Digital can be fun, entertaining, interactive and worth our attention. Is it possible to get all of this into standard online ads?

My last post suggested that maybe (not definitely) Apple’s iAds could be good for digital advertising, making them a bit more useful and a little less interruptive. Only time will tell, of course.

In the meantime, the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) has also come to realize it hasn’t done enough to make paid online advertising appealing or effective enough to attract spending commensurate with the amount of time people spend online. Click rates remain pitiful and no one has yet cracked the code on how to do display advertising or brand building executions in the online space.

While marketers spend $30 billion a year on OLA, $25 billion of that goes directly to search. According to Peter Minnium, who’s helping the IAB develop new standards, the big problem has been too much emphasis on response and too much dependence on the lowest common denominator units – typically the 2” by 3” ads that can be served by anyone from Google and MSN to your local blog.

According to Peter, as a result of standards that have to work for every website out there (in an effort to save advertisers having to create an excess of custom versions) creators face restrictions that drive them toward mediocrity and consumers live with tired, boring ads that fail to capture their imaginations.

The industry knows this. As search starts to slow, all the big portals are looking for ways to beef up revenue.  That means Google, AOL, MSN and others will all try to figure it out on their own, but that approach could lead to confusion and fragmentation. Imagine if advertisers had to create totally different units, experiences and executions for every site where they ran ads?

Can the IAB change this? Well they’re trying. They’ve asked a number of creative folks from the advertising industry to help develop new standards. The objective is to come up with something that excites marketers, agencies and media planners.

IAB thinks that the solution, not unlike Apple’s approach, just might be to combine the sight, sound and motion of video with the web’s power of engagement and sharing, then somehow develop new formats that everyone buys into in order that brands can create fewer units and have the option of running them anywhere.

The big question of course is what is the role of branded display advertising on the Internet? In an ideal format, it will allow consumers to get the information they want, learn something meaningful, search directly from the ad, share if they wish to, and experience entertaining content in the process. Oh right, and it can’t interrupt.

Can this ever be achieved? Is there a model that works for both advertiser and consumer? How about the role of tablets to influence new formats?

Right now, advertisers need to move money out of TV and align budgets with consumer behavior. (Relying on memory here, but I believe the web accounts for 30 percent of consumers’ media time but only 10 percent of marketing dollars. Someone correct me if I’m off with these numbers.)

Running TV spots on the web doesn’t work. We’re online in order to discover what we want. Ads that interrupt us find little welcome. In fact, they’re disdained. And finally, as we turn to our social networks directly for the content we want, traditional search becomes less necessary and OLA close to useless.

Put that way it seems an insurmountable challenge.

The promise of digital advertising, of course, is that it serves us as much as the advertiser. It knows what we’re interested in without violating our privacy. It lets us opt in on our own terms. It includes all the best features of social media – sharing, ratings, recommendations from friends. And it’s exciting.

We seem to get more of the above in great social media executions and compelling viral ideas but not in paid digital ads, despite the few exceptions.

So, will we ever see standard units that are actually conducive to more inspiring advertising? Can the IAB win consensus from both big portals and smaller sites? Will iAds raise the bar for what consumers expect? Can paid digital advertising that lives on a website actually earn our attention?  Lots of questions.  But at least we have acknowledgment of the problem and a set of criteria that seem to make sense.

What do you think? Any chance we’ll ever learn to love online advertising?

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Perhaps it’s the inspiration of Zappos and its pioneering use of Twitter.  Maybe it’s the success of Best Buy, whose Twelpforce has turned employees into an online service and support staff.  But retailers everywhere are jumping on the social train.  And well they should.

Today shopping happens anywhere: offline, online, on the go. And shoppers can connect and share every step of the way. Mobile utilities make it possible to find a product in a store and quickly order it for less somewhere else. Services like Groupon deliver daily and or regional discounts providing the crowd responds. Platforms such as Placecast offer all of us a chance to opt-in to offers and messages from our favorite retailers entirely on our own terms. And multi-feature apps such as Springpad (note they’re a client and I serve on the board) will soon actually hunt down the best prices for products you’ve saved to your wish list.

In fact it’s only a matter of time before consumers can issue their own RFI for a given product type or even a specific brand.

So what are retailers doing besides the obvious presence on Twitter and Facebook?  Lots of stuff. In the last couple of months I’ve come across the following.  My guess is it’s just the beginning.

