Twitter.

Facebook.

My blog.

Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Flixster, Flicker,Foursquare…..

You probably get the point, because almost everyone is making it — social media is confusing, time consuming and hyped.

But it’s not going to go away.

I was in Ireland a few weeks ago. My work was to invite innovation to the client’s social media space and help to build a strategy for the future. The foundation of what they needed was content marketing.

As I went through a series of facilitation meetings, it struck me that we need to start talking about engagement — and I mean real engagement. You see, as a marketer, I talk glibly about content marketing’s place in the social environment of this generation’s technology. But it strikes me that most of us are still caught in the old paradigm — we’re just using it in digital formats.

What I mean is the advertising “push” factor.

My main goal is to get my message to you in measurable formats, ultimately selling my product/service. But social ads an interesting twist — the pull factor.

Think about the pioneers who used a crosscut saw to clear the woods to build their house. The crosscut saw requires four hands attached to two bodies. The most effective cutting technique is an even weighted system between two people. Requiring less actual muscle and more rhythm.

That’s what social media is — except the hands are changing all the time.

The pull of social media is the same as the push. Your social media team needs to engage in conversations. And that’s the risk. In the days of print ads, the process of vetting eliminated error — sure, many still snuck through the barriers, but the chances of huge errors are largely eliminated.

Not so with social — as we’ve seen in the past few weeks where there were a few stunning errors in judgement.

This makes your job harder, because you not only need to shout out to your audience — you actually need to start and maintain a conversation. That means you have to be there. It’s not just about writing 15 twitter messages and posting them at regular intervals. It’s about engaging with others in Twitter — commenting on relevant posts and adding relevant content. It’s about blogging and commenting on other people’s blogs. It’s about answering messages to your own posts, starting a real-time conversation.

And that’s where the push and pull causes tension.

Who is going to do it?

Who is going to have the content capacity to provide the flow of information?

What is their personality and their tone?

What are the metrics you are going to use to track for effectiveness?

The metrics we have used in the past are not reliable. This is not a direct response mechanism. Because followers have commented on your post doesn’t mean they are going to buy your product, engage you as a service provider or donate to your cause. You still have to nudge them from a listener to an engaged participant to a customer, client or donor.

I am currently working on a white paper with a team from the Canadian Marketing Association — we are asking a few top flight organizations these questions. I am looking forward to their answers.

It’s a tremendous time for marketers…

“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”

― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Better never means better for everyone… It always means worse, for some.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

Authors of dystopic novels — like Huxley, Orwell and Atwood (my favorites) — imagine beyond what we know to envision what will come. Echoes of distopia are becoming a reality. In the ’30’s, when Huxley’s book launched, Soma was a clever and imagined drug therapy to each the pain of growing old, today it is, literally, a drug to each the pain of aging muscles. Orwell imaged Big Brother watching every move we make — today we call it “Big Data”. Atwood imagined a world that had the opportunity to start over, a world that began with complete destruction. Today we continue to imagine the benefit of technology.

MIT just released their list of the top 10 break through technological ideas of 2013 www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/513696/deep-learning/ – as a marketing professional — and agency — we need to keep on the edge of things, because ideas are the very foundation of our work.

Royal Homes have just launched their first digital magazine…. you can find it in the iStore and the Play Store… just search for Royal Homes magazine. And it is made by Barefoot.

Royal Homes is a leader in the construction industry — first, for their innovative technology of building in a factory. Second for their focus on using a technology that has, historically, been considered cookie cutter and making it custom. Even though the house is built in a factor, each home is unique, built to the owner’s specifications.

Finally, they are leading the community in technology. Their web site is robust with information — long before marketers called it “content marketing” Royal Homes has built their product on providing customers with information. The information is not dry and formal mission statements and policies — it’s engaging videos, photos and home plans — content the customer wants.

Publishing the magazine app is a perfect match for Barefoot — we believe in the publishing world, but we’re convinced that the future is digital. We don’t believe for a moment that traditional print will be eliminated. There continues to be a great delight in turning paper pages… but digital presents so many more opportunities. Embedded videos make the user experience so much more engaging. Drawing on additional content in different ways makes digital formats a “make your own adventure.”

So go to your favourite app store and download Royal Homes Magazine, produced by Barefoot.

