Ok, maybe it’s not a pun in the biblical sense but I think it’s a pun nevertheless. If you don’t agree with me, that’s perfectly fine. And while I am not the world’s greatest speller – although I did come in 2nd place in the 6th grade spelling bee a few years back, the reason for my incorrect spelling of the word “mover” is due to the fact that I want to tell you about something called “muuver.”

As per their description on the crowdfunding site indiegogo.com, “muuver is a simple to use social app that let’s you share your hypes and gripes, kudos & complaints, likes, and dislikes – about ANYTHING. muuver then takes your hype or gripe about an item and adds it to the ‘item page’ where you can see everybody else’s posts who hyped or griped about that item.”

Now I am a self-admitted social media junkie and anytime I hear of something new on the social media landscape I am usually drawn to it for at the very least to learn more about it.

Such was the case with muuver. When I heard about it then read about it on indiegogo.com, I was intrigued and wanted to learn more.

So I tracked down the president of muuver, Paul Marek to learn more. I asked him the obvious questions of what exactly muuver is, how it works, do we really need another social media network and so on. But I started off  querying him on why crowdfunding as a way to raise capital vs. the VC route – which other type startups seem to prefer.

SO: Why crowdfunding and not the traditional venture capital route?

PM: I  decided to go the crowdfunding route after attempting to put together a few pitch decks. It was then I realized I was focusing too much on getting VC funding, and not worrying enough about getting the tool built for people to use so it could gain traction, so I stopped pursuing VCs. But there is one VC I’d really like to partner with – Vinod Khosla. I love his attitude about failure. I’d really like to partner with him and his group to leverage their wisdom and connections.

Anyway, this is the power to the people tool, and I think turning to the people is the answer. I think the people should help build the tool, not have it in the hands of any one financial interest. In fact, we have a muuvment on the site called the “Use the tool to build the tool” muuvment. Essentially, since muuver is a tool for people to leave their opinion, we want to get their opinions about ALL the important aspects of muuver, from simple app functionalities, to helping us create our privacy policy.

This has to be built by the people, for the people, from the ground up. Therefore, in keeping with the theme of muuver, crowdfunding was the only road we could take.

SO: What is muuver?

PM: That’s a complex answer, but at it’s essence, muuver is a tool that is designed to give power back to the people. It’s designed to instantly connect and assemble people who share common ideas into groups, and uses the power of the collective voice of the group to create what we call a “muuvment”.

It’s complex because muuver is essentially a mashup of Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Yelp, Klout and Wikipedia, which is a lot of functionality all rolled into one. But, we’ve actually made it extremely simple to use. In it’s simplest form, muuver is a place where you share your hypes, gripes, kudos, complaints, likes and dislikes… about anything. But then muuver automatically does a whole lot more from there.

Here’s an example of how it works:

Let’s say you want to post a gripe about CompanyXYZ. Posting a hype or a gripe is actually quite easy – you just use our ‘muuvtags’ instead of Twitter’s ‘hashtags’. To make a muuvtag, you put a PLUS sign in from of something you like, or a MINUS sign in front of something you dislike. If your item is more than one word, you just close the phrase with a plus or minus sign. So, to post your gripe you would post it like this “I had a really bad experience with -Company XYZ-.

The complexity grows from there, but muuver takes over and does the rest by adding your post to a page that only displays posts about that same item. So, your gripe about Company XYZ will get added to the “Company XYZ Item Page”, which displays everyone else’s post about Company XYZ. Company XYZ can then “Claim” that page and respond to people’s hypes and gripes in full transparency. This is where the power is. But the item page not only shows everyone’s post about the item with Company XYZ’s responses, it also shows a bunch of stats about the item like its overall +/- score, it lets you “watch” or follow the item, it displays the item’s popularity on muuver, shows total number of posts about the item, it’s total number of ‘voters’, and lots more that we’ll be revealing soon.

The +/- score is the most impactful stat though, because I think people don’t just want to see how many people “like” a company, service, or product – they want to see how many people DISLIKE it too. Seeing both is seeing the truth. But muuver does this with ANYTHING that people put into it, not just products or companies. The users create the items.