Uniqlo sets the bar

If non-stop experimentation and creativity is your criteria, check out Uniqlo. Their constant fashion innovation extends into social media. For example, UTweet takes all your Twitter content and gives it a cool new look. They’ve got something new every month or so and all of it is designed to engage with customers, connect them to each other and inspire them to pass it around. This is a brand that’s being social rather than doing social.

JC Penny hires haulers

Among the many phenomena brought to us by YouTube are haul videos. Shoppers sharing their most recent purchases. Don’t ask me why, but some of these young women have thousands of followers and hundreds of thousands of views. (Amazing what we are interested in.) JC Penny figured, “Why not have them haul home stuff from its stores?” Give some of the popular ones a couple of gift cards and turn those haulers into customers and advocates all in one fell swoop. No doubt we’ll see more retailers trying to leverage the influence of the individual.

Kohl’s crowdsources customer stories

Again, you may ask yourself why, but it appears we want to share everything and even pay attention to what others are sharing. Kohl’s figured this out and created a simple site where customers could hold up receipts, sharing what they bought and more importantly how much they saved. Granted $100 prizes helped generate participation, but shoppers showed up and shared as much because they wanted recognition and inclusion as they did the money.  In a matter of weeks Kohl’s got thousands of customers to share their purchases and brag about their savings. Note: Kohl’s worked with This Moment, whose platform lets them create a unified brand experience across all the social networks, from YouTube to Facebook to Kohl’s own site.

Diesel introduces social dressing rooms

This is pretty cool. In Spain, Diesel created the Diesel Cam, essentially connecting mirrors right outside the dressing rooms directly to Facebook. When you try on an outfit you can log in, upload a photo of yourself in your new jeans, and solicit immediate feedback and “likes” from your friends.  We all want the opinion of people we trust and who better to watch our backside than our friends?  Social shopping, whether it’s via our iPhone and a quick TwitPic or full-blown installations like Diesel’s, is definitely here.

K-Mart post gamers’ online reviews in-store

This one couldn’t be simpler.  K-Mart invites its video game customers to review games online and possibly have them appear in-store as POP right on the shelf where the game is sold. You get your review and your name front and center for other shoppers to see.  Ups your gamer cred and makes you feel part of the franchise. We all know it’s easy to post comments online, but to have them displayed as a miniature billboard? Much cooler.

Retailers may still be addicted to FSI’s and the offline tactics they’ve always depended on, but if I were in the Sunday circular business, I’d be even more worried than I already am.

If you’ve seen other cool retailer uses of social media, please share. I’m taking up a collection.  Thanks for reading.

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I just got my SxSWi panel submission in under the wire. Was on vacation so totally forgot.  Won’t have any idea whether it has a chance or not until September. But here it is. If you read stuff here regularly, you won’t be too surprised.  Following the SxSW submission guidelines there’s the title (limited to eight words; agree mine still needs work); description (1500 characters max, though I’ve fattened it up a little bit for this blog post; who it’s intended for; the five questions it will answer; and why I’m qualified to participate (that was the really hard part.)

Title:

New Models Prove That Ad Agencies Will Survive

The title can’t be more than eight words — Rumors of our death are greatly exaggerated was an alternative — but they want something more specific, hence the reference to “new models.”

Description:

Social media enthusiasts, inbound marketers and digital shops have all declared that the advertising agency as we know it is dead. But is it really? The old agency model may have lost its relevance, but there is a new crop of “agencies” springing up all around us.

Still in their infancy, crowdsourcing agencies are succeeding at sourcing ideas from both the public and free agents.

Digital production companies that combine technology and production now offer strategy and branding in attempt to displace agencies of record.

Social savvy integrated agencies that boast innovation “labs” are experimenting with everything from the creation of their own products to the development of digital eco-systems rather than ad campaigns.

The implications of these new models are significant:

They create new opportunities for brands and marketers as they learn to engage rather than “broadcast.”

They force traditional agencies to adapt more quickly if they are to survive.

They call for a new set of skills and expertise from those who want to work and prosper in the industry.

This panel, comprised of leaders who represent each of the models, along with a leading CMO from a major marketer, will explore the following:

–Why rapidly changing consumer behavior (from spectator to creator, from reader to publisher) demands constant reinvention on the part of agencies

–Creating a culture that embraces change

–Criteria that brands and marketers should use to evaluate the new models

–The skills employees will need in the future if they are to prosper and succeed.

