Carolyn Anna Hall

The real cost of free social media tools

2010-02-14T20:05:00.000-08:00

Originally published in Campaign Brief December 09. I have been a little lax in my posting recently.

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It comes as no surprise that Facebook has reached over 300 million users this year. Twitter has hit the scales at around 50 million. Yet these places are no longer simply for the warm and fuzzy feelings of catching up with old high school sweethearts. It seems every man and his dog (and yep, become an online fan of Lassie today) are using free software and a myriad of blogs to fight for a cause, stir up some nostalgia or to push their brand deeper into the realm of social media.

However, just because the tools are free, doesn't mean it's going to cost nothing.

Similarly, signing up for a free blog or Twitter and Facebook account does not sign you up for immediate success in the online social world. These seemingly effortless accounts may take less than a minute to create, but making them function as effective communications tools that amalgamate with a company's branding, marketing messages and culture takes more than time. It takes understanding, skills, experience and money.

Millions of people are tapping into social media the world over, which is at once a pro and a con. It's the kind of number to get you giddy with excitement; it certainly sounds like a tantalizing number of people to listen to what you have to say. You're probably thinking, that's at least hundreds of fans, followers and friends to learn more about our company, products and what we're all about.

However, it needs to be remembered that a company’s online presence is as real as its offline; it needs to retain its own branding and personality. Capitalizing on your daily tweets may mean initially investing a little time (and depending on your skills - creativity or hired help) to escape the rudimentary templates of free software. Designing a wallpaper, making your logo prominent and linking the account to your existing website may sound obvious, but it’s largely underrated. A recent study by global PR firm Weber Shandwick found that “fifty three percent of the Fortune100 Twitter accounts did not display personality, tone or voice”.

However, it is crucial that the underlying voice of the brand remains intact. The office tech-nerd or friend of a friend of a colleague who happens to be very web savvy cannot maintain a company’s online presence. The voice needs to come from above; the face of the company who can clearly speak the brand’s personality; with agencies providing the consultation and strategy on how to translate a traditional message into an online one.

Weber Shandwick’s study also found that many Twitter accounts seemed to have appeared simply to have an online presence. What were lacking were companies using this platform as a link to the community and demonstrating their brand as a source of information, trust and listening ears; they were not building connections with media, other business contacts or maintaining relationships.

Consulting firm Deloitte have found that Australia is lagging in the social media stakes. They recently surveyed a small section of directors from the top 200 ASX companies and found “very few knew much about it. Only one from a group of ten said it was a topic of discussion in the boardroom, yet there was unanimous agreement it should be.”

And having fans is not enough. If clicking a button to become one is the only active participation a person will have with your site, the only real prize at the end is having more fans than your competition. If fans are constantly bored with irrelevant content and not being rewarded with personal interaction for their allegiance to a brand, they may as well be nonexistent. What they see in their daily news feeds needs to keep them coming back for more – clicking through to the fan page, taking a participative approach to their following.

The flipside to this is the investment of time, intensive labour and possibly remuneration for someone to ensure the blog stays updated regularly, the tweets are relevant and not alienating, and the Facebook page is regulated and controlled. It takes an investment of dollars on the right minds to create ideas for unique ways to utilize online space. It takes allocated time each week to see these ideas through. An enthusiastic start to a weekly blog that dissipates into a spasmodically updated online blather doesn’t do much for a company’s profile. Keeping them keen is crucial – it takes nurturing, love and lots of commitment.

"Marketing across social media requires more time and attention to detail, but offers to reward brands that do it well with far more meaningful consumer interactions” says Hashem Bajwa, Director of Digital Strategy at Droga5 in New York. “Success in social media is less about building outbound messages in the form of an artifact, such as an advertisement – it's more about living systems that evolve and are linked together. This requires more time and effort than ever before" he goes on to say.

But it’s not all about hard work. A classic example of clever online strategy comes from the faces behind Movember. Turning long-term media strategy on its head, the fundraising venture for men’s health awareness lasts a three-month period from October to December, a perfect length of time to remind people of a worthy cause, create an active response and see the results at the other end. It’s quick, clean and effective without stagnating or becoming a stale message.

Reactions to new products or news from a company can be also very easy to garner. Simply look at the number of groups on Facebook that cropped up in reaction to Kraft’s grand new scheme to name its Vegemite spin-off “isnack v2.0”. The hashtag “#vegefail” spread quicker on Twitter than the product ever did. One thing is clear – public reaction is happening at lightning speed. Interestingly, Kraft’s Twitter account went virtually silent after unveiling the new name and its pride on supermarket shelves was compromised. The opportunities and repercussion from using these simple, online accounts are as limitless as the creativity of marketing minds or the passion of the people.

It may sound like social media could be the bane of a company’s integrated marketing efforts. It shouldn’t be. There are millions of people ready to listen, take part and respond. Understanding the inherent need for hiring the right kinds of creative minds to keep followers eager, and spending the time and energy on maintaining an active and creative participation on the tangled world wide web, makes it all worthwhile. It’s that old mantra of time equals money, reborn into a new era of social media. Keep ‘em keen. Make a solid investment of your time, energy and money - and see how they return.