But it goes even further from there. Since everyone who has an opinion about Company XYZ is now all in one place, we can then put this focused group into action. From here users will have access to a set of tools called a “muuvement” that anyone can create and manage. Muuvments are exactly what it sounds like – a group of people focused on a particular cause or action. Our muuvment suite of online tools has everything you need to inspire and manage your group into action, including their own status feed, forums, event management systems and calendars, petitions, and a whole lot more.

SO: What do you say to people who say “oh great, another social media network?”

PM: This is the issue I’m most focused on. My entire effort is to ensure that muuver is not just “another social network”.

From a user standpoint, I feel that the old social sites each have critical elements missing that make them far less effective than they could be. Twitter has the character limitation, Facebook only has a Like button, StumbleUpon and Yelp are missing the deep  networking aspect, and generally speaking, these sites are mostly just social fluff – pretty pictures and breakfast menus.

Yes, people have figured out ways to create huge social changes using these limited tools, people are innovative. But these old social networks were not designed specifically as tools to create social change – muuver is.

We take all the best aspects from each of the old networks, to make one that answers the yearning that people have had since the internet began – using it to create change. We’re also eliminating user friction by allowing users access to muuver with any other major social account. And they can share their posts to any social account as well.

SO: What effect will muuver have on brands and businesses?

PM: From a business standpoint, I’m almost afraid to predict what kind of impact this will have. Companies will have to address issues that people raise in on muuver in full transparency, directly with the person having the issue. Companies won’t have a choice about getting on muuver – the users will put them here. WHEN companies get involved will be the issue for them. But it’ll work both ways… companies will get the full benefit of people’s hypes, kudos and likes as well.

SO: When will the site will go into Beta and when will it go live?

PM: Our crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo lasts for 60 days, which is mid July. We’re hoping to launch our Beta platform a few weeks later at the end of July – it’ll depend how our crowdfunding campaign goes. Some of the perks we’re offering in our crowdfund campaign give the contributor immediate access to our alpha platform, and we’ll be using those lucky people to start creating a nice data set that Beta users can then begin to interact with when we launch at the end of July. When a full public launch will take place after that will be up to the Beta users to vote on and decide.

***

Ok, so what do you think of all this?

Do you think this sounds like something you would be interested in?

Me? I honestly don’t know if muuver is something I will ultimately use or not. I will more than likely kick its proverbial tires when it goes live.

Image source: Google Images

Named one of the Top 100 Influencers In Social Media (#41) by Social Technology Review and a Top 50 Social Media Blogger by Kred, Steve Olenski is a senior creative content strategist at Responsys, a leading global provider of on-demand email and cross-channel marketing solutions, and a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing. He can be reached via Twitter, LinkedIn or Email. 

Back in April a headline on cnet.com read: Location information to make mobile ads more valuable. In the article the writer made reference to two interviews in which “the CEO of the mapping app Waze and ad executives Jason Spero from Google and Mollie Spilman of Millennial Media talked up the importance of users’ GPS location information to help tailor advertising.”

Seems the folks at Facebook are paying attention to the ever-growing popularity of location based advertising as witnessed in Parmy Olson’s Forbes column on May 9th in which she wrote of the fact that Facebook (is) In Talks To Buy Waze For $1 Billion.

But today I want to share with you a completely different take on location-based advertising. A take that has nothing to do with mobile phones or devices.

It’s what I think is a brilliant advertising campaign aimed at raising awareness of child abuse and its victims. It comes from the Spanish organization - ANAR Foundation (Aid to Children and Adolescents at Risk).  Working with their agency, they used lenticular printing to create outdoor ads that look different to an adult and child.

So, depending on your height, or your location, you will see a different ad.

Adults seeing the ad will see an awareness campaign message that reads: ”sometimes, child abuse is only visible to the child suffering it.”

But when viewed from the average height of a 10-year old child, the ad is completely different. It displays an image of a child who has been abused and includes the hotline number for ANAR where children who are the victims of abuse can get help and counseling. As I mentioned I think this is a brilliant campaign as it takes advantage of lenticular printing thereby delivering two messages through one ad.

It is also brilliant from the standpoint that the aforementioned phone number is only visible to those being abused with the thought being if a child abuse victim views the ad while with his/her abuser, they will see the number while the abuser will not.

