Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz's Marketing Blog

Can't Buy Me Like: The Exclusive Post2Post Blog Tour Interviews with Bob Garfield and Doug Levy

Bob Garfield, one of my favorite writers and critics analyzing the advertising and media fields, has a new book out with Doug Levy, Can't Buy Me Like. Bob and I are pretty close. Okay, we're not best friends who go out to grab truffle fries after the upfronts or anything like that. But, unlike most people in America, I do have a photo of Bob kissing me:

There's a story behind that. But you'll have to buy me a drink first, as this post has nothing to do with why Bob is kissing me there (short answer: he's trying to make my brother Joel jealous). Though there is a connection of sorts. Bob's intimate moment with me arose after doing dinner together at a MediaPost conference in Kohler, Wisconsin last summer. We found some common ground. And the next morning, when I saw him again, we built on that in some rather unexpected way leading to the photo above.

In short, it was all authentic. It was Bob trying to kiss up to me because I'm some blogger who might one day promote his book, and it wasn't me getting all gaga over him just because he's some famous author, NPR radio celebrity, and uber-famous curmudgeon in my industry. And all that is kind of the point of the book Can't Buy Me Like. Marketers can't whore around for likes and resort to their old tricks. They need new tricks, which, hopefully, are not tricks at all.

Tada. Segue achieved. And now here's what you're supposedly here for - the interview with Bob & Doug:

1) Your book focuses a lot on the brand sustainability map. What's one brand you can think of that has gone from Limited to Sustainable? Why do you think it has done so?

Doug: Apple first migrated from the Limited Relationship to the Emotional Relationship quadrant. Though the company was loved by many, few people were actually buying from the company before the launch of the iPod. And while the company stood for something, the brand was selling expensive computers that didn't work well in corporate environments. As a result, Apple nearly went out of business. With the launch of the iPod, then the iPhone and the iPad (which supported the growth of their computer sales), Apple capitalized on the trust it built and moved from the Emotional Relationship to the Sustainable Relationship quadrant. The question now is, with Steve Jobs’ passing, can the company stay true to this purpose?

2) What the heck - what about a brand that has gone in the other direction? Why did it go in reverse, and what lesson can other marketers learn from it?

Bob: Johnson & Johnson is headed in the wrong direction due to one scandal after another, in all cases putting profit before the brand's integrity.

3) If you were to meet with someone who was getting their first-time promotion to a CMO position, what's one bit of advice you'd give them?

Bob: Rent, don't buy.

Doug: What got you here…won’t get you where you want to go. The game has changed.

4) Beyond brands, let's talk about people for a moment. Who's one person in the marketing world who you think really gets the principles of your book?

Bob: Trick question. Almost everybody gets the principles. Acting on them is a different matter.

Doug: Ron Shaich at Panera. Casey Shehan at Patagonia. Eric Ryan at Method.

5) What's one thing you were going to include in the book and wound up cutting but wish you could have left in?

Bob: There was to be a chapter on the relationship-management back-end focusing on a vendor or vendors who supply human/data capacity.

6) You mentioned Krispy Kreme as a great example repeatedly, and while their revenue and stock price has been on a bit of a rebound,revenues, its revenue, profit, and shares are nowhere near what they were from 2001 to 2004, and its brand hardly has the same cachet. Is this really such a great example of a brand to emulate?

Bob: Krispy Kreme was a bubble stock, and its high revenues were pumped up by overexpansion. It is now on a sustainable trajectory based on organic growth. So, in short, yes.

Doug: Not everyone loves them. But the people who love them REALLY love them. And, when they got clear on why and focused on that, their business began a rebound. That's what makes them a brand to emulate.

7) You mention Dell Ideastorm, and for awhile it was THE hot example of social media prowess, but at the same time its sales were plummeting, and its brand and company were tanking in just about any way you could measure. What's your take on what happened to Dell? Can't brands follow all this great advice about connecting with people while falling flat?

Bob: Dell has a combination of a failed business strategy and terrible customer service. Yes, Ideastorm was forward looking, but in the grand scheme of things, it is lipstick on a pig.

Doug: Its a soulless company. It shows that you can get the technique of social media but when the core company is not attractive, it doesn't much matter.

8) Besides your own esteemed work, what's one other book you'd recommend someone read to better understand the ins and outs of marketing today?

Bob: The Network is Your Customer by David Rogers. [Ed.: I'm a big fan of Rogers and his BRITE conference myself.]

Doug: Start with Why by Simon Sinek. 

9) Who are your favorite three people or accounts to follow on Twitter?

Doug: Blogs, more than Twitter… Augie Ray, Seth Godin, Joey Reiman.   

THE END... of sorts.