Who it’s intended for:

Ad agency executives, CMOs, marketing executives, ad industry employees will all benefit from this discussion.  They’ll come away with ideas, examples of what doesn’t work, and new ways to think about the business they dedicate so much of their life to.

Questions this panel will answer:

• What does the next generation ad agency look like?
• Do I need one agency or multiple specialty shops?
• How is consumer behavior and technology affecting advertising effectiveness?
• What kind of skills will be most valuable to the industry in the future?
• What doesn’t work and how can I avoid making mistakes others have made?

What qualifies me:

Needless to say I wrote something that makes me sound impressive. After all, I am in advertising.

So, what do you think?  Any good?  Would you attend?

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The3six5 project: crowdsourcing, community and content distribution

Perhaps the most interesting thing about social media isn’t what brands are doing in the new space but what individuals and small teams are creating. I’ve written here before about some of my favorites: Erik Proulx’s ability to make Lemonade the movie; Sheena Matheiken’s clever Uniform Project that raised over $100,000 for the Akanksha Foundation; Michelle Ryan Lauto’s Facebook event, responsible for thousands of New Jersey students boycotting school in protest of tax cuts.

Today I participated in another project that’s pretty cool. Len Kendall’s and Daniel Honigman’s the3six5. The simple Posterous blog recruited 365 different people around the world to each write about a single day. The3six5 is a lesson in everything from crowdsourcing to generating free content, to harnessing the collective reach of a community.

It also offers the perfect formula for brands and marketers to follow.

It takes advantage of a simple, easy to use platform

No one built a website. Instead 3six5 uses the increasingly popular Posterous. The free platform comes with its own built-in community and offers an embeddable tab on Facebook. The old way of thinking was to create something you have to build.  The new way of thinking is to build something from stuff that’s already created.

It invites participation

There will always be downright remarkable content toward which we all gravitate. But no one is content just to watch anymore. More and more everyone wants to join in and create. People will give more of their time, effort and ideas than you might imagine if they feel as if they’re contributing to something bigger and worthwhile.

It markets itself

Do the math. If 365 people contribute, and they each have a few thousand followers on Twitter, each of whom has hundreds more, well, you get the picture.  It doesn’t take very long for those numbers to grow.  In fact after just six months the3six5 has over a million views.

Ironically, my the3six5 post was about old fashioned community, the kind that doesn’t need social media. But if you’re a brand, a marketer, a small company or just one person who wants to make something happen, this is clearly the neighborhood to live in.

What do you think? I’d really appreciate it if you shared as many one person initiated projects that you can think of. Let’s start a collection in the comments below.

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There are an awful lot of great digital and social gatherings. SxSWi. PSFK. Internet Week. But I’m pretty excited that this year Boston is about to try something new with the launch of FutureM.

Thanks to the inspiration of a bunch of really smart people including folks like Brian Halligan, David Meerman Scott, and the leadership of MITX (one of the country’s premiere Internet business and marketing associations), Boston will host an event that has the potential to define “what’s new and what’s next” as FutureM gathers leading thinkers in marketing, media and technology for five days in October.

There will be keynotes, panels, workshops, tweet-ups and, of course, parties. Plans are still in the early stages but what’s pretty cool is the collaboration and excitement already being generated.

Chris Brogan’s Inbound Marketing Summit at Gillette Stadium is part of the event. Hubspot’s user conference takes place the same week.  MIT’s Technology Review will showcase its future view of media.  And a lot of other people, including Mike Volpe are working on ideas, panels and presentations as you read this.

I’m thrilled to be a small part of it. I just started collaborating with the super smart Mike Troiano on a panel about change, transformation, and how to specifically overcome obstacles in order to get more digital and social. We’re hoping to avoid the tired old conversation of what’s not working and put some real specific recommendations on the table for both agencies and brands.

Kiki Mills, the executive director of MITX, has asked me to organize a TNGG (nextgreatgeneration.com) session where we get some really bright, social savvy Gen Y marketers to talk about how companies will have to engage with their generation in the future and how they predict marketing tactics and programs will evolve to align with their behavior.

It would be great to bring in people like Michelle Lauto to get a first hand POV about how this generation looks at media as its own tool for connection and change.

And finally, I’m hoping to moderate, or at least help recruit, a panel of the most forward thinking brands around. What makes them different?  How do they get management sign off on ambitious and untested ideas? Do they use a different set of metrics and evaluation criteria? Are their lawyers more open-minded?

