Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 290

Fascinating Perspectives On The Future Of Media

It's Friday night.

Your week was probably a long one (it was if you were me). Instead of reading, friending, following, blogging, tweeting, sharing, curating, aggregating, emailing or whatever... STOP! Stop and watch this 28 minute conversation between Charlie Rose and David Carr. Carr is one of the leading media and culture columnists in the world and he works for The New York Times. Carr was also featured in the excellent documentary, Page One - Inside The New York Times (if you haven't seen, please do check it out as well). This conversation originally aired on the Charlie Rose show on Tuesday. Unfortunately, Charlie Rose doesn't allow their videos to be embedded, so you'll have click over and watch this amazing chat about the future of media and journalism...

David Carr And Charlie Rose.

Tags:

blog

charlie rose

columnist

culture journalist

david carr

documentary

future of journalism

future of media

journalism

media

media journalist

page one inside the new york times

the new york times

It's The Little Things

You sometimes pick up a gem of an idea... and the mind begins to wander (and wonder).

At the Monetate Agility Summit today in Philadelphia (where I was invited to give the keynote presentation), I wound up connecting with some of the most fascinating brands in the world - all of which have a deep passion for creating a better consumer experience in the digital channels. Over dinner last night, a conversation broke out on the topic of loyalty, targeted emails and consumer fatigue (hey, it's a gathering of a bunch of marketing wonks, what did you think that we would talk about?). Some of the guests were lamenting the frequency by which many of the flash sale sites or Groupon-like enterprises barrage the inbox. And, while the discussion ensued an individual said that they had received a very interesting email from Fab (one of the companies that often emails with a daily-plus frequency). Without knowing the exact language, the email said it was unsubscribing this individual from their mailing list because they have not opened up any emails from Fab, so they did not want to disrupt this individual's inbox. Seth Godin would be proud.

Did you catch that?

The brand wasn't waiting for this customer to grow fatigued and opt-out, they didn't want their brand to feel like an annoyance in their inbox, so they were simply removing this person and thanking them for their consideration. How many brands do you think do this? How many brands have lists upon lists of email addresses from individuals who have never bought from them or even opened their email? Instead of bragging about how many email addresses they have collected, Fab was looking for actual customers. You don't hear about these kind of smart marketing tactics to sort the wheat from the chaff often enough. It's a simple little action that keeps their email lists clean and relevant, and delivers a powerful message to a non-consumer ("thank you for considering us, but we don't want to bother you").

It's the little things.

All too often brands are trying to make big plays. You have cookie companies working in real-time to create ads while a major world event is going on to feel relevant and build buzz. You have brands attempting to pull off a stunt in Time's Square that the world will notice. You have countless companies trying to manufacture the next YouTube sensation. How many small things (like unsubscribing the people who aren't even opening your emails) are you missing? If there is such a thing as "death by a thousand papercuts," maybe the opposite is doing a thousand of these little marketing things that gets the word out and builds the brand in a more profound way.

Small allows you to iterate.

If you could execute on ten smaller things, instead of the one big thing while testing, learning and optimizing, imagine what your brand could do. Another lesson from the Monetate Agility Summit was this: those who win are those who test. We saw countless brands talk about how many tests they do online - each and every day - and how these small, little tests enable them (big, big corporations) to be extremely agile in a world where the big stuff would get locked in political quagmire and technology roadmaps that would take years to undertake. This is about much more than the aphorism that small is the new big. It's about a way of thinking (and doing) that engenders a culture of trust with customers and - even better - a corporate culture that screams: let's tinker with a lot of little things, see what happens and keep iterating until efficiencies are truly met.

What would it take?

Fab, obviously, does a whole lot more than just remove the uninterested from their email lists. Zappos does a lot more than make sure that returning a product is simple. My key takeaway from this event was: make a list of many little things. Start with five. Test, learn, tweak and optimize. It can be something in your office, it can be something for your consumers or it can be something on your website, Facebook page or Twitter feed. If you don't think about it and test, you'll never know if you can be making something that much better (or if anyone cares).

