David Armano is Managing Director of Edelman Digital Chicago. This is his personal digital property where he shares insights, ideas and opinions on doing business in a connected age.
Brands that insert themselves into relevant cultural events is now becoming a norm in marketing. Did you know that May 4th is considered Star Wars Day? These brands did, and they inserted themselves in the conversation by producing content which reflected it. Here's a few that went to the dark side:
Pop Chips went the simple route and used an action figure to do the heavy lifting.
Harrods did some subtle and clever Photoshop to go over to the dark side of marketing.
PayPal traveled to a galaxy far far away and kept their branding intact
...while Red Bull played it safe and stayed closer to the Milky Way.
Oreo went old school (see original Star Wars for blue drink reference)
...and tide skipped Photoshop school altogether
If Motorola didn't do this, they would have gotten decimated by a death star.
USA Today made their audience do the work for them with a contest on Vine that asked people to make Wookie noises in the six second video format.
Marketing, content and cultural relevancy continue to merge together fueled by digital social and mobile channels. Now it's just part of how brands seek to remain relevant to their consumers, customers and in some cases audience. Have you seen any good Star Wars Day content produced by brands?
I'm in Lake Tahoe this week combining some business and down-time and recently spoke at "Snowcial"—billed as "SXSW for the snow sports and hospitality industry, it attracts a really cool cross section of people who span marketing, technology and even journalism. If you love skiing or snowboarding and marketing/technology, it's worth considering for your event calendar. I kicked off day one yesterday with a short talk about content, convergence and connectivity. Below are a few themes from my talk:
Content As Currency
There's a good reason everyone is talking about the role of *content these days but you have to understand the psychology of it all. Thanks to social networks, people share interesting, entertaining or even informative content because it makes them look good. There's a reason why the word "meme" has "me" in it. So it's not enough just to produce content—your content has to be designed for sharing. I like to think of content in today's hyper connected world as being "snackable"—sending out bits and bites of content which can be digested and shared rapidly. The reason why we're seeing a revolution in visual content which is designed for social newsfeeds and mobile is based on this core understanding of why people like, share and engage around content.
Everyone Can And Will Publish
I shared a recent experience I had with Jeep where I tweeted for help and was not only responded to but had my issue resolved through their customer care service which was facilitated through my initial interactions on Twitter. This is by no means a new model, but clearly Jeep had a process in place and was able to close the loop with me efficiently. This is an area brands will continue to grapple with as people move from traditional ways to initiate contact with brands and go directly to public forums. The obvious follow up question is how does this scale? My answer is figure it out because it's not going away. And yes, my car is working just fine now.
Insights > Influence
For all the hype around influence—we've still largely got it wrong. We should be looking at analyzing who and what are driving conversations in the same context as we might run a focus group. Technologies that allow us to analyze conversations and how they spread and who influences them can provide great insights if we know what we are looking for. For example in working with the association that represents US dairy farmers—we analyzed conversations in forums and found these emerging. As we audited the content the organization was producing—we identified opportunities make future content initiatives more relevant to what people were talking about. You Don't Not Need An App For That
There's no doubt that we are living in an App economy, but it's time to step back and ask ourselves if we need an app for every idea. Unless that idea involves significant functionality, it might not need to be developed as a stand alone app creating yet another format to maintain. My team has been developing content solutions using responsive design techniques so the design reacts to the format it's being viewed it. It's not a perfect solution for every development issue, but worth tapping where it makes sense.
It's All Converging
Lastly I talked about the convergence of media models and marketing tactics. First from a broad perspective inspired by Altimeter's model of converged media, but also ad it applies to new digital advertising formats which blur hard lines. Facebook sponsored posts are a perfect example of how paid, earned, and owned dynamics all come together. You can read more about that on the unofficial All Facebook blog who covered my talk.
Looking forward to hitting the slopes again before I leave!
Somewhere in the debate to define what was hot or not as a worthy "real-time marketing" example during the Oscars, we lost sight of the bigger picture. We're not really talking about the benefits of marketing in a timely fashion as much as we are talking about the birthright of an organization or brand to produce, circulate and curate conversations around valuable content.
