The digital havoc continues; next target the CMO
Airbnb leverages Craiglist customers to acquire more of its own using marketing techniques that no traditional CMO would ever imagine
We all know that the road from the world of print and broadcast to a new place where digital, social and mobile reign, is littered with once prominent agencies and individuals who got left behind. Those of us who are still around have managed, in one way or another, to transform ourselves. We’ve learned new skills. Hired different kinds of talent. Changed how we work. Re-structured our work spaces. And learned to live in beta, knowing that whatever we have working today probably won’t be good enough six months or a year from now.
Inside ad agencies, we continue to see disruption. People, roles and skills change constantly. Planners become digital strategists. PR people master social media. Creative teams scramble to understand APIs and HTML5. And account folks, at the minimum, learn the timing, resources and costs of creating digital content. The changes have spawned an entire re-education industry. The 4As runs transformation sessions. BDW fills up workshops. Hyper Island charges a fortune for its digital therapy. Google and Facebook spend a small fortune educating agencies on how to best use their platforms.
But I’m guessing this is still just the beginning. The emergence of new social networks, platforms for collaboration, and the importance of reaching and acquiring users without relying on paid media and traditional advertising will call for us to learn even more. Throwing up a Facebook page, tweeting about our new product, or targeting influential bloggers won’t be good enough.
If you need evidence, check out the argument put forth in this enlightening post by Andrew Chen, a Silicon Valley blogger, entrepreneur and angel investor.
Chen suggests that the future head of marketing will have to be what’s called a growth hacker. The term is new, but gaining traction in Silicon Valley where most new companies are all about generating users for a digital product or service. His argument is that marketers now need the technical chops to integrate platforms, leverage their existing communities, and invent new ways to generate reach and visibility, using tactics and techniques foreign to most traditional marketers.
The case study he describes shows how Airbnb wrote a script to scrape Craigslist and interact with its forms thus leveraging Craigslist’s huge user base despite the ad platform having no API. (Note this is mostly over my head, so you’re better off getting the explanation from Chen.) After reverse engineering Airbnb’s “Post to Craigslist,” Chen writes:
No traditional marketer would have figured this out
Let’s be honest, a traditional marketer would not even be close to imagining the integration above – there’s too many technical details needed for it to happen. As a result, it could only have come out of the mind of an engineer tasked with the problem of acquiring more users from Craigslist. Who knows how much value Airbnb is getting from this integration, but in my book, it’s damn impressive. It taps into a low-competition, huge-volume marketing channel, and builds a marketing function deeply into the product. Best of all, it’s a win-win for everyone involved – both the people renting out their places by tapping into pre-built demand, and for renters, who see much nicer listings with better photos and descriptions.
While Chen is referring specifically to the need of startups, looking for users on its way to being the next Instagram, one could argue that all brands will be making, and all agencies marketing, digital products — apps, experiences, communities, digital services.
What will this mean for the future account manager? Or strategist? Or creative team? Your guess is as good as mine. But I can virtually guarantee you that one thing is certain. Whatever we’ve managed to learn in the last few years won’t be enough to get us through the next few.
Related: What next CMO of Best Buy needs to do immediately
Shout out to my student Maurice Rahmey for turning me onto Andrew Chen’s post.
What the big boys could learn from the startups
Maybe it’s because they’re fighting to survive. Perhaps it’s because they don’t yet have millions of customers. Or it might be that it’s actually part of their culture. But if there’s one thing that separates startups from established companies, at least in my experience, it’s customer service, personal attention and real time response.
Last night at 9:45, after two hours of entering grades and comments into Coursekit, the platform I use for teaching, I hit publish and instead of sending the grades off to my 25 students, Coursekit presented me with a blank page. All my earnest and time consuming efforts gone. I tried to re-enter them from memory figuring I’d at least be close. But when I hit publish for the second time, this batch disappear, too. After a moment of panic — of course I hadn’t saved them anywhere else — I sent Coursekit a public reply on Twitter asking for a follow in order to back channel.
It took a mere 10 minutes for them to reply and even that came with an apology for the delay. They were “in a meeting.” (Funny I’d never believe that from most companies but at 9:45 pm it seemed likely for startup.)
Within another couple of minutes I was on the phone with one of their lead engineers Jim Grandpre. Jim only had a phone with him, but even then he managed to access his servers and summon the second set of grades. He explained that something had gone wrong with the cache at their end and that it wasn’t due to anything I’d done wrong. (+1 for honest admission of fault).
He then promised that he’d recover the original grades as well as the feedback notes in the morning and would either enter them for me or send me a file so I could do so myself.
Sure enough, the next morning I had everything back. Including a very clear explanation that no one had access to my grades or notes other than he and his co-founder CTO and in no case would either of them access it without my permission.
