Of all the ads I saw during the most watched Superbowl ever, I liked the quick 15-second ad snuck in by Worldwide Pants. It features David Letterman (who wrote the ad), Oprah Winfrey, and Jay Leno. While it flew by during the game, it stuck with a few folks who remember the old late night rivalry between Leno and Letterman. And, hints that it's going to be fun to have the rivalry back! It's great to see people poking fun at themselves and having a good time doing it. Nothing like some healthy competition to keep things interesting.
The January 19th election for the next Senator of Massachusetts has made the national news. Looking at the state I've lived in for over 20 years that leans heavily to the Democratic side, I'm asking myself how in the last couple of weeks is a Republican candidate that I've barely heard of now running neck-and-neck with the Democratic candidate the people assumed had the race all but won.
Great Marketing Begins With Understanding Your Customer
Senator Ted Kennedy loved Massachusetts. He never took a vote for granted. When he was elected to the Senate, the Massachusetts economy was based on clothing mills and shoes and the high-tech industry was just getting started. There's a great blog post by Joyce Plotkin on how Ted Kennedy took the time to champion the tech community because it was important to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Kennedy understood his base. He also understood that in Washington, while people could vehemently disagree on issues, if you could get to some common ground like your love for your country, you could find a compromise to make things happen.
Those of us who have built careers on sales and marketing know that no one is entitled to a sale from a customer. You develop a product or service based on an understanding of what real people want. You do your due diligence to see if there's enough of a market out there to build a business on and if there is, you go out there and try it. By understanding what your customer needs and how they receive information, you define your own success.
Did the Democratic party in Massachusetts think they were entitled to this seat because Democrat Ted Kennedy had held it for so long? Is that why they ran the Attorney General for the Senate seat? Why the sudden scramble to hold on to the seat? What does Scott Brown have that's causing such a ruckus?
I'm reading a lot of articles today on who has the best social media strategy, i.e., who's got more Twitter followers or who's got a better Facebook page. I'm reading about mistakes made on radio talk shows about who doesn't know that Curt Schilling is a Red Sox fan. I'm getting at least three robocalls a day encouraging me to get out and vote. And, I'm watching Scott Brown ads on TV that talk about change followed immediately with a negative ad by the Coakley campaign. More importantly, I'm reading the comments left by readers of articles on the campaign in the Boston Globe and the New York Times.
Tapping Into the Mood of the People
Massachusetts is an interesting place. We've got about 9% unemployment and we're covered for health care based on state law. People here are worried about the same things they are worried about around the country - jobs, savings accounts, paying the mortgage, and being able to provide education and opportunities for the next generation. As long as Senator Kennedy was looking out for the interests of Massachusetts, he had the majority of the vote. Ironically, over the last few weeks, Scott Brown seems to have done a better job of assessing what the voters in Massachusetts want in Washington than the Democrat looking to fill Senator Kennedy's seat. I'm talking to a lot of people who don't like the negative ads, but who aren't ready to vote Republican so they are staying home on election day. They don't care if on Massachusetts seat goes to the other party as long as they don't have to be the one who voted for it. I think that the Scott Brown campaign figured this out a while ago. He looks like he's having fun driving himself around Massachusetts in his pickup truck talking to voters about what they really want. Even if he doesn't win, he's tapped into the mood of Massachusetts and he'll be a force for change going forward.
You know, not every business needs to deploy social media tactics to be effective. Take Whole Foods as an example. With snow falling in Boston outside and an empty refrigerator inside, I went online to do a quick search to see if the closest grocery store in walking distance to my house would be open on New Year's Day so that I could skip a trip out in the snow today.
It was easy enough to do a quick check of the Whole Foods website where I typed my zip code into the store finder which lead me to the website page for my local store. So far, so good. But then, it took a while to find out whether or not the store was open on New Year's Day or not. I finally found the information in the Whole Foods Facebook feed in the bottom right corner of the web page. It took me a long time to find the information I was looking for because of all of the other clutter on the web page.
The top right corner asked me to "join the conversation" via the Twitter feed for Whole Foods at Cambridge River Plaza. Will learning that "Nothing like a some spice to help you warm up. Korma, curry, and more-Indian Cuisine in our hot food bar tonight!" really alter my dinner plans or cause me to suddenly crave Indian food that's been sitting out warming all day? A quick scan of the feed showed me that it's not much of a conversation when all of the tweets try and get me to buy more stuff at Whole Foods.
The lower right side of the page asked be to become a fan of the store on Facebook. Do I want to become a fan of Whole Foods at Cambridge River Plaza on Facebook? No, although it looks like 122 other people did. Really, I see the folks in my neighborhood all the time. Do I really need to join the other shoppers who are employees of Mass General Hospital, students at Suffolk University and my fellow residents of Beacon Hill in the Whole Foods on-line community? If the community was actually a link to community good works or events of interest, it might have some value. But, again, it looks like more promotional product pushing and not the best place to post holiday store hours.