I had to take a pause recently to remind myself of the bigger picture and consider other activations we have in play like working with the organization who represents the US Dairy industry. In this approach, we've gotten to point where we staff an onsite newsroom who is focused on producing content and engaging with the industry. Before any of this happend, we had to begin with a strategic approach—a content strategy.
Planned & Responsive Content
A good content strategy starts with the basics—which are built upon developing content narratives around planned activities which are either ongoing (like a drumbeat) or are responsive (in reaction to current events). Both have their place and they can and should work together. Content strategy often is the starting point before getting into the nuts and bolts activities which support it, like developing a content calendar, putting an editorial process in place or supporting content production with writers producers and creative talent. While newsrooms and war rooms can serve as places content activation happens in concentrated form—these tactics are not the strategy.
A war room setting enables teams to centralize content production and operations
These are still early days for organizations who are building their audiences directly via social channels, or partnering with media companies to circulate or co-produce their stories. There are some great examples where brands have already begun regularly producing their content (Intel IQ, Coke Journey, AMEX Open Forum). In each of these programs and the ones to come—whether it be formal or not, there is strategic thought being applied to content development and distribution.
I'm not surprised, but that doesn't mean I'm not concerned. I witnessed something sad last night, while the Oscars were going down. As I anticipated, there was a great deal of activity by brands and their partners who took a shot at producing content connected to the Academy Awards. Some of the content was just OK. Some wasn't. And to be honest, some of it was pretty good even if not earth shattering.
Because I had a feeling there would be a great deal of activity going on—I set up a simple hash tag, because I wanted a way to organize what brands would be doing. So, I set up #OscarsRTM (Real Time Marketing) on my own as a way to keep track. And I invited others to help. And perhaps discuss.
What happened next astounded me. First—the "marketing community" debated the term real-time marketing back and forth. At least this was somewhat intellectually stimulating. Then what came next was something not unexpected but still astounding in it's intensity. A constant stream of snark, dismissal, critique and a never ending barrage of "not impressed."
Really? When did it come to this? Take the below image posted on a Tumblr created for the sole purpose of trashing the efforts from brands last night.
It's the "newsroom" US Cellular set up and was using as their mission control for branded content which they published throughout the evening. I watched most of their content and I enjoyed a few of the posts. And frankly, my first thought was that this particular organization is ahead of many because they are TRYING to provide relevant content vs. just doing straightforward advertising. Does your company have a newsroom ready to go? Do you have staff and partners coordinating and working together to produce content? Are you experimenting AT ALL?
According to the genius who took liberties with the above picture, the team at US Cellular should be fearing for their jobs. And this—this is why I am so concerned. If the marketing "community" is successful at tearing itself down in the pursuit of building up the profiles of individuals too fickle to be bothered, then we all lose.
Nobody tries. Nobody fails. Nobody wins.
Yes, my team was working with a brand last night as well (Kellogg's), but even if we weren't and if I had created the hash tag just to perform objective research, I would still be concerned. And despite that, I have a prediction for you. Brands will eventually figure this stuff out. They will get better and it will become integrated (JC Penney did a nice job of that). It will just become part of how brands build equity (through content). And no level of sarcasm will be able to stop it.
This train has already left the station—so we now choose to get on and guide it to the right destination, or we can sit on the sidelines and wait for the next one, hoping it comes soon. I'll choose the former while others debate the latter. And trying will only make it better.
Several weeks ago I drafted a post articulating the need for the Public Relations industry to re-invent itself. That still needs to happen—and there's a lot of work to do. What I didn't communicate in that post is the fact that it's becoming increasingly meaningless to distinguish yourself as a practitioner of "advertising" or "public relations" because increasingly to the end consumer, user or stakeholder—it's all just becoming content. And as I've stated many times before:
Content is today's currency in marketing and communications. And context dictates how that currency gets spent.
And the reality is—nobody has perfected the content model yet—it's still an open playing field. The advertising industry has it's own problems. It may have, in some cases strong chops in creative and in other cases it's perfected the slicing and dicing of data especially tied to demographics. But when you break down most advertising at the core—you begin to uncover this dirty little secret.
It's all about the campaign—and traditional tactics (television & print) still rule the campaign and media spend.
