The Skill of Story Telling

I was re-reading some parts of Anvinash’s book today looking for something else entirely, when I noticed the question “in one sentence please describe what your company does”. As a start-up myself that got me thinking and I know exactly what services I provide, and what quality it provides for my clients but how am I package my messaging. It a hard question to answer because before you can sum it all up, you have had to thought your brand all through. And the strength of the brand and the story it tells is key to engaging not only the heart of your customers but some the most critical “customers,” your employees.

"Businesses today exist in an era in which it's nearly impossible to escape the likelihood of being evaluated." said Linda Shea, senior vice president at Opinion Research.

I found a great article from Mark Thomson, and he highlights three communication strategies that he has found relevant to building a strong brand story:

Clarity: First, make sure you know what you wish to say. This is the content of your brand; who you are, what you do, who you do it for, why it matters to them, and how it’s different from anyone else in the marketplace.

Consistency: Make sure you say it (and show it) in the same way, wherever and with whomever you do business. This is how all your communications, actions and accomplishments start to work together, building up into the unity that is your brand presence in the marketplace.

Character: This is where your personality shines through. It’s what brings you to life at an emotional level. It’s what makes people want to connect with you. It’s what turns necessity into desire. For example, it’s what turns the statement, “I need a new cell phone, and” into “I want that new cell phone.

Marketing is nothing more than telling your story in an effective way that embeds your identity into the minds of your audience, connecting and communicating who you are, what you do, and why your audience should be doing it with you. Now, think about our company and

• Describe what it is you do


• What does your brand provide to those you serve


• Why it matters

* Just a side note, the Web is a multimedia communication venue, with increased bandwidth and high-speed connections where people are tweeting, plurcking, stumbling their way through lots of content, reviews, and ideas. So if brand stories are about communication be very careful in executing your strategy because communication is a funny thing, company’s might be present good information but that doesn't mean people are communicating back!

Dark Knight, Greatest Viral Marketing Campaign....

So like the rest of America I am going to see Dark Knight, and from all the reviews I can’t wait. Although the movie looks promising their interactive movie-marketing campaign has already delivered. What am I talking about you might ask, offline it seemed business as usual:

• Promoting the movie with commercial a year in advance (check)
• Commercials published on youtube (check)
• Pizza commercials endorsing the movie (check, check)

However if you took a closer look, Warner Bros. took an untraditional awareness-building maneuvers and starting the film’s promo push strategically.
Billboards arrived without explanation in more than a dozen major cities, with two simple call lines, “Harvey Dent for district attorney” and “I believe in Harvey Dent”. Within 72 hours, each billboard had been defaced with by identical graffiti: The candidate’s eyes were scrawled over with black rings, his lips crudely rouged with a smeary, clown-like grin.


An online version of the fictional newspaper The Gotham Times arrived and was followed by numerous websites, including a defaced Joker version of the paper called The Ha Ha Ha Times and even a website for the Gotham City Rail with a subway map of the city.
Then arrived a new page appeared at whysoserious.com/steprightup with a hammer game and some teddy bear toys. Each toy had an address on it located in a number of cities around the US. The note on the game told people to go to that address and say their name was "Robin Banks" (yes "Robbing Banks") and they'd get something there. It was first come, first serve, and each location was a bakery. What they were given was a cake with a phone number written on it. Now here's the best part: inside the cake was an evidence bag (complete with Gotham City Police printing) that contained a cell phone, a charger, a Joker playing card and a note with instructions. They got people armed with cell phones ready to go out and do whatever the Joker asks. It didn’t stop there clues spelled out in skywriting, secret meeting points were arranged, Internet red herrings, DIY fan contests and even fake political rallies.

Now if all of this has your head spinning, trust me I was in awe at the level of creativity that came oozing out of the genius who created a tangible marketing ploy. Viral marketing at its fundamental is about giving your audience a cultural event that lets people become part of the experience and connect emotionally. With weekend sales beating out Spidey, and I def see that the "ploy" paid off.

What do you think, have you tried anything as creative and would love to share?

Analytics, Website Marketing, and Development | BusinessHut

Analytics, Website Marketing, and Development | BusinessHut

Web Analytics & Consumer Segments, work together?