Guessing Less

2010-02-14T18:14:00.000-08:00

This article will be published in Campaign Brief, Feb 2010.

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2009 was the year of the nosedive, for obvious reasons. The economy went pear-shape, and all things considering - everyone was wishing it were a different year, or better still, decade.

Suffice to say, this downturn translated into a different way of doing business. Spending changed and priorities shifted. Tightening the purse strings happened by force, no longer for the ulterior motives of commandeering massive profit. There was more pressure to achieve results - and ones that could be found in measurable terrain beyond feel-good territory.

This also came at a time when social media marketing began to really take off, with more and more opportunities to speak to a larger, more engaged audience. Facebook was becoming more than just a soapbox for sharing stories of baked goods and weekend frivolities, Twitter became a forum for sharing news, not just the weather.

It seemed social media was going through puberty. It was finally finding its adult voice and experimenting with the big wide world in new ways; yet the chest hairs of measurable results and success were not so easy to find.

Companies started experimenting with these social networking tools that offered seemingly endless opportunities. Marketing minds were fascinated with the creative potential available and excitement found in the unexplored. The lure of rapid word-of-mouth was out there with these tools providing a great platform for discussion and unsolicited recommendations and criticism by users.

Was this just a matter of pure coincidence? Or was it the result of cheap social medial tools forced into sweatshop labour to combat a reduction in spending? There's good reason to suggest it was both. Whatever the cause and effect ratio was (or still is) the timing has been perfect.

And the result of this shift in gears? What we are looking at now is not marketing budgets changing drastically in size, but rather altering in their breadth and depth. The total figures might not adjust much, but the size of each piece of the media pie will.

Forrester Research found in a recent survey of 114 global marketers that more than 50% will increase their spend on social marketing. The research group also discovered that 45% pull together funds when needed, and 23% scrape together money from wherever they can to put to use for various social media efforts.

Kristen Vang, Principal Digital Strategist at Thinq says "social media is not "alternative"; it isn't a flavour-of-the-month for the tech-savvy; it's just the way the Internet is now. Google displays tweets and blog posts as real-time search results; newspapers are rolling out online subscription revenue models; Hulu broadcasts the best American TV shows on the web (legally). Marketing managers and upper management need to understand and accept this before budgets will allocate digital it's rightful share."

Of course this kind of spend will all depend on the intent of each campaign. For example, an integrated marketing campaign we developed for a group of Western Australian wineries whose message to wine drinkers was to buy local, had approximately 30% of its budget allocated to a social media component. The results were impressive. Before the campaign – known as “Summer with The Locals” – had even launched in traditional media such as press, radio and outdoor, the social media forums of Twitter and Facebook had gathered over 1,000 fans and followers of the wine collective.

Spending a significant portion of the budget on communication with a loyal fan-base with these relatively inexpensive tools proved to be a catalyst for a successful campaign that could be measured not only with awareness but with people contributing individually to spread the client's message.

It’s the power of Facebook news feeds, online fan competitions, and simply the personal recommendations of individuals reaching out to their average 150-friend lists that stretch dollars further. And it's all because of that old chestnut, communication.

Awareness for the need to support local industry grew massively in the campaign’s infancy, purely with viral nature of Facebook updates and Twitter. And with the campaign’s traditional media supporting the social media presence, it only made sense that budgets were skewed in an online direction.

“Two years ago most of my clients didn’t have a line item in their marketing budgets dedicated to social media – now they all do. As a marketer, it is clear that the tide is really shifting with big brands like PepsiCo forging the way as they make bold decisions such as reallocating all their television Superbowl advertising funds to social media. Pepsi has realized what many other companies quickly are – consumers are in control of brand. The landscape has been totally democratised and as a brand you simply can’t afford not to be talking to your consumers” says Sarah Payton, Senior Vice President at digital agency Affinitive in New York.

However, social media adoption by marketers is still relatively low, especially in Australia. But we are on the brink of major changes. The epidemic is growing, and most companies today are with little doubt of the need to invest in social media; any uncertainty they are experiencing is now how to make it a long-term reality and how to translate this into monthly budgets and billings to client.

The success of traditional marketing has always been difficult to grasp accurately. So it's no surprise that the measurement of social media is going to be as equally as hard. This shouldn’t be a turn off, though. More than anything, it should be a reason to search harder for the results and answers to the "why" of social marketing.

And why? Currently it seems that social media spend is often “scraped together” to pay for what is considered a tentative or experimental solution. But while the results may not be startling obvious, this kind of afterthought mentality puts long-term social media projects in jeopardy.

There is now a need to look across various communications channels - and allocate accordingly. Otherwise an experimental attitude negates the idea that social media is here to stay. The campaigns need to be managed properly to garner results, or else there will be tomes of figures and dollars, allocated against "experimental" campaigns that appear without justification and will be easily quashed next time by powers that be.