Source: YouTube, Google Images, cnet.com, Forbes

Named one of the Top 100 Influencers In Social Media (#41) by Social Technology Review and a Top 50 Social Media Blogger by Kred, Steve Olenski is a senior creative content strategist at Responsys, a leading global provider of on-demand email and cross-channel marketing solutions, and a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing. He can be reached via Twitter, LinkedIn or Email. 

(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

And at that time I didn’t know if the rebrand campaign that ill-fated CEO Ron Johnson was undertaking would in fact be classified as epic when the dust settled.

Well, today, I can tell you from where I sit the rebranding campaign does not appear to have been an epic failure. At least not from what I’ve seen coming from JCP headquarters.

In case you missed this:

That of course was J.C. Penney’s latest television commercial which all but comes out and says “we screwed up, please forgive us.”

Forbes contributor  Clare O’Connor  in her May 1st column wrote how “J.C. Penney is going on the offensive, apologizing to shoppers alienated by Johnson’s controversial store revamps.” Also on May 1st, Will Burns penned With New Ad, J.C. Penney Plays The Card It Can Only Play Once. Will’s title is spot on as surely such a mea culpa campaign can only be used once. So it better work.

And I think it will.

Which brings me to Laura’ Heller’s column on May 2nd - J.C. Penney Is Listening, And Getting A Huge Response. In her article Laura writes of the increasing popularity of J.C. Penney’s Facebook page and in particular their “We’re Listening” post.

From The Man Himself

James Cash Penney once said “I believe in trusting men, not only once but twice – in giving a failure another chance.”

I wonder how the man himself would view this most recent rebrand and if he himself would label it as an epic failure and if he would in fact trust those who made the decision in the first place and thereby give them another chance to right their wrong?

Of course we will never know how he would’ve responded but I would imagine he would’ve been of the mindset that at the end of the day the consumer will tells us if we were right or not.

And since we live in an extraordinarily forgiving society and where our world is transparency on steroids – I believe this mea culpa will ultimately work in J.C. Penney’s favor.

Now of course there are provisos to this.

1. They must, MUST stay the course. Discounts and coupons are back and they need to stay that way. The people have spoken. Yes, you are listening JCP. Now keep listening.
2. Maintain complete and open transparency. You got down on your knees and asked for mercy from the court of public opinion. Fine. But once you’re off your knees, don’t forget where you came from.
3. Don’t overthink this. If you have a subpar quarter now and then, don’t fall into the trap of running to your ad agency with another rebrand edict at the top of your To Do List.

At the end of the day no one has a crystal ball of course. No one can predict the future. All we can do is learn from our past.

Clearly J.C. Penney is trying to do just that.

Now, we wait and see if they learned anything.

Source: Forbes

Named one of the Top 100 Influencers In Social Media (#41) by Social Technology Review and a Top 50 Social Media Blogger by Kred, Steve Olenski is a senior creative content strategist at Responsys, a leading global provider of on-demand email and cross-channel marketing solutions, and a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing. He can be reached via Twitter, LinkedIn or Email. 

In most cases their national fulfillment operations are either positioned in Toronto or Montreal, as well as some in Vancouver, which up until now have been totally acceptable solutions. However, it definitely appears the days are numbered for a single e-commerce fulfillment operation being a viable customer delivery experience solution for all of Canada.

Depending if your customer delivery service level goals are next day metro markets or same day will determine the appropriate the number of e-commerce fulfillment operations you will need coast to coast in Canada. For many what I’m calling the ‘Power of Two’ will be the most logical next step with the addition of a second e-commerce fulfillment operation in either Eastern Canada or Western Canada depending on location of your current national site.

Implementing a ‘Power of Two’ solution will allow retailers and etailers to reach all major urban markets for next day delivery. Based on a number of recent analyses for clients, it clearly indicates that a Greater Calgary Area and Greater Toronto Area model will provide the optimal service, coverage and cost.

Not only does the ‘Power of Two’ allow you to improve service delivery levels, it also mitigates the risk of having a shutdown, strike or other facility outage which could be fatal in current single site e-commerce fulfillment solutions. By implementing a ‘Power of Two’ solution your Canadian fulfillment operations will have redundancy built in to ensure you remain in business should a disaster or other disruption strike one of your operations.