Want more from Bob and Doug? Follow the rest of the Post2Post tour:

Tuesday, May 28

Renee Hopkins - @Renee_Hopkins

http://www.renee-hopkins.com/has-relationship-era-of-marketing-changed-business-models/

Wednesday, May 29

David Berkowitz - You are here.

Thursday, May 30

Denise Yohn - @DeniseLeeYohn

http://deniseleeyohn.com

Friday, May 31

Jay Ehret - @JayEhret

www.TheMarketingSpot.com

Pop-Up Shop Pops up Yet Again (Thanks, Rushkoff and TechCrunch)

I've had this odd feeling of déjà vu this month, especially as I discover that my first job out of college was at a tech startup that proved to be well ahead of its time.

In 2000, I worked as technical writer, and then a marketing writer, for a startup whose main product was Popupshop.com, which promised 'end-to-end e-commerce in a pop-up window!' In plain English, it meant that you could shop directly within ads online.

Imagine my surprise reading Present Shock, the latest work (and a phenomenal read) by media analyst and critic Douglas Rushkoff and discovering he wound up describing the business model of this startup that died twelve years ago:

On the Web, with the emergence of HTML 5, we are finally witnessing the disappearance of the split between ad and store. In the upcoming rather holistic model of online marketing, the banner ad is no longer a click-through to some other website, but it is the store itself. The ad unfolds and the customer can make a purchase right there and then.* You will be able to buy my next book wherever it is online that you’re finding out about it, without going to Amazon. By embedding stores directly into ads, we reduce the digiphrenia and increase the sales.

Rushkoff, Douglas (2013-03-21). Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now (Kindle Locations 1849-1853). Penguin Group US. Kindle Edition.

I then got another surprise seeing this story in TechCrunch:

Fresh off its $2 million in Series A funding, in-app mobile payments platform ZooZ is announcing a new product today: in-ad payments. Yes, that’s right, “ad” not “app.” The big idea here is to streamline the checkout process for consumers by addressing some of the challenges with e-commerce on mobile’s small screen, and now connecting that process to mobile banner ads to increase click-to-buy conversions.

With in-ad payments, mobile users will be able checkout by tapping once on a visible banner ad within a mobile app, which then launches ZooZ’s checkout flow. As with ZooZ’s previously launched in-app payments product, the fully native checkout experience here doesn’t require the end user to re-enter their credit card or payment details after their initial sign-up.

This is a tough model to pull off. Which kinds of products would people buy from an ad? How easy will the payment process be especially if you're not first logging into the merchant? How much cross-selling and merchandising can one do within an ad? There are countless other questions and challenges.

Still, it's a reminder not to count out any seemingly hare-brained idea out there. In 2000, I was hardly a true believer in the company; it was an entry-level job that, for the 40-hour work week, amounted to under $13 an hour and yet allowed me to somehow move to New York City, where I've lived ever since. More importantly, it got me into this industry, and I never looked back. Yet it's amazing to think that I was working with some visionaries, and that this model was more than a decade ahead of its time.

The Next Book You Need to Read: To Sell is Human

I'm a fan of the author Dan Pink. I interviewed him more than 10 years ago for eMarketer about his book Free Agent Nation. A Whole New Mind was revelatory. Johnny Bunko didn't do much for me, but I do remember reading it and recall the gist, so that's something. Despite loving his work overall, I still had no interest in reading his recent book To Sell is Human. And yet, for whatever reason, I wound up buying it and, in some moment of weakness, I read it.

I'm so glad  I did.

The introduction of the book talks a lot about non-sales selling - namely, how 40% of our workday is usually trying to persuade people, outside of a typical sales context. Not surprisingly, that applies to my job too. Granted, my job is at a marketing agency that is trying to sell its clients on ways that they can sell more of their products (whether or not the product is tangible). For me, a lot of my day is more on the so-called buy side, where so-called vendors are constantly pitching me, so I deal with dozens of salespeople in a typical week. (Note: I'm not a huge fan of the whole buyer vs seller / vendor distinction, but its simplicity sometimes works, such as in the recent post The Biggest Red Flag from a Vendor).

I digress though.

To Sell is Human is a marvelous book. The best thing about it is that odds are no matter what your profession is, you will wind up doing at least one thing differently (ideally for the better) after reading this. If you can get just one thing out of it, to paraphrase Alan Patricof of Greycroft Ventures, it will be a good use of your time. And you might do or think about far more differently after reading it.

Here are a few highlights from my notes I highlighted. There are some other GREAT ones, but you'll have to read the book yourself, as it won't work to quote him entirely out of context without some of the longer stories involved.

Select quotes:

• "Since Kickstarter launched in 2009, 1.8 million people have funded twenty thousand projects with more than $200 million. In just three years, Kickstarter surpassed the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts as the largest backer of arts projects in the United States." [This is more of an aside in the book, but fascinating nonetheless.]
  