Are their exceptions? Yes, of course. But if you work in the industry, you know the truth. For every Old Spice Twitter tactic there are scores of traditional led campaigns where the lion share of the budget goes into broadcast. Then there are the traditional-digital budgets. These have exploded over the years. Companies invest in banner advertising on Websites and Websites themselves—but are they producing valuable, sharable content through these tactics? If content is today's currency (think memes) then, budgets share should reflect that.
They don't.
So the ad industry with a few exceptions has their own problems. It now needs to create content designed for instigating second and third screen behaviors (like sharing). It needs to apply "journalism" sensibilities to the advertising machine so that a regular drumbeat of content and engagement can act as a foundation which supports the burst of campaign activities. With all the hype around "creative newsrooms" permeating the industry, the table stakes outlined by the below framework are being overlooked. This does not look like traditional or even "tradigital" advertising. It's something entirely unique:
At this point, it's anyone's game to pioneer the future of marketing. Doesn't matter if it's a PR firm, a digital led agency, a large traditional led agency or on the client side, an organization who works with a number of partners in order to be able to execute at scale.
Advertising is being re-invented before our eyes. And not everyone is ready for it.
I am really loving the below deck, led by my colleague Monte Lutz because it outlines several key trends in a more articulate way than I've seen elsewhere. It's a shot across the bow—to marketing professionals who come from any background, that we're smack dab in the middle of a sea change. But it' still early on. It's not that traditional marketing strategies and tactics are no longer relevant. I'm not saying this. But if you're an advertising executive or CMO—you should really ponder about the trends in this deck and think about how your budgets are allocated. And you should ask yourself if you are ready for the next ten years.
The above video documents some of our recent work with the Cars.com team where we planned (in advance) to support a new campaign that launched during the Superbowl. With the Oscars right around the corner—you can bet that the topic of real-time marketing is going to come up again as brands seek to remain relevant during periods of time where everyone seems to be talking about one thing. Recently, the Harvard Business Review featured an article stating that "advertisers should act more like newsrooms"—in it, this stood out for me:
"The traditional campaign model is rigid. Ad units are created at a point in time and don't generally adapt to emerging themes in culture. In contrast, the newsroom metaphor suggests that content has to be produced and delivered in a continuous stream rather than through a ponderous, slow-moving process of months of campaign development."
It makes a point salient point that's worth digesting—traditionally advertising has been planned well in advance and that planning doesn't often leave room for improvisation. But don't mistake improvisation for lack of planning. If you watch the video above, you see the team working together in the "command center" which required advanced planning. It was no easy feat to mobilize a centralized group working with multiple teams offsite to upload content, respond, track and measure results and engage in real-time. It is well planned improvisation. Below is a sample from the planning process that went on behind the scenes:
To pull it off requires forward thinking organization (we had this with Cars.com) and alignment with multiple partners (other agencies). It requires the ability (and permission) to improvise once the planning is in place. It requires both flexibility and a focus on staying on brand. While "Real-Time" and "Content Marketing" seem like buzzword overload, it is simply an evolution of marketing triggered by modern day behaviors. In other words, not a fad—In my opinion.
The real winner of this year's Super Bowl might just be real time marketing—or at minimum the ability for your marketing team to be nimble. The lights go out at the big game? Get creative about it as they are being fixed. Have a copywriter ready to craft a headline, a designer who can whip up a compelling visual, and don't let your media buying slow you down because you will need to promote that post on the spot—and in my opinion the best people who are in position to do this kind of media buying is the team working in the "newsroom" who have access to all the analytics. The future of marketing will move at the speed of now. Kudos to the Oreo team for once again nailing the execution.
We had our own team mobilized in a newsroom setting (our SICC) as we supported Cars.com who launched their new campaign with a spot that debuted during the game. More on that later, the pictures below capture the activity level as we monitored social mentions, sentiment and coordinated posts and responses:
We also addressed the power outage during the game as it unfolded (above)—working it into our evening, but the creativity shown in the Oreo example is something that should make you stop and think because it's not easy to pull off. But while the Oreo example is well executed, I still think this game is in it's infancy, and as if the real time creativity wasn't easy enough to pull off—as I mentioned earlier the media buying is really going to create headaches. Here's a simple illustration of the basic flow of the real-time marketing model.
It begs the question: Can you really do real time? Do you have a content team ready at a moment's notice? Can you promote a Facebook post as quickly as it takes to develop the content? Can you measure what's working and what's not as it unfolds?
