Underground Blog

Back when I was in High School, our cross country team coach had an unusual and corny yet strangely motivating expression. Prior to the beginning of each season, during the summer, he would say, “Make sure your hay is in the barn.” What did he mean by that? I’m no farmer, but I’m pretty sure he was describing one of the important steps of preparation a farmer has to make before a long winter. And since cross country is a sport that requires longer distance running, the preparation you put into building up your endurance beforehand by running 300 miles in the summer – instead of waiting until the beginning of the actual fall/winter season to begin training – will give you greater results for the long-haul.

Strangely, my old coach’s expression has merit all over again for marketers.

It’s time to re-examine your brand positioning now. Because the preparation you make now in terms of strategic brand development and then executing that strategy give you a much greater chance of establishing and strengthening your brand’s presence in the marketplace.

Why now, you ask? After all, why not wait until sunnier days come upon us? Think about how you view brands you now trust. Even when you had a need for a solution in that brand category, was that trust always instantaneous and so compelling each and every time that you thought “I’ve got to have that product/service this second”?

No. I’ll bet you didn’t have that instant connection. I’ll bet in some cases, that connection and trust took time to sink in. You had to absorb it. You had to think about it in the context of all the stuff you needed. You had to see it a 2^nd or 3^rd time to get the whole story and reinforce the feeling that, yes, this brand was the one you could feel good about.

That’s how people work because like it or not, they’re naturally skeptical of many claims. No matter how genuine those claims are.

With this in mind, let’s fast forward to a time and place where the economy is not recovered but at least better than where it was. Some would even say that day is today. Your competitor has laid the groundwork for brand building with multiple efforts. He’s shifted some choices due to budget but still engaged in forms of traditional advertising and PR. He’s ventured in social media more than he ever did. And he’s revamped the look of his company’s website to encourage greater repeat visits.

And you? Well, let’s say at this point you’re just now ready to start talking about how you’re going to strategize your brand direction with some efforts that take place months from now – you know, the stuff your competitor’s been doing well ahead of you.

Provided the message is on target, which do you think the audience is more likely to respond to first — the brand they’ve been hearing from multiple times or the brand that just shared its first new message in a good long while? My money’s on the one that put itself out there in an effort to establish a rapport long ago.

Now let’s come back to the here and now. If you’re interested in taking proactive steps, then take a good, hard look within and ask yourself some tough questions that are not the no-brainers they appear to be initially. For example:

Who is your target audience?
You say you know who they are? Good. Tell me exactly which zip codes they live in and their purchasing behaviors. Then tell me where a potential secondary audience might be.

What are your competitors doing better than you?
It’s fun and easy to say where they’re failing in comparison to your strengths. Work harder than that. Tell me where they’re kicking your butt. Your company is not perfect. Nobody’s is.

What’s the state of your website?
Is it a 1-time-only experience where people get what you’re about and then leave? Most are. No interactivity and fresh content….no reason for them to come back.

What are the threats on the horizon for your industry?
Tell me how your brand may be affected and what you intend to do about it from a marketing perspective right now. Don’t tell me you’re going to wait until the threat is here and very real.

How are you showing that you’re a trusted authority people can turn to?
I’m not talking about what you do. I’m talking about speaking to events and trends in your industry or in the news that you have spoken to consistently through blogging, podcasting, video, newsletters, articles placed or another option.

This is only the beginning. The point is that from answers to questions like the ones above, you can begin to get honest with yourself about what you need to do from here. I’m quite certain that your house is not in perfect order at this point, which is fine. The time to ask them and then execute answers to them is now. Not later.

Animals go into hibernation for the Winter. Chief Marketing Officers don’t have that luxury.

Agencies of all nature, particularly advertising, think their ability to specialize in a certain industry equates to better overall work. Which left me to ponder this:

What if you know a lot about an industry but your work from a creative standpoint isn’t very good?

See, specialization that forces an agency to be all about one particular industry can actually backfire. True, some specialists are excellent strategically and creatively speaking. They’ve got the ability to put their money where their mouths are because they know that experience and the portfolio of past work for other clients in a “that’s fine and good but what can you do for ME” world can only account for so much. I don’t have many issues with them.

