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:
How does the Internet see you?
That is the question that Personas, a project at MIT, asks. It’s a kind of Doppler Radar for your Web presence. Here’s what my Personas looks like.
It leaves me wondering… what’s so “illegal” about me?
I don’t think there’s anything you can decipher or definitively pull from the Personas analysis. But it is a great way to take an alternate look at your personal brand on the World Wide Web.
Here’s an analysis for Liz Pulliam Weston, a personal finance adviser, and contributor to MSN. Liz’s presence is much more diverse, colorful, and spans 29 dimensions (versus my three). If nothing else, it says that her brand touches a wide-spectrum of interest and very broadly on the Web.
And why not type in your corporate brand as well and see what comes up?
[Hat-tip to Sam Kaufman]
Read more@PadrePablo was home for 98 days this summer. And the last few days were a lot of fun as we relaxed and drove all over California with our pup, @Chibsters.
In homage to of one of the best movies we saw in theatres during these 98 days – (500) Days of Summer – we sought out Tom and Summer’s “bench” at Bunker Hill’s Angels Knoll Park. (But not before we grabbed lunch at our favorite Phillipe’s first…)
Here, @PadrePablo explains where we are:
Apparently we weren’t the only one’s with the idea as we saw other couples strolling… asking themselves “Is that the bench?” or declaring “That’s the spot!”
This is the 360° view of the park from Tom and Summer’s bench:
And here’s a 180° view of Los Angeles from the park:
If you’re so inclined to do the same, LA Times has an article and Google Maps tour of all the sites from the flick.
Read more“Journalism is the first rough draft of history.”
-Philip L Graham, Publisher, Washington Post
I had several conversations this week about how Communications Directors and other media relations folks can use Twitter to interact with the printed press. Interesting topic for a few reasons:
My colleagues and I stopped using news wires, primarily because of the cost associated with their services. The same effort that it takes to write a press release and submit it through news wires can easily be used to broadcast yourself by serving as your own news service.
Communications needs have changed, as well. I find more value in the interaction and feedback with our constituents on our blogs and social networks (primarily Facebook).
All this said, many journalists are adopting 2.0 tools in order to save their 1.0 business. Just this week, the New York Times appointed Jennifer Preston (@NYT_JenPreston) the New York Times’ first Social Media Editor. Both the Times and Washington Post are doing a great job using new media and multimedia tools, and creating unique content using free resources such as Google maps and API calls.
So how do you find the reporters/journalists that best fit your communications needs? Try these resources. (If you have other ones, let us know by leaving a comment!)
By the way, if you’re a major newspaper needing a Social Media Editor, tweet me @sherrymain. I’m interested… and interesting!
Read moreIn honor of World Health Day, YouTube is highlighting the Oscar-nominated film set in the slums of India: The Final Inch. It’s an inspiring short documentary about a group of dedicated workers who are going door-to-door to give polio vaccines to children in the poorest areas of India.
It’s good. You can spare 39 minutes to watch it!
From the YouTube blog:
Read moreSince polio no longer exists in the developed world, many assume that the crippling disease has been eradicated. Sadly, this isn’t true. Polio is still a reality in the world’s poorest countries. Created by our friends at Google.org and Vermillion Films, this captivating 38-minute film brings to light the global challenge of polio eradication and tells the story of those who are on the front lines helping the most vulnerable — children under five living in some of the world’s most destitute regions.