Immediately after I wrote my last post about the need to re-invent public relations—I began getting questions/reactions in real time (starting on Twitter). The nature tone of the questions came with a raised brow as if to say "are you on something?" albeit uttered more politely. Immediately I asked myself the same question. "is change really possible—and can it come from the inside out"? Was I being realistic in thinking that the desire I had to see re-invention through was doable?
I'm writing this post several days later from Los Angeles where I am attending an offsite for our US senior leadership. It's 3:20 AM PST. I can't sleep—but I am inspired. Mark Hass our US president and CEO delivered his vision for where he feels the organization needs to go and all I can say is that it dovetails perfectly with what I wrote recently—if I had to choose a word it would be kindred. It wasn't only the content of Mark's vision and the philosophical alignment that got me all fired up, but also the style as well. Mark pulled a clip from the film Lincoln and used the former president and his leadership style to illustrate what "operational vision" is all about. Lincoln didn't simply have a vision for the nation—he was laser focused on operationalizing it and ensuring that action applied to the vision resulted in impact.
Then the lightbulb went off for me. Change is possible when it comes from both the bottom up and the top down all at once. It's possible when you have a leadership team with a shared vision and the chops to operationalize. Not easy, or even immediate—but possible.
And on that note, I want to end this post with content from a release regarding a recent hire. It's not something I do often— leveraging this space to get the word out on these types of things—however this is important for me as my team and I represent the "bottoms" up change in Edelman and I can directly influence our Chicago digital operation (there are eighty of us now). We've made a few key hires/moves and the most recent is Steve Slivka—a talented creative director who has put in a decade of digital work at Leo Burnett and departed Mullen to become a part of our re-invention. Steve's only one person but his arrival is symbolic, at least in terms of how I view it.
Change happens—especially when it's put in motion at both ends.
Edelman Digital Appoints Steve Slivka, Senior Vice President, Group Creative Director, Chicago
Slivka to Lead Chicago’s Digital Creative Efforts
Edelman has named Steve Slivka senior vice president, group creative director, Edelman Digital, in its Chicago office. In his new role, Slivka will lead the charge in elevating the digital creative for both content development and digital builds. He will report to David Armano, managing director, Edelman Digital, Chicago.
“Steve will be instrumental in driving our digital strategies as we define and refine our client offerings in converged media, merging social platforms with paid and earned tactics,” said Armano. “The future of digital creative content lies at the root of this overlap, and his leadership is critical to the firm as we evolve to align our clients’ strategies and tactics and craft unified creative campaigns.”
Slivka will work closely with Elizabeth Pigg, senior vice president, director of converged media services, Edelman Digital, a 12-year veteran of the firm who recently returned to the Chicago office for her newly created role. They will work to raise the creative output in digital content generation and innovation for the firm.
“Digital creative today requires a reevaluation of how content is created and delivered,” said Slivka. “Edelman holds such a respected place in PR and social that it seemed a natural fit to bring next-generation creative to life here, and by tapping into Edelman’s strong capabilities in analytics, converged media and strategy, my team will be well-positioned to deliver creative that meets the constant innovation required to exceed clients’ goals.”
Slivka joins Edelman from Mullen, a Boston-based full service integrated advertising agency, where he built the creative social-digital team at the agency’s North Carolina outpost and was responsible for creating content for clients such as Tresemmé, CSX and Honda Jet. Prior to working at Mullen, Slivka spent a decade at Leo Burnett in Chicago and also launched his own boutique agency, Colossal Squid Industries. He attended Columbia College Chicago for music composition and interactive media as well as The American Conservatory of Music.
Thinking about my own career path since the beginning, I realized there's a pattern. I've always been drawn to industries in the midst of change and disruption. I landed my first job as a graphic designer because I had entered the workforce with a valuable skill at the time—I had learned the essentials of desktop publishing and the company I went to work for was in the process of overhauling how they produced their marketing materials (migrating from traditional tools to digital). It was a huge change and for those who were resistant to converting their skills to digital desktop publishing—they faced early retirement.