Those retailers and etailers still servicing Canada from their US facilities are also in a great position to benefit by tapping into the ‘Power of Two.’ Not only do you pick up the improved service levels either East or West depending on where you induct into Canada, you also mitigate the risk of being out of business in Canada should any untoward events or labor issues impact border crossings. It’s also important to note that any retailer or etailer with more than 60,000 e-commerce deliveries a year in Canada still servicing from a US fulfillment center are paying both a cost and service penalty for doing so.

Many retailers and etailers are also currently supporting their e-commerce fulfillment needs with an in house operation. This is of course perfectly acceptable, but the question becomes do you create another in-house operation East or West or look to outsource a second e-commerce site in the East or West as needed? Again I would assert the ‘Power of Two’ is again at work as by having one in-house site and one outsourced is an effective way to benchmark your business, challenging both your own operations folks and the 3PL to perform at peak levels.

Over the long term, the outsourcing one of your fulfillment operations may also directly demonstrate the actual benefit potential of using a third party for e-commerce fulfillment. These benefits accrue in both labour and space flexibility which are very difficult to replicate and achieve with dedicated in-house e-commerce operations especially with the dramatic peaks in e-commerce demands. As well, advanced lean third party operators are incentivized to reduce operating costs with in-house operators often protecting current budgets in case of future needs.

In summary the ‘Power of Two’ is real with rapid results available now to retailers and etailers in customer delivery service, risk mitigation, flexibility and cost benchmarking. If you’re still shipping e-commerce for Canada out of one location in Canada or the United States you’re missing out on service and redundancy benefits. Finally, when the day comes, and be sure it will, that your CEO challenges you to improve on your e-commerce customer experience know that there is an easy answer and that is for you to tap into the ‘Power of Two.’

Jeff Ashcroft

A long time specialist in retail logistics and e-commerce fulfillment, Jeff works with SCI Group in Toronto which provides national retail & e-commerce logistics support for over 7,000 retail outlets/stores across Canada as well as e-commerce fulfillment operations for Walmart.ca, ToysRUs.ca, Rogers Wireless, Tim Hortons and DeSerres. He can be reached at Jeff Ashcroft jeff.ashcroft@scigroup.com @JeffAshcroft or feel free to call him at 416.401-3011 x 3033 and further discuss the ‘Power of Two.’

I prefaced my column that day because I am indeed a very curious person and in that particular context in that particular article I was referring to “programmatic advertising.”

In the piece I shared a conversation I had with Gurbaksh Chahal who is the Founder, Chairman & CEO of a company called RadiumOne. whose platform“is designed for today’s real-time,programmatic media landscape.” And while I had a great chat with Gurbaksh, my curiosity remained piqued, as it were.

As luck would have it  a few weeks ago I was introduced to a gentleman by the name of Eric Bosco, who is the new CEO of ChoiceStream - a company that deals in the world of  ”programmatic advertising” among other things.

Recently I had the opportunity to throw a few questions Eric’s way but instead of diving right into programmatic advertising, buying and bidding, I decided to start off with a much more global, all-encompassing query.

SO: How is digital advertising changing?

EB: The allure of digital advertising has long been its inherent one-to-one nature. However, until recently we have only realized one-to-one metrics – who clicked on an ad and who converted. Now, consumers are more complex than ever, forming fragmented audiences spread over plentiful and diverse content. Additionally, new technologies such as programmatic buying have enabled bidding on each ad impression separately as well. This empowers marketers to pick and choose one audience member at a time and show them a relevant ad.

We’re at an inflection point in the evolution of digital advertising. Media buying will become increasingly programmatic, campaigns will become much more efficient, and ads will become more relevant. The shift to programmatic buying is being driven by two catalysts.

The first catalyst is the ubiquity of the digital advertising method.  Now, on a large scale, digital ad technology is being used to deliver advertising in all sorts of channels including TV, mobile, tablets and even in-store kiosks. Where once there were many disparate platforms with separate technology, metrics, and delivery models, today’s market is converging and marketers can take advantage of a more unified stack in all these channels.

The second catalyst is the rapid growth of computational capacity, enabling scalable ad technologies including: Data Management Platforms, Real-Time Bidding, Audience Targeting, and Optimization. The intelligence resulting from these synergistic systems — when applied to programmatic buying in the unified stack — enables digital advertisers to gain performance while improving relevance for consumers.