Over to you, what are some of the little marketing things that you have seen that have moved you? 

Tags:

brand

consumer experience

corporate culture

digital channel

email

email fatigue

email list

email marketing

fab

facebook

flash sale sites

groupon

inbox

keynote presentation

little things

mailing list

marketing

marketing optimization

marketing tactic

monetate

monetate agility summit

real time marketing

seth godin

small is the new big

stunt marketing

technology

testing

twitter

viral video

youtube

zappos

Pay Attention: The End Is Nigh (For The Personal Computer)

Exponential growth is one of the biggest opportunities... and threats to business today.

If you're running a business in the technology sector, exponential growth is the type of thing that happens when your market hits the tipping point and the growth ratchets up from there in a way that could have never been estimated by the analysts (take, for instance, the growth of tablets). Ray Kurzweil once defined exponential growth in an easy to understand way. He said that as human beings were trying to map the human genome, it took a long time for us to arrive at the point where we had mapped one percent of the human genome. Once we arrived at one percent, we were basically at 95%. The point being that the first percent is the hard part, but once that hurdle was jumped, the rest just flows with that hockey stick type of growth curve on a graph, but that human beings don't have the capacity to understand and quantify this exponential growth. Meaning, it always surprises us.

Surprise. Surprise. Surprise.

We're seeing a lot of exponential growth in business and it's not just coming from tech companies. We're seeing companies come out of nowhere and have meteoric rise. Sometimes it leaves a wake. And, because of this moment that I have defined as "purgatory" (a central theme in my upcoming business book, CTRL ALT Delete), it also can cause massive sinkholes in businesses that we once assumed were protected. The news today is very grim for the PC business. The personal computing market is imploding at an exponential pace, and it's something that has taken even the technology analysts by surprise. This graph titled, The PC Industry Implodes Before Our Eyes (published yesterday on Business Insider), tells the tale. From the news item: "It's ugly out there for the traditional PC makers. IDC says PC sales fell 14 percent in the first quarter on a year-over-year basis. That's worse than its forecast of a 7.7 percent drop. This is the worst quarter for PC industry since 1994 when IDC started tracking sales. So, that pretty much makes it the worst quarter in history." The fingers are being pointed at everything from growth in tablet and smartphone markets to the lackluster Windows 8 operating system reception by consumers.

The post PC world.

The reality of exponential growth - and what it does to the industries that are affected - is that even with this raw information, human beings reject it, ignore it or dismiss it as hyperbole. They'll think that the numbers are exaggerated or that the "average American" still uses a PC and that we're a long ways away from it being abandoned. And that, my dear business colleagues, is how we quickly do ourselves in and fail to grasp the ramifications of exponential growth. We try to retrench instead of innovate. We attempt to discredit the data by looking at the market of one. We think that the speed of change will be much slower than these analysts are telling us.

Movements not trends.

Moving forward, it may be wise to worry less about trends and pay more attention to movements. Trends are the types of stories that look at year-on-year growth by analysts in a linear fashion. It's the type of news item that states that product X is expected to grow X percent over the next year. Instead, look at movements. This news about the PC industry is not a trend so much as it is a documentation of what has already happened. Pay less attention to forward-looking statements but pay a ton of attention to the data that tells us what has already happened. The news about the PC is something that took even the experts by surprise and it's something that will - without question - lead to a massive shift in how we operate. If the personal computer business is imploding, this means that how we work and what we do will radically change as well.

It's something to think about. Deeply.

Tags:

business insider

business movement

business opportunity

business purgatory

ctrl alt delete

exponential growth

idc

market of one

pc business

pc industry

personal computer

post pc world

ray kurzweil

smartphone

tablet

tech company

technology

technology analyst

the tipping point

windows 8

The Complexity Of Simplicity

Nobody said it was easy.

