Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz's Marketing Blog

Es ist Deutschland Week in MarketersStudio.com

We're going all German, all the time here at Marketers Studio. Following up on the previous news that I will be joining an illustrious roster at German Haus at SXSW, Thanks to my new friends at SMG Germany (shoutout to Johannes Lenz), they asked me some pretty interesting questions about marketing in general and my role in particular. I hope my answers remotely lived up to the questions. Here's an excerpt: 

Johannes If you would have only three Hashtags to define your relation towards Digital and Social Media which one would you choose and why?

David Fun question. I’d say #connected #convenient and #culture. First, with #connected, I love how digital keeps bringing people together in new ways.

My first experience with digital was connecting with a friend on a 1200 baud modem back in in the 1980s, and mobile devices were always about communication and connectivity first.

With #convenient, being able to book a trip, replace some household goods, or deposit a check in a few spare minutes really does add time back to my day, and that’s invalauble.

Lastly, seeing how #culture spreads digitally is facinating, like with the rise of DJ Khaled in recent months, and #culture is what further brings people together in interesting ways.

Read the full interview on their blog. Ich danke dir sehr!

Why I Hate the Word Content, and More Thoughts on 15 Years of Content Marketing

I'm a little slow to post this here but would be remiss not to. Several weeks back, I had a fun time talking shop with Dorian Benkoil, founder of the MediaThon series and one of the savviest content marketing practitioners I know. 

The result of the conversation was an extensive interview, one where I get to be more candid than usual about how things work in B2B marketing for my agency, MRY, and what I've learned along the way. 

Check it out over at Contently and let me know what you think. 

 

 

14 Interns, 2 Campaigns, 1 Critical Challenge

At MRY, I've had the great pleasure of working with some inspiring classes of interns, and the summer intern class of 2015 was no exception. For the big team project this year, we gave them an especially daunting brief: come up with a campaign to support college students grappling with mental health issues. Oh yeah, and they'd have little time to do it, next to no budget, and they'd be working with people they just met.

As for the scale of the problem, a survey from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) showed that among people who stopped attending college, 64% cited mental illness as a reason for dropping out. 

What the interns (with the assistance of a great, deep bench of mentors across the agency) was inspiring. I would have been surprised if any team pulled off anything remotely successful. It turns out that both teams not only put together impressive campaigns, but they each attracted hundreds of posts practically overnight from people around the world supporting their work. Perhaps in time they'll have even started a movement.

Here's a quick recap of what each team did, and this post won't do justice to either, so spend some time checking out their links, videos, social feeds, and more. 

One team crafted a funny brand, Don't Be a Dick, as a way to sardonically shame people who are all too dismissive or ignorant about their friends' serious mental issues. The videos they created, especially the best of the lot, are both funny and biting, and the personas they brought to life feel all too real. Check out one of the videos below, featuring team member Courtney Ratner.  Beyond YouTube and their site, you can see their work on Instagram and Twitter. 

The other team, The How Are You Project, took a more serious approach. The centerpiece is a ten-hour video of team member Trevor Hains in a coffee shop who is just waiting to find out how you're really feeling. There's something so salient about how the team sought to make people pay attention when asking such a commonplace question. You can also find them on Twitter. And no, I'm not just embedding their video below to try to get you to spend ten hours on this blog. 

Kudos to the class of interns: Marisol Pelaez, Trevor Hains, Carly Harris, Georgina Morgan, Nancy Nystrom, Leah Greene, Cody Allen, Jason Hill, Aye Chan Moe, Richard Balagtas, Morgan Klovens, Peter Maturo, Courtney Ratner, and Charles Crain. I hope to have the pleasure of collaborating with all of them again, given how much I learned from working with them. To all of you #MRYinterns, thanks for your countless contributions to the agency this summer. 

[Update: MediaPost covered the internship program. Thanks again, intern crew, for the work you did here. It's exciting to report we already hired two of them from this class, and we may well get to bring on others as they graduate in the years ahead.]