Looking forward, we will see greater reliance on consumer intelligence and the continuation of the conversation with the faces behind the suburban computer screens. Social media marketing is here to stay, but to make it a permanent inclusion in effective integrated marketing campaigns, they need not only to work, but be seen to work. Beyond experimentation.

Mark Braddock & Carolyn Hall launch ‘Chatterblock’ at Block

2009-11-09T17:44:00.000-08:00

So here is my VERY EXCITING news. We have been working on this project for the last 3 months or so and today - we launched! I am so excited to be working with my Block buddies.

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PERTH: Two of Perth’s most respected marketing and communication executives, Mark Braddock and Carolyn Hall, have formed ChatterBlock, a division of brand management agency Block that specializes solely in digital and social media strategy.

ChatterBlock now sits alongside Block’s existing divisions: Block Consulting, Block Branding and Block Imagining.

“Many marketing executives are curious about using social media to reach their consumers but they have no idea where to begin. At ChatterBlock, we hope to play a leading role in helping companies implement digital and social media strategies,” says Mark Braddock, Creative Director and Co-founder at Block.

“One-on-one conversations with people have always been the holy grail of marketing communications, but until now they have always eluded us,” says Hall, explaining her decision to join ChatterBlock at Block.

“With the rise of digital media, this holy grail is within our grasp. We can now communicate directly with people without always needing costly, drawn-out product development cycles and focus groups. We can take a product or idea directly to the brand’s audience and they can tell us if they like it and would buy it. This is a radical shift for all business owners, big and small,” says Hall.

ChatterBlock will work with clients to show them how, when using digital media, it’s all about integration with their existing communication campaigns. It’s not about technology, but a way to grow closer to their existing customers as well as access new audiences far more effectively than mainstream media channels sometimes allow.

Braddock brings a wealth of experience to ChatterBlock having worked at The Martin Agency and Ogilvy in the United States and Smarts Advertising in the UK before returning to Perth in 2002. He formed Block with co-founder and Managing Director Tanya Sim in 2002.

Carolyn Hall brings 22 years of experience to ChatterBlock as former Senior Vice President for McCann World Group in New York, the largest marketing communications organization in the world. At ChatterBlock, she will also continue at the helm of brand consultancy, City Hall.

“We’re excited about collaborating with Carolyn because she’s passionate about all things digital, and offers a unique perspective as a result of her mixed background as a marketing and advertising executive. She already authors several blogs, and her website SmallNotes has been hugely popular, making her a bona fide digital expert,” says Braddock.

In 2006, Hall returned to Perth from the United States as Brand & Communications Director of the Royal Automobile Club (RAC), which became the top-ranking brand in the Annual WA Business News branding survey for two years running under her leadership.

Block’s decision to launch ChatterBlock heralds a major shift in the WA advertising industry, which is making way for niche, specialist players like ChatterBlock in addition to the large agencies that have traditionally dominated the landscape.

Brands - NOW IS THE TIME TO TWEET

2009-11-03T22:44:00.001-08:00

It is no happy accident that after Barak Obama, Coca-Cola is the most popular page on Facebook. Unlike many pre-internet brands, the king of carbonated drinks and confectionery has a social media strategy that keeps the one hundred and thirteen year old company fresh for consumers.

Recently posting a link to redirect traffic from their website to their Facebook page, Coke now has almost 3.8 million fans. It is important to remember that visits to brand websites are often infrequent. Utilising social sites like Facebook and Twitter can grow brand networks at an exponential rate whilst maintaining and building lasting consumer relationships. These social platforms also work to build a more personable brand identity.

Visionary got it wrong on books

2009-11-01T16:51:00.000-08:00

This is a great article written by my friend Damon Hurst. It appears today in The Australian in the media section. Well worth a read.

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"THE book is dead," said Peter Kindersley, founder and chairman of Dorling Kindersley (DK). He was launching the world's first interactive CD ROM in London in 1992 at a lunch for city types as the company prepared for an initial public offering.

At the time, DK was a "new media" company with an "old media" core business -- illustrated reference books. To be sure, Kindersley's bold and self-interested prediction has plenty of relevance to today's debate about the newspaper industry and the role of the internet -- history might not predict the future but, hell, there sure are echoes.

Kindersley, a graphic designer, personally responsible for the illustrations in the ground-breaking Joy of Sex, had taken his essentially pop-art sensibility and applied it to the boring world of educational publishing with huge success. In what must have seemed like a blink of an eye he had built a global company producing 200 books a year, which in turn were licensed and published in 80 countries into 40 different languages.

So what was the secret to his borderless triumph? He took a product that was a monologue of black and white text and turned it into a hotchpotch of high-resolution photography, bespoke illustration and modern motifs, stitched together with thin lines leading to small blocks of text with factual and lateral interpretations of what you could already see on the page. Sound familiar? Fast-forward 20 years and look at a webpage today, even the modern newspaper, and you see how Kindersley's vision was the shape of things to come.