As the years wane on and you gather perspectives and insights from your business, your industry and your peers, what you quickly realize is this: nothing is easy... nothing is simple. Even quick scores (like Instagram grabbing close to one billion dollars from Facebook) was not a cake walk. All companies (and the people that work for them) understand the difficulty that is business. There is a small part of me that wishes we could simply close our eyes, click our heels three times fast and make a wish that business should be as much fun and as easy to do as taking the kids to the park... but alas, money complicates things.

Shedding skin.

The news of JC Penney dismissing their CEO, Ron Johnson, after just 17 months broke my heart in many different ways. Primarily, I'm a big fan of retail and an enthusiast of the industry. As digital as my existence may be, I'm a complete urbanist and revel at the opportunity to walk through a big shopping mall. I love the smell of commerce in the morning (to quote the movie, Mallrats). I am fascinated with the changing landscape of retail and even more enthralled with the place of shopping malls in our culture (more on that here: Do Shopping Centers Have A Future?). When Johnson (who was previously heading up the retail division of Apple and was responsible for some of Target's success prior to that) was picked to help reinvent the beleaguered department store chain, I held high hopes that his actions might reinvigorate the entire department store model.

This is where things get selfish.

On a selfish level, I spend a few paragraphs of energy talking about Ron Johnson and JC Penney in my upcoming business book, CTRL ALT Delete (out on May 21st). As soon as the news broke, I got an email from Joseph Jaffe asking me if there was time for me to edit, update or change the part of my book that speaks to Johnson's work. My gut reaction was to call my literary agent and editor to seek their guidance. I reviewed that, specific, part of the book and it reminded me of something very important. The story that is being told isn't really about JC Penney or Ron Johnson or how successful they could be. The true story was about that fact that Johnson was trying to bring a lot of simplicity to a business that had become increasingly complex, bloated and somewhat uninteresting to today's shopper. The story of JC Penney is just as applicable today as it was when I first wrote about it. Maybe even moreso now that Johnson has been shown the door. Trying to untangle a business and make the offering as simple and delightful as possible is very, very hard work. It gets much harder as you get bigger, and it gets much harder the longer the company has been in business. We've all heard the Einstein line about simplicity being the ultimate in complexity, and the news of Johnson's departure simply reinforces that.

How simple are things?   

If you polled employees at Apple (and if they were willing to tell you the truth in candid fashion), you would probably uncover that Apple is not a simple company at all. That with all of the secrecy, layers and more, every individual is not working in an open and collaborative environment, but rather a complex place where pieces and bits are being mastered and optimized without a full understanding of how the pieces and components shore up to a bigger product or service. Often, the excuse given is that this decreases the likelihood of something being leaked, but if you peel the layers of that onion away, what you find - at the core - is a very complex model that results is products that are simple for people to use. Still, the business is not simple.

Business is not simple.

The over-simplification of business may be a misnomer. Ultimately, all of us (whether we're B2C or B2B businesses) are trying to create products and services that are simple and intuitive to use. That journey is one that requires many complex things to happen. When the news broke of Johnson's departure, something fascinating happened. According to article in Time, JC Penney Ousts CEO Ron Johnson, Ullman Returns: "Penney's stock price Monday evening showed investors' frustration with Johnson and it's uncertainty about Penney's future. When news began to leak after the market closed that Penney was ousting Johnson, the stock, which had closed at $15.87 in the regular session, climbed nearly 13 percent to $17.88 in after-hours trading. But as pleased as investors were about getting rid of Johnson, they didn't appear impressed with his replacement. After Penney announced Ullman would take over, the stock reversed course falling as far as 11 percent from its regular closing price, to $14.10. That's 21 percent from its after-hours high." 

Here's the other thing...