6 Characteristics of Great Storymaking

originally published in Ad Age - read the published version there and share away 

 

Six Characteristics of Great Storymaking

It's easy to call storytelling a cliché, but how exactly can one move beyond it when storytelling is entrenched as the epitome of what defines great marketing?

In previous Ad Age columns and during the Ad Age Digital Conference this April, storymaking has kept coming up as a way to describe the shift away from the broadcast-era mentality of storytelling to a new approach where marketers build on stories that people share with each other. Yet storymaking needs to be dissected so that anyone can identify it, learn from it, and engage in it themselves.

At the Ad Age conference, I moderated a panel with some stellar storymakers in their own right: Visa's chief brand and innovation marketing officer Chris Curtin; Burger King's CMO Eric Hirschhorn; Fullscreen's head of content Ashley Kaplan; and Adobe's CMO Ann Lewnes. Some examples and insights they shared further illustrate the art. Here are six characteristics of great storymaking.

1. Participatory: One clear sign of a story that's told versus one that's created with its audience is that the audience must be able to add to the story in some way. Beautiful stories can be told in 30-second spots, but it's impossible for a 30-second spot alone to be considered storymaking. Storymaking requires some effort from its audience.

2. Fan-inspired: Sometimes, marketers create new experiences that trigger storymaking, and there's a place for that, especially when launching a new product. Yet marketers are often getting into storymaking precisely because they're seeing what their fans are already talking about and sharing. Like any kind of socially-driven marketing, it's advantageous to have an existing base of fans to draw from. Adobe's Lewnes said, "Brand love leads to storymaking. Fans must be engaged and very attached to you; otherwise it is difficult to make stories."

3. Decentralized: If all the stories are designed to live in a central hub that the brand or publisher owns, then it takes away from what people can do on their own channels. True storymaking taps into any channel people want to use, online and offline. Sometimes this involves working with content creators and influencers to reach consumers. Fullscreen did this by promoting the movie "Ouija" with a stunt where it made teenage internet celebrity Kian Lawley disappear. His multi-platform efforts to tap his fans to bring him back led to more than 7 million Twitter mentions about the movie. Fullscreen's Kaplan said, "The creator is core to everything we do since they are the ones with the relationship with their audience."

4. Unpredictable: Because storymaking shifts the focus from the brand's story to people's stories about the brand, it opens the door for others to take the idea in new directions. When Visa Checkout sponsored Odell Beckham Jr.'s successful attempt at setting the Guinness World Record for one-handed catches, it inspired others to try to break the record. Iowa Hawkeyes wide receiver Tevaun Smith seemed to do so (though it wasn't certified by Guinness), generating a new wave of coverage for the stunt.

5. Reciprocal: If you want people to run with a brand's stories, there has to be something in it for them. For Visa Checkout and Fullscreen's "Ouija" campaign, the brands entertained and surprised people. Burger King listened to customers' pleas and brought back chicken fries to its menu, and fans in turn spread their love of the product through chicken fry emojis that the brand created. In Adobe's case, the marketer showcases its customers' work in its marketing for Photoshop [see the video above], Creative Cloud, and other products, as almost all artists love getting more exposure for their work. The value exchange is usually clear in every great example of storymaking.

6. Authentic: The clearest sign of storymaking gone awry is that all the stories created are positive. If marketers embrace their lack of control over where stories go, it means some stories won't be ones that any brand would tell. Yet as Hirschhorn noted, that's less risky than covering one's ears. He said, "I don't think negative sentiment towards a brand is a terrible thing. Operating in a world where people have a positive opinion or negative opinion is a much richer territory than telling people to feel one way."

The Power of Ideas and Collaboration, and a Brief History of Social Media Marketing

I recently had the honor of being interviewed by Bill Sobel for CMS Wire, where I shared some thoughts on ideas and collaboration, but also on how past experiences laid the groundwork for the present state of marketing. For instance, I shared a few thoughts on the evolution of search and social:

It was, at the time, a Herculean effort for marketers to shift from focusing on their reputation in Google to their actual reputation. Google was almost a distraction. It's as if marketers cared so much about sweeping the sidewalk in front of their store that they weren't paying attention to the people shopping there.