There will be several of winners who profit from this seismic shift in digital advertising. The first set includes developers of the two distinct components of programmatic buying: Real-Time Bidding and Continual Optimization. The second set of winners will be publishers whose premium content and premium audiences will be bid up as more programmatic buyers enter the market. The third set of winners will be the marketers who acquire internal expertise and develop the partnerships necessary to operate in the evolving ad ecosystem.

Q: What are programmatic buying and Real-Time Bidding?

EB: At its heart, programmatic buying is an automated auction in which ad impressions are traded, one impression at a time. The systems that run the auctions are called exchanges and systems that buy programmatically in these auctions are called Real Time Bidders. IDC has projected programmatic buying will grow at a 53% clip per year in the United States between now and 2016, while Forrester Research has claimed that programmatic buying will ultimately capture the bulk of all digital advertising spending.

Two basic approaches are used in programmatic buying. In Price-Based Trading, the goal is to buy impressions as cheaply as possible –improving campaigns simply by reducing costs.  Targeting and optimization in these systems may be derived from analysis, but it is largely a manual (therefore infrequent) process.  Because these early systems treat all impressions like remnant and focus on price, we have witnessed a downward pressure on pricing raising concerns about a “race to the bottom.”  We do not see this trend continuing.

The second approach is Value-Based Trading, in which the system continually learns from ad responses and automatically values each impression based on the probability of a response and the value of a response for each campaign. Value-Based Trading works to achieve the greatest margin between media cost and response value for each campaign. By recognizing when expensive impressions are well worth the cost and when inexpensive impressions do not deliver value, value based systems maximize ROI.  These advanced systems will bid high for valuable impressions.  For example, our monthly Audience Cost Index provides some early evidence of wide pricing ranges where some impressions are recognized as premium and command significantly higher prices.

SO: Why should a CMO add this to the mix?

EB: Programmatic buying should be part of every CMO’s marketing arsenal. It is a labor efficient and cost efficient way to accurately reach huge audiences. When backed up by continual optimization for value, it can be very effective for performance focused campaigns.

Perhaps even more exciting for CMOs is programmatic buying of display ads to support top-of-the-funnel goals: such as acquiring “followers” or building awareness. Often, these top-of-the-funnel tactics are expensive (think Super Bowl ads) and the results can be hard to quantify. Now, brands can buy digital ad impressions efficiently and leverage the analysis to discover the right audience and gain insights. Programmatic buying may be the best way a savvy CMO can get cost-effective access to large numbers and wide varieties of consumers across all content, day-parts, and devices.

SO: What’s an example of a big brand using programmatic buying successfully?

EB: One brand seeing success with programmatic buying is Zappos!  The online retailer of apparel, footwear and more has a performance goal that they established through a year of experience with all of the partners in their plan. When we applied value-based programmatic buying techniques, the early results were 15 percent better than the goal. Programmatic buying backed by algorithms that continually learn and optimize campaign performance will show month-to-month improvement in performance.

Zappos! also worked with our creative services to deliver contextually relevant dynamic ads that show apparel or footwear that is in-line with local weather conditions. So Samantha, experiencing snow in Syracuse, will get an ad for boots and sweaters while Fred expecting fun-in-the-sun in Phoenix, will see an ad for flip-flops and shorts. Between these creative services and continual optimization, Zappos! has further improved results over the first few months to beat their goal by 30 percent.

SO: What do you suggest those new to programmatic buying do to get started?

EB: Pick a partner.  It’s really not any harder than that.  The right partner can bring a marketer up to speed quickly while managing the risk and performance for them.

No marketer can do this alone, so they need to get serious about identifying an internal advocate, then testing several vendors.

Choose vendors that can provide a breadth of audiences (access to exchanges) and depth of data to meet your goals. Deep data requires algorithms and computational power capable of analyzing third party data (available from a number of providers) and advertisers’ first party data (which includes CRM, email, customer data, etc.). The best programmatic buying partners will also be able to provide their own proprietary second party data that can enrich and inform the campaign. Those vendors should be able to demonstrate continual optimization and value-based bidding. Throughout each campaign, marketers should receive insights through audience profiles and performance breakdowns to inform not only the optimization of the campaign as it happens, but future campaigns and even overall marketing strategies.  After that, it’s important to look for something special.

We have a product we call “Active Audience,” which embeds a branded poll in ads. The self declared attitudes and intents gathered from poll responses reveal unexpected insights and greatly focus campaigns. Finally, vendors should act as real partners, providing full services and sharing the risks and rewards of success.

