The Marketing Action Journal

Jon Ward blogs about marketing, branding and social media

• Home
• About

• The Bradley Effect
• The Marsumer Is Coming
• Why No One Is Fit To Be President
• Moving Towards or Moving Away
• Why Strategy Matters

• Branding
• Introduction
• Knowledge Marketing
• Marketing
• Online Marketing
• Social media
• Target audience
• Uncategorized
• World's Greatest Branding Seminar

• The Marketing Action Program
• The Social Branding Center

Read the rest of this entry »

Topics: World's Greatest Branding Seminar | No Comments »

Consumers are becoming marketers. Mostly this trend is still at the margins, but expect a mainstream revolution in the coming years. It’s a consqeuence of the explosive rise in cheap video technology combined with Web 2.0.

The technology places broadcast-acceptable video in reach of the masses, while Web 2.0 provides the distribution.

Case in point, the 30-second ad contest launched by MoveOn.org for the Obama campaign. I quote from an email I received this morning from my friend and colleague James Burgin. He lists his takeaways from the phenomenon:

• Amazing use of video as viral power
• Grass roots thinking can change the world
• The Internet is so cool to connect people
• Old people are truly extraordinary in sharing the essence of life
• Children are truly extraordinary in sharing the essence of life
• People just like you are are amazingly creative – you too
• There really is hope to change the conversation in America and the World
• You can say a lot in 30 seconds
• And it’s best to say just ONE thing
• It only takes a few seconds to open your heart
• The culting of brands has infinite power
• Humanity is awesome

You have to sign in to MoveOn.org to see the ads, but of course you can unsubscribe immediately after. As James warns, it’s a bit addictive, clicking from on ad to the next!

Topics: World's Greatest Branding Seminar, Branding | No Comments »

In the age of online video, no one is fit to be President.

Hillary Clinton romances a story of her visit to Bosnia, but video tells another story. Barack Obama hangs out with the wrong minister, and video keeps repeating his strident sermons. John McCain envisions troops in Iraq for 100 years, and that’s how long video will remind us.

Presidential elections, like any marketing campaign, are predicated on the fantasy of perfection. Here’s the flawless product, the fail-safe solution, the error-free performance, the object without blemish. All ads promote this nonsense. All marketing is a study in cheerful insanity.

Unfortunately, presidential candidates are human beings, and human beings have shadows. In the television era, you could hide the shadow or cover it quickly if it slipped into view. In the Internet era, that’s not possible.

We live in the age of over-exposure. It’s in the nature of digital media to capture and store astronomical quantities of data, and make that data available to everyone on the planet. What’s more, it’s an age of permanent exposure. At least TV is transient, a nation’s short-term memory. The Internet has the memory of DNA.

What you say, what you do, what you casually blurt out, gets instantly hardwired into eternity.

The world of marketing hasn’t yet caught up with this reality. That’s why conventional marketers are outmatched by web 2.0. The “new Internet” is a free-for-all global conversation where anything can be said — and is. And it comes to us without an eraser.

In this environment, maintaining a façade of perfection becomes increasingly absurd. Canny marketers will enter the conversation with a new kind of honesty. They will give up the hyperbole, they will own up to their products’ limitations, they will talk like human beings — creatures that frequently make miracles and just as frequently botch them up.

It’s hard to imagine marketing that candid, and it will take a long time coming. But come it must because somewhere in the room, a tiny video camera is watching…

Topics: World's Greatest Branding Seminar, Marketing | 2 Comments »

Two fundamental forces drive buying decisions: aspiration and aversion. There are some things I am eagerly moving towards, and some things I am anxiously moving away from.

If you persuade me to buy a diamond-studded Easter Bunny, you’ve clearly touched on the first. If on the other hand you sell me a remote-controlled ejector seat that hurls would-be carjackers into the next millennium, you’ve found your way to my secret fear of auto theft. Easter Bunnies belong to the world of aspirations, carjackers to the world of aversions.

Any successful marketer needs to know which side of this fence the target audience is sitting on. You can try going for a blend of move-away and move-towards messages — for example, this new electric kitchen knife will slice 33 onions a minute and protect your extremities with its galvanized steel finger-guard. However, the law of focus insists that you embrace one or the other as your brand center. Are you trying to excite my desires, or stir my fears?