Another big change is that media companies didn't have any great ways for brands to reach people via social channels. Facebook in its fairly early days was tapping Microsoft to sell banner ads on its site. Meanwhile, MySpace let advertisers somehow make its site even uglier than it was before. It’s as if every ad was designed by Michael Bay. Marketers could also connect with bloggers, but even the word "blog" sounded like a noise people make once they realized they got food poisoning. Marketers weren’t in a rush to change tactics.

Read the full interview and let me know what you think. 

A Story about the End of Storytelling: The Short Story

It's been a big month of storytelling about the end of storytelling. I previously shared my presentation about the end of storytelling (complete with dozens of illustrations), and a related version then ran in Ad Age. The Ad Age story's a bit different, with a focus on how Coca-Cola's Share a Coke campaign with the cans with names on them exemplifies what marketing should be like in the post-storytelling era.

Let me know what you think. I will probably have some new stories to share that don't keep beating this drum, but there should be more chapters to come.

The Beginning of the End of Storytelling

Once upon a time, an industry became obsessed with storytelling. Everywhere these industry people went, they said storytelling was the most important thing they all had to do. Then a mean dragon of a columnist said storytelling was evil, and the industry people slew him so they could go back to enjoying their jobs. The end.

Or consider a different version of this story.

Once upon a time, an industry became obsessed with storytelling. But it gradually came around to the idea that no one listening to those stories could remember anything about them, so the industry people found a more meaningful way to connect with their audiences. And they all lived happily ever after. The end.

These stories are mutually exclusive. One will be fiction and the other nonfiction. In this unofficial edition of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" series, which path do you want to take? That path can have profound consequences for all of our jobs.

How many conferences have you been to about storytelling? How many articles have you read on how marketers can tell better stories? Given the obsession we have with storytelling, it seems like few people appreciate the dark side of it. I didn't appreciate the drawbacks myself until a conversation with my wife shifted my worldview. Here's the story of what happened.

One day, my wife and I were venting about a few insufferable people we know. They didn't seem to take an interest in us or anyone but themselves. Exasperated, my wife lamented, "All they do is tell stories!"

It was one of those lines I'll never forget. Given that our industry is all about storytelling, I'm used to storytellers being the heroes. Yet here she was revealing the negative aspect of the craft. Stories are often used as crutches that cast light on some trait or moment, rather than opening up a path to understand people more deeply. It's the story that gets in the way of the relationship. Tell the story with its beginning, middle and end, and your work is done.

To make matters worse, do you think people really get brands' stories? Think of a brand you love: Apple, Tide, Gucci, Hyundai, or any brand that you identify with. Do you know what its story is? I just paid way too much money to get the new iPhone, but I can't tell you Apple's story.

 

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I asked my wife about this, too. Cara loves Diet Coke, so I asked her, "What's Coke's story?" The next thing I knew, I was living in a real-world version of the "carousel" moment from "Mad Men." She started telling me about when Coke came out with cans with red tabs, and all her friends used to collect them. And then she told me about the games she played with her friends in sleepaway camp, where they'd break off tabs from Coke cans as a way to reveal which boys they liked. Thanks to this brand, I was learning more about the person in my life I have been the closest to for nearly a decade.

Interestingly, Coca-Cola is currently running one of the most radical campaigns that pushes back against storytelling and addresses the future of marketing. The "Share a Coke" campaign with names and relationship descriptors on cans and bottle labels empowers people to create their own stories. I see these moments happen all the time with colleagues and friends, where the brand is the catalyst for the stories they are making about themselves.

One small but striking moment I witnessed was when my teammate Kate wound up with a bottle labeled "Adam," and she saved the bottle for my colleague Adam, who was all too happy to have it. Before the campaign, they wouldn't have even valued the empty bottle for the recycling refund. Instead, what would have been a piece of trash wound up strengthening their relationship in some small way. And that story of Kate saving the empty bottle for Adam is a story all three of us remember. Perhaps you will remember it, too.

