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.

[Unfortunately, this isn't a well thought out post, and completely un-researched.  I write this blog-post-turned-essay as a way to spark constructive discussion about the Web and the way it is transforming lives.]

Happy 40th birthday Internet.

The first test that led to the operation of the Internet happened on September 2, 1969.  Many other things happened that summer, including the Apollo 11 lunar landing and Woodstock.  All three events changed the course of history in then unimaginable ways.  None, however, has affected individual lives as much as the Internet.

The Internet made the Web possible. (By comparison, the Web is only half the age of the Internet.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about how the Web has changed so much about our society, culture and habits.  Many are embracing it, while others will continue to shun it.  Regardless of which side you’re on, it’s hard to ignore the fact that the Web is here to stay.

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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]

I responded to a manifesto by Devin Coldewey at TechCrunch today, asking:

Why do you, or why don’t you, use Twitter?… I only forbid one answer: “because everyone else is doing it.” That’s the same reason people wore Hammer pants.

In short, my answer was that I use it because it’s part of my research to do my job effectively, and to stay on the cutting edge of my industry.  (Go here for the long answer.)

That all led me to wonder how my tweets were being used by others… if at all.  I know what value I am getting, but what do others get out of my 140-character banter?

Sure people retweet what I say or converse with me via my public lifestream at @sherrymain.  But is all the noise I make actually worthy of anything other than building my online-ego?

I came across an LA Times article from May 21 that quotes my tweet verbatim (down to the hashtag!), and associates it with my full-time profession:

Gun scare at UCI serves as test for text-alert system

…Reports also spread through campus through hundreds of messages on the microblogging site, with students sending tweets about helicopters hovering above campus, swarms of police and apparent lockdowns. “For those reporting on #UCI incident, evidence that UCI’s ZotAlert system works, and Twitter helps to spread the word beyond,” wrote Sherry Main, a communications director at UCI.

Someone is listening!  The media are listening, especially  because I wear a communications hat.  So in fact, the primary reason for my tweeting maybe to research the medium, but a by-product of that research is that I represent not only my private self, but any and all organizations that I am affiliated with.

In such a public forum, I must always be “on” – whether I tweet about my restless night at 3 a.m. or the hair in my lunch – people (and the media, which include major papers, bloggers, etc.) are listening and looking for quick, easy ways to obtain and retool information.

I’ve always been consciously aware that anyone can read what I write, but being consciously aware that someone can reuse what you write, is something completely different.

What starts as research quickly turns into addiction – ahem, Twitter and Facebook – especially when my interactions with the respective communities grow.  But the value in this addiction lies in the ability to filter out the noise and extract lessons for both my life and more importantly to carve a career path and expert niche for myself.

Twitter backgrounds can now be interactive… [Correction: Works on any browser!  See comment  from ShiftComm below.]

Installing and activating your page with Clickable Now is good practice.  Your followers, customers, and constituents may be using either browser, and this is just one more step that will help ease the process for people who want to interact with you on the Social Web.

Install the add-on or script into your browser from here, then give Clickable Now access to your Twitter account.  Once you do, it’s pretty simple (See the screen shots below):

1. Click on the “New Link” button.
2. Drag the link box to the portion of your sidebar that you’d like hyper-linked.
3. Resize to fit the area to be hyper-linked.
4. Enter the email or Web site information, and choose the highlight color.
5. Save settings.

That’s it!  Although this only works on Firefox browsers, and for those who have installed the add-on, it’s a big step forward.  We’ve been wanting the Twitter backgrounds to be interactive for a long time.

You can see below what we’ve hyper-linked @INCULINK or on my personal page @SherryMain.  We’ve added live links to our logo and URL, personal blogs, personal Twitter accounts, and to our Facebook fan page.

Perhaps one day, HTML will go the way of Photoshop layers and allow us to upload custom HTML backgrounds behind the Twitter feeds.  But until then, this will do…

Hat-tip to Todd Defren (@tdefren) of ShiftComm.com.

Check Vark out on Sunday’s New York Times… Congrats, Vark Team!

A few months ago, I wrote a post introducing Aardvark (aka Vark) – a service where your question is broadcast to those mostly likely able to answer it within the Aardvark community.

Vark has been really useful because I can broadcast a specific question without clogging Facebook or Twitter feeds, and count on someone with at least a basic knowledge of my query, to point me in the right direction.

Today, I got an email from CEO Max Ventilla:

Since you’ve blogged about Aardvark in the past, I thought you might be interested in some exciting developments…

…Anyone can join now at http://vark.com using their Facebook account. (We’re integrating with other social networks very soon.)

[Fan them on Facebook too.]

This is a great move on the part of Aardvark.  They’ve really come a long way in the last few months, partly thanks to the growth in number of users.  Once it reaches critical mass, it’s value will increase exponentially.

Five more suggestions that I think will make their tool and brand name powerful are:

1. Allow my Vark Q&As to be published to social network feeds, particularly on Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed.
2. Facebook app that can also be a tab within a profile where friends can see your Vark profile, and question/answers.
3. iPhone app (this is already in the works)
4. And if an exact or very similar query has already been answered, to automatically “reuse” that answer for faster responses (with a like/dislike option).
5. Vanity URL to profile.  (I’d like “vark.com/sherry”.)

I enjoy Vark because it’s (almost) anonymous social networking: I’m interacting with strangers to help them out, and vice versa.  If you use the instant messaging (IM) tool for Vark, the unexpected randomness of questions breaks up my work day.  Vark “interrupts” subtly by asking “Are you there?” and you can choose whether to engage or not by typing “sure”, “busy”, or “pass”.

Try it out… you’ll be surprised at how much you actually know.

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