Posted in Advocacy Insights, Hardwiring, New techniques, tagged Advocacy, Brand Storytelling, Brands, corporate storytelling, Richard Moss, Storytelling on March 1, 2008| 2 Comments »
Daniel Tammet is a remarkable individual. He holds the European record for reciting pi to 22, 514 digits in just five hours. He has twice been in the Guinness Book of records for remembering the order of a shuffled pack of cards in next to no time.
How does he do it? He utilises the power of storytelling. In fact he is currently teaching UK school kids this art – getting them to create vivid stories in their minds as they are shown random cards and then getting them to tell these stories to correctly recite the pack order.
Why is story relevant to every Marketing and Communication professional? Simply because as brands lose the control of their traditional communication channels and their customers increasingly rely on trusted third parties (advocates) as sources of information to make their buying decisions, every communication professional is going to have to become a master storyteller. Identifying what their brand or corporate messages are (the cards) and creating vivid stories around them that will get passed from one advocate to another with the core messages intact. I have spent a fair amount of time teaching the art of story-telling to corporations and executives around the world. It’s a forgotten art with increasing relevance and has a transformational effect on business.
PS.
I’m always collecting great brand or corporate stories … those stories that help define a brand, it’s behaviours and the journey it’s on. If you know of a great story …would love to hear it!
Posted in Advocacy Insights, New techniques, tagged Brand Advocacy, Brand Advocates, Ignite Conversations, Net Promoter Score, Richard Moss, Word of Mouth on January 26, 2008| 1 Comment »
I notice that the conversation around brand advocacy is changing from a focus on it’s relative importance, to a discussion on how you build it – quickly.
Here in a nutshell is what you do.
1. Measure your advocacy levels. NPS is a pretty good start point.
2. Fine-tune your advocacy engine – your brand. Are you surprising and delighting at every touch-point?
3. Identify your most influential advocacy channels. Today they are unlikely to be ads.
4. Identify the conversations taking place amongst these channels
5. Create the story that will ignite memorable conversations around your brand
6. Develop the engagement plan (the platforms to spread the story).
7. Measure and watch your business grow!
Posted in Advocacy Insights, New techniques, tagged Corporate branding, corporate reputations, Marketing transparency, Richard Moss, The 4 P's, The marketing mix on January 21, 2008| 1 Comment »
I’ve written about the criticism that Unilever has faced with the Dove and Axe brand before on this blog. Two modern day “conversational brands” that sit in different markets, have different target audiences, yet are taking flack because they both have the same Parent, Unilever. How can Dove credibly champion the cause of real women, when it comes from the same stable as Axe some cry?
Personally I don’t see this as a dilemma. Unilever has created two conversations in the market and consumers are clearly free to join or reject either. I do think however that it raises interesting questions for all Brand/Communication Directors who are trying to adapt to our increasingly transparent world.
As the Unilever example demonstrates, product brands and corporate brands no longer live in different worlds. They cannot be managed as individual challenges. The corporate brand can no longer be constructed solely for internal/financial audiences. It must be a living and visionary manifesto – a public declaration of the core intentions of the business, its guiding principles and policies.
I therefore suggest that a 5th P is added to the classic 4P’s of marketing. In addition to Product, Price, Promotion and Place, should we not add Parent (the Corporate Brand)?
If you believe, that the strongest brands in future will be those who best engage their audiences in an open two-way conversation, doesn’t it make sense for the corporate brand to be considered at every stage of the brand planning process?
Posted in Interesting books, Measurement, New techniques, tagged Advocacy, Planning, Richard Moss on December 29, 2007| Leave a Comment »
Some experts in the UK are estimating that 17% of shopping was done on-line this Xmas, beating all predictions. It’s another sign of how fast things are changing for brands and I was fascinated therefore to read an article in the Times Magazine today, looking at predictions from leading commentators for the year ahead. Supercrunching grabbed my attention …
Ian Ayers has written a book called Super Crunchers (named using Google Ad-words to test various titles to his book, to identify the one that generated the most clicks).
Supercrunching is the analysis of huge quantities of data to make predictions about the real world. He claims it is the future of marketing – identifying what consumers will buy next, based on masses of collected data on past behaviour, external influences and probabilities etc. He says it will replace intuition in many situations.
Data is being collected from us at every source today– search terms, shopping purchases, location records etc. Piecing these together does give marketers the opportunity to create fantastic predictive and targeting models. The issue historically has been one of cost – it’s simply been too expensive to adopt this approach across a wide range of decisions. As these costs reduce, as they will, Supercrunching will clearly become an increasingly important component of future advocacy strategies.
I also liked The Times article on the Terabyte.
Fewer than ten years ago a matchbox sized 64 Megabyte MP3 player held a CD’s worth of music. The current Ipod has 160,000 Megabytes (160 Gigabytes). Even the Gigabyte is close to obsolescence according to one commentator – as we move towards the Terabyte (1 million Megabytes). Soon gadgets will contain tens or even hundreds of Terabytes. They will be pre-loaded with masses of information to reduce the reliance on slow Internet connections and we will have the opportunity to store everything we have ever produced, seen or heard. It’s yet another new space for brands to think about.
The future it seems is data!
Posted in Engaging Encounters, New techniques on December 12, 2007| 1 Comment »
Google has built a business on it, Radiohead has made money from it – is the future of marketing about giving your product away free?
In a recent survey conducted with Paul Marsden, we identified that 70% of brand advocacy can be linked directly to how much a brand surprises and delights its customers – exceeds expectations.
So how do you surprise and delight your customers? Well you can follow the example of the car industry and add features. Do you remember what created the buzz when BMW re-launched Rolls Royce? It wasn’t the smooth ride or the top speed – it was that bloody umbrella in the rear door! You can also add streams of experiences as the fruit juice brand Innocent have done using their product labels, the Village Fetes, the woolly hatted CSR activities etc.
But there is something else you can do. Nothing will surprise your customers more than giving your product away free! Could the value of the eyeballs you bring to advertisers be worth more than the few pence you make from your pack of beans? Could the volume of people you bring to your free on-line insurance service offer a profitable platform to sell other higher margin products? Is this the future of marketing?
It’s an idea, isn’t it … and one I’ll give you for free!
Word of Moss 