But I do take issue with specialists who are trying to get clients to drink the Kool-Aid that says their ability to be so “laser-focused” on one industry only will naturally equate to better ideas and better results.

Nice try. But not always true. In fact, the specialized agency may even be worse. Allow me to elaborate.

Here’s the scenario: Let’s say an agency is completely focused on healthcare clients. They know the trends facing healthcare, they have a great familiarity with a variety of healthcare marketing challenges, they’ve written White Papers, blog posts, e-newsletters, the works. And yes, perhaps they even get one of the first calls from a prospect to participate in a pitch because that prospect associates the agency with being experts in that field.

Success or at least a leg up on the competition, right? Not so fast. Because the prospect also invited a few other agencies to the table too that are not specialists. And more than anything, the prospect has lacked a recognizable, striking brand identity that causes a potential customer to say, “Wow, this company is doing something different and I’ll have to think about them in my purchase decision going forward (note: I know this is total marketing speak but you get the idea).”

With this goal in mind, isn’t it conceivable that those non-specialized agencies are coming into the situation with the freshest eye of anyone? After all, consider this:

They don’t have any other client on their roster remotely close to that prospect they’re pitching. Which means they won’t have a “this prospect sounds a lot like that other client of ours” mentality. They won’t assume the challenges and goals are the same. And they won’t risk developing ideas that may be dangerously close to what was done for that other client.

An understanding of the client’s challenge and its audience? Definitely a must, obviously. But am I to assume that an ability to inspire audience participation in the way of purchasing and advocating the client’s brand to others isn’t as important, if not more so? Surely you must believe it is. So if the specialist presents strategic brilliance but a creative snoozefest while the non-specialist is just a tad behind that other agency’s knowledge curve yet triggers an emotional response during its pitch in the boardroom along the lines of what you’d love your audience to have, who do you choose?

The answer: At the very least in such a scenario, specializing is not the slam-dunk advantage some make it out to be.

Herein lies the hole in the argument of specialists who say their intensive industry knowledge equates to standout results – they may begin with head start, but the race is won not by winning merely the marketing decision-maker’s approval but by ultimately winning the target audience’s approval. The specialist can pull that off. But so can the non-specialist who may be able to show their versatility to connect with audiences across a wide array of different clients.

Each agency owner must make their own choice that feels right in the specialization/non-specialization spectrum. Personally, I choose to be non-specialized because I feel it gives our people the opportunity to come into an environment where no two days are ever exactly the same because they work on many different clients. That’s fun, challenging and exciting for them. They thrive in the unexpected. But most importantly, it benefits our clients who need ideas that are not only increasingly creative but increasingly cost-effective in challenging times.

To that end, I look forward to increased pitching against others who have done this or that for one industry only. I may win. I may not. But you’d better believe my team of non-specialists is surely going to give them a run for their money.

I suppose I committed a cardinal sin of Twitter the other day. I unfollowed some people. I know this goes against the “get as many followers as you can” logic, but I have to say I found it to be a kind of cleansing experience. I see the Twitter experience – which isn’t for everyone, by the way – as being one that is more fruitful and fulfilling when a community built on being social is just that. And truth be told, I found some people who weren’t being very actively social at all. Sure, maybe they were just listening to a lot of conversations more than anything. But on Twitter, there’s already too much listening and not enough engaging.

Here’s a Tweeter that isn’t worth following to me – take a look at the person’s Twitter stream and see if he or she has a combination of most or all of these elements:

1) Doesn’t converse with others.
“Hey world! Here’s everything about me and what I’m doing right now!” It’s a wonder these people are even on Twitter any more. Buy an ad. That’s what you really want. Because it’s clear you don’t care about answering questions, posing questions, adding onto other people’s thoughts, etc. It’s not hard. But this person doesn’t want to make the effort.

2) Doesn’t Retweet.
It’s so simple to Retweet a comment, quote or thought that it’s ridiculous. Especially if you have TweetDeck. You come across useful tweets all the time, right? Sure you do. Or you still wouldn’t be on Twitter. So why aren’t you Retweeting them? It’s courteous, it’s nice and it helps provide exposure to that tweeter. Wouldn’t you want someone doing the same for you?