Perhaps Johnson wasn't the right fit. Perhaps his strategy was met with friction from the existing customer base, maybe his marketing strategy was off, but here's the thing: JC Penney was in need of Johnson (or, at least, a reinvention). Ditching him doesn't change that. It merely reinforces it. Where this will ultimately net out is anyone's guess, but rest assured that whomever takes the reigns at JC Penney will be focused on creating an in-store experience that is in-line with the consumer of today. And, rest assured, the consumers that become the heavy users and brand evangelists are the ones who are getting products and services that are brilliantly simple. No, I'm not going to go back and change the contents of CTRL ALT Delete. In fact, I think the story glorifies this moment of purgatory that business finds itself in (and that's the core message of the book). Could you turn around an organization of that magnitude in 17 months or less? It's not an easy task, and it's the new reality of the speed and transitions that we see in business today. I start the book out by saying that people need to look to their left and then to their right at the people around them, because the odds are that one of you won't be around in the same vocation in the next five years. Maybe the real editing of the book should be around the timeframe. I hope 17 months doesn't become the norm.

JC Penney still needs a reboot. My guess is that there are parts of your business or your own career that need one too.

Tags:

apple

apple employee

apple retail

b2b

b2c

brand evangelist

business

business book

business culture

commerce

complexity

ctrl alt delete

customer base

department store

facebook

in store experience

instagram

jc penney

joseph jaffe

mallrats

marketing strategy

retail

retail industry

ron johnson

shopper

shopping mall

simplicity

stock market

target

time magazine

urbanist

Bitcoins And The Future Of Business

Facebook is a license to print money.

As far as social media goes and the growth of online social networking, it's hard not to have Facebook be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of new media, at this point. The company claims well over a billion active users. They generated close to $4.5 billion in advertising in 2012, and while many were tough on the company in their post IPO performance due to a lack of mobile agility, the company has made some leaps and bound in the past short while to rectify the course in a post Web-browser world and changed that perspective around. In fact, mobile ad spending could rise to $7.29 billion in 2013 (according to eMarketer) and while Google is set to take home more than half of that, Facebook will account for close to thirty percent as well.

There is a bigger picture.

Take a step back and look at what companies like Facebook and Google have created. They are not just tools and services, but a centralized community in a decentralized geography of users who are deeply connected to one another on a global level. When you tag mobile on to that, it's not hard to imagine a world that doesn't require telephone services or even text messaging as we have known them to date. Why wouldn't those who are connected via social media, also communicate instantly and more directly through those channels? There is a profound reason why Facebook and Google offer email, messaging, video conferencing and chat services as part of their suite. Once one company has their users so deeply connected (and yes, this is about much more than Facebook's massive acquisition of Instagram), it becomes increasingly difficult for a user to leave (look no further than the slower adoption and acceptance of Google + in a Facebook world). As you continue to take this bird's eye view of these massive channels (and how deeply connected people are ingrained in them), you begin to realize that Google and Facebook are, essentially, Internets unto themselves. While many lauded the Web's arrival as a new place that would disintermediate the mass media companies, and a place where anyone can become a publisher, we went from four major network television stations, to a handful of online giants that control the bulk of online traffic. Right now, these companies see media solutions (advertising, marketing and communications opportunities) as the easiest - and most obvious - way to generate income... much like the traditional media channels that came before them.    

What if the true value, revenue and potential of companies like Facebook and Google went beyond the revenue that they generate from advertising?

It's easy for a company that attracts a lot of eyeballs to become snowblind by the money that brands and media agencies are throwing at them. Ultimately, the economics of advertising is somewhat simplistic: advertising generates the most revenue in a scarcity model. We have no printing press on the Web, and video content doesn't have to be consumed during prime time on Thursday. In fact, even your typical one thousand word article can be chopped up into multiple Web pages to serve up as many display banner ads as the publisher wants. With so many places to publish content online and so much user generated content, it's not hard to see a digital advertising world that offers more inventory than there is a market for (an abundance model). Before dismissing that notion as hyperbole, think about how many users complain about Facebook's advertising and how non-relevant/contextual the ads often are. If a brand was willing to buy that highly targeted and coveted space, we all know that Facebook is willing to sell it. What this means is that there could be other revenue models worth exploring, and one of them could be the creation of a currency.

It's not easy to make money.