Next, I spent about a year working in cable news—but it was an intense year as I worked with the Fox News Channel team helping launch the 24 hour cable news network. Fast forward over fifteen years later and that network is thriving, having tapped consumer demand in cable news and niche media coverage. I've worked at the Chicago Tribune in digital news media and witnessed first hand the differences in how the "digital" team and the veteran employees viewed their work. I spent nearly six years working for one of the original digital agencies which back then was expected to transform the agency space and now doesn't exist anymore (agency.com)—the remains have been swallowed up by corporate entities.
It was at the tail end of my experience there that I discovered "social", first through the blogosphere and then Twitter and Facebook and I did stints at other digital firms and even a start up—hoping these organizations would lead the way in the transformation from traditional digital to a more connected form of digital communications. Eventually in 2009, I found a home with Edelman because it seemed the culture prioritized and valued everything that was changing because of the emergence and disruptive nature of social media. Back then, it was the PR firms that seemed to understand best what was changing. Today, it's not the same story.
I believe search, social and mobile are the three most disruptive forces in modern communications and they are working together to wreak havoc on organizations and their agency partners. Because I work for a public relations firm—I feel a sense of urgency to start here and lay out what must evolve. The people (stakeholders) we want to reach move effortlessly across a media landscape often times making no distinction. Increasingly they spend time on mobile devices skimming content in "streams or feeds". The average consumer of media has the attention span of a squirrel on ritalin and getting them to pause to read anything more than paragraph is becoming increasingly difficult. The media industry has been disrupted and thereby public relations is an industry in the midst of change. Here are a few areas I believe PR must aggressively embrace and do differently.
Creative Most PR firms will say they have creative talent, but we have to ask ourselves if it's the right creative talent. Can we produce apps that live in Facebook or mobile? Are we working on the next Nike Fuel or are we in position to just do the media outreach for it? My most recent hire is a digital veteran who has spent most of his career at advertising and digital agencies. We aren't going to just get people talking about things—we are going to create the things they talk about.
Analytics Analytics in Public Relations has to move beyond just counting "placements" similar to the act of pulling together traditional media clippings. Analytics in public relations has to integrate with the other measurement functions of an organization (like connecting earned to owned properties). It also needs to go beyond measuring and move into data collection and analysis. And analysis needs to evolve beyond merely analyzing into deriving core insights to inform decisions like how to spend media dollars and what the tone of messages should be. I'm currently hiring a senior analytics lead for my team and I describe the ideal candidate as part measurement wonk and part digital planner.
Converged Media Public relations was built on the notion of "earned media" which differentiated it from advertising. Today, it's all just content as part of the vast quantity we are able to digest on a given day thanks to the deluge we are subjected to. It was Google that began infusing ways to "pay" to help raise visibility with the search engine. It is Facebook that has introduced to the mainstream a convergence of media through things like the promoted post—and it is the media itself that is offering more ways than ever to make advertising feel like it's a part of the editorial universe. This convergence defies both traditional advertising, marketing and public relations constructs—yet poses great opportunity for any of the disciplines who are nimble enough to master.
This brings us to today and tomorrow. Here's what I am seeing in the industry: PR got a head start on social but it's been rapidly eroding. Companies who value customer service have moved beyond how many PR professionals think about social and are gradually evolving how they service customers. The advertising industry which has always held "creative" in high regard no longer sees social, digital or mobile as add ons but rather core to their business. They are bent on not just talking about the digital world but rather they want to help build it—and they also understand how to leverage creative communication to get people's attention. The partners who handle media transactions do so in bulk, but increasingly it will need to be done in real time. In short, it is the marketing and communications industry that is being disrupted and for those of us on the "PR" side—we must act quickly and decisively to re-invent ourselves in a way that looks more like the future and less like the past.
About the author: Ekaterina Walter is a social media innovator at Intel, a speaker, and an author of the book “Think Like Zuck: The Five Business Secrets of Facebook's Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg”. Walter was named among 25 Women Who Rock Social Media in 2012. She sits on a Board of Directors of Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA). You can find her on Twitter: @Ekaterina and her blog www.ekaterinawalter.com.
With over one billion users, Facebook is the king of social networking.
But it was a slow starter: MySpace and Friendster were already established when
Facebook was still a twinkle in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye. How did Facebook
leapfrog the competition to become a daily habit for more than half its users?
What led Mark Zuckerberg to such unprecedented success? And what’s next for the
web giant?