  
• "Start your encounters with the assumption that you’re in a position of lower power. That will help you see the other side’s perspective more accurately, which, in turn, will help you move them."
• "Amazon, like most organizations, has lots of meetings. But at the important ones, alongside the chairs in which his executives, marketing mavens, and software jockeys take their places, Bezos includes one more chair that remains empty. It’s there to remind those assembled who’s really the most important person in the room: the customer."
  
  
• One of the most meaningful sections for me was Pink's look at problem finding vs. problem solving, where problem finders tend to perform better than solvers. He noted, "The Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, now offers a course called 'Problem Finding, Problem Solving' because, as its instructor says, "part of being an innovative leader is being able to frame a problem in interesting ways and . . . to see what the problem really is before you jump in to solve it."'"
• "The purpose of a pitch isn’t necessarily to move others immediately to adopt your idea. The purpose is to offer something so compelling that it begins a conversation, brings the other person in as a participant, and eventually arrives at an outcome that appeals to both of you."

These aren't even the best parts. If that moved you in the slightest, then I just performed that very human act of selling. Now go and buy the book already.

Who's the Mobile Champ Now?

Well, I have no idea. But Google has a new series about it:

What is top of mind for mobile evangelists in the agency community? How are agencies helping their clients win with mobile? We caught up with mobile leaders from the agency world and asked what excites them — and challenges them — about mobile today. 

There are some great features with Zach Morrison at Elite SEM, Tom Cramer at Razorfish, and my old friend Jeff Heinz at MediaCom. For those more inspired Q&As, you can go to Google's Think Insights site (one of the best resources available for mobile marketing and other marketing trends and topics). While I only have so much patience for watching myself on camera (especially on a day where I was so distracted by the interviewer wearing Google Glass), here's the interview, also hosted on Google's site:

The series also on Google's Mobile Ads, AdWords, and Agency blogs.

Oh, and here's what the interview looked like wearing Glass:

 

 

eMarketer Looks at Feel-Good Effects of Real-Time Marketing

eMarketer has a new report out on a topic near and dear to me, "Real-Time Marketing: Speeding Up the Creative Process" (read more about it in eMarketers' newsletter article on it). 

The chart below, via GolinHarris, shows this real-time marketing thing may actually move the needle for brands, whichever needle marketers are looking to move.

(image courtesy of eMarketer Inc)

I have a few mentions in the report. Here are excerpts:

When deciding when to pull the trigger on a real-time opportunity, Oreo's digital agency, 360i, considers three factors, said David Berkowitz, VP Emerging Media:

* Is the moment that is happening brand friendly?

* Are there influencers online and available to extend the message virally?

* Is there an opportunity to 'surpise and delight' the consumer?

Then...

"What's going to define it well is not the Super Bowl. I'm much more curious about what happens on a typical Wednesday. Making social currency part of the brand identity - that is a bigger challenge and bigger opportunity." ...

"The biggest thing we can do to speed up the creative process is generate trust from our clients. Trust and real-time marketing are interwoven."

It also brings to mind a conversation I just had on Twitter with USA Network's Jesse Redniss:

How much of the RTM Social content race is just "disposable brilliance" one and done? #socialTV #secondscreen #TV #marketing @dberkowitz

— Jesse Redniss (@jesseredniss) May 8, 2013

@jesseredniss the brands that get a reputation for consistent RTM are the ones that get a reputation for understanding culture

— David Berkowitz (@dberkowitz) May 9, 2013

Why Should Marketers Care about the Age of the Cyborg?

I've got a new post in Ad Age about a subject we'll be hearing plenty more about in the coming decade: humanity's cyborgization, and how advertisers are learning from actuaries. The post starts:

You might know how much an impression's worth for your brand. Perhaps you can estimate the value of a click, or social actions such as buzz, likes and shares. But what if you could measure a customer's level of physical activity? What about posture, sleep habits, or even virility?

 That data's going to become increasingly available to marketers and advertisers as we head into the age of the cyborg.

Once a hallmark of science fiction, the human enhanced with mechanical superpowers is quickly becoming mainstream with the advent of wearable technology. Among the milestones arising over the past decade was Apple's success with slimming down the iPod and equipping it with enough storage to hold thousands of songs, which turned it into a popular workout accessory. A slew of add-ons sprung up to allow runners to wear the iPod as an armband. Then in May 2006, Nike released Nike+, in collaboration with Apple, a wireless chip embeddable in select shoe models. In a breakthrough melding of fashion and technology, the chip synced with the iPod, and later the iPhone, to track fitness activity and sync music to workouts. In 2012 Nike released the FuelBand, transitioning its technology from a chip hidden inside a shoe to a bracelet that became its own fashion statement.

Read the rest at Ad Age, and let me know what you think in the comments or on Twitter.