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer universal, digital currency platform that has been getting a tremendous amount of attention is the past few months. This virtual money holds no physical presence (it's all zeroes and ones) and is both used to pay for goods and services as well as being traded (much like any other commodity) in the online sphere. In the past short while, it has been gaining in both popularity and value. Currently, the value of one Bitcoin is over one hundred dollars and, to add some perspective to this, in early March there were trading below $35 and as of this past January, they were trading at under $15. Last week, GigaOm published a very comprehensive article about Bitcoin titled, Yes, you should care about Bitcoin, and here's why, that explained the currency as such: "Bitcoin is to state-issued currencies - often referred to as fiat money - as P2P file-sharing is to traditional broadcast media. There is no centralized source for it that can be controlled or moderated or regulated. It is difficult if not impossible to track from the outside... It is important to understand that, while fiat money is issued and controlled by governments and their laws, Bitcoin is generated and controlled by algorithm. While governments can always print more money according to their needs, there will only ever be just under 21 million Bitcoins (right now there are around 11 million), because that's how the algorithm works." Beyond the logistical, technical and security issues that are happening in parallel with Bitcoin's meteoric rise, it is abundantly clear that this is a first generation digital currency experimentation and that we can expect our world to see a lot more of this. What if Facebook, Google and others took on the business of borderless digital currency? Think about the current race for digital wallets and decentralized online banking opportunities. What if the real business of Facebook or Google was to become the next-generation of Bitcoin? Facebook Credits already exist (remember Linden dollars in Second Life?). Currently credits in online platforms are still centralized and controlled, but what if Facebook gave their billion-plus community their own currency system and then extended it outward - one that wasn't or couldn't be affected by local governments, markets and the like? What if one dollar for me was the same monetary value as one dollar for (in whatever country you're living in)? Clearly, there are many economic and legal hurdles that these companies are going to have to solve and jump through to create their own legally recognized currency, but Bitcoin is pointing to a fascinating new world where banks and our money - as we have known it to date - is about to become even more digitized and globalized. It's something all of us need to be watching much  more closely, because it makes perfect sense.

If Facebook is a massive global community, why wouldn't that community have a shared currency for exchange?

Tags:

abundance model

advertising

advertising revenue

bitcoin

broadcast media

business

chat

commodity

communications

contextual advertising

currency system

digital advertising

digital currency

digital wallet

economics

email

emarketer

facebook advertising

facebook credits

fiat money

future of business

gigaom

google

google plus

government

instagram

linden dollars

marketing

mass media

media solution

mobile

mobile ad spend

new media

online banking

online community

online content

online social networking

p2p sharing

peer to peer currency

post web browser

publisher

scarcity model

second life

social media

telephone

television network

text messaging

user generated content

video conferencing

virtual money

virtual wallet

How Do You Scale Humanity?

Episode #352 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

This is also episode #25.20 of Across The Sound. Joseph Jaffe is widely regarded as one of the top Marketing Bloggers (Jaffe Juice) and Podcasters (both Jaffe Juice in audio and Jaffe Juice TV in video). He is the author of three excellent books (Life After The 30-Second Spot, Join The Conversation and Flip The Funnel) and his latest business venture is, Evol8tion. A long-time friend (and one of the main inspirations behind the Six Pixels of Separation Blog and Podcast), we've decided to hold semi-regular conversations, debates and back-and-forths that will dive a little deeper into the Digital Marketing and Social Media landscape. This is our 25th conversation (or, as I like to affectionately call it, Across The Sound 25.20). The best title for this episode would be: How do you scale humanity? In a world of automated advertising - which is quickly taking the lion's share of media dollars (see Facebook and Google advertising as a starting point) - where does the humanity of advertising - as we have known it - come into play? Some might say that social media brought the humanity back to marketing, but content marketing is proving challenging for many brands who are used to mass marketing tactics. So, what does advertising look like in 2013 and what will it be moving forward? Enjoy the conversation...

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #352.