Image Source: Google Images

Named one of the Top 100 Influencers In Social Media (#41) by Social Technology Review and a Top 50 Social Media Blogger by Kred, Steve Olenski is a senior creative content strategist at Responsys, a leading global provider of on-demand email and cross-channel marketing solutions, and a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing. He can be reached via Twitter, LinkedIn or Email. 

Twitter for business

Nestivity, a social media startup developing community software tools for Twitter, released a list of the top twenty-five brands with the most engaged Twitter audiences. I have been made aware of Nestivity very recently, thanks to a post by Jure Klepic, Feathering Our Community With Nestivity.

According to the start-up, Nestivity turns your Twitter handle into a “Nest”, a place for you to connect with your followers in a more organized and structured way. It sounds promising and if it lives up to its promise, Nestivity would rank as one the solid solutions out there. I am trying it so I will be able to talk to it after I have given it a test drive.

It is only natural for a tool promoting its ability to help you organize, build and grow your Twitter community should have a privileged insight into the most engaged brands. In their recently issued list of the 25 Most Engaged Brands on Twitter, Nestivity has analyzed more than 739,000 Tweets found some pretty interesting data. 6 points worth looking into :

1. Followers count do no count. We knew that but hearing it again will not hurt and might help shift the dialogue to more important aspects of community building.
2. Frequency of tweet doesn’t matter, relevance to your community does. This is one of the most asked question out there and yet, it seems that whether you tweet every hour like the @NBA or every month, if your audience cares, they’ll engage with you. Show them some love with content they want to see
3. However, it seems that Timing is everything. Find you sweet spot and leverage it.
4. Quality over quantity. No surprise there but always good to remind brands that point 2 is even more important (ref : Frequency of tweet doesn’t matter )
5. Multimedia is best. There again, studies have shown that people react more and better to images, videos and visuals, in general.

On a personal level, this list makes me ponder. Why did I ever waste my time trying to engage with @Starbucks (As you can see I may be hurt because on top of spending time tweeting them, I’ve spent insane amount of money at the cafes, I feel, in vain. Good, I quit coffee). @Disney never tweeted me back and that would have made a couple of little people in my house pretty happy. And I need to start to tweet @Chanel.

Check out Henry Min’s blog post over at Nestivity and the list of 25 Most Engaged Brands on Twitter (Click to enlarge)

So, what’s you take on the top 25 and the honorable mentions? Would love to hear your experience and thougts.

Karima-Catherine Goundiam is a Toronto-based consultant in digital and social media. She can be reached on Twitter,  LinkedIn or on her blog.

Initially published on www.3angelsmarketing.com
 

Back in November of last year I scribed The Need For Marketing Integration – The Defense Rests. In that now ill-titled piece, I wrote of something I came across on MarketingCharts.com: Multichannel Retailers Struggle To Create A Seamless Brand Experience.

In my foolish exuberance I wrote the aforementioned “Defense Never Rests” piece thinking (or maybe not) that I had now presented enough evidence to prove my point which was integrated marketing is essential for today’s brands. In case you didn’t know, I have written numerous articles on the topic of integrated marketing with the one referenced above just being among the latest.

See I figured there was nothing left to say, no further evidence was required to make my case.

I was wrong.

Of course I was wrong.

What was I thinking?

The defense can never rest until every marketer in every corner of the world understands and truly comprehends integrated marketing, and why it is so important for their ultimate success.

I Give You Exhibit ???

I have lost count as to what letter of exhibits of evidence I am up to and quite frankly don’t even care anymore.

What I do care about is when I see something like the following:

Accenture Study Shows U.S. Consumers Want a Seamless Shopping Experience Across Store, Online and Mobile that Many Retailers are Struggling to Deliver

As you can probably tell (you’re smart enough to pick up on this) I am referring to something from Accenture. To be honest it could’ve come from anywhere – well maybe not anywhere, but just the fact I saw this headline on a press release from earlier this month caused me to scream aloud: Not again!

The opening line of the release read as follows:

“Retailers that deliver on their customers’ expectations and provide them with a seamless shopping experience – whether they are shopping in a store, online or through a mobile device – will win their loyalty and gain a competitive advantage that drives sales.”

