7. Sharing - Beyond Engagement for Trust

So two final posts on this stream of thinking for now. The first on how the approach to what the digital channel is for needs to change to build trust and then one on the realities of adopting this approach for companies and the implications.

We hear a lot about the need to attract and engage consumers. The real power of communications in digital channels comes from going beyond that. If we can construct dialogues that enable and empower the individual and lets them control the future direction of communication then we have truly placed people at the centre of the communication and will develop trust accordingly.

See below, this illustrates both the opportunity and challenge of doing this. Brands are reluctant to let go of control but they must if they are to reap the benefits of trust based communication.



In practice what does this mean? It means starting dialogues not knowing where they will go, creating a piece of communications that opens up a conversation and then listening before deciding where you (the brand) wants it to go next. If you really get to the point of empowering the consumer you find a way to let them take the brand in the direction they want. Obviously there are constraints, obviously whilst I talk about individuals we are really talking about a collective consciousness but the principles still apply.


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Bordeaux Birthday 2008

Ahhhh a gastronomic joy.

5 days in the Bordeaux surroundings, eating fine food, drinking fine wine, making new friends, losing old ones (joke).

My associates for the adventure, Jean Peranaud (host and local), Celia Grannum (pregnant angel wife of the former), Teddy Rudholm (brief flirter of food and hardest working man in business), Reshma Sohoni (major flirter in general:-)) and Philip Stoeckl (he's the German join him!)

Three great restaurants in 3 days

Day -1: Before the rest of the group arrive I sample Jeans mums cooking
Home made duck fois gras
Tomato salad with tomatoes from the neighbour
Duck confit
Home made Tarte Tatin
A good Sauterne and Bordeaux
Do I really have to say more?

Day 1: The starter for 1 (star) Le Saint James a Bouliac - Michel Portos
Jean and Celia have the best lamb ever
Ted asks for more bread
The pre-dessert dessert with infusions of lemon grass and ginger gives us all inner glows of joy
The guys died over their desserts whilst I enjoyed my cheese and incurred Jeans wrath for having port (it was on the cheese board sunshine!!)
Service was poor and attitude sucked so I would have removed their star out of spite...
...but they also forgot to put 100's of euros of extra's on the bill so all good in the end :-)

Day 2: The main course for 3 (stars) - Les Pres de Eugenie - Michel Guerard
The best French cooking I have experienced
The mushrooms oh the mushrooms
The lobster oh the lobster
Calm down Reeshma, no I don't want tea and boobs

Day 3: The dessert for 2 (get it?) Relais Poste - Jean Coussau
The grilled Fois Gras was so rich we all felt it but I would eat it again and again until I died (see pics below)
The Tattinger 1988 for a birthday treat
The great desserts
The Armagnac
The oh dear shouldn't have followed that with more champagne 4am moment

Day 4: Just a little lunch
The mushrooms and egg en coucotte (sp?)
Mmmmm

Oh and hey weighed myself today....I lost weight over the weekend, package me up and ship me to Bordeaux.

Random images below, click the image to see the amazingly humourous descriptions.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

6. Sharing - Why the Trust Iteration works

Why does what is laid out below work better for brands and people?

See below, this is reflective of campaigns as we know them.



Most campaigns develop high peaks of reach with a sharp fall away (point 1 above). This is true even with camapaigns including digital elements, it may help lesson the fall away (illustrated by the light grey illustration above) but the principle remains.

Assuming media spend and creative success are constant then reach is always similar (2 above). This could be different people, but the volume of reach is the same because we always start from point 0.

By focussing on TV and print the media spend can be high to attain the desired reach and the challenge is to ensure that the reach is relevant. (3 above)

The Trust Iteration provides a different result, below



A combination of traditional techniques and online marketing combine to create awareness (Point 1 above). By understanding the target market and by leveraging multiple relevant online media and techniques together with traditional sources reach can be more relevant with a greater conversion % and lower cost per reach.