I love marketing and using social media effectively. But, come on. Just slapping up a Facebook page and utilizing Twitter as a cheap way to push ads, is a real turn off. It's hardly "joining the conversation" when Whole Foods is doing all of the talking. I question organizations who are more interested in being able to say that they "do social media" than actually using social media tactics to communicate effectively. We used to say that "it only takes one bad e-mail to destroy your brand." I wonder how many bad tweets it takes to drive off your customer base.
In 1955, Sears Roebuck & Co. ran a newspaper ad letting kids know how to call Santa directly. Unfortunately, the telephone number was misprinted and instead of reaching Santa, the phone number put kids through to the CONAD Commander-in-Chief's operations "hotline."
CONAD was the predessor to NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command), a joint organization of Canada and the United States that provides aerospace warning, air sovereignty, and defense for the two countries.
The Director of Operations at the time, Colonel Harry Shoup, had his staff check the radar for indications of Santa making his way south from the North Pole. Children who called were given updates on his location, and a tradition was born.
Ever since then, NORAD employees have volunteered their time to respond to Christmas Eve phone calls and emails from children. And today, NORAD tracks Santa using the Internet. If you are interested in knowing what Santa and the elves are up to right up until Christmas day, take a look. NORAD has also created a Facebook group, a Twitter account, and a Picasa site as well.
The term, "Cyber Monday" was invented by Shop.org, part of the U.S. trade association National Retail Federation, in 2005 when retailers noticed a trend of people shopping online on the Monday after Thanksgiving when they were back to the office using their high speed Internet connections.
Cyber Monday Has Evolved With Faster Home Internet Connections
With faster connections at home, CyberMonday has become more about online retailers offering bargains than people shopping from the office. "Americans appreciate the convenience of shopping online, which doesn’t require standing in line, circling for a parking spot, or even changing out of your pajamas,” said Scott Silverman, Executive Director of Shop.org. “Cyber Monday promotions are enticing, so shoppers can expect incredible bargains on popular holiday items, percentages off entire websites, and a lot of free shipping.” The survey says that while some Cyber Monday shoppers will choose to shop from the office, the large majority will shop from home. And, 3.8 percent of them will shop from a mobile device like an iPhone or a Blackberry.
Is Cyber Monday For You?
Before I wrote it off as a gimmick, I decided to see if there were any deals online for the things that I was going to buy the people on my list any way. I'm happy to report that there was! My nieces love to use my Flip Camera, so I decided to get them one of their own for Christmas this year. American Express is letting you cash in points for one. But, before I did that, I decided to type "Cyber Monday deals" into Google. This search term took me straight to cybermonday.com (a shop.org site) where I typed in "Flip Video" and was presented with options from $119 to $189 from online retailers. So I just went ahead and bought one from Amazon.com for $119 and took the free shipping option.
I'd encourage anyone to at least give online shopping a shot to see what deals you can find regardless of where you're doing your online shopping or which day you're actually shopping on. In this competitive marketplace, you might as well take advantage of the Internet to help you save some money.
In the mode of FakeAPStyleBook and Fake Steve Jobs, we now have Fake Andy Rooney (and he's following me back on Twitter!) As a 60 Minutes fan and long time mimicker of Andy Rooney, I thought this video of Social Media Andy Rooney was pretty funny as well as a great way to put Tipping Point Labs on the map for their expertise in social media.
Back when I lived in Connecticut, I actually met the real Andy Rooney at a Christmas party. My friend Betsy's parents were having the party their home in Rowayton, Connecticut and Andy Rooney was a long time neighbor of theirs. He had one of those holiday ties on that played a Christmas tune if you squeezed the bottom of it. At the time (don't ask!) I was wearing these goofy Christmas socks that did the same thing. So, we had a pretty bad concert together over by the bar. Of all the things I could have chatted with Andy Rooney about from his great career as a war correspondent and CBS news writer, I blew my shot at intellectual conversation. But, we had a good laugh. Did you ever wonder why we don't do that more often?
A recent survey by Vertical Response of 831 respondents at businesses with fewer than 500 employees found that 74% plan to increase email marketing and 68% will increase their use of social media marketing. Of particular interest is that only 4% of the respondents do not plan to use e-mail marketing in 2010.
The folks at Constant Contact, a leading provider of email marketing, event marketing, and on line surveys for small businesses with more than 300,000 customers would agree. In fact, their senior vice president of global market development, Eric Groves, has written The Constant Contact Guide to E-Mail Marketing. I just finished reading it and, while I've been doing email marketing for at least 10 years, I learned a lot of things that I can be doing better.
Why is e-mail marketing the choice of 96% of small businesses? According to chapter one (down-loadable for free) of Grove's book, while email marketing is an amazingly cost-effective way to reach your customers, the main advantage is that it is "simply the most effective way to stay in touch with most of your customers." You don't need to hire me or another marketing consultant to tell you that it's hard to find new customers. It's your returning customers who are going to spend more long term with you. And the best way to keep them coming back is by building a relationship with them.