Tags:

across the sound

advertising podcast

blog

blogging

brand

business book

david usher

digital marketing

facebook

flip the funnel. evol8tion

itunes

jaffe juice

jaffe juice tv

join the conversation

joseph jaffe

life after the 30 second spot

marketing

marketing blogger

marketing podcast

online social network

podcast

podcasting

social media

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #146

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist's Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

You Are Boring - The Magazine . "Scott Simpson absolutely skewered me with this piece from The Magazine. Five paragraphs of insults, and then some thoughts on how to change for the better. Awesome." (Alistair for Hugh).

This Story Just Won't Write - The New Yorker . "I didn't know Time and Newsweek started out as a digest of the news 'to present the week's news succinctly to 'busy men' who were too involved in their important endeavors to spend time wading through a lot of newspapers.' Later, as we wanted ever-shorter news, it urged readers to 'make time for Time.' In this fascinating account of his years there, Calvin Trillin gives us a rare glimpse into how newsrooms changed as we moved from broadsheet to tweet." (Alistair for Mitch).

Money-Laundering Banks Still Get a Pass From U.S. - Bloomberg . "There seem to be many things wrong with the way the world works these days (ever was it so). The sickness of our time seems to be the influence the financial sector has on policy and law-making. It's a vicious cycle: financial sector gets more powerful/wealthier; becomes more influential in policy/law-making; influences policy/law to make financial sector more powerful/wealthier. You can see this in the response to the financial crisis of 2007/8-->now, and more blatantly in US government response to *actual* convictions of large-scale, illegal money-laundering done by big banks. 'Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.'" (Hugh for Alistair).

What Is the Business of Literature? - The Virginia Quarterly Review . "My good friend and fellow-traveller in the world of book/publishing start-ups, Richard Nash , has written a tour de force diagnosis and prognosis of the business of literature. If you care about books, writing and reading, you should read it." (Hugh for Mitch).

Brilliant new Twitter account proves mathematical theorems in 140 characters or less - The Next Web . "What (still) gets me excited about all of this digital-ness is when someone takes something that has broken well beyond The Tipping Point (like, say, Twitter ) and does something with it that not only raises an eyebrow, but gives you a glimpse into the creative spirit that is the full blown glory of  the human condition. In this instance, someone much smarter than me is using Twitter to prove certain math challenges in 140 characters (or less). Make no mistake about it, this also illuminates how bad my math actually is." (Mitch for Alistair).

What are some of the smartest things you've seen people do to promote a book? - Reddit . "I'm a massive fan of Reddit . Years ago, Julien Smith told me about it and I have been hooked ever since. I don't even think I am registered user. Just a total voyeur. Alexis Ohanian is the co-founder and he's about to release his first book, Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made, Not Managed . Ohanian and I share the same publisher and editor. As I get prepped to launch my second book, CTRL ALT Delete , on May 21st, I'm going through the stress of figuring out with my publisher, agent and the team here at Twist Image , how to best market this book for success. Ohanian (whose book comes out in October) turned to the Reddit community to see what the community was impressed with when it comes to book launches. Take a read..." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

Tags:

alexis ohanian

alistair croll

bitcurrent

bloomberg

book a futurists manifesto

calvin trillin

complete web monitoring

ctrl alt delete

gigaom

hugh mcguire

human 20

iambik

julien smith

librivox

link bait

link exchange

link sharing

managing bandwidth

media hacks

newsweek

pressbooks

reddit

richard nash

scott simpson

social media

solve for interesting

the magazine

the new yorker

the next web

the tipping point

the virginia quarterly review

time magazine

twitter

without their permission

year one labs

Life In The Social Era

This is not a post about social media.

This is not a post about social business. This is a post about the social era. It's something that my good friend, Nilofer Merchant, cares about (deeply). The other week she gave a presentation at Google about her latest book, 11 Rules For Creating Value In The Social Era. There are few business strategist like Nilofer. Look no further than her debut book, The New How, or her batch of articles for Harvard Business Review. She is more than worthy of your attention, and this forty five minute presentation demonstrates that her message is one that all of us need to listen to, watch, bring to our business peers and share.