By the way it appears we have a new word for integrated: Seamless. Fine. Call it kumbaya marketing for all I care. Just do it and do it right or don’t do it at all.

Anyway as you can see the opening line to the release drove home the point and need for integrated marketing. It is what consumers want for crying out loud so why wouldn’t you give it to them?

Oh right, you don’t know how.

From the aforementioned  MarketingCharts.com piece:

So, Mr. and Mrs. Marketer know what Mr. and Mrs. Consumer want. They simply do not how to give it to them.

That sounds like a problem to me, does it not?

Did I mention consumers want this?

The defense (never) rests.

Sources: Accenture, MarketingCharts.com

Named one of the Top 100 Influencers In Social Media (#41) by Social Technology Review and a Top 50 Social Media Blogger by Kred, Steve Olenski is a senior creative content strategist at Responsys, a leading global provider of on-demand email and cross-channel marketing solutions, and a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing. He can be reached via Twitter, LinkedIn or Email. 

Well, we all know that consumers are becoming more and more contemptuous of push advertising, which has traditional marketers scrambling to find a magic bullet to replace it. But with what? When social came along and marketers mistakenly tried to force push advertising messages there, the failures were huge.

What we’re seeing is a gradual shift away from advertising in general, and back towards communication, which has always been the human strong suit. People want to get information when they want it—not have it thrown at them, and they want to have conversations about and with brands. I read an article recently atretailcustomerexperience.com that quoted Scott Olrich, CMO of the relationship-based marketing software company, Responsys. Olrich sums up the shift pretty nicely:

“A century or so back, the local corner shop lived or died based on the relationships they built. As new means of mass communication emerged, companies used their increased reach to try to advertise their way out of that responsibility. But today every aspect of a company’s behavior is on public display. A relationship first approach to every customer interaction has again become the imperative.”

Even Google’s algorithm changes are indicative of this shift towards communication and conversation, with content relevance being a key factor. Content that’s helpful and educational trumps marketing-speak, improves SEO and is instrumental in opening the door to those all-important relationships.

So where does that leave the average business? Finding ways to start more conversations is a good place to begin. At Collective Bias®, we foster a collaborative marketing approach by managing a private community called Social Fabric. It’s a platform for micro-publishers (or bloggers) who are passionate about building relationships and telling stories. Collective Bias® uses Social Fabric® to gain shopper insights and to identify brand advocates to create content for client campaigns.

This works very well for retailers and other brands because these bloggers are your shoppers and consumers. They are the brains behind some of our most successful campaigns – building, leading and managing them. Our community is different from most, because our members are highly involved in the campaign process. The content our bloggers produce is creative, engaging and compelling, and its reach is exponential, because it’s syndicated across various social channels as well as through the blogger’s audience. But what makes this type of content influential is that it’s tied to an emotional connection that resonates with people. It’s not about selling—it’s not about hype—it’s people talking to people about their lives and experiences with a brand being a part of the story.

So our focus is on collaborating with the Social Fabric® blogger community to create the informative, educational and emotionally compelling content that people are looking for online.

Some big brands are also finding success in creating “branded content,” which research analysts at Forrester define as “content that is developed or curated by a brand to provide added consumer value such as entertainment or education. It is designed to build brand consideration and affinity, not sell a product or service. It is not a paid ad, sponsorship, or product placement.”

That’s not to say that ads don’t have their place, but they can no longer be the major focus—it has to be delivering great brand stories. Companies that have moved the needle on branded content include Proctor & Gamble, Cisco, Duane Reade, Tyson, Nestle, Bigelow Tea, Red Bull and The Cleveland Clinic, to name a few. And they consistently leverage this content ahead of ad campaigns, which gives them even more top-of-mind reach and better ad response. These brands improve their products by staying close to their customers with constant communication at every stage of the customer relationship.

The marketing shift to branded storytelling also means that companies need to re-think metrics. It’s not enough today to simply measure impressions as a factor of campaign ROI—we need to think in terms of measuring our influence as well and our SOV (Share of Voice). Tracking the quality of engagement with our messaging is crucial to measuring overall effectiveness.

So whether your business is selling widgets or services, success depends on thinking more in terms of delivering stories about those widgets or services and how people use them than about pumping out feature-rich fact sheets or ads. Your customers want to hear those stories, so find more ways to tell them! Reach out to your brand advocates and collaborate with them, and don’t forget to include quality of engagement in your metrics for a better overall view of how you’re doing. In other words, think like a publisher—you’ll get better results.