The current presidential nomination battle (or debacle, depending on your POV) is a great study in this distinction. John McCain is the moving-away candidate. He’ll continue to parade a string of awful things that could happen if you don’t crown him President next November. Obama is the classic move-towards candidate, an all-American apostle of hope and possibility. As for our Hillary, she’s a fence sitter, trying to nab a bit of both.

The real brand question is never about the product, but always about the target audience. Political marketers need to ask: is the electorate primarily driven by aversion or by aspiration? By hope or fear?

We’ll find out next November, but you don’t have to wait that long to know where your brand audience stands on this decisive point.

Topics: World's Greatest Branding Seminar, Branding | No Comments »

The simple and amazing fact is that most small to medium size businesses have no marketing strategy. None. At best they have a media schedule, like ‘This quarter we’ll run some radio spots and do a print ad.” That is not the same thing.

A marketing strategy is a plan to make money. A media schedule is a plan to spend money. There is a difference, believe me.

What do I mean by strategy? I mean begin at the end result and work backwards, laying out the steps. Your end result is more sales (how many?). Which means more leads (how many?). Which means attracting those leads with a compelling message (what message?). Which means delivering the message (using which media, costing how much, with what ROI?).

There are many more pieces to place in between, but when I start work with clients even these simple elements are usually missing.

The solution isn’t difficult, and what it demands is more a mental effort than a ton of time. You’ll find plenty of tools out there to help, including of course my Marketing Action Program. The key thing is to make the decision. Stop throwing advertising mud against the wall. Have a strategy!

Topics: Marketing | No Comments »

I’ve now attended two web seminars with LinkedIn maven Chip Lambert and I’m completely sold on the power of this particular network as a business building tool.

Chip gets one thing really clear: the difference between social networking and direct marketing. As a LinkedIn enthusiast, he’s an advocate of authentic connections and he can’t stand anything that smacks of spam or sales on the network.

For those of us trained in old-school marketing this is counter-intuitive. We want to hit as many prospective buyers with our message, don’t we?

What that mindset misses is the astonishing power of leverage. Although it has 18 million members, LinkedIn isn’t the place to blast a mass audience. It’s the place to find the one connection that will transform your business.

You’ll only get this if you tune into the power of alliance marketing. It’s a dimension most of the entrepreneurs I deal with are curiously asleep to. They know the possibility is out there, and they’ll make a nodding reference to it as we look at their marketing plans. But very few invest energy or resources in actively seeking alliances.

Most people would rather spend $10,000 on a print ad to get a thousand leads than a week cultivating a relationship that might net them a million.

LinkedIn is a living, growing reminder of the power of alliance marketing. So get on board and start linking to leverage!

PS Here’s where you can find me on LinkedIn. I’m an “open networker” so I welcome invitations to connect.

Topics: Social media | No Comments »

The current flap around John McCain’s supposed romantic interests of a decade ago will no doubt pass, and may inflict more damage on the paper that broke the story than on the candidate.

Still, tuning into my local radio I heard another buzz going on about the Arizona Senator’s use or non-use of public election funds. It got me thinking about the awkward spot a public figure is in when he proclaims his own integrity as his key selling point.

Clients often tell me that “integrity” is their strongest value. I’m glad to hear it, but I encourage them to refrain from turning it into a sales message. There’s something off about telling people that you tell the truth. It’s like when someone says: “Let me be honest with you for a moment…” I’m always tempted to ask: “Are you lying to me the rest of the time?”

Integrity should be demonstrated, not promoted. So don’t tell me you’re an honest broker. Show me.

Topics: World's Greatest Branding Seminar, Branding | No Comments »

The concept of brand archetypes, which I learned from my friend and colleague James Burgin, is one of those powerful intangibles that can transform your marketing situation — once you “get it” on an instinctive level.

How to explain archetypes simply? Embedded in our culture are timeless “characters” that have always shown up in stories, songs, movies, even dreams… Examples are the lover, the jester, the ruler, the regular guy and the wizard. Each successful brand has its own archetype, and remains consistently faithful to it. This may be intentional or through unconscious awareness — a collective instinct. Harley Davidson is a rebel; The Home Depot, a regular guy; Microsoft, the ruler; Nike, a hero. Once you start looking, the examples are easy (and fun) to find.

The Republican nomination race has boiled down to a contest between two archetypes: the warrior and the tycoon — John McCain and Mitt Romney. Of course, “tycoon” is hardly the stuff of timeless myth and legend. But over two centuries the figure of the supreme corporate boss has acquired the status of an archetype in American culture. As for the warrior, that’s as ancient and profound an archetype as you can find anywhere in the world.