Watch this...

Tags:

11 rules for creating value in the social era

business strategist

google

harvard business review

nilofer merchant

online video

presentation

social business

social era

social media

the new how

youtube

What's More Important To A Consumer: The Price Or The Brand?

Before you go spouting off the answer to this question...

Please read this article from The New York Times titled, E-Commerce Companies Bypass the Middlemen. If you think that branding and retail have become complicated because of stuff like showrooming and attribution, you need to take a pause and try to figure out the myriad of complexities that e-commerce has created in the retail chain when laid out in this article. We tend to look at brands like Warby Parker and wonder how they had such a stellar ascent. We also look to traditional retailers and wonder how they will keep pace against Amazon. For many, the argument is that the lowest price wins. That retailers have no chance against e-commerce plays when they're not dealing with the traditional supply chain and logistic problems. We praise companies like Walmart (#client) for their perfection of this channel and how that efficiency drives towards savings for the consumer. We see these big box stores as a way for the vast majority to access adequate products at reasonable prices. In short, e-commerce beats retail because of lowest price and efficiency, and big box/massive retailer beats out the smaller/local players because they have inventory at better prices.

What if that isn't always the case?

What if - along with price - that branding has a major impact on success or failure, no matter how much cheaper your products are to a competitor? There are many startups like Warby Parker who are providing consumers with competitive pricing by going directly to the manufacturer and cutting out several layers of middlemen to create both efficiencies of scale and significantly reduced pricing (while still managing to eek out a hefty profit). It's not that big of an innovation as the bigger retailers have been doing something similar for decades in the world of private labels. From the article: "Start-ups have traditionally struggled to match those efforts. They do not have as much brand recognition as big retailers, and persuading consumers to take a chance on, say, Warby Parker eyeglasses instead of Prada's can be difficult. 'The challenge is, if you've never heard of the brand, you wonder, 'Should I buy it when it's 20 percent cheaper?' ' said Raj Kumar, a supply chain consultant at A. T. Kearney. 'Or should I buy a brand I trust?'  What is empowering the upstarts now is the Web's ability to reach lots of consumers without the costs of operating physical stores as well as a change in manufacturers' willingness to work with small brands. The founders of Deal Décor, whose model was to sell furniture directly to customers, worked at Target and Home Depot Direct before starting their company. They said they saw an opening after the recession hit."

At what price trust?

The obvious answer to the question is that when given the option, consumers will always choose the cheaper product. By the sounds of this article, these new startups - who are coming out with products that are often produced in the exact same factory as their big-brand competitors - they are having trouble getting sales because they lack a trusted brand. Non-marketing professionals tend to diminish the economic value of branding. It's sad. This article re-illuminates, something that marketers have to constantly reinforce to our peers: the brand matters.

The trusted Warby Parker.

Whether Warby Parker is a trusted brand as some of the iconic ones that are listed on Interbrand's Best Global Brands is not the point. What is most interesting is how all of these smaller e-commerce startups quickly realized how important a compelling brand narrative is... even if your product is the cheapest and people are talking about it. Scale of business happens only when the brand kicks in. We see this all of the time. Consumers can be a very finicky bunch. Over time, even the cheaper price will fail if a new competitor creates a more compelling brand story. True, the prices can't be night and day, but slight premiums do creep in when there is a strong brand play and definitive value exchange that consumers feel. It seems like cheap pricing and great branding is a killer combination.

In the end, it still seems like the brand does win.

Tags:

amazon

at kearney

big box stores

brand

brand narrative

brand recognition

brand trust

brand value

branding

competitive pricing

consumer

deal decor

e commerce

ecommerce

home depot

innovation

interbrand

marketer

marketing professional

prada

private label

raj kumar

retail attribution

retail. showrooming

supply chain

target

the new york times

traditional retailer

walmart

warby parker

Did You See That?

How valuable are stunts to a brand?