-Originally posted at: http://www.tedrubin.com/building-customer-relationships-with-branded-story-telling/

Over the years, businesses have developed sales, marketing and service strategies around the funnel. Awareness, interest, desire, action, to this day, describes the likely steps a customer may take in making a decision. Over the years, it was assumed that the liner path would also continue through a transaction to a state of loyalty and ultimately advocacy. The process of customer engagement to this day is designed to shepherd people along this delicate path. For at any moment, consumer attention, interest, and resulting action could fall astray without superintendence.

I call this the “Cluster Funnel” and it’s meant to demonstrate how a customer lifecycle when viewed in aggregate is broken.

Without awareness there can be no consideration. Hence, businesses today invest to varying degrees and effectiveness in marketing, advertising, and communications strategies. To earn customer attention isn’t a switch that toggles on and off, it is a state of perpetual engagement. The blaring noise that customers continually experience has forced them to adapt. Second nature acts as a defense mechanism to tune out the constant barrage of marketing messages and clever campaigns. Awareness at the top of the funnel is elusive but never more important.

The Cluster Funnel from What’s the Future of Business

For the sake of this discussion, let’s assume that everyone understands the value of the funnel (or at least the idea of it) to attract customers and invest in long-term relationships. But what if businesses were investing their time and resources in the wrong places? What if where we think we can impress upon customers or get them to notice us is not at all where their attention is actually focused?

These are important and timely questions to answer as they will reveal a new journey to embark upon. The truth is that what we know and what we need to know are in fact separated by an unfolding reality that requires immediate intervention.

Your market has already been disrupted. Through an unforgiving series of technology revolutions paired with an era of individual empowerment, your customers are not only more informed, their expectations have matured. The “C” change in consumerism has ushered in a genre of connected consumers. As a result, your customers are learning about you or your competitors differently. How they make decisions does not at all follow a linear path. How they are influenced and in turn influence others is profound in its reach and effect. What was once simplistic, or overly simplistic depending on your point of view, representation of a fluted customer journey is in fact much more dynamic and connected.

Engagement is as much art as it is science. But to better understand the behavior of your connected customers or as I refer to them “Generation C,” takes practice of the social sciences from digital anthropology and psychology to sociology and ethnography. Understanding behavior exposes patterns in consumer activity that in of itself reveals new touch points. Appreciating how customers form and make decisions and why inspires empathy and creativity. This research will specifically point to what Altimeter Group refers to as the Dynamic Customer Journey. What you’ll learn following your research is everything. Most notably, your business will now earn clarity in how and where to focus efforts on shaping decisions and experiences pre-, during, and post commerce. Additionally, you’ll learn the specific factors, people, technology, communities, and resources that affect every stage of your customer’s journey. The results will contribute to a far more accurate point of view that tailors marketing, sales, service, and loyalty strategies to be more effective and engaging. But it won’t stop there.

Inspired by McKinsey’s work and my own research during the writing of The End of Business as Usual, we re-imagined the traditional funnel into a constant and very public elliptical path that often repeats itself.

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Evaluation
4. Purchase
5. Experience
6. Loyalty
7. Advocacy

The stages of the Dynamic Customer Journey are familiar as they reflect similar methodologies in the traditional funnel. However each step is unique in the contributing factors for how consumers discover, analyze, choose, and share. The screens they use to search and purchase, the people who influence them, the content that informs them, the social networks they rely upon, the collective experiences of others, and the real-time conversations that shape impressions, each introduce guidance, doubt, and validation that works for or against your right now. The most important revelation in the DCJ is how every stage feeds into a discoverable online repository of shared experiences that influence all those who embark upon a similar journey. Without positive influence there is no hope for preference. And, without positive experiences there can be no chance for loyalty or advocacy.

It is only by traveling in the digital footsteps of your customers that uncovers a new landscape for engagement and also a new reality for your business. Embracing your connected customers will help them embrace you in return. At a minimum, the gifts you receive by embarking on this journey and investing in engagement, education, and meaningful experiences are empathy, relevance, and ultimately reciprocity…all of which is measurable by traditional business metrics.

The story continues…

Brian Solis

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