OK, so American Express comes close to that kind of service when you want them to credit you for a charge you didn’t incur. And Zappos (Mullen client) might take equally good care of you over the phone.
But how many other companies can you think of who are that responsive and then deliver. Not Bank of America, that’s for sure.
Coursekit’s product is awesome. I would probably keep using it even without such responsiveness. But the fact that there is a real human with a name and accountability to solve problems like this makes me loyal forever. I just hope that they can make their customer concern part of their culture as they grow and prosper.
What startups are you getting service like this from?
SxSW Panel: Harvesting Consumer Intent from the Social Web
To those of you who made it to our over-subscribed SxSW panel, thanks for showing up, for engaging and for expressing so much support. To those of you who got shut out, please accept our apologies. Apparently SxSW did not anticipate the demand for this topic and only gave us room for a few hundred attendees.
I thought I’d share a recap here, as there seems to be no shortage of interest in the interest graph.
We were lucky enough to have Venture Beat’s Jolie O’Dell moderate a group that included Springpad founder Jeff Janer; Vayner Media founder AJ Vaynerchuk; strategist Farrah Bostic, and myself.
Wanting to avoid the pitfall of too many panels – unfocused, rambling conversation — we actually determined our questions in advance, prepared answers and assigned roles. We even used an interest graph platform, Springpad, to share and exchange ideas.
Panel Thesis
We had point of view that we could all agree on,
- The interest graph is replacing the social graph as the new frontier.
- It offers a better opportunity for brands and marketers to connect and engage with prospects, customers and community.
- Learning to engage, add value, and both learn from and market to the data are the ingredients for success
We then answered eight questions.
How is the interest graph (and with it the expression of intent) going to change how both consumers and brands use social media?
I used a couple of simple examples to answer this. Take my Facebook friend Alison. We share some interests. But if I friend her on Facebook I might find my stream cluttered with updates on shopping trips or cat memes. Those are her interests. However, Alison knows Austin restaurants, business books and social media trends. What if I could follow just those topics? Then Alison would become a true source of knowledge. And I would have greater flexibility to filter and access the content that matters to me.
For my brand example I used the curious case of American Express. I’ve been a card member for 35 years. Yet on Facebook, they offer me coupons to the Cheesecake Factory and discounts on cruises. Look at my purchase history, American Express! I have never done either of those things. What are you thinking?
If AMEX could tap into my interests, rather than my friends, they would send me useful information on hotels and trips to the cycling capitals of the world. (Note, even after a 60 mile ride I don’t plan to eat cheesecake.)
What are the platforms and the difference among them?
We talked about Foursquare’s evolution from check-ins to recommendations, discussed how The Fancy can actually drive purchase, and showed how Polyvore adds value to online shoppers.
No conversation about the interest graph is complete without a nod to Pinterest, which makes it super easy to collect, curate and post inspirational images, so we gave them a pretty good shout out, too. But what remains missing from all of the platforms but Springpad,* are the enhancements and alerts that help convert interest to action.
There’s more, too. Specialised platforms like Get Glue, along with established players like Facebook, all have something to offer. Right now the field is crowded and getting more crowded, so you have to pay attention not only to what’s hot now but also to what might catch on over the next year.
Consumers are jumping on platforms like Pinterest, but do marketers yet understand the opportunity?
Not really. As they tend to do with most new platforms, marketers treat them as another broadcast medium, injecting their content and hoping for traffic. True, brands fit more seamlessly into the interest graph than the social graph. The former is about what we like while the latter is about whom we know. But based on the brand behavior we see on Pinterest marketers have yet to realize that these new digital playgrounds are ideal for engagement and adding value, not simply showing off our wares.
Interestingly, Mullen’s recent Social CMO Research reveals that only 13.6 percent of marketers capture preferences or interests in their social media efforts. So there is a huge opportunity.
How can brands and marketers leverage these platforms?
One of the best lines came from Farrah Bostic. “If all you do is show, all consumers will do is look.” That’s a suggestion that we need to do more than post products and links. At Mullen, we recommend that clients foster discovery, learn to engage, and leverage the data. I won’t elaborate here as all the bullet points are on slides 30, 31 and 32. You may want to check them out.
Are any brands getting it right?
It’s really too soon to say. We don’t have much to go on. But a quick search of brands on Pinterest shows that very few do anything beyond self-promotion. One shout out goes to San Francisco’s ModCloth. Willing to share and post far more than their own catalog, they’re inevitably learning what catches on with their community and offering more reasons to return, pay attention and interact with content.
What could brands be doing?