"These books, they just come to life off the page and reflect real life -- or TV," he once said to me with a twinkle in his eye, while explaining what drove him to experiment with CD ROMs. It led me to joining the company for eight years, initially as commercial director based in London and ultimately as managing director for the Australia/NZ territory, with stints in between developing the business in Britain, the US, Germany and Russia.

These new "multi-media" products, as they were then known, were developed from scratch in a highly publicised joint venture with Microsoft. A joint venture that consisted of DK's two million copyright-free images, Microsoft's ideas and team of 150 graphic designers, editors and "interface" people who grappled for two years to invent the new media software industry. Remember at this time there was no commercial World Wide Web. CD ROMs, which we now know to be just storage mechanisms, were then a sexy new marketing channel.

The brokers pricing the DK float based on bottom-up calculations of the old media business were very annoyed with Kindersley's comment, as were DK's distributors awaiting the next batch of products. Not to mention DK's unintentional encroachment into the sacred monopolies of the film production and TV industries.

The tension to get these now very expensive CD ROMs finished, with production costs of up to pound stg. 2 million each, into smart packaging was matched only by the pricing wars that followed in retail environments around the world. Not to mention fundamental questions, like where to place them. With books? With software? A new category? The refrain from retailers around the globe being: how do you price new products without an historical reference point?

The DK educational products went head to head with Sony's new PlayStation games. The PlayStations were launched as hardware/software packages and their brilliant animation actually exceeded the "TV" qualities that Peter Kindersley had imagined for DK's products. Sony won the the retail war and DK got on with finding a way to demonstrate these "beautiful educational" products, without them being compared to the nasty competitive game products. Demonstrating the CD ROMs and other DK products in the family home led to huge sales, often at heavily discounted prices but the model worked and DK had 10 very good years.

Long enough, at least, for Kindersley to attract an on-market bid from Penguin at an enterprise value of about $2 billion, at a price-earnings ratio of 26, which was twice the publishing industry average, even if those brilliant ideas of his were yet to cascade to the company's bottom line.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. A book is a book, as a film is a film, as a CD ROM is an old-fashioned storage device. So what's the moral to this story? In my opinion, the long-term future of the newspaper industry is assured if it authentically acts out the part of selling newspapers.

The fundamental business question the newspaper industry should ask itself: what's our value proposition from a customer perspective? It's a sanguine conclusion as I reflect on the day the book publishing industry was swamped by the digital revolution. Kindersley made a lot of money but he got one thing wrong. Books survived.

Damon Hurst is the principal of Thirdman Interim - damonhurst@thirdmaninterim.com

Earning fans or buying eyesballs

2009-10-27T02:55:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's been a long time since I have blogged but boy have I been busy with a whole raft of projects - exciting projects in fact.

I just came across this fabulous post from Espresso and had to re-blog it:

The challenge in moving from traditional to new marketing is in weaning oneself off of the addiction to “buying eyeballs” instead of “earning fans”. New marketing demands that you think more creatively; that you commit to a long-term relationship; that you listen to what your loyal customers need, want, and care about (instead of forcing your own agenda down their throats—repeatedly).

Take a look at the article here. Well worth a read.

Twitter, fresh from the oven

2009-04-04T16:51:00.000-07:00

Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of Twitter, but not a huge fan like some. However, I came across this story on Iain Tait's blog and it's clearly demonstrated the power of this medium. I love that my local baker would send out messages about what's just come out of the oven for me to race down and buy. Hot, fresh and delicious.

From his post:

Some of the excellent geeks at Poke have hacked together / masterfully crafted BakerTweet. It’s a wonderful hardware / software solution for alerting people to the latest oven output from the Albion bakery. It’s a wireless Arduino thing that can be customised via a web interface to allow for various custom messages to be Twittered at the twist of a dial and the push of a water/flour-proof button. What’s brilliant is The Albion actually using it. And it actually works.

who, Kodak? really....

2009-04-03T00:19:00.000-07:00

I have recently started paying attention to Kodak.

I have to tell you it’s not my style. I am a passionate Nikon lover having worked on the account when I lived in New York.

Paying attention to Kodak took me by surprise.

I was re-introduced to them via a friend of mine, Mary, who’s sponsored by Kodak. She is a blogger, presenter and designer starting a new business venture by branching out in the world of social media. Kodak took a chance on her. I really like that a huge company like Kodak would do this: LISTEN and RESPOND to their audience.

They have demonstrated, not just talked about, how listen to the people that use their products. Not only that, they recently co-sponsored the Streamy Awards in the US. Mary covered this event. Again, interesting I thought.

Their CMO, Jeffrey Hayzlett, is on twitter (mind you every man and his dog seem to be these days so it’s not so cutting edge but credit where credit’s due). Again, I thought, interesting. He doesn't just tweet about mundane company stuff. He has a personality. Sometimes I don't agree with him, but hell, at least I can have an actual dialogue with the CMO of a huge corporation. Think Zappos. Big, big points in my book.