It’s still too early to share specifics. And suffice it to say I’m both excited and anxious about it being great. But as I’ve learned from hanging with the digital and social crowd, this community works together. It’s collaborative. And it helps each other experiment, learn and ultimately succeed. It’s why I’ve volunteered to help.

So join us. Plan to attend. Submit events. Comment on this post. Leave suggestions for who and what you’d like to see and hear. And if you have ideas for any of the above panels, please let me know.

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Where does brand loyalty come from? A social media platform? Or a brand's behavior?

Once again I enjoyed participating on an episode of The Beancast last night with some really smart people that included Mitch Joel, John Wall, Ian Schafer and, of course, Bob Knorpp.

We discussed the week’s marketing stories: everything from the plight of independent BP service stations to the likely winners at Cannes. But the topic that I found the most interesting was the question of loyalty. How do we measure it?  Can we assign a real dollar value to a Facebook fan? Are the recent findings from Syncapse and Vitrue dependable.

In the case of Syncapse this social media strategy company suggests that a Facebook fan is worth $136.00. The number comes from determining a typical fan’s behavior. Syncapse concluded he’s likely to spend $72.00 a year more on a brand than a non-fan; is 28 more likely to continue using that brand; has a high propensity to recommend products to friends and family; and has a real affinity to the brand he “likes.”

But the real question that no one seems to answer is this: If there were no Facebook or equivalent social network, would that “fan’s” behavior be any different?  Does he fan/like a brand on Facebook because he’s already loyal? Or does becoming a fan somehow induce that loyalty?

I’m willing to bet it’s the former.  We are loyal to a brand because of its products, service, quality and consistency; we then reflect that loyalty by fanning a brand, not vice versa.

This has real implications for marketers. Research like the above results in more of the idiocy we have seen in the last year or two: brands that have to be on Facebook; success that’s measured in terms of how many “fans” or “likes” that brand acquires; programs that are designed to drive up the numbers.

Granted Vitrue’s approach and valuation are quite different. Their number is less than $4.00 per fan, but they’re actually measuring impressions.

To me, both of these metrics represent a classic case of applying old media thinking to a new media environment.  They measure what exists after the fact — customer value and impressions — they don’t tell us whether or how we can actually increase loyalty.

A program that strives to pile up fans will at best simply identify people who are already loyal. At worst, it will convince someone to click a button because it’s effortless, but potentially also meaningless.

The only thing we should be measuring is whether or not we can create content, utility, service and value in the social media space that induces prospects to become customers and customers to become repeat customers, perhaps even willing to pay a premium. Accomplishing that calls for  ideas, creativity and experimentation, not another quantitative study.

Smart brands measure (and, for that matter, predict) everything. But before they put their money behind reaching and collecting fans, they invest in behaviors to prove they’re worthy of a customer’s loyalty.

What’s  your brand doing to earn loyalty?

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Building brands has changed in a big way.  Once it was all about what a brand said: the promises in its advertising. More recently it was about access: websites that let customers and prospects come and interact when they wanted to.  But now it’s about what might be called “marketing through relationships.”

I’ve talked about this in a number of presentations, mostly in an attempt to explain that social media is not about technology or platforms, but rather about how brands can create long lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with their customers.

A couple of days ago, poking around on some of my favorite blogs, I came across a presentation on BBH Labs’ site that included another smart way to think about this.

In a recent presentation that a couple of its strategists gave to students at VCU, the skunk-workers suggested that if a brand focuses on behavior, conversation, innovation, and utility (among other noteworthy qualities) it might actually make friends. A pretty good idea given that friends listen, share, support, forgive, come back and maybe even stay loyal when someone else has a better price.

Some pretty successful big brands — Panera*, Zappos*, Apple, and American Express come to mind – along with plenty of smaller companies — Timbuk2, the messenger bag maker, and AJ Bombers, the Milwaukee burger joint, for example– have also demonstrated the value of this approach.

These companies do it through their physical environments, interactions in social media, products and innovations, even their content and advice. What they all have in common is this: the experiences they create, digitally and otherwise, are mutually beneficial. They give their community as much as they hope to get back in the form of sales and business: Panera with its community involvement; Zappos with constant engagement and its knack for delighting; Apple with its one-to-one classes; and AMEX with it’s customer service. (If you’ve ever tried contesting a charge or fee with CitiBank or Chase versus American Express, you know what I mean.)