The future of storytelling isn't about telling anyone anything. It's about storymaking, where the brand facilitates and taps into the stories people are creating and sharing with each other. Storytelling is the epitome of the old one-way, broadcast mindset that so many of us in marketing are trying to leave behind. Storymaking, by contrast, is far more fulfilling, and exactly what will matter to the people all of our brands are trying to reach.

 

A Story about the End of Storytelling: The Full Story

At HubSpot's Inbound 2014 conference this week, I had the honor of giving one of their Bold Talks, which meant 12 minutes to talk about anything I wanted, as long as it wasn't a typical presentation about my day job.

I used the time to pick apart a word I find so overused: "storytelling." You can see the presentation below in its entirety (complete with dozens of illustrations), and I'll share more soon. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

 

A Story about the End of Storytelling from David Berkowitz

Everyone Contributes

When I joined MRY last year, one of the selling points of the CMO role was that Matt Britton said I'd be a mentor here to hundreds of potential thought leaders.

Around the time I joined, MRY was planning to start its blog, and there was the idea that everyone should ultimately contribute to it. I liked it in theory, but I know blogging's not for everyone. Heck, I can still improve at it quite a bit, and I've been blogging for ten years already.

Instead, I liked the idea that everyone contributes to their brand in their own way. Design a logo. Work on the website or a mobile app. Set up for our events we host. Speak at an event. 

As part of a report for an all-agency event we just held, my team put together a reel that shows a small taste of how scores of people have contributed in their own way. It's hard to describe how fulfilling this is - fostering the kind of environment where people are so proud of the extra time and effort they put in to take part in something above and beyond their day to day roles. 

Here's what it all looks like:

 

 

 

 

First Week Lessons from a First-Time CMO

As you might guess if you've been reading this blog for a bit, this isn't my first week as a chief marketing officer. Yet the start of the new year feels like a fine time to return to some unfinished business.

Last summer, a week into starting my new job as CMO of agency MRY, I penned a byline about lessons from a first-time CMO based on a single week's experience. Amidst other columns I was working on getting out then, other deadlines, and the Advice for a New CMO roundup, I didn't get around to publishing it. Here, for the first time, you can read the column in full. It's unedited from the initial draft, so the rawness is in place; perhaps I'll soon get to adding more thoughts about lessons learned since this was published.

By all means, your own experience would be most welcome in the comments, social channels, email, or any other forum you see fit.

First Week Lessons from a First-Time CMO
By David Berkowitz
Chief Marketing Officer, MRY

At the end of June, I joined agency MRY as its first chief marketing officer, a role I’m now holding for the first time. For those taking on new marketing leadership roles and embarking on other transitions, I kept track of the experience during that first tumultuous week on the job. Here’s what I learned so far:

Consider everyone a potential ally. Some of those I started to collaborate with in the first week included the heads of human resources, strategy, innovation, business development, and certain account teams. Granted, the very first person I met was the office barista – another person who can make a big difference in one’s day.

One of the biggest wins is reach a clear understanding with the chief financial officer. Marketing, known as a cost center rather than a revenue driver, isn’t always a CFO’s top priority. I have the good fortune of working with a CFO who already believes in marketing. What’s more important is for a CFO to appreciate the need to be nimble, and even engage in real-time marketing. In return, the marketing team must be willing to keep their books balanced. By finding common ground, my meeting with the CFO proved to be one of the best hours, and perhaps most important, of my first week.

Your relationship with your marketing team will make or break most days on the job. Get to know them well. Support them. Show that you will go to bat for them.

A team is composed of individuals. Treat them as such, even if it’s a group where everyone may wind up stepping in to chip in with other’s jobs.

Share everything you can with your team. Earn trust.

Have a vision, or better yet, a “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” or BHAG as Jim Collins says. I had a small, fuzzy, ambitious but attainable goals going into the job. Then I started getting approached with some challenges on the first day that I wasn’t expecting. Addressing those to the extent necessary will require a BHAG. The night after my third day there, I wrote an outline for a BHAG. The next morning, it turned into a minimalist 60-slide deck. Before lunch, I shared it with my team to see if it made sense and get them on board. It is now something I hope to work on the rest of my time in this job, and maybe in many jobs to come. And I never could have thought of it in advance. It came entirely from listening.