3) Hasn’t posted in over a month.
OK, some people can’t tweet every day or possibly every week. Cut those folks some slack. But when you look at their Twitter stream and see their last post was May 19th when it’s October 14th, you’ve got a sure sign that this person is not the kind of individual who is likely to awaken from their Twitter slumber to have a conversation with you.

4) Doesn’t post links if they don’t link back to their own stuff.
Sure, it’s fine to post links to your latest blog post. I do it all the time. But a lot of other things are worth linking back to that have nothing to do with your brand. It might just be a funny picture. Or a useful article. Or some commentary on an issue you found interesting that you’d like to share with the community. When that isn’t occurring in tandem with some of the other traits above, you may have yourself a follower who is really just about promoting their own cause.

I know, sometimes you want to follow Ashton and Demi or some celebrity or famous business person who doesn’t really interact that much and is more about “here’s what I’m doing right now.” You have an interest in that person and it’s really just about listening for you. Here lies the exception to the rule I’ve outlined above. Believe it or not, the celeb tweeter I actually don’t mind for one simple reason – those people usually give us a steady stream of information regularly that we find useful. Celeb tweeters can get away with a little less give-and-take with the community than average Joes like you and me.

The rest of us? Well, we have to work harder if we want to get something more out of the Twitterverse. Yet, if we do so, I think the people we are following and those following us will be that much better for it.

Very interesting post by Max Kalehoff that’s worth sharing in regard to how influential your culture and leadership can lead to impassioned people who aren’t even affiliated with your company spreading the good word (hopefully) about you through social media. By the way, in case you think the examples here only work because the companies cited are large, Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer cites smaller examples such as Martell Home Builders and Tinku Galleries — Google those too when you get a chance.

http://www.attentionmax.com/blog/2009/10/figuring_out_social_media_the_answer_is_not_advertising.php

It always seems odd to me that when the advent of a new, exciting form of media sprouts up, another has to be crushed into oblivion and “die.” Why? In a mad rush to seem like an Oracle of What’s Next, there’s always some person in our industry who has to declare the time of death of a certain type of media. And I just have to call BS. Like when I hear….

“Newspapers are dead!”
Not really. Newspaper content is shifting to online and taking a different shape than what we’ve known. Don’t mistake this change for meaning that newspapers as an irrelevant option for media where appropriate to your target audience.

“TV is dead!”
Wow. I’m glad you told me. I’ll have to notify the millions upon millions upon millions of people who have these weird boxes in their living rooms because, as you say, Johnny Expert, TV is dead. TV is transforming and expanding into online with video, thanks to good old YouTube and others (but the traditional TV isn’t leaving the house anytime soon either).

“Radio is dead!”
Interesting. So everyone with a car doesn’t listen to FM or AM radio? I know this medium is changing, but dead? Not quite. One of my clients always seems to get terrific traction from people saying, “You work for them? Hey, isn’t that the company who has the radio commercial that sounds like…”

And then I hear this, which sends me over the moon:

“Advertising is dead because social media is here!”
Stop. Stop. Stop. Hold your horses right there. I am as big a fan and proponent of social media as anyone. Social media is bringing exciting changes in the way that we converse with potential customers. But advertising or PR it is not nor should it replace. To be clear, social media is something that brand managers need to get familiarized with and fast. They need to evaluate it in the context of what they’re doing in tandem with their overall strategy rather than an add-on afterthought.

Yet, brand managers also have to remember that it is their own audience behaviors, budget, goals and more that should dictate media decisions. And what I’m seeing is that these types of factors are pointing in the direction of multiple avenues of communication, including in several cases, avenues that have been erroneously declared “dead.”

Let’s take advertising, for example. Spending in certain areas of advertising may be down, but to eliminate traditional advertising as a potential avenue – especially when it makes sense as part of research is telling you – is foolish.

I believe in integrated approaches to brand building. Sometimes that includes advertising in the picture, sometimes that doesn’t. But what The Oracles of What’s Next don’t seem to understand is that the picture can include Advertising, PR, Social Media, Digital and more. Media that makes sense for the client’s challenge gets included in the strategy. Media that doesn’t make sense for the client’s challenge still lives to get evaluated for another client, another day.

One big happy family under one brand umbrella. I think we can live with that.