Before answering that question, we have to go back in time (just a little bit) and remember that in a field of limited media choices and outlets, getting someone at these media outlets to pay attention was somewhat easier. Either they wanted the exclusive over their competitor or they wanted access so that their competitors would not have the exclusive. Fast forward to today, and the challenges in not only pulling off a stunt but making it memorable is super-tough on the best of days.

Who did it?

Remember the sunglasses that were given to the trapped miners? Remember that car that was stuck in a massive sinkhole? What about the author who opened a book store in NYC that only sold his book? What was the name of the company that put a million dollars in cash behind a glass wall of a public bus stop to prove how resilient their product is? Can you name the brands? Do you even remember the stunts? Pushing that idea forward, as a marketing professional, keep in mind that it's your job to be aware of these campaigns... but what about the average consumer? We have created stunts beyond the world of saturation. The signal to noise is even harder to break through.

Give up on stunts.

That's what some might say. Throw in the towel. It's just more noise and it is increasingly difficult to do something with resonance. I would disagree. The challenge is simple, but the execution is harder: create stunts that latch on to the brand. Don't create stunts that make the brand not as recognizable as the stunt, but create stunts that can't be remembered without the brand. A prime example of this (and one that has been beaten to death by people like me) would be Red Bull Stratos. When people talk about this campaign, it's not just about the guy who jumped from space with a parachute, it's about how Red Bull got this guy to jump from space with nothing but a parachute. All day and night, we watch brands try to do something - at a specific moment in time - that will garner a reaction from those witnessing it and that will generate earned media from those talking about it. All too often, they fall on deaf ears. There's no doubt that many of them lack anything truly remarkable for people to share, but so few of them realize how loosely connected the brand is to the actual stunt.

So many industries get this wrong.

Look no further than the automotive and hotel industries as prime examples of this. Both offer up all kinds of unique events and stunts in launching a new product line. If you took all of these stunts over the timeframe of a year, removed the brands, tossed them all up in the air and then randomly added another brand on to the stunt or event, odds are most people would not notice the difference. Sure, there are exceptions (there always are), but consumers have become so inundated with something happening on every corner or every other YouTube video, that the ability for a brand to pull the stunt off and get the true value and recognition out of it has never been more challenging.

Pushing a stunt forward.

Stunts still create a splash. It's a moment in time where something happens that rises above the other stuff that is happening. I love these digital channels (and, when I say "digital channels" I mean Web, mobile, social, etc...) because they can add a depth and power to stunts unlike anything we have known before. If the stunt is the splash, digital can augment it by adding the ripples that can grow and resonate before, during and after. Think pre-stunt and how you can leverage all of these magical channels to uncover your heavy users and those who may be interested in the brand. Think of how digital can help support the stunt as it takes place in terms of publishing and sharing the information - in text, images, audio and video - in real time. Now, for the most important part: think about how a stunt can be supported after the event takes place. Think about the measurement, feedback, loyalty and pulse and what you can learn and iterate on.

Stunts are not easy.

For years brands have tried to figure out how to create an impact, how to make something viral or how to get the whole world to pay attention to them - even for a brief moment. There is no doubt that awareness is still a key factor in any brand's marketing success and longevity. All of that can't ride on stunts alone. Content, advertising and everything else that we publish has a much shorter half-life than most of us would care to admit. If a tweet doesn't last more than a couple of minutes and a blog post doesn't linger for much longer, how can we expect a big stunt in one city and one moment in time to resonate? Marketing is getting tougher as metrics become more real and true return on investment can be aligned across all activity. Tossing marketing budget against a stunt for a stunt's sake alone feel like a very antiquated and non-effective tactic in this day and age.

Doesn't it?

Tags:

ad campaign

automotive industry

band

brand loyalty

branding

content marketing

digital channel

digital marketing

earned media

hotel industry

loyalty marketing

marketing

marketing professional

media

media outlet

mobile

pr campaign

pr tactic

product line

publishing

real time web

red bull

red bull stratos

social media

stunt marketing

stunt pr

web

youtube