Timbuk2 treats its customers with genuine appreciation, taking advantage of everything from its website to personal thank you notes.  And AJ Bombers continues to set examples with its innovative use of social media.

Behavior – what these brands do, not what they say – results in their winning friends, at least in the loose sense of the word.

In the BBH Labs presentation, the assignment to VCU students goes on to ask for an eco-system — presumably based on insights and an understanding of how the community-to-be-engaged (I like that better than the term “target audience”) uses technology, media and content — along with propagation tactics for how the word will get spread.

This is yet another smart way to look at marketing. After all, if we’re trying to make friends, the last thing we need to do is blabber at them.  Better to create a warm, welcoming, entertaining environment where they might want to come and hang out rather than an ad they’re likely to tune out. Heck, they might even buy something while they’re with us.

We all know this is the new way to market. Every agency and CMO is starting to think this way. Granted some are getting there faster than others. After all it takes a different kind of team, a revised approach to strategy, and willingness to throw out the old way of doing things.

But I think the BBH Labs approach offers a good place to start: attracting friends (rather than targeting an audience) and building an eco-system instead of crafting a message.

Is that what you’re brand is doing?

Photo by Haags Uitburo

* Panera and Zappos are clients of Mullen, the agency where I work.

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Gary Vaynerchuck, host of Wine Library TV, makes his debut as a subject featured in the New Yorker's Talk of the Town

Gary Vaynerchuk has made it big in social media, the news media, and now the cultural media.  This week the New Yorker, of all magazines, published a piece about the wine guy in its Talk of the Town.  In its inimitable tongue-in-cheek manner, as the magazine is prone to do, it bestowed both praise and thinly veiled criticism on the author of Crush It. Though the writer, Tad Friend, did let Gary’s personality shine through, whether his intentions where to show Gary’s good side or poke fun at him is somewhat questionable.

The New Yorker is my favorite magazine and Gary is one of my favorite social phenomena.  So I love the fact that this high-brow cultural periodical profiled him, and that in return he appears totally unintimidated, either by the reporter or the magazine’s readership.  Gary Vee stays true to his passionate, opinionated, intense personality.  “Take me as I am or don’t take me at all,” he seems to say.

While the New Yorker acknowledges Vaynerchuk’s accomplishments it implies that Vaynerchuk isn’t quite as social as he may claim to be, arguing that if we believe in the theory of Dunbar’s number, no one with 45,000 fans or 850,000 followers can actually engage with but a fraction of them. The article cites Gary’s automated video email reply, which substitutes for a real response when you send him a message, along with the amount of time it takes him to actually respond to his community as evidence that what Gary espouses and what he delivers aren’t quite the same.

A relationship with Gary V means an ironclad guarantee that he’ll reply to your e-mail within four months, with at least a “thnx” or a “mwaa!” First, however, you’ll get a bounce-back message that directs you to a brief video. In the video, Gary V, looking sporty in a maroon rugby shirt, thanks everyone: “I don’t want anybody to not recognize how appreciative I am of the volume of e-mails I get.” He names assistants and handlers who can help with your biz-dev or media-op needs. Then he thanks everyone again, and again, and again, six times in all. His passion and sincerity make his eyebrows pop like upside-down Vs—V for Gary V! Branding! Tad Friend

But I think the New Yorker misses the point a little bit. It’s easy to fault the host of “The Thundershow” for not being able to respond in real time to his thousands of followers. And this is not a new argument. Plenty of people have proffered that we can’t really be social in social media once we reach a certain size following.  This is especially true for celebrities (think Oprah, Martha, Ellen) not to mention anyone with hundreds of thousands of fans.

Illustration of Gary V by Tom Bachtell, from the New Yorker, Talk of the Town, June 7

But Gary’s real contribution is something other than his day in and day out engagement. He’s demonstrated it’s possible to build a significant business with social media alone. He’s set a pretty good example in the process. And he’s willingly shared all or much of what he’s learned.

Bypassing traditional media, eschewing paid advertising, he’s proven what one person can achieve by taking things into his own hands.  With a video camera, a folding table, and an understanding that by democratizing wine with a straight forward, unpackaged, no BS approach to content generation he’s built a business and a following while pioneering an approach that’s obviously as valid as any of the models documented in marketing text books or ad agency case studies.

You can do business with Gary. The prices at Wine Library and Gourmet Library are pretty darn good. You can engage with him. But I think the real opportunity is to study what he’s done and how he’s done it, then replicate some of those techniques for yourself, your business or your client’s business. In fact I know people who after one night of hanging with Gary — and listening to his enthusiam for the potential of social media — have upped and quit their jobs to start their own business.