Today I needed (wanted) to buy a digital camera under $250AUD. Nothing expensive. I use my iPhone for most snaps. Just a little something that I can shoot video on of my dogs, friends and family stuff. To my surprise, guess where I first looked without even thinking about it at Office Works? (Staples for my American cousins).

KODAK. In the end I didn’t get a Kodak camera because they had sold out and when I buy I need to take it away with me. But sold out is good. Has me think that something is working.

So enough of me banging on, but I want to send a message to Jeffrey Hayzlett and his team: now you have created an open line of communication with me and all the people that use your products, you better keep stepping it up. If you don’t , all that good work will crash and burn like so many other companies that haven’t dedicated enough resources in their marketing budgets to this type of dialogue.

Likemind March 2009

2009-03-21T00:56:00.000-07:00

Likemind was a huge success this month. I was so happy to see a lot of new faces. What a mixture we had at Zekka this Friday morning. If you are interested in attending, please drop a line to likemindperth@gmail.com.

Can I get that to go - Twitter the new drive-thru?

2009-03-09T17:53:00.001-07:00

This is a fantastic article about the power of Twitter in increasing your customer base. Well worth a read.... via Pistachio Consulting

When J.R. Cohen, Operations Manager for CoffeeGroundz (@coffeegroundz) Cafe in Houston, Texas first heard about Twitter from one of his customers, he was puzzled but intrigued. Today, he credits Twitter with almost doubling his clientele and with opening his eyes to a whole new way to build Community.

Nothing can build your brand faster than being or doing something remarkable. Seth Godin, author of the recently released Tribes calls this becoming “The Purple Cow”. Cohen didn’t set out to become a Purple Cow - but with one brief 140 character message - that’s exactly what he’s done.On October 31st, 2008 Sean Stoner (@maslowbeer) was hungry. As a regular customer at CoffeeGroundz he sent the following Twitter to Cohen:

Comedy of errors for two of our Likeminded folk

2009-03-03T01:39:00.000-08:00

Seems like my very good friends at BLOCK have run into some media problems. I can assure you that they are both well and happy. Take a look at the video here vi a ABC's Media Watch.

Is this more than just semantics?

2009-02-18T19:30:00.000-08:00

Thanks to my buddy Hash who helped me out with this. I am giving a talk in March about the issues below. Any other ideas would be more than welcome.

* * * * *

In the business world today, we refer to the world our customers, brands and products live in, as a “market”. Such clinical terms desensitise us to culture and products and services that really motivate people.

We replace “people” with “targets”, “culture” with “markets”, “communities” with “segmentations” and “desires” with “insights”.

The question I would like to investigate today is “Is this more than just semantics?”

If our goal is to understand what really matters, we should start by realising that as brands, we have to exist in peoples lives authentically and that means as a strategic marketing and brand building business, our own language and posture has to be of the world, not some foreign “speak” that only exists in business school classrooms, corporate cubicles and boardrooms today.

I would argue that our old language and definitions have changed, if not become redundant and we, as a business are slow to adapt, let alone lead and shape brands for our clients into the future.

On being authentic

2009-01-27T04:20:00.000-08:00

There is something wonderfully authentic about these online clips from CNBC.

The music creates a slightly sentimental emotional response, and even more so, the way they have all followed the same format but are given the freedom to design their own narrative about who they are and where they have come from is touching. It even stirs up slightly warm feelings for Jim Cramer. This then gives me, the viewer, permission to have a relationship with the reporters/journalists I identify with.

Whilst some people I have spoken with say they come across as a little self serving, I don't believe this to be the intention, though they might want to tone down the emotion a little. You will still get the same result. It's a fine line as we all know.

It's hard building an authentic brand, even more so today in a market that is becoming increasingly over crowded. No big news I know, but the "authentic human touch" strategy behind these clips are a great idea for a company who's products are a little harder to sell - such as banking, financial services, insurance etc. Give your greatest brand champions (your employees) a human face, and your company might not seem so impersonal after all.

You can take a look here.

Don't stop spending, just be smarter

2009-01-15T04:21:00.000-08:00

Keep advertising during a recession: a great TVC from 1991. This is well worth a watch. Clients take note.

Ad Agencies Fashion Their Own Horn, and Toot It

2009-01-06T15:00:00.000-08:00

I am just catching up on some of my holiday reading and came across this interesting article in the New York Times.

Whilst this might be a good idea short term, this site earns money through a readership of over 120k views and AdSense, I question if it strays from where an agency should be focused. I agree that by developing their own brands they can learn real-life lessons, but I am still left cold by it. I will admit that mrs-o.org is now firmly on my blogroll.

From the article:

The advertising agency behind the blog, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, does not work for Mrs. Obama or for the fashion designers the site features. In fact, mrs-o.org is not for a client at all. It is an entirely new business created by the Zag division of Bartle Bogle, which the agency started to invent new brands.