So why is the warrior winning? As always, the answer lies in the “brand tribe” — the target audience the brand is aimed at. Republican voters, if we can generalize at all, are easily motivated by fear — fear of terrorists, fear of foreigners, fear of government, fear of liberals… The warrior is a protector. He fights on our behalf to make our world safer. The tycoon also speaks to fear, fear of chaos. He promises order and the clean, efficient workings of the corporate mind. Between the two, however, it is easy to see which has the stronger emotional appeal. The warrior’s enemies are more threatening, his weapons are sharper and his vision is larger.

Interesting to note, by the way, that up to now there were two candidates vying for the warrior-protector archetype, but now Mr. Giuliani has fallen on his sword, the battlefield belongs entirely to the Senator of my adopted home state.

Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »

A bold claim in that headline, Jon. Well let’s see if we can live up to it…

In my last post, I proposed a two-part law of sales:

1. Every product is a commodity
2. “These People Feel Good”

The simple (and familiar) idea is that it’s the people behind the product or service that matter most in any sales situation where there is an authentic choice between two comparable alternatives.

Now let’s unpack the phrase “Feel Good”. I see six components and I’ll explain each briefly. In a later post we can look at how to implement them. So what makes “These People” (the people who are selling me something) “Feel Good”?

1. They understand my problem.
2. They know what they are doing.
3. They tell it like it is.
4. They keep their word.
5. They give more than they take.
6. The X factor.

The first of these is simple: know what matters to me, and show me that you know. The second is about your status as an expert — you’re a master of your field. Third comes the “no BS” factor: the conviction you will tell me the truth, good or bad. The fourth component is about integrity: from being on time to selling me something that works. Next comes value: whatever price you are charging, you will give more of yourself than I expect.

Finally, X stands for “expansion”. It’s the closest we come to charisma, though it doesn’t require any God-given qualities of personality. When you add the X factor, you expand my own vision of what is possible for me in my business and/or life. You increase my field of possibilities.

Now let’s say the competitor’s offering is comparable in price, features and benefits. If you pass muster on all those six points, you get my order. I don’t care if you’re selling me a vacuum cleaner or a private jet. You get the sale. Period.

How robust is this model? I’d love to see comments and challenges. Meanwhile, try applying it to the presidential campaigns and see what kind of rankings you give the different candidates on the six components of personal brand success.

Topics: World's Greatest Branding Seminar, Branding | No Comments »

It’s one thing to be talking shop at the weekend. It’s another to be dreaming shop! Well, I woke up last night from a dream where I was presenting to a client that makes private jets. (I have no such client).

The whole presentation was burdened by the ethos of what’s called “the complex sale”. Endless spreadsheets and sophisticated processes. I suddenly tore through the client’s flip chart to find a blank page, where I scrawled “Jon’s Law of Sales.” Under this I wrote: “These People Feel Good.” Realizing that wasn’t quite complete, I wrote a second, complementary law above it: “Every Product Is A Commodity.”

The position is a bit extreme, but waking up I found myself willing to stand by it. If the product isn’t a commodity — if it actually has significant advantages over its competitors — you don’t really have a sales situation. Just mail out the spec sheet and collect the orders. The whole point of a true sales battle is that it’s a tight choice between your offering and the competitor’s.

So what is the decisive factor? This is where we come to Jon’s Law: “These People Feel Good.” In most circumstances, the sales decision comes down to the people behind the offering, to what we call in the broadest sense, the personal brand. Yes, even in the corporate environment what matters most to the buyer of any product or service is that “These People Feel Good.”

In my next post, I’m going to validate this apparent overstatement with a six-point analysis of “Feel Good.” For now, suffice it to say that “Feel Good” has nothing to do with “Nice”: a mistake many people make once they launch into personal branding. In a serious transaction, “Feel Good” emerges from a few very specific and testable components.

Meanwhile, I haven’t forgotten the World’s Greatest Branding Seminar. The presidential election is fascinating because it removes the product (the commodity) from the equation. It’s a raw battle between personal brands. I think we’ll see that presidential brands are subject to the same principles of “Feel Good” I will be unpacking next time.

Topics: World's Greatest Branding Seminar, Branding | No Comments »

« Previous Entries