P.S.  You might be interested in a post I wrote about Gary Vaynerchuk and Lee Clow a little over a year ago.  Let me know who you think wins.  Might be fun to see if a year has changed anyone’s opinion.

Illustration by Tom Bachtell, used without permission.  Hope since I’m linking to the New Yorker page featuring the illustration that he won’t mind.

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Sunday, May 30th 9:16 pm

I am writing this while on hold with Verizon. I’m curious. Can I actually compose an entire post while trying to resolve the problem of my miraculously slow Internet service?  At the moment I’m furiously scribbling in the margins of a brochure that  proclaims the attributes of Verizon’s blazing speed.

9:23:14 pm

I’ve been through the menu, have actually reached a person, but am now back on hold. The digital reader on my phone screen ticks away the wasted seconds in its relentless determination to diminish whatever remaining faith I have in Verizon.

9:24:36 pm

The heinous piano music playing in the background doesn’t quite qualify as a genre, though if I had to give it a label it would be jazzak. Seems someone had the idea that if you play the most amorphous music imaginable a person on hold might stay calm. Conceptually that makes sense. But given that there’s steam coming out of my ears while the veins in my neck bulge in time to the unavoidable beat of the music, I believe that the UX person has failed in his or her ability to truly understand what motivates customers.

9:26:43 pm

Speaking of UX, are you ready for this? One of the reasons I’m on hold at 10 minutes and 43 seconds of my call is that following the computer generated questions that wanted to know what language I speak and the nature of my problem (all of which I had to repeat when I eventually got to a real person) the real person I eventually got to just this moment transferred me to a second real person.

Why did he do that? Here’s why. After asking me all those aforementioned questions all over again he then wanted to know my operating system. When I answered, “Mac OS,” he informed me that he couldn’t help me since he was a Microsoft person. Wouldn’t you think this would be the first question to ask? Not the last?

9:28:36 pm

My new real person, the Mac guy, is now running some remote diagnostics. (Note: the problem has nothing to do with my operating system.)

9:29:02 pm

Dum dee dum dee dum dee dum.

9:29:35 pm

This is usually where I stare at the phone some more to make sure I’m still connected; my greatest fear is I have to start this process all over again.

Mac guys’ back. And what’s this? My slow service is Verizon’s fault? I’m in possession of a faulty modem! It’s always been faulty! That’s why my service at this location has never been that good? And they’ll have a new one to me tomorrow morning? Even though it’s Memorial Day? I’ll believe it when I see it.

9:31:43 pm

Well I’m done. Fifteen minutes and 43 seconds. Actually that’s not as bad as it could have been. Then again, who wants to give up 15 minutes of their Sunday evening on the phone with their Internet provider.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Verizon.  I use their online service, their wireless service and can’t wait for their alternative to AT&T as an iPhone provider. And in their defense, I have to say the individual techs on the phone were more than supportive.

They apologized for the problems and seemed determined to make things better. In fact, they did a great job. If anything, they were hampered by a system that frustrates callers before they ever reach the tech person and by questions that someone else wrote for them to follow.

This is a reminder that your employees are only as good as the systems that back them up a long with the prototyping and role-playing that helps determine how they work in real life.

To that end I’m sending Verizon’s director of user experience a copy of Tim Brown’s Change by Design. (Tim, if you are reading this, you really should help Verizon design a better user experience.) They need help with everything from the menu you have to endure to reach a person, to the music they play when you’re on hold, to the sequence of questions that doesn’t ask you which operating system you use until the very end.

Monday, May 31, 8:00 pm

Update. The modem did not arrive.  Again, I think the intentions and promises of the service tech on the phone were genuine. He was imply let down by the organization behind him.

Recommendation

Seems to me that a Verizon could do a number of things differently. Here’s what I recommend:

1. Create a menu that gets you to a person faster.

2. Give the tech instant access to the same answers you just delivered automatically. Why make customers answer them twice?

3. Improve your problem assessment. If one’s operating system determines everything, ask about it first not last.

4. Make sure the systems in the back room and the people on the front lines are in sync. It will save you from promises you can’t keep and further disappointing customers.  It’s always better to under promise and over deliver.

5. Offer some form of compensation for the mistakes. If my modem has been faulty for months, then reimburse me for a portion of it that time.