Mrs. O and Zag are part of a business model transformation in the advertising industry. Agencies are parlaying their expertise in marketing the brands of other companies into creating and marketing their own.

“Advertising is a massively old model based on the 1950s. As media has proliferated, it’s become a lot harder for us to earn enough money off our ideas,” said Ben Jenkins, the strategic director of Zag. “Zag is about creating the properties ourselves from scratch and having 100 percent of it.”

2008-10-27T00:15:00.001-07:00

It's great to see likemind getting a mention in The New York Times this weekend. I love that we down here in Perth are part of something much larger than our city, or country. This really rang true for me:

These workers need new ways to connect, said Ethan Watters, who studied young urban professionals in his book, “Urban Tribes.” They live far from their families, he said, and work in highly fluid industries where co-workers change continuously. Unlike professionals from an earlier generation, they marry later and have weak ties to organized religious or community groups.

The full article can be found here.

Likemind October 2008

2008-10-20T01:53:00.001-07:00

Another wonderful Likemind morning was held on Friday at Tiger Tiger in the city. If you would like to attend the next coffee morning you will find all the details at the Likemind site. All are welcome.

So, what do you do again?

2008-10-19T17:21:00.000-07:00

Literary essayist George Steiner once put it this way: Had a buggy whip manufacturer in 1910 rethought things and concluded that rather than being in the buggy whip business he was instead in the business of creating “transportation starting devices,” he just might have been able to survive.

I found this quote via the wonderful Lynette on her tumbr: Interesting Snippets. For me it really resonated. I guess it's what we folk try to do on a day-to-day basis.

Don't fall into the buggy-whip mentality: USA Today

Being friendly with Don Draper

2008-10-16T00:00:00.000-07:00

I have been so impressed with Mad Men's use of Twitter that I am going to write about the good and bad experiences I have had with companies and promotions via this medium. Stay tuned.

The sun right now in Perth

2008-08-24T01:13:00.001-07:00

Is inspiring my next post about clients and agencies and the rotation of staff (from the client side) that happens on big accounts... any thoughts please email me at carolynannhall [at] gmail.com.

Likemind August 2008

2008-08-21T20:14:00.001-07:00

As you can see, we had a great turnout for our August Likemind meeting. I think September's will be bigger and better. All welcome. For more information, see my post below.

Likemind Blends Perth’s Coffee and Creative Minds

2008-06-22T18:34:00.000-07:00

New Yorkers Noah Brier and Piers Fawkes met online through their blogs and decided that given they had so much in common to meet up for a coffee. One thing lead to another and they started to invite other people along by posting details of their coffee mornings, gathering like-minded creative people in one place to talk and share ideas without the constraints of structured networking or formal topics for discussion.

“We never had a plan with likemind other than to get people together to enjoy a cup of coffee and a conversation. We did it in the morning because it was the only time we could meet that week, however, its turned out to be our best decision as the morning forces people out of their routine and those who come to likemind actually want to be there” said Noah.

By their fourth meeting, 30 people had joined the group. Since then, likemind groups have sprung up in 51 cities all over the world – including Paris, Tokyo, Cape Town and, since August last year, Perth.

Hashem Bajwa, who works as Worldwide Planning Director for agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners regularly attends likemind gatherings in San Francisco. When discussing likemind, Hashem cites Apple CEO Steve Jobs who described how “innovation requires like-minded people getting together and working on ideas together”. True innovation is when a person calls you at 3am with a random idea, or a small group getting together and working on a concept for its merits and faults. Likemind is certainly that."

Our Perth gatherings have so far been attended by creative people from organisations including The Brand Agency, Meerkats, RAC, Maxus and Block Branding and students from both ECU and Curtin University.

Together with Ronnie Duncan, I co-host Perth’s likemind gatherings. We, and the other groups around the world, meet on the third Friday of every month in our respective cities for coffee and a chat, sponsored by some of the companies that attend.

Over a coffee, we share creative ideas, collaborate on projects or discuss trends. The group provides a forum for networking, sharing and mentoring and is comprised of a mix of creative people including creative directors, architects, writers and even students who are just starting out in various creative disciplines.

Simon te Brinke of Gramercy Park consulting who regularly attends summarises the meaning of Likemind perfectly: “I’m someone who loves to be in the company of visionaries, creatives, creators and innovators. Once a month likemind gives me a fantastic start to the day simply by enjoying the company of these types of people, all of who are people I sincerely respect, both personally and professionally. Likemind is not about networking, business or creating opportunity. It’s about people with vision who like to enjoy the company of other likeminded individuals, all of who share the values of sincerity, mutual respect and trust.”

Dale Simmonds of The Brand Agency concurs. “Likemind is a reminder that there are a lot of talented people out there and gives you a slightly different take on things,” he said. “It’s great to have a laugh.”

Blogging and social media has really opened up a lot of opportunities for people to meet and share ideas, and likemind offers a way for creative people to meet face-to-face.

