Two Hat Marketing -- Would YOU Do Business With YOU?

A Self-Proclaimed "Enlightened Stupid Marketer"

MUST. NOT. TOUCH. SIGN. MUST. RESIST.

One way to get your attention for the real message.

(Thanks to Don Giammo for sending this!)

Your Biggest Threat? The One You Can't See.

Last week I facilitated a 2-day brainstorming meeting for the National Confectioners Association (NCA). One of the methods I've developed is a my own variation on the tried-and-true S.W.O.T. Analysis.

We know that Strengths and Weaknesses are based on INTERNAL factors. Where are we strong? Where are we weak? Groups never have a problem listing these.

The Opportunity portion gives participants a chance to think EXTERNALLY. Is there new technology we should be using? Do our customers have a new and/or different need we could fill for them? Like Strengths and Weaknesses, there never seems a lack of ideas here.

Where most groups fall down is in the Threats discussion. It's relatively easy to compile a list of external threats. For almost every organization I've worked with, for example, the economy, technology, terrorism, Mother Nature, and government regulations are on that list.

But so what? What happens next in the discussion? Sure, it's important to be prepared for such possibilities, but for the most part, these are contingency plans. And, frankly, in brainstorming sessions, most corporations and associations are focused on proactive thinking, not reactive.

At this point I turn the Threat discussion around and offer a new perspective for the participants; a Threat-You-Can't-See discussion.

I think it was Bill Gates who said many years ago, "I'm not worried about the competition I can see. I know what they're doing. It's the competition I can't see that keeps me awake at night. It's the guys in a garage somewhere that I don't know about, who are working on something I haven't thought of." (BTW, I have no idea what the exact quote was. I'm going on my certainly unreliable well-over-50 memory.)

The scenario I posed to the Confectioners task force last week was this:

Imagine you are an entrepreneurial-type person and are looking for a new opportunity. Your radar is up. And in the course of seeking this new opportunity you decide to go after the confectionery marketplace. What Need Gap would you discover? What white space could you find that isn't being filled by the NCA? What technology can you embrace that would enable you to quickly attack the NCA and kill it?

With this type of conversation, you turn the Threat discussion around from reactionary planning back to proactive. By putting them in a different frame of thinking, the NCA participants were able to identify those areas they needed to actively work on right now. In addition, this discussion both reinforces and amplifies some of the Weakneses, but from a new perspective.

Give it a shot for your own organization, no matter your size. You might find it not only shows you gaps that need plugging, but you might also discover new areas of opportunity not thought of before!

Personal Branding Interview

Check out my interview with Dan Schawbel on his Personal Branding Blog. He actually made me sound somewhat intelligent.

The Worst Hotel In The World

Read about it

Market Like A Rock Star

One of my Internet buds, Josh Richards, sent me the following email:

Steve,

Thought you might find this HBR post (and the book it references) of interest:

In August 2005, Jonathan Coulton  quit his job as a software developer, with the goal of conducting an experiment: over the next year, could he figure out a way to earn a living as a full-time musician, leveraging the Web and his small-but-passionate fan base?

Coulton isn't the only artist who is trying to come up with new ways of cultivating an audience and making a living in a post-label, post-studio, post-publisher world, where big advances and development deals are essentially a thing of the past for emerging talent. For my new book Fans, Friends & Followers, I spoke with thirty filmmakers, musicians, writers and comedians who've been developing new strategies for building a fan base that can support the work they want to do. Many of their strategies would be equally effective for businesses trying to generate buzz and attract loyal customers - without an enormous marketing budget.

[...]

Thanks, Josh!

Another Great Business Book You've Never Heard Of

Howard Luck Gossage was called "The Socrates of San Francisco." He owned an advertising agency, but treated advertising as radioactive waste. While most ad men of his day (the 50's and 60's) catered to their clients whims, Gossage forcefully dug his heels in the sand, steadfastly demanding advertising that actually created results.

David Ogilvy called him "Advertising's most articulate rebel." Stan Freberg (one of my own all-time heroes) called him his best friend.

He was a quotable dream:

"The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it's an ad."

To ask consumers how they like ads is like asking a galley slave what he thinks of his job calesthenics-wise."

"We're not sure who invented water, but we're pretty sure it wasn't a fish."

"To explain responsibility to advertising men is like trying to convince an eight-year-old that sexual intercourse is more fun than a chocolate ice cream cone."

I could go on, but clearly Gossage wasn't a company man. He created advertising/marketing campaigns brilliant in their simplicity and obvious in their results. I love the full page ad he did for the Fina Oil and Chemical Company that simply said:

[OUR MOTTO]*

IF YOU'RE DRIVING
DOWN THE ROAD AND YOU
SEE A FINA STATION AND
IT'S ON YOUR SIDE SO YOU
DON'T HAVE TO MAKE A
U-TURN THROUGH TRAFFIC
AND THERE AREN'T
SIX CARS WAITING AND YOU
NEED GAS OR SOMETHING**
PLEASE STOP IN***

(If you want to know what the asterisks mean, the full ad is on Page 50.)

The Book of Gossage is a compilation of Gossage's writings and musings about advertising and is simply brilliant. It also includes additional articles and commentary about Gossage from such luminaries as Stan Freberg (did I mention he is one of my heroes?), Jeff Goodby, Jay Conrad Levinson, and Tom Wolfe. 