I discuss the answers to these questions
in my new book “Think Like Zuck: The Five Business
Secrets of Facebook's Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg.”
I reveal the simple five-part formula the upstart Facebook CEO used to
change the world-and how any business leader can apply it to his/her own
company: Passion, Purpose, People, Product, Partnerships. In this post,
however, I would like to take a quick look at Facebook’s journey and where it
might be going.
Early innovations
Right from the start, Facebook proved that it was different
from other social networks. While MySpace allowed multiple accounts and
anonymous usernames, Facebook has always strived for dependability, deleting
phony profiles and duplicate accounts. “Having two identities for yourself is
an example of a lack of integrity,” Zuck believes. Zuck’s passion for openness
and transparency is at the root of this, and it has given Facebook a sense of
genuineness that proved popular with users looking for a communication tool
rather than a popularity contest.
Striding ahead
Zuckerberg’s passion for connectivity pushed some of
Facebook’s most radical – and initially unpopular – innovations. The Newsfeed,
introduced in 2006, was a controversial feature when it launched. People were
unnerved to see their updates amalgamated into one location visible to their
network, but once they were used to the idea it became second nature to log in
to see a summary of friends’ activity. Membership soared, and soon checking
your Newsfeed became a daily habit for millions of people.
It was the introduction of photo tagging that really set
Facebook apart from the competition, even specialist photo sharing websites.
Facebook was becoming more than just a utility; it was becoming people’s social
graph. “Watching the growth of tagging,” said Matt Cohler, Facebook’s former
Vice President of Product “was the first ‘aha’ for us about how the social
graph could be used as a distribution system. The mechanism of distribution was
the relationships between people.”
Web integration
More than any other social network, Facebook has become part
of our wider web experience. A recent
study by website monitoring service Pingdom found that almost 25% of the
top 10,000 websites in the world now have some form of official Facebook
integration on their homepage, and almost 50% have regular links to Facebook.
Facebook’s social login feature means that we can use our Facebook identity on the
wider web to stay logged in to sites and share information easily across
profiles. It has become natural to share photos, videos, news articles, and
even purchasing information effortlessly with our networks.
For the first time in
history brands are building global communities on Facebook on a scale never
heard of before. Coke, Starbucks, Red Bull and many others are getting more
visibility and engagement within their Facebook communities than they were ever
able to harness on their other forums. Intel’s community around the world, for
example, exceeds 23 million fans spanning over 50 countries, and it is a
privilege to touch so many of our consumers every day.
The future
Zuckerberg has always been passionate about openness on the
web. At one time on his personal Facebook page, he listed his personal interest
as “openness, making things that help people connect and share what’s important
to them, revolutions, information flow, minimalism.” He has achieved all of
those things and more, and as more and more sites activate their sites socially
that flow of information is only going to increase. Facebook has led the way in
the way we share and connect with our networks; what was unthinkable only a few
years ago is now natural for hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis. The
future holds an even greater level of openness and sharing as Zuckerberg and
his team continue to revolutionize the way we connect with each other and the
wider web.
Everything about Facebook’s incredible eight-year journey
tells us one thing: not to second-guess Mark Zuckerberg. His passion for his
product, his long term vision and his apparent lack of interest in a quick buck
are good signs for users. Facebook have introduced unexpected features before
and while some have quickly disappeared, others have only made the site more
popular. The teams behind Facebook are smart and dedicated. They have a wealth
of social data available to them and are capable of coming up with innovative
solutions to increase profits without ruining the user experience.
But as Facebook marches forward, the company will definitely
face some challenges. Some of them are: expansion into mobile, striking a fine
balance between user satisfaction and integration of new types of ads,
appealing to generation Z and their digital habits. Facebook will also have to
achieve a reasonable balance between its constantly changing product features
and brand’s expectations as they are building their large communities on the
network. Achieving smooth strategic partnerships with brands has never been
company’s strongest suit.
There are things to work on, but I don’t see the company
slowing down any time soon. There is a speculation about Facebook achieving its
peak in 2012. I don’t believe that’s the case. But as company grows and expands
there is a danger of stagnation. Now more than ever Facebook will have to rely
on its hacker culture to keep them moving and the vision of its leader to keep
them innovating and evolving.