It’s amazing to see people chatting away like old friends even though they may have met only 10 minutes earlier. Seeing people from different companies, creative disciplines and levels of experience come together to share their creativity is really exciting – and so is bringing this kind of thinking to Perth’s creative space. Knowing that people are gathering in likemind groups around the world makes us part of a global community of creativity that we can tap into.

The types of people who gather at a likemind meeting also provide the perfect audience for authors and publishers wishing to promote their new books. In the US last month, publisher Random House paid for the coffee and gave each attendee a free copy of Rob Walker’s book Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We are.

We pay homage to formal groups in Perth such as FORM who lobby the government on important issues about creativity in our city and while we intentionally don’t have a structured agenda for likemind gatherings, we enjoy the possibilities created by bringing this group of people together.

When I asked Noah where likemind was headed he said he wasn’t sure at this stage. “We continue to expand to new cities as people volunteer to host. We are also working on some stuff to make the web experience a little more robust. Two years later it’s just nice to see what likemind has become”.

If you would like to attend the Perth Likemind coffee morning the details are posted here: http://likemind.us/

Moving Beyond Consistency is the Key to Brand Success

2008-01-28T19:20:00.000-08:00

The ancient Greek philosophers had it right when they implored us to “Know Thyself”. This is as true for a brand as it is for an individual. Truly understanding who you are at an emotional level as an entity, in this case a brand, and what you promise will mean that there will be a coherence in everything you do.

It also means that you can do away with the slavish application of consistency in the look and feel of your brand and you can tailor your messages to a wider range of increasingly fragmented audiences. To illustrate my point, think of Cate Blanchett. She never wears exactly the same thing all the time but you can instantly describe her style. And your brand is your style, not the clothes themselves.

Consistency of look and feel has long been king. I’ve spent the last ten years on both sides of the fence insisting upon absolute consistency of communications and design – but I now believe the timing is right for us to let go a little.

Consistency also worked for us because of the cost efficiency of recycling the creative idea across a number of media vehicles. Marketing departments had to justify large advertising budgets (usually based around big TV production and media spends), so often the creative material would be used across the multiple brands you had.

Our customers were much easier to target with traditional mass media, which meant that this religiously consistent work was accepted – and it was effective. Back then.

Today, the communication landscape looks very different.

Consistency is virtually impossible with the increasing number of communication channels and those ever-shifting, fragmenting audiences. Today, customers are congregations of like-minded people, with no common language, geographical, demographical, age or gender boundaries who are multi-channel users. They are also becoming more and more successful at filtering out information that doesn’t ring true for them.

So while consistency of look and feel becomes less important, the authenticities of the brand message and the emotion or promise that message delivers becomes more and more crucial. You don’t need the logo in the same place and size, the consistency comes in how the brand acts and what the brand actually does.

To talk to these congregations authentically, I feel we might need to loosen our collective stronghold on look and feel and give them a context through which they can understand our story in their own way.

We’re talking about Virgin again
Virgin is so different across so many markets – from planes to mobile phones – but in all cases, the heart of the Virgin brand promise remains the same. Each element of Virgin is different, but the consistency of the brand lies in their context – the emotion attached to all of their products and services. When you’re buying from Virgin, you know what to expect from every touch point.

They’re completely inconsistent in their communication – they’re always trying new ideas and launching new products and services – but there’s still the context of Virgin attached to everything they do.

As a client, sometimes consistency is seen as a triumph over chaos. But now, we need to accept that it’s ok for a brand to be in chaos if the emotional promise or message is coherent. If the context is there and coherence is there, it doesn’t matter what it looks like the takeout will be the same.

What are you hiding?
I have often seen clients hide behind consistent looking marketing communications. Sometimes it’s easier to be visually consistent than really taking the time to explore the DNA of your brand. But trust me, even if your message is visually consistent, the logo is in the right place and in the right colours with the right headline and supporting copy, it still needs the context of your organisation’s values and the emotional elements to make sense for customers.

Exploring a multi-agency approach
I am a big believer in collaboration across agencies. Not every agency will express your brand in the same way, but then nor do you customers think the same way.

If you, as a brand manager, can let go of the need for absolute consistency, a more collaborative approach with your agencies may just be an effective way of creating ideas that will let you engage in a genuine way with your consumers.

As a marketer, you want your agency partners focused on your business, and not focused on fighting off attacks from the other agencies in the mix. Hashem Bajwa, Digital Strategy Director at Goodby Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco says, "you want the best possible creative talent, and that means listening, learning, experimenting and collaborating together. It also means giving them the trust and clear stewardship they need to do brilliant work."

True brand success is achieved when, irrespective of language, culture or historical background, a diverse range of individuals can articulate what you stand for. It doesn’t matter what your message looks like, who’s saying it or what medium it’s coming through – the brand’s authenticity will shine through.

