LOST IN MASTICATION

THEN

Marketing and branding were about pushing your message to consumers. You sold them what they never knew they wanted.

Marketing used to be all about the product or service. What made your product unique from anything else on the market? What was the value-add in your version versus a competitor? Did you have the best price or experience for the money?

Branding was all about the image of that product or service. What perception did you want your customers to have about your company? What did customers feel about consuming what you had to offer?

NOW

Marketing and branding are responses to real-time customer demands and needs. Customers are telling you what they want. You are listening – more than ever – to the consumer, instead of dictating to them what they can or cannot live without.

Marketing is now much more than the product or service.  While people still connect with an object such as a particular coffee brand or airline, it’s not enough to sell how tasteful your peppermint latte is or the extra 6-inches of legroom compared to a competitor.

Likewise, branding is now about customer interaction (not to be confused with customer service), corporate social responsibility, online culture and community, and much more.

Making this shift to social media isn’t an easy move. Wait too long to get on the bandwagon, and you’ve lost your first-mover advantage. Act too fast, and you may not have a well thought-out strategy.

So how do you know whether to jump into the next new web trend? How do you evaluate your presence in that landscape? How do you use the new media tool in such a way that no one else is using it? Thinking outside the box and being innovative with the new media tools will help in setting your company, brand and product apart.

Whether it’s a mobile app, interactive website that has nothing to do with your product and everything about your consumers, there’s definitely a niche that you can create for yourself within your industry that will accomplish the original goals of branding and marketing.

Here are a few new media integration examples that are successful at tying together “new marketing” and “new branding” into the digital customer experience:

Sonicare: Adopt-a-Tooth

The Sonicare Facebook application keeps the user engaged over and over again by encouraging good dental hygiene through a “pet” tooth.  Take better care of our “canine” and be privy to special gifts and promotions.

When someone takes action with their pet tooth, it can appear on their friends news feeds, and is always visible on the owner’s profile.

In today’s social network landscape where the popularity of social gaming such as Mafia Wars and Farmville are growing exponentially, it’s smart for a brand to jump into the arena with the right interactive app.

Coke Zero Facial Profiler

Coca-cola claims that Coke Zero has been one of the most successful product launches in its history. In the two years since its release, Coke Zero has sold nearly 450 million cases and is available in more than 100 countries. So why not take this success and broad reach to connect your fans online?

That’s exactly what cokezero.com does. The site says nothing about the product except for a wordmark that includes the tagline “Real Coke Taste. Zero Calories.”  Instead, their site is home to the Facial Profiler application, which uses Facebook Connect to troll tagged images of you to help find your look-alike.

The premise? A social experiment: If millions of people like you enjoy Coke Zero, then there surely is another person that looks like you that enjoys Coke Zero.

USAA Mobile App

Your new media presence doesn’t always have to be through a web browser. USAA takes personal finance management to a whole new level with their iPhone app. Unique features include:

• Deposit@Mobile — Depositing a check is as simple as snapping a photo.
• ATM Locator — Find the closest ATMs.
• Loan Calculator — Estimate monthly payments on a loan.
• Rental Car Locator — Find the nearest Avis, Budget or Hertz location.
• Accident Checklist — Record accident details to help you file a claim.

This Mother’s Day weekend, Facebook is rolling out a new profile feature that allows you to show your immediate family members in you bio.  There are plans to expand this to extended family members in the near futue as well.

Facebook has come a long way from a college network.  It’s really built itself as a community for classmates, professional networks and family members alike.  In the past six months alone, I’ve seen friends and family that I never thought would join Facebook take on to social networking.

If you missed this a couple months back, Facebook also let’s you create private family groups now.  I think this is a great way to cut down on email invites and links.  Click here to start your family page.

I did my obligatory post on the randomness of me:

1. It did not say that I would have bad luck for seven years if I didn’t do it.
2. The first person that tagged me is someone I don’t know too well, and I felt like I got to look into his soul. So I wanted to share back.
3. Whatever I wrote on this list, I would be remembered for at my memorial service – not the 25 skeletons in my closet, which are reserved for those who I’ve shared those experiences with.
4. And because as much as I’d like to say I’m a trailblazer… I am a conformer.

OK – I’ll end there.  25 Random Things is the only fad I’ll succumb to… Until the next one from a friend – who I may or may not be friends with in real life – tags me in Facebook and inspires me all over again.