Note
Initial reach can meet or exceed that of traditional campaigns depending on media spend and strategy. This is shown lower here to facilitate the rest of the illustration

Effective, relevant engagement between points of awareness stimulates further reach through word of mouth (2 above)

To maintain momentum and engagement typically there is a greater frequency of targeted activity over time compared to the traditional approach (3 above)

Use of digital technologies allow us to capture and remember consumers that have engaged so each new initiative builds on the last rather than starting again from zero (4 above)

In actual fact each step in the mountain can also be techniques working together (point 5 above)

Over a period of time the total reach compared to the traditional approach is far greater with a correlating increase in conversion and the benefits that provides.


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5. Sharing - The Trust Iteration (Practice)

So how do brands/agencies do this?

1. Ensure that any communication fits into an overall strategy and business imperative and does not become determined in isolation
2. Ensure that any communication takes into account the previous and next touch points (micro-interactions)with a person
3. Ensure communication can be instigated as needed and therefore be relevant

Below is what I call the Trust Iteration, a simple overview of what we need to do as agencies or companies to best service the needs of the individual with our brands. Being able to go through this loop time and time again with each micro-interation or touch point between and brand and a consumer in a way that addresses the above three points is the key to effective communication for brands.




How does this work?

1. Understand
• It starts with People. Human insight is crucial, we have to understand and keep learning about people, not just general demographic data.
• We have to understand people based on their motivations, needs, desires, culture, their loves, their hates. We have to know it now and we have to have a view how it is going to change over time.
• Note that people touch all elements of the Trust Iteration. Everything that follows must be done with people (the consumer) in mind.

2. Envision, Justify, Plan
• Vision: A strategic direction irrespective of media
• Rationale: A business rationale for the above, why bother?
• Tactics: A strategy to implement the vision re: brand, planning and media. What will this provide the business? How will the business need to evolve to deliver on this?
• Success definition and measurement: what is success (in business and consumer terms)? How will we qualitatively and quantitatively measure it?

3. Innovate, Inspire, Create
• Relationship Design – construct the chain of touch points between consumer and brand and how people move, or brands move people, between them (note this is a non-linear series of points)
• Creative & Content strategy - how we bring the above to life by inspiring innovative effective creativity across all relevant media

4. Attract, Activate, Engage, Enable, Empower
• Stimulate awareness and interest in creative execution/pr etc and start engagement
• Beyond Engagement; Enable & empower the consumer (I shall come back to digital being “Beyond Engagement” in a later post)
• Other Production - bring the vision to life through words, images, motion, objects (or whatever else works)

5 Convert, Learn, Retain, Measure
• Once we have the consumers interest make sure that converts into sales
• Process the inputs from dialogues and apply those learnings back into the next iteration of Steps 1&2
• By doing the above improve the experience of each consumer with the brand to keep them loyal, consider mechanics and incentives to aid this process
• Finally accurately measure how you have done (not in reach and awards) so that on the next iteration you can eliminate the bad and do more of the good

That seems a lot of things to do if you are to iterate effectively and efficiently but the reality is that once you have established the key strategic drivers and direction and once you have started the process it is a case of subtle changes and tweaks or ending streams of communication and starting new ones or even just a set of mental check points when considering instigating another micro-interaction or having to create on as a response to an event.

The bottom line is if someone is in control of their communication and the overarching dialogue they are looking to have with a consumer they can insert and change the subject matter relatively easily, just as a person would in a sales meeting when responding to questions or on a date or in a job interview…you have an objective, you know your subject matter and if you are to be successful you will apply that in a way your audience is satisfied, and using this model will ensure communication is effective and not wasted.


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4. Sharing - The Trust Iteration (Theory)

Campaigns are dead. How many people are saying this as a headline to grab attention? OK, maybe I may have said it myself in some presentations over previous months. On reflection however I think using the word "campaign" is missing the point. Irrespective of what we call our communication I firmly believe it is the frequency that is the primary issue to discuss and not necessarily the form it takes. I think debating the need for “traditional” or “online” communication misses the point. In life I want to be entertained and engaged, amazed and appeased, sold and served. None of these things are mutually exclusive, what is important to realise is when I want one and not the other. Don’t keep telling me how great something is when I can’t figure out how to turn it on, don’t sell me on something new when what I have got doesn’t work.