My own copy of The Book of Gossage is dog-eared, and highlighted throughout, so you can't have it. But I would highly recommend you get a copy of your own. If you are serious about advertising/marketing, this book will seriously ramp up your knowledge.

That Pesky Twitter Thingie

Unless you've been under a rock, in a coma, or a complete Luddite (which means, of course, you wouldn't be reading THIS), you've noticed a recent barrage of media attention to this little social media tool called Twitter.

What exactly is Twitter and why should you care? Wikipedia defines Twitter this way:

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow anybody to access them. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. The service is free to use over the Internet, but using SMS may incur phone service provider fees.

Twitter is an example of Web 2.0, where two-way conversation is king. (To be perfectly accurate, "two-way conversation" is redundant and "one-way conversation is an oxymoron.) And as the definition states, you have "followers" (people who have chosen to hear your "Tweets"), and you also follow others.

Think of Twitter like a 24/7 online networking event. It's a lot like the last big "networking"event you attended at your industry's big trade show or convention. You walk into the room, see hundreds, maybe thousands of people milling around, and you decide if and how you are going to participate. If you're like most people, you look for familiar faces and activate a tractor beam to pull yourself into their group. Most people stay with their peeps and really never get out and "network" with new people. In fact, most of us avoid human contact with strangers at all costs.

Being an online party, Twitter allows us to be somewhat arms-length from all these strangers, thus giving us permission to approach people. We can be a little bolder...and this is where most people screw up their perception of Twitter.

As the media has hyped up Twitter (as of this post Ashton Kutcher has 1,642,841 followers!), it's become a race to see how many followers you can accumulate. Twittiquette says that if someone starts following you, then you should return the favor. Now in the early days of Twitter (WAY back in 2007), most people accumulated followers by posting hundreds of interesting Tweets. "What are you doing?' was the question that started all the conversations, but they quickly morphed into much more interesting submissions. Pithy remarks about some topic of interest, famous quotes, questions, redirects to interesting blog posts and web pages, brief movie reviews, etc., etc., became the norm rather than "Eating waffles and bananas for breakfast."

People who USE Twitter join the conversation. People who ABUSE Twitter have no intention of joining the conversation. They just buzz their evil little fingers around the Twittersphere, clicking "Follow" on thousands of names, expecting all those people to automatically follow them back. The abusers don't add any tweets to the conversation, somehow thinking that if they collect 4,239 followers and only post three inane comments, they're big winners. They think they now have some type of list of people they can now market stuff to. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Another Abuser is the person who simply sees Twitter as one big marketing opportunity. Every single posting is a product pitch, like this real post, "FREE trial with GDI @ www.RossB.ws."

Why is this abusing Twitter? As I said, Twitter is like that last big networking event you attended. Imagine standing there and someone you don't know walks up and immediately says, "FREE trial with GDI @ www.RossB.ws!" You'd turn, walk away very quickly, and look for Security.

Web 2.0 (Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, and the hundreds of other social media sites) is about CONVERSATION...it's about RELATIONSHIP BUILDING. It's about building credibility and trust with the exact right target market. Remember the adage, "People do business with people they like. People do business with people they know. And people do business with people they trust." Once you've built credibility, people will naturally want to know more about what you do and maybe they'll do business with you. Once you've built trust, they'll tell others about you. That's the beauty of Web 2.0.

Should you be on Twitter and/or any of the other social media tools to help build your business? That's hard to say. Marketing is an inexact science. It's all about testing. But considering the ability to start conversations with a huge population of targeted prospects, I'd say it's worth a try.

Just don't be an Abuser.

Oh, and BTW, if you want to follow ME, click this link: www.twitter.com/SteveaMiller.

(I'm also working on a white paper explaining step-by-step how businesses can use Twitter as a marketing tool. If you're interested in receiving a free copy, just CLICK HERE.)

Give it away and then get them back

Do you have a great product? Is it a product that people would love if they just tried it? Why not give it away?

The next problem, of course, is how to get them to come back again and again. Ben & Jerry's has the answer to both.

Ustream and Twitter are like peanut butter and jelly

I just watched a great test by Scott Stratten (better known as @unmarketing in the Twitter world), combining the power of Twitter and Ustream.

Twitter has been all the rage lately, getting tons of publicity on TV and from celebrities, like Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Larry King, and Oprah. If you don't know what Twitter is, well, you're just not paying attention.

Ustream is a very nifty site that allows you to broadcast live shows on the Internet (video & audio). They recently added an interesting feature that I'm going to look into for my own business, as well as for my clients. Ustream has always had the ability for viewers to make comments and ask questions of the broadcaster during the show. But now they added the ability for the viewers to log into their Twitter accounts and comment to the broadcaster via Twitter. That means that when I commented to Scott on Ustream, my comment also went out to all my Twitter followers. Ustream very smartly tags a link back to the braodcast at the end of my Tweet. A follower of mine reads my post, gets curious and clicks the link to go watch the broadcast.

This is VERY cool. I can see doing something like Scott did as a way to generate meaningful visibility to a target market. If i then provide solid content to the viewers, many of them might start following me on Twitter and also join my list. Wow.

Kudos to Mr. Unmarketing for his test today! BTW, if you're on Twitter, be sure to follow Scott. Oh, and follow ME, too, at www.twitter.com/SteveaMiller.