2 seconds before midnight

2007-12-26T20:35:00.000-08:00

Everything we consider traditional media was invented in the last 2 seconds before midnight (if you condense all history into a single day) — June Cohen, TED Media, speaking at Le Web conference

I had the pleasure of meeting the wonderful Lynette Web when I was in London. Her interesting snippets are inspiring. You can catch her stuff here.

Can innovation prevent a looming recession?

2007-12-02T12:14:00.000-08:00

Another great article from Adrian Ho at Zeus Jones. I am sure my very good friend Hashem at GSP would agree. They key, I believe, as Adrian has clearly stated is:

"Create excitement around the marketplace of marketing channels by innovating".

You can read the article here.

coherence and context

2007-11-09T04:21:00.001-08:00

More and more I am realising my function in the organisation is to provide two key roles. One of context (why, at a group strategic level we are doing what we do, and how that will impact everyone in the company) and one of coherence (how the multitude of messages and actions give the people that buy our products clarity around who we are, no matter how they interact with us).

One of my mentors, Joe Plummer, a truly brilliant and funny man, talked to me at length about the importance, not of consistency, but coherence. Only now as a client am I beginning to really get it.

It's been a silly week work wise. I am off to the US and Europe next week for five weeks and plan to write a lot more. I am also very happy to have a real Thanksgiving with friends and loved ones in NYC.

Measurement

2007-10-27T02:40:00.000-07:00

I have just come back from Sydney where I was attending the NINEMSN digital summit. Interesting stuff. One thing I did take note of was the many conversations around measurability of media spend. Sure we have all talked about it before, but this time it seemed different.

This is something that I have been thinking of a lot lately given I have begun to reduce my media and agency spend, but still want the same, if not more. I cannot, any longer, approve large media buys without solid quantification.

I am very aware now that marketing is becoming more strategic to our organization. First and foremost I am being asked to improve revenue generation, decrease costs and reduce marketing waste.

I read recently that by 2012, the role of the CMO will shift from one of creative brand builders to one of accountable, business oriented strategic managers with customer loyalty as their main focus.

I have more meetings these days with the CFO than I do with any other “C” in the company.

Very different from a couple of years ago.

Who's creative is it anyway?

2007-10-09T17:36:00.000-07:00

My wonderful friend Hashem at GSP pointed out this article from Adweek around how creative differences came between Motorola and their agency. I think it also talks to how the various Motorola marketing groups came between themselves and used the agency as the scapegoat.

Check out this link: Moto Magic from Adweek. Below you will find the TVC in question.

It’s all about the Mojo

2007-10-02T04:35:00.000-07:00

To many agency and marketing communication types, a good client is one that spends a bucket load of money and gets out of the way so they can work their magic.

While that may be the dream of the wishful, years of experience have shown that this type of client/agency relationship rarely produces the best results. If it did, the Darwinism of business evolution would have selected it long ago.

Truly great advertising is almost always the result of the friction caused when inspired creativity hits the boundaries of a well-defined, clear business vision.

To get to this nirvana, however, requires both sides of the fence to understand their role. For us as clients, its all about creating the right mojo.

Being on the agency side for many years, I keep a list of what good client mojo looks like. To have a fruitful and satisfying relationship you may wish to consider following the rules;

(a) Great clients love and understand the role of communications - don't feel you're too important to get involved in any part of the process
(b) Appreciate all stages of the creative process. It takes time and patience and a lot of sweat to come up with a great idea
(c) Challenge agencies to be great and let them challenge you to be great
(d) Be consistent in your expectations, criteria and direction. Agencies write advertising first and foremost to suit a client's personality
(e) Know what they're talking about; understand the agency’s business as well as your own. No agency really wants to BS the client; but they don't really want to have to be constantly answering stupid questions
(f) As a client, appreciate research but don't let it be your master
(g) Acknowledge and reward, emotionally and financially great work

I also kept a list of what bad client mojo looks like. If you really want to push your agency over the edge, here are some top tips:

(a) Don’t have a clear idea of why anyone should buy your product – expect the agency to figure it out
(b) Make love to the agency one day to get their best and brightest but consider it a point of pride to screw them financially when it comes to remuneration
(c) Send too many people to the briefing sessions and make sure the list of people that have to approve work is long
(d) Think and act like ordinary people to lull the agency into a false sense of security and then demand that brand advertising has lots of elements that will only appeal to your industry insider mates.
(e) Presume that everyone wants to listen to you, so you don’t have to worry about how to really engage them
(e) Be untrustworthy. Don’t support your agency if there are any internal concerns from your bosses. Blame anything they don’t like on the agency and ignore the fact they were executing your brief.

Like all relationships the relationship between client and agency changes with time. Taking the time to understand each other and communicate will yield the best results. All successful relationships need effort to work and while sometimes it’s better to cut and run, working as one team from a place of mutual respect can produce some truly amazing work.

The core issue is that buying the services of an agency is not like buying new hardware, stationery or gum. You are buying ideas and ideas are funny things. If they are incubated in a warm environment of trust and respect, where people understand their roles and meet expectations, then you can create something pretty special.

That’s a whole other level of mojo.