Knowing where someone is on his or her journey with your brand is essential. As is being able to be there when people need you, and not make them wait until you are ready to communicate with them. This is where the use of online and other digital media can be of massive benefit to brands.

Brands typically choose to communicate with their consumers once every 3-6 months. This is because it takes that long to internally meet and discuss a strategy, then turn that into a brief, then illicit responses on "the big idea" from agencies, then decide, then produce, then agree media, then distribute. All of this and often still no real accurate source of measuring success other than tracking bottom line sales and industry awards.

The obvious driver (excuse?) here is the time required to go from inception to distribution of content in traditional media as well as the internal decision lag in big business.

As I mentioned before nothing is mutually exclusive so if there are valid drivers for large scale mass reach communication for your brand then great continue with the 3-6 month cycles BUT; they should be in the context of the broader dialogue with your consumer, and should be inter-dispersed with regular micro-interactions maintaining the brand-consumer conversation, listening, learning and giving input and context to the next large scale explosion.

My position is that if you were wanting to choose (and on the assumption that choice is normally driven by budgetary limitations), the constant communication of micro-interactions is far more powerful, cost effective and relevant to your brand than the high cost explosions, I really believe these are now the “nice to haves” in your communications mix.

So why the need to have these micro-interactions? I believe it comes down to relevance. As mentioned earlier, as a brand you need to be there when I need you, but also when you need to be there as a brand.

As an example, if I am reaching a purchase point for a product (e.g. my laptop is old/broke), you need to know that and be there for me helping me understand why it makes sense for me to purchase your product (especially if its one of your products I am replacing!), you only know that if you have maintained a dialogue with me and understood where I am on my journey. If it is one of your products I am replacing you know that and you turn that into a benefit with a loyalty discount on my next purchase etc.

Likewise you should be there when a moment or event makes your brand/product instantly relevant to someone or if your brand/product has had a significant positive effect on the moment in question. In the last 24 hours as I type this Usain Bolt has just won the Olympic 200m with a 19.30s world record (on top of his 100m world record), he has also proudly paraded his gold Puma running shoes in front of the cameras and into 3 billion homes…in itself not a bad result for Puma, but now is their time to jump all over that moment, knowing it could have been a reality they could have already planned to leverage it. They still might, but the reality is whilst the event will be have awareness for some time the mass impact is within the first 24 hours of it happening. Politicians announce relief for disasters in the first 24 hours because it will have the greatest positive impact on their ratings, they could wait a week, the event is still resonating, but people respond to instantaneous response as it resonates with what they are feeling at that moment.

Linked to the above is the impact of word of mouth. In the next 24 hours of a significant event it is all people discuss. Today the papers and discussions are of Bolt and his amazing efforts, but tomorrow or the day after there will be others (remember Michael Phelps and his 8 gold medals? Yesterdays news, sorry Speedo). Add to this point the role of social media online and the ability to spread news from 1 to millions and you understand the opportunity that is currently being missed by brands (oh and do recognise that online people spread news to offline people as well so it is not just about leveraging a relative minority market online!)

The advent of online and in particular the increase of social media means that now I don't need to wait to have to hear about and contribute to events, news, moments.

So in summary, going back to the imperative of trust (see previous posts), brands have to be able to contribute to dialogues and discussions as they happen or as they need to happen in a contextual and relevant manner otherwise at best you are missing an opportunity and at worst seen to be irrelevant and “bandwagoning”.


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Sharing with piece of mind

I always wanted to use this forum to share thoughts and opinions on marketing but there was always the concern of "do I want to give away that which I hold most dear". But recently meeting and talking to the likes of David Armano and David Bausola I really have come round to the idea of share and trust. For extra piece of mind though Mr Bausola introduced me to the Creative Commons licensing scheme you will see on my posts. Mr B narrates a wonderfully illustrated film on what this all means and why you should take an interest.