Listen to anyone and everyone.

Listen actively. Find something to learn from every conversation. Write it down. Revisit it until you internalize it.

One great way to internalize what you learn is to share it with your team and others. It goes back to the saying that my eighth grade math teacher, Pat Kelly (of blessed memory), made all of her students memorize on the first day of class: “The more senses you bring into the learning process, the more lasting will be the learning.” Repeating what you learn engages more of your senses.

Every day, play small ball. Look for those quick wins. Find a way to say yes to someone and make something happen.

Say yes even when you’re in over your head. Not even 90 minutes into starting there, an opportunity arose to present at a major client’s event in Australia a few weeks later. That meant working harder to get the agency’s story straight, getting immersed in the agency’s work, understanding the client in depth, creating a presentation hitting on the organization’s key themes, and scheduling a trip about as far away as one can travel, all while trying to keep things moving forward with the countless projects and needs arising in the home office. Then again, it was a great way to make a statement as part of an organization determined to go to the ends of the Earth for its clients. Find a way to start with yes.

Prioritize. The first priority? Sit down with anyone and everyone internally who can meet with you. Beyond that, the CMO will have to partner with many others externally to get the most visibility possible for the organization. Many such potential partners will benefit far more once you have a better understanding of how your own organization works. Even if some are hungry to work with you right away, they’ll appreciate you trying to be effective rather than too fast.

Make every minute count. You only get one first week. Use it to define yourself. Set yourself up for success in what will, one hopes, be years contributing there.

Be proud of what you’ve done so far, however subtle or grand. Remember, you were brought in for a reason, and it means at least someone else wants you to succeed.

Smile. 

 

 

 

 

The Backlash to Real-Time Marketing is ON!

Image via Jon Thomas at Post Advertising

Is 2013 the year of real-time marketing (RTM)? Befitting such a buzzword, it had a few good months, but the backlash to it has been picking up steam.

Here's what MRY CEO Matt Britton had to say about it in Digiday:

“It’s herd mentality, and for a lot of brands, it’s really just embarrassing,” said Britton. “It’s actually hurting the field of social media marketing. You have brand marketers who have spent 50 years crafting their brand and now all of a sudden they are dumbing it down with clipart trying to replicate magic that happened once.”

In Ad Age, Mike Proulx of Hill Holliday compares RTM to a predatory weed:

Driven by the myopic goal of increasing engagement, many brands are unscrupulously on the hunt for likes, shares, followers and retweets without an overarching strategy based on core business objectives. This blind yearning for social currency is leading to incredibly irrelevant and unavailing branded content (a.k.a. advertising) that's preying on social media. Just because #Sharknado is trending, a royal baby is born, the "Breaking Bad" finale is on, or it's "Talk Like a Pirate Day," doesn't mean your brand has to flippantly post about it.

Even 360i exec Jared Belsky has been heard dismissing claims of Oreo's 'super' tweet being something that just magically appeared in seconds (via Ad Age):

Seem we can't talk about real-time without mentioning Oreo's Super Bowl tweet. But that was actually 3 yrs in the making- J Belsky 360i #awx

— Jade Mangahis (@jade_mangahis) September 24, 2013

And then at my OMMA Social panel about Vine and Instagram during Advertising Week, moderator Carree Syrek of Kinetic Social put a glass on the stage and said anyone who mentioned real-time marketing or Oreo had to put in a dollar fine. We somehow avoided the penalty.

Real-time marketing is not a bad word. Or a bad thing. Like any other kind of marketing, it needs to be used strategically. There's often value in it, and it's much, much bigger than community management. Real-time marketing is happening in search, display, online video, digital out of home, mobile marketing (in various guises), and even at times in traditional channels such as TV and radio. Harness it, not because it's a buzzword, but because it often is the best way to reach your target audience.