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:
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.
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.
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:
If you can sketch an idea on a napkin, then Prezi is the presentation tool for you. Adam and I just gave our first Prezi-ntation using this “zooming presentation editor”, and it went off really well.
Prezi is a different way of thinking about presentations – not at all like traditional slideshows made in Powerpoint or Keynote. In fact, Prezi is more like an interactive Flash video, but without having to use the Adobe Flash or know about timelines, paths or layers.
Prezi starts with a blank slate and you map out a presentation as orderly or disorderly as you want. You can use frames to anchor areas to include photos and text into, similar to a single slide in a traditional slideshow. Create the path which you want the presentation to travel in, by hooking assets (frames, images, video, PDF files, text) with anchors.
Click on the screenshot to view the Internet marketing class project for our client Surf City MX (@surfcitymx):
The toolbar/menu is also unlike a traditional desktop software. And the “transformation zebra” – the blue striped concentric circles of the logo – isn’t immediately intuitive. But if you take the short tutorials (complete with Hungarian accent), it’s pretty easy to pick up. Here’s a look at the tool-cluster:
I like Prezi because it’s a different way to engage your audience with presentations. Powerpoint and Keynote come out with new animations and other visual candy with each release, but you can’t get away from the old transperancy on an overhead projector frame. Prezi is all online – no installation of software, upgrading or toting files on a thumb drive.
There are still things lacking in Prezi such as the selection of themes, the ability to customize your own theme. I’d like to see Prezi allow embedding of video, images or text from the Web, much like Tumblr. What if it could take a URL and have the screen shot appear on the Prezi with full navigability? And hopefully a link to embed Prezis elsewhere on the Web (think YouTube videos). All in due time, I hope.
Prezi is still in private beta, but you can apply on their homepage to be a tester. Try it out if you can!
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Exciting news! From the folks at Creative Commons comes an announcement that you can now CC-license your tweets via TweetCC!
It’s simple, just send one of the following tweets to @tweetcc, depending on which CC license you’d like to use (click on the link for an instant tweet):
CC Zero Waiver: @tweetcc: I dedicate my tweets to The Commons by waiving all copyrights under CC Zero Waiver http://icnhz.com/cc-0
Attribution: @tweetcc: I license tweets under CC Attribution http://icnhz.com/cc-by
Attribution Share Alike: @tweetcc: I license tweets under CC Attribution Share Alike http://icnhz.com/cc-by-sa
Attribution, No Derivatives: @tweetcc: I license tweets under CC Attribution No Derivatives http://icnhz.com/cc-by-nd
Attribution Non-Commercial: @tweetcc: I license tweets under CC Attribution Non-Commercial http://icnhz.com/cc-by-nc
Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike: @tweetcc: I license tweets under CC Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike http://icnhz.com/cc-by-nc-sa
Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives: @tweetcc: I license tweets under CC Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives http://icnhz.com/cc-by-nc-nd
Even cooler is they don’t ask for your password:
We don’t ask for your Twitter login or password as this password anti-pattern practice teaches people how to be phished. Don’t scatter your passwords around like chicken feed.
Join the founders of TweetCC – @malarkey and @briansuda – and some 1,300 other tweeters who have already licensed their tweets!
Read moreYouTube is bringing together the world’s first collaborative orchestra. And though it’s too late to enter to be considered for the project, it’s not too late to participate by voting on 3,000 audition videos from more than 70 countries and territories spanning six continents. Submissions came from Kazakhstan, Mauritania, Eritrea, Venezuela, Vietnam, Russia and the U.S., and included everything from the violin to the toy piano and even an audition on the musical saw.
The selected few will perform this spring at Carnegie Hall. You can now vote from the selected finalists who have been narrowed down by a panel of musical experts from the London Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and other leading orchestras around the world. The final selections are based on such criteria as musicianship, vitality of performance and originality.
What a great idea to bring together musicians from around the world that otherwise would never have come together. It’s all a twist of fate and a whole bit of luck bringing together these amateurs and professionals alike to perform on one of the most coveted stages in the world.
This is a great example of social media bringing together a community of musicians from around the world to accomplish a task that couldn’t happen in a 1.0 world. Imagine the camaraderie that these musicians will enjoy… just because of simple videos and votes from strangers like myself that will bring them together for one night at Carnegie Hall. And social networks – whether it’s YouTube, Facebook or another crowd-gathering site – will keep them connected for years to come.
Had I known about this earlier, I may have tried to get a hold of a contra-bass clarinet and entered myself. There’s something about being a part of a group of people symphonizing to make music. It’s a beautiful thing, and I miss it a lot.
Read moreRule #1: Give credit via Twitter name. Examples: @SherryMain or @inculink.
Rule #2: Give credit via Twitter name. Examples: @rww or @AdamAinbinder.
When I read an article or blog post online, I like to see Twitter links to the people who are being mentioned. Why? Because if I’m interested in something they’ve said once, I want to know quickly if there’s more to them.
A Twitter profile is a great way of getting a quick snapshot of someone. In this day-in-age of information overflow, I can’t help judge a book by it’s cover. I have 10-seconds to find out whether someone is interesting or not. I can decide later if in fact that judgment was correct, as I get to know them via tweets. But if you lost me in those first 10 seconds, then you’ve lost me forever.
On the other hand, if you hook me with your Twitter profile, well then you’ve probably got my attention on your blog or website… and probably even Facebook, LinkedIn, or Tumblr.
I find that I learn a lot more by reading the first two pages of a Twitter profile, than I can get out of a personal blog or website. Just yesterday, I connected with @swannny because she is a “tech-crazy, opera-loving geek girl”!
Here’s what I find helps when it comes to general Tweeting habits:
Take advantage of the 160 character profile. Be selective in your words used to describe yourself – and take advantage of the 20 extra characters! What I’ve tried to do in my profile is to connect with others in higher education communications, entice conversations with people who share similar hobbies, and market a personal venture:
Comms Director @ UCIrvine. Business, political, technology and culinary junkie. Enjoy travel, outdoor adventures and photography. Also, co-founder of @inculink.
Diversify your tweets, often. If the entire first page of your Twitter profile are @ replies or purely about your state of mind, I can’t be convinced that I have a connection with you. But a useful business tip coupled with a personal misadventure, plus an intriguing conversation with another Twit will intrigue me enough to follow someone.
Twitter is still a very nascent tool, but its community and its power are growing exponentially. The ways and means in which Twitter can be used could never have been predicted by it’s founders (@ev, @biz and @jack). But online habits have changed the culture of information flow, and I think as content creators on the web, we need to be sure to provide quick links to readers and other creators alike!
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