(more…)

(Although I write this post with specific focus on higher education and non-profits, I think it’s a useful guide for start-ups looking to establish themselves on the Web as well.)

New and social media have been around for the last 15 years.  But not until recently have they truly become interactive and conversational.  The tools and communities that make up this medium continue to change the way we see, hear and touch the communities around us.

When I was hired as a communications director a few years ago, my job description in short was to educate the public about research, maintain a static website, and design print publications.  It quickly became apparent that the old ways weren’t working:

1. Information changes too fast. News gets old quick, and to print/re-print to keep up with changes became expensive, and environmentally unfriendly.
2. Were we telling the right stories? We were feeding what we thought our audience wanted to hear.  There had to be a way to “listen” so we could better apply our efforts.
3. Money and the Environment. The cost to print and mail materials – in dollars, trees and carbon footprint – are constant concerns in our world today.  In other words, corporate social responsibility.
4. Walking the talk. This is unique to us, but as a leading computing- and technology-focused institution, if we cannot connect in a way that demonstrates the power of computing and technology, then we have failed to communicate.

Thus, we slowly began to transform our communications strategy and have arrived at the tools that make up new media and social communications today. (All this, in addition to many traditional media efforts that we still practice.)  Here’s what we’re doing in higher education at UC Irvine’s Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences:

• RSS. If you do nothing else, offer an RSS feed to your news, blogs, event calendars, videos, etc.  You can probably gain 50% of your value simply by allowing your community to stay in touch with you, without having to actually check-in.
• Blogs. Both students and alumni blog about what’s on their mind.  Students most often talk about classes and social activities which paint a true picture of college life.  Alums keep in touch and share their experiences about ICS and being in the real world.  Both serve as great recruiting tools for students, parents and faculty.
• Multimedia. Video profiles, audio snippets and podcasts engage the audience in unique ways. Digital media is portable, and when done correctly, engaging.  We create videos profiling students, special lectures and events, etc. We maintain a presence on YouTube and Flickr.  Here’s an example of a marketing video:

• Social Networks. Today, we exist on LinkedIn and Facebook.  But only on these two networks, for the reasons that they are the most reputable, and our particular community are most active on these two social networks.  The beauty of participating in a social network it that its content is crowd-sourced – your community helps contribute to the cause.
• Twitter. This is an experiment, but an inexpensive one.  In fact, we automatically feed news through Twitter so that prospective students (@BrenAdmissions) and interested community members (@UCIbrenICS) can quickly follow us.  We also “listen” to buzz in our community through Twitter and make efforts to engage with the “twitterverse”.
• Second Life. TechCoast Island, our presence in Second Life houses a virtual Bren Hall.  For our ribbon-cutting ceremony, we invited guests from afar to join in the virtual celebration concurrent to the live events. Today, it is used to model real-world research in a virtual setting… an innovative solution to conserving resources and money. We’ve even held lectures and meetings at TechCoast.

• Share Functions. If someone wants to share and offer feedback on anything that is a part of your Web presence, let them.  It’s the best way to create buzz and spread news organically.  These functions can range from digg to del.icio.us to StumbleUpon and more.

These new and social media applications may not work for all ventures.  In fact, I urge that each organization explore and understand their community and resources before investing too much time into these mediums.  But given that you have an active online community that is willing to participate, and that you can produce enough content to keep your online presence from becoming stale, it’s worth at least giving the free resources a try.

Our strategy continues to change as quickly and often as technology and social media do.  I’m curious to hear what other non-profit and educational institutions are doing in this arena.  Do share!

I often get the comment from my Facebook friends that I must be updating my status all day long.  In fact:

Twitter integrates really well with Facebook.  Let your Facebook friends know what you’re up to or what you find interesting by updating your Tweets (hopefully through a third-party Twitter app).  If you’re not already integrating the two, here’s a simple look at how.

1. Search “Twitter” in the upper right search box.  The Twitter App should be the top result that looks like this:



2. Click on “View Application”, then “Go to Application” and “Allow Access”:



3. Sign in at the prompt to your Twitter account from Facebook:



4. Once you’re signed in, “Allow Twitter to Update Your Facebook Status”:



5. Finally, click on “Allow Status Updates:

To see the Twitter App setting after setting up your Twitter feed to Facebook, simply click on “Edit” in your “Applications” window at the upper right of your “Home” page:

The Twitter App will default to the following setting, which I recommend:

That’s it!  If you have any questions, feel free to message me in Twitter @sherrymain or in Facebook.