Hello all, so this might not be on your radar but I have recently been reading and thinking a lot about behavioral marketing because with today’s market getting so personalized, targeting can provide marketers with the ability to reach desired segments outside of contextually relevant messaging. Clickz defines behavioral marketing as “targeting consumers based on their behavior on Web sites, rather than purely by the content of pages they visit. Behavioral marketers target consumers by serving ads to predefined segments or categories. These are built with data compiled from clickstream data and IP information.” However, for you traditional marketers out there this is something that you have been practicing for years with consumer segments.

Question is how to bring both worlds together to provide the ultimate experience for the user and of course make our execs smile. So I was going through my reader (love this tool by the way) when I ran into Gary Angels, from Semphonic, blog and he provided some great post on the mindset of a project and the challenges that lie ahead. If you have never dipped into the world of consumer segments or persona’s let me take you on a quick tour, then I will follow up in another post with what Gary recommend. I have tried to make the steps simple but be aware that this is hard stuff folks and usually done by people who are mathematic genius (if you don’t have the resources in house I would strongly recommend you get outside help to handle the complex clustering that go along understanding demographic and psychographic variables of your company’s customers.)

• Identify your target audience
• Employ Primary research (using only the best methods to reach and question)
• Use pre-existing panels, with some targeting/ qualifying questions that cover key demographics and attitudinal information
• Analyze Respondent data
• Set of scores for each respondent assigns them to a unique group
• Descriptive business names and rich descriptions are then created to provide a framework for a wide range of marketing activities

So now you got part one over with, but what about the online variable you ask about whom we typically know nothing about. Well, here to get a useful behavioral segmentation (pages viewed, time on site, visits and sometimes geo-demographic variables like IP-based DMA) you need to look at a different set of variables such as:

• Set of behavioral facts about a visitor is which topics they consume and how much of each topic they consume.
• Navigational sources (search, directory, link-drives, images, etc.) they use and what type of sessions they typically have. (converting or non)
Now you got part two over with, so the million dollar question being “what now”? For the sake of not scaring anyone with the length of this post, I will break this into two parts. The next post will go over what Gary Angel recommend and have some sprinkles of Avinash’s Trinity Model. So stayed tuned!

Optimizing the Offline?

With so much chatter about engagement, and being I last posted about it, I have decided to give this magical word a different perspective. So you hear the news and forecast that online spend will exceed 10% of all advertising in 2008, for a total of $52.2 billion, and in 2010 account for 13.6 percent, or $78.2 billion. So with most of today’s articles focusing trends on the web and how to fully optimize online campaigns, web behavioral data, and online engagement, one can lost site (if your a reatiler) about optimizing the offline experience.
I had the pleasure of attending Dr. Kevin & Jackie Freiberg seminar, who wrote Boom!: 7 Choices for Blowing the Doors Off Business-As-Usual , one of the bestselling authors on building a work culture that is remarkably different. Dr. Kevin Freiberg is recognized in the business arena and on the speaking circuit as a thought leader and authority on Gutsy Leaders and Companies that Blow the Doors Off Business-as-Usual. The duo team highlight the unique cultures they have analyzed and unconventional business practices used to not only increase sales but engage the customer to become loyal shoppers. Bruce D. Temkin, from Forrester, wrote an article on The Enjoyability Factor and identified that consumers would switch companies if they thought it would provide a more enjoyable experience. So companies need to make interactions more useful, engaging, and desirable, seem like a broken record? Well to tell you the truth I sometimes forget that I myself go offline and like going to certain stores over others. I asked myself is it the product that draws me there, the environment, the people, or all of it?
So how exactly does a company start to create a work culture that offsets the offline experience? One tip that I picked up was that employers should know that when employees feel honored and served there is a reciprocal effect that causes them to provide extraordinary service to their customers. Another tip was by being creative with the pressures of sales points and being transparent with customers. Going above what the normal expectancies of just “can I help you today” mentality, which is not different from trying to engage users online.
For more information and some great material please visit the Freibergs and pick up their book if you’re a retailer trying to change your customer’s experience. As an online marketer I have to remember that in today’s world we should be working on becoming an integrated experience and be fluid within all of our channels.

Let me know what you think, do you have any tips on making an impactful change on experience?