And breathe...

Off to Bordeaux (that's in France btw) for 5 days fine wine and fine food and no wireless...

It's been a good week.

3. Sharing - The Strategic Start Point

So if we assume that volume of advertising continues to grow, and that digital is now an established medium, other media stay relevant but choice in media consumption will increasingly go into the hands of the consumer and that what we crave is trust where do we go?

First understand how the current model doesn't deliver.

Established thinking in marketing has always focused on the brand. Understand clearly what we are, why we are better and then tell the consumer in a clear, appealing, emotive manner and make them WANT us.

In real terms (see below) we understand our brand, our target market, and then how we can PUSH to them and best REACH that market in apportioning our media spend. Then we create a message that best exploits each media and (hopefully) all fits into the same broader "Big Idea". We then do that every three months, often starting from point zero again with a new "Big Idea".



Thing is, if what we marry that to human behaviour that is like me meeting you for the first time, saying "Hello, pleased to meet you, I'm Jason Hartley, and I'm a great brand strategist, who are you?" then meeting you three months later and saying "Hello, pleased to meet you, I'm Jason Hartley, and I'm a great Creative Strategist, who are you?". You are going to think a) he's rude for not remembering me, b) he's inconsistent and maybe a bit of a bullshitter for changing what he is and maybe, c) he's a little arrogant for claiming to be great...I'll be the judge of that. The outcome of this is dis-trust, the exact opposite of what we seek.

So how do we resolve this. We do the following:



By placing people at the centre of our model we allow people to control the conversation with the brand. They PULL and ENGAGE with the brand in media as they see fit. Of course we can attract, stimulate and guide using traditional methods, no harm in that, but they take on the role of stimulus, jumping out of the crowd starting a dialogue saying "hey, fancy a chat?", rather than "hey you, shut up and listen to this".

Note that unlike the previous model where we can create individual brand communication for each channel in isolation we now have to create a holistic brand experience that can take into account a person starting or engaging in a dialogue at any given point in time or in any medium. This means that any touch point needs to be both an introduction to, and a driver to, continue engagement and that all points HAVE to be consistent in message, tone of voice and their visualisation. Brand managers will no doubt say that has always been the case but I challenge them to go and look at their communication delivered by different agencies across different media and then tell me what they wanted was what they got.

The role of media is also important to note here. You cannot do one size fits all. You need to be flexible and not prescriptive with media strategy, until we determine where the dialogue is going to be most effective or where it will be held we cannot pretend to have 100% understanding of where we must invest. Media agencies will no doubt contest this, but only because their business model means they have to. This flexibility needs to extend per market and even per segment per market. Again, developing trust takes commitment and effort and can't be based on general-isms and shortcuts.

Given that the pragmatic answer to a cohesive, consistant dialogue across media isn't and never will be "give it all to one agency" the challenge for brands/companies is how they deliver the above. That is next...


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2. Sharing - The Consequence of Noise

So given we know there is a proliferation of communication and that choice is prevalent in modern culture how do brands secure their place in peoples minds and wallets? The following illustrates that there really is, I believe, only one way to be heard and that is to develop trust.



What does this mean?:

Brands can't just shout and expect to be heard. They have to listen. Listening may mean the need to change, not for short term gains but for the greater long term good. Listening means measuring (qualitatively and quantitatively). It means starting open ended communication and seeing where people want it to go and then adapting to their needs. It means doing things you think may fail but the learning you get is worth the risk.

Brands can't just reinvent themselves as appropriate to leverage cultural trends, they have to live by their previous choices and expressions and evolve from them, admitting mistakes and building on success. This means stopping with constant creative re-invention It means letting the need to work hard connecting people and brands over time take the lead over big ideas exploding every three months.

There is only one way this can work, and will be illustrated in the next post, its a very simple strategic shift for a brand/company to make but the implications in communications and internal organisation are significant which is why there are very few (dare I say no) illustrations of this being done currently


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1. Sharing - The basics

So moving forward I am going to use this blog more as a platform to share my thoughts on communication, feel free to contribute, borrow etc but please take note to the licensing conditions, many thanks.