I don’t know if Verizon plans to rectify the situation without my having to go through all of the above all over again. But I’m I’m not holding my breath. But at least I got a post out of the situation.  Let me know what you think.

*Note this post was typed the next day and includes some basic editing of my initial scratches.

Footnote:  Tuesday, June 1, 11:45 am.  Believe it or not, Verizon just called me, within minutes after this post went up.  Coincidental, no doubt, but credit to them for trying.

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Doc Searles, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, and I have been exchanging thoughts about brands, branding and reputation over on his blog Doc Searls Weblog. (Gotta love the fact that he calls his site a weblog, testament to how long he’s been around.)

If you don’t know who Doc Searles is, take a quick peek at his list of “projects.” There’s not much he hasn’t done, and if anyone’s entitled to talk about this stuff, he is.

Anyway, Doc had a pretty opinionated post about how “branding has jumped the shark,” declaring that….

“saying stuff may get more attention than doing stuff, at least in the short run. But doing stuff is what makes the world work.”

No arguments there. But I sort of disagreed with Doc when he insisted…

“brands are nothing but statements. At best they are a well-known and trusted badge, name or both.”

I believe that a brand is the essence of what of what it promises and delivers. It’s not a logo, or a trademark — and definitely not its advertising — despite the claims of brand identity companies and even some ad agencies. Your perception of a brand may be informed by ads, along with recommendations from friends, or interactions with a company’s employees, but the only thing that truly matters is the real-life experience you actually have with the company or its products.

Think of how many brands you know that hardly do any advertising.  Starbucks, and Wholefoods, for example, or until recently, Zappos. In every case, what you think about those companies has less to do with their “branding” and more to do with the personal involvement you’ve had with them.

I suppose in some ways, Doc and I are in agreement:  messages don’t matter; actions do.

So if you’re in the business of “branding,” it’s more important that you work to influence, or at least accurately reflect, a brand’s behavior.  And just hope you’re not on the BP account.

Here’s the back and forth Doc and I shared.

My initial response to Reputation vs Branding

WTF is branding? That’s a dumb word that simply means taking a brand, its beliefs, what it stands for and its consistent behavior (all adding up to the promise of a brand) and giving it a “message.” It’s messages that have jumped the shark and branding = creating messages.

What you really mean to argue is that false messages or contrived messages — think BP’s Beyond Petroleum — have jumped the shark. That is what you call branding. And in an age when the manufacturer, publisher, broadcaster and programmer have lost power to the consumer, reader, viewer and user, it’s obvious that the power of controlled messages (what you call branding) has lost its impact. That’s nothing new.

Brands, on the other hand, are alive and well. A “brand” has always been its ultimate promise; and what you, a consumer, believe that promise to be. In many ways, that’s the exact same thing as reputation, as a reputation is earned through behavior.

Doc Searles’s Reply

Edward,

I did not mean to argue that false or contrived messages have jumped the shark. They have not, and probably never will. I did mean to argue that “branding” as a marketing buzzword has jumped the shark, in the sense that it has been carried by its buzzers far from both its original meaning and the one to which its defenders hope to restore it (by calling it, for example, a “promise”).

Differences matter. Distinctions matter. A brand may be a “promise,” but a reputation is not.

My second comment

We may be saying the same thing and using different semantics. I am arguing that there is a difference between “branding,” the act of trying to define a brand, and “brand,” which is essentially what the brand *is* and *does* and delivers as an actual promise, not a stated one. Nike’s reputation is for good athletic shoes. Nike’s brand is about encouraging individual performance. That is its promise, delivered through its product, consistent behavior, etc.

Coke’s product is a sugary softdrink. Its brand is happiness, delivered through the way in which its product is used and the occasions associated with it.

BP’s product was oil exploration and oil. Right now its brand is environmental destruction. Recently its branding has been Beyond Petroleum. If we follow your argument, it suggests that such “branding” efforts are futile. But brand, not always the same as product, will always exist. Brand is reputation. Branding is an attempt to change that reputaiton through words or messages rather than behavior.

Doc’s Response

Thanks, Edward. That’s the best summary I’ve read so far on the topic(s).

I figured I should quit while I was ahead. But you must admit, the opportunity to connect, debate, disagree and clarify our thinking is what’s cool about all of this. What about you? Care to weigh in? Message versus behavior? Reputation vs Branding? Branding vs Brand?

photo by:  jddefillippo 138

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