When you begin using email that you send to your customers containing relevant content that is of value to them, you'll see immediate return on their investment. And, you'll have the metrics to prove it. It's important to look professional in your communication and to be ready to respond when your customer gets back in touch with you because that's what they'll expect from you. By constantly reviewing the results of your e-mail campaigns, you can fine tune your marketing strategy using what is working best for you.
This morning, we stopped by the WBUR station as part of the "Learn, Earn & Return: My Life as a Computer Pioneer" book tour. In the photo on the left, you can see Harlan Anderson, the book's author, with Curt Nickisch and Deborah Becker of WBUR. Deb asked Harlan many questions about his co-founding of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) with Ken Olsen, his thoughts on what happened with DEC over the years, and his thoughts on computing today. It was a great interview that should be aired soon.
History of WBUR
WBUR-FM went on the air on March 1, 1950, as a 400-watt non-commercial educational FM station licensed to Boston University. Through the 1960s, more and more radio professionals joined WBUR and gradually transformed the station’s format. By 1971, WBUR had enough full-time employees to qualify for status as a public radio station and applied to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) for certification. In 1980, the station began to receive programming from NPR via satellite. In March 1999, WBUR-FM was named “News Station of the Year” by the New England Associated Press, an award it has since received three more times.
WBUR Today
WBUR broadcasts with an effective radiated power of 40,000 watts. There are two daily programs broadcast live from our Boston studios and distributed nationwide on NPR member stations: “On Point,” hosted by Tom Ashbrook, and “Here & Now,” hosted by Robin Young. There are also three other programs broadcast from WBUR studios on a weekly basis: “Car Talk,” “Only A Game,” and “Radio Boston.”
This morning, as we were getting ready for Harlan Anderson's interview for his book, the studio was getting ready for the discussion of Sarah Palin's book "Going Rogue" and her political future on the "On Point" show. With the book just out, the website has already pulled in 60 comments from this morning's interview.
Stay tuned for a link to the interview with Harlan Anderson on WBUR that is coming soon! We had a fascinating morning at the WBUR station that's just a part of the publicity for his book.
Steve Robins led a great session on Social Media at ProductCamp this past Saturday in Cambridge, MA. I found it interesting to be in a crowd of product marketing folks from organizations of all sizes with the opportunity to see where they were with social media. Its fascinating to see social media programs start in "old school" organizations and that attitude of employees towards adopting change or hiding from it. Here are my notes from this session.
We all agreed that an effective social media program begins with your organization’s goals. But, when the group was asked what their goals were, there were a variety of answers that included:
We want to gather market requirements
We want to gather leads
We want to make sure that we aren't getting burned "out there"
We want to hear what people are saying about our competition
We know people are doing their research online so we want to make sure our information is there
We want more evangelists for our products
These are all good goals, but in a big organization (or even a mid-size one), chances are these goals fall under different departments and no one stepped up to say that they were coordinated across their organization with a company-wide social media strategy.
So where should an organization start? How about by listening before you start talking? Everyone agreed that "Frank" at Comcast Cares on Twitter was doing a great job at staying ahead of the pack on customer complaints online. Why? Because he asks "how can I help?" to diffuse the emotion and to change the conversation.
We also agreed that just because the world is on Twitter doesn't mean that your company belongs on Twitter. There's nothing worse that jumping into social media without a strategy so that when some sort of action occurs, you're not prepared to respond. An example that Joseline Manebrought up was with Sprint. Last spring, there new CEO ran ads with his e-mail address on it asking for customer response. When folks accepted his invitation and start writing in, they received an auto-response e-mail. Talk about a way to backfire your campaign!
In all, about a third of the crowd said that they were using social media in some fashion within their organizations. When asked how it was working, no one jumped up and said "Fantastic!" Instead, we heard that it takes a financial and resource commitment and until my company is ready to commit to that, we can't start a social media program. And, that social media is something that you need to measure so that you can demonstrate success to senior management for buy-in.
While I think that the ProductCamp crowd was conservative, I think their approach towards adopting social media is typical of many organizations today. They get that they need to be doing it and they want to learn more, but they are hoping that someone else will figure it out for them and tell them what to do.
This morning (yup, Saturday morning!), I'm headed over to Microsoft's Cambridge offices for the ProductCamp unconference which will cover user-driven topics related to Product Marketing and Management. Having spent most of my career in product marketing for high-tech firms in the Greater Boston area, I'm interested to see where the day takes us and who the crowd will be made up of.
ProductCamp has no attendees, only participants. Everyone is expected to actively participate in leading a session, round table discussion, speaking on the topic at hand, or volunteering. Last February’s ProductCamp Boston event brought over 120 Product Management and Marketing professionals together to learn, share, and network with their peers. Today's event looks like it bring 200 people together.
The list of participants, scheduled speakers, and events are posted on the ProductCamp Boston Website: http://barcamp.org/ProductCampBost. Want to see what we're up to?