Lets start with some basic background info that sets up the framwork of the debate. Yes digital is a factor but no TV and other media for that matter is not going to suddenly disappear as a relevant factor in communication. To me this is common sense but I have read enough to know others believe different so I just wanted to set my stall out. By the way after going from Keynote to PowerPoint to GoogleDocs some of my lovely slides look a little ropey, sorry for that.



The one thing to note here is that the medium is increasingly going to become an irrelevant tag when creating content, today often we say "TV" when we mean "Film" and "online" when we mean "websites". Already digital media is actually a medium for any form of content and over the coming couple of years the TV will catch up and be an interactive shell for digital content. Moving forward content will become independent of the medium to deliver it. What will become important is how we construct experiences and ongoing dialogues across the different media so people get the right content and interactivity in the context of what they are doing and what their needs are at a specific point in their brand interaction.


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Moving On...

So from that situation comes a crossroads...what to do? 3 years of running my own agency, then a supposed stable period turns sour. What to do?

Battled but unbowed by the Look experience, more certain than ever that effective use of digital in a variable media mix is without a doubt the way to develop effective lasting profitable consumer brand relationships but without a vehicle to express this belief.

After seriously considering a move away from all forms of marketing comes a bolt from the blue that reaffirms my faith!

Drafted in (via fairy godmother Pasquelina Petruccio) to work with 180 / TBWA on a global digital pitch for one of the worlds best known sports goods brands. Working with Omnicom/TBWA CDO Colleen Decourcy and a team of brilliant, lovely people in 2-3 weeks of very long and stimulating work we deliver a pitch to be proud of.

Up against, Droga5, Aegis Isobar and AvenueA Razorfish the result is due today...watch this space...

So from the worst to the best experience of my career...ain't life funny.

OK so enough of the personal emotional posts, now back to the fun of communications and how we need to react to the changing world of consumer brand relationships to successfully deliver value to client organisations...

cherish is dead, long live cherish

So what an interesting few months that has been. It's my blog so I can be honest, and here goes honesty....albeit in short.

November 2007...time to wrap up cherish...why?

1. cherish was doing small work with big brands. This was not going to change in the short term and was frustrating.
2. As a self financed venture cherish never had the money to hire the very best people, with all respect to those that worked with cherish in its 3 years. This was hurting our work and the business.
3. I was increasingly failing as a manager, partly because of the above points it was becoming clear the business, which successful compared to many small agencies, was not living up to my expectations and aims...so before it died or I died it was time to close.
4. There was an offer of something interesting that would allow me to leverage the cherish model but in a larger better financed environment. More of that below.

Feb 2008...new challenges and little bit of stability, or so I thought...!

Over the course of 2007 a friend at the time Hans Howarth, CEO of Amsterdam based web agency MediaCatalyst, had approached me to help head up a new joint venture between his company and Cayenne, the traditional agency of Canon in Europe. The new company, Look, was to be the integrated agency of the group. My role was to be Strategy Director, determining the offering of the business and help solidify a very shaky client relationship between Canon and Cayenne.

Public blogs are not for details so I will leave it by saying it was not what it was meant to be, politics and in fighting resulted in stagnation and impotence, someone I considered a friend turned out to be quite the opposite in their expectation setting and more disappointingly in their financial commitment so after 4 months it was time to leave what in fact turned into the worst experience of my career.

You always learn from these things, they make you stronger, but it is still not pleasant to experience.

The biggest disappointment of all is that the small number of Look employees brought in to start the business were very able, very admirable people. MediaCatalyst is a company with a strong culture and great team. It is an example of how one person's ambition can be blind to what could be lost in order to reach a financial goal. A lesson in business for us all. But, onwards and upwards.

cherish lives on, but now as a vehicle for me to engage agencies and brands to deliver on the opportunity that exists in communications without the baggage of overheads and the necessity to sell campaigns or production.