A lot more. Why not show your expertise in a subject other than what you sell (Burberry on London, Clif Bar on nutrition, Tommee Tippee on baby care) and become a trusted resource. One of the clear takeaways from SxSW is that all brands have to move beyond branded content and become content brands, starting conversations, producing entertainment, and earning attention. Interest graph platforms are the ideal place to do that. After all, people aren’t there to see their friends but to explore and act on the things that matter to them.
What does success look like?
This is not about likes, followers and RT’s. Most of which mean little or nothing. This is about significant traffic and inbound links. All of which are measurable and can be traced back to your content. It’s about deeper engagement that leads to better understanding of your customers. Imagine being able to market to an individual rather than a segment or demographic. And finally, ultimate success consists of outcomes in the form of purchases and other actions. If you become a trusted source of relevant content, engagement and interaction will certainly yield higher conversion.
How do brands get started?
The list is clear. Explore the sites, establish a presence, don’t commit to just one site, learn conversation strategy, measure and track everything, understand the data, create APIs. And something that I’ve learned from all the startups with whom I’ve worked: get to know the product visionaries behind the new services. While they’re still young and small, they’ll be hungry to please, to teach and to co-create with you.
If you have any other thoughts or ideas, please share. And help yourself to the deck.
* Note that in addition to working at Mullen, I am the CMO at Springpad.
Why SxSW is awesome from the moment you arrive
It’s not the weather, that’s for sure. It’s 40 degrees and pouring out today. There’s a line for umbrellas and people are paying exorbitant prices for rain jackets in hotel gift shops. Oh well.
I’ve been here a day and half so far, and have only started to make my schedule, but have already had incredible encounters with people I know and others I met for the first time.
It even started on the plane. I don’t think there was a single person on Jet Blue Flight 1263 who wasn’t headed to the nerd convention. In fact most of us knew each other.
I ran into Scotty Henderson and got an update on New Empire Builders, a collaborative venture to discover the start-ups, non-profits and companies making the world better.
I sat next to a young entrepreneur Scott Dubois, co-founder of Pidalia, a software company disguised as an ad agency because if you make stuff for marketers rather than for IT departments it plays a bigger role in a company’s strategy. Interesting to see all the ways that tech is infiltrating marketing and advertising.
In Austin I caught up with Musa Tariq, the global head of Burberry’s social media initiatives. We talked for a couple of hours about the need for better social metrics and an understanding of how to leverage likes and engagement in more effective ways. Burberry uses the new platforms as well as anyone and has mounds of data as you would expect. Further validation that the interest graph platforms are the future.
Over drinks I had the pleasure of meeting Edelman’s Managing Director of Europe, Middle East and Asia Marshall Manson. I got a crash course in how social media does and doesn’t work in different countries around the world.
And finally, this morning Conrad Lisco of Co:Collective invited me to join him for breakfast and a rapid fire discussion of new business models, the future of work, and the role technology will play.
I haven’t even been to a panel and I’m smarter than when I got here. I know more about how to counsel brands and clients on mobile development. I have a more vivid understanding of where analytics has to focus if it’s to help social marketers make better decisions. I have further validation and also a better perspective as to how the interest graph can help brands segment their communities and emerge as trusted experts. And I have a new insights as to how social media differs from one country to the next.
And to think I only came for the parties.
The interest graph and marketing to consumer aspirations
“I strongly believe that consumption is less about reflecting who we are–even though that’s clearly a fundamental dimension of it–as much as it’s about who we wish to be.”
That quote comes from Paul Mullins, a professor at Indiana University-Purdue University and president of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Professor Mullins new book, The Archaeology of Consumer Culture, proposes that the study of remnants from our past may offer us the best insights about who we, as consumers, are today.
In the book, Mullins explores how trends in product purchases – plates and silverware in the late 18th century, or expensive running shoes today – reveal over and over that we buy stuff not just for the utility but for the message it sends about us.
While that’s not new – driving a BMW, drinking Heineken, wearing Burberry – all project something about us. But what Mullins argues is that we are sometimes portraying a persona that we’ve yet to realize, instead declaring that it’s who we want to be.
So what does this have to do with marketing, advertising or social media? Quite a bit if you think about it. We have this new phenomenon going on called the interest graph. Pinterest, The Fancy, Fab, Springpad are all letting us declare our wishes, not necessarily by making a purchase but by displaying how we’d like to be perceived in other ways.
If Mullins is right, and if this same insight informs the kinds of things we see people pin, then there are even more opportunities for marketers. It’s not just about posting content that drives a link, or trying to sell a product or service to someone who has raised her hand. There’s an opportunity for brands to find new ways – content, product, service, imagery, interactions, advice, utility – to actually help consumers and users become what they dream of becoming.
And if a brand can do that, well then, the opportunity for attention, sales and loyalty gets even bigger.