One cold, snowy January morning Ashton (my grandson) and I curled up on the couch and concentrated on killing as many bloons as possible. We worked together, adding defense towers to beat off those horrid bloons.

Then I got hooked.

After Ashton left, I started to work to beat the game. Now beating the game is nothing to sneeze at.  Each game has 5 levels…. from easy to apopalypse and deflation…. and there are 24 “scenes”, that’s 100 levels to beat. That takes significant investment in time and energy.

But  I did learn some valuable lessons from my foray into Bloons TD5. I learned, that to win one has to do more than add defense towers willy nilly. And more defense towers aren’t necessarily better. Taking the time to develop your banana farm, increasing your overall revenue, changes the game. When you invest in specific towers, upgrading them to their full upgrade potential, you get free special agents that can really help you out in a pinch.

Ashton and I, intuitively, want to protect the exits — making sure the bloons don’t escape. The number of escapes are limited — so we need to take care we make sure we pop them all before they get to the exits. So when things start to go south, our immediate response is to clog the exits with spikes — saving the day.

But, when I started to explore the game, I learned some really meaningful lessons. And each of those lessons teaches me a little about myself — and marketing.

1. Invest in the long term.

Building that banana farm requires an investment mindset. It means that I have to take some risks in the first few rounds — risks that may let a few bloons seep out of the maze. But that investment will give me a lot of power when the bloons start to come fast and furious. In business, we often want to take the easiest and least expensive route. But before we latch onto that strategy, we need to weigh the cost.  I have clients ask me all the time what is the fastest way to acquire new customers, clients or donors. I have to tell you, the best way is to strategically invest in building the banana farm. There is no quick fix for long term engagement. It is hard work. It is strategic. And it leads to a win.

2. Don’t be fooled. Some Towers are better than others.

Choosing the right defense Towers will change your game. Each maze has unique patterns and schematics that change the defense needed. Understanding the pros and cons of each Tower is critical in beating the game. Marketing is no different. Choosing the right tactics for your campaign is critical. Sometimes the dart monkey is perfect — other times the ninja monkey will be a better bet. The monkey apprentice does pretty cool things, but you might just need the mortar tower. When you figure out your campaign, you need to outline all the tactics — then choose the most effective. Simply implementing a tactic is not a guarantee win. Smart marketers know their tactics — and choose wisely.

3.  Take risks

My tendency, especially when I am watching too closely, is to resist risks. After all, each bloon that escapes contributes to my demise. But there are times when letting one or two squeeze through so you can increase your defense team helps you win. Also, taking the risk to test a new defense Tower teaches me better methods of winning. Taking that risk in one maze, gives me the power to defeat another — if I don’t take any risks, but just play the game the same way all the time, I don’t open new doors. Marketing is the same. While there may be a cost to the risk, there are always benefits. Understanding the risk, doing it purposely and collecting the data on performance leads to increase knowledge — and extremely valuable tool.

4. Take strategic risks

That doesn’t mean that I will take risks foolishly (if I want to win). I know the power of the monkey apprentice. I know that I have to employ them early in the game to hit cameo bloons. Because I understand the role and the power of each tower, I am able to take strategic risks. You will not learn if you don’t take risks. But you will be more effective if, when you take the risk, you employ the learnings of other experiences. Be prepared to fail — in my experience, campaigns that struggle teach us more. Also be prepared to win….

5. Know when to take action

The closer I watch the game, the more likely I am to make nonstrategic, gut responses. But when I watch TV, catching a bit of the action while my defense team struts its stuff, I find I make smarter, more decisive decisions. I also have more cash to make those decisions, because I’m not micromanaging. When I watch the game, I am more likely to start new things, build more Towers, not using my increased cash flow to build stronger, more powerful defense structures. I think that’s a common business and marketing error. Doing little things — just to keep the cash flowing — can deter long term growth. It’s like software companies that launch their software before they remove all the bugs. On the other hand, there are times in the game when quick action will save the play. So the answer is more complex — while we need to invest in long term growth — we also need to be prepared to act on opportunities quickly.

I confess, this little app has amused me far more than it should — after all, I’m not 8 any more. But I think the game has also taught me a bit about myself. I am tempted to act before I should — it’s human to want to protect one’s bloons. I also want to save time and money — who doesn’t — but sometimes that makes me lose the game.

Finally, most of all, I want to take risks, to learn from my mistakes and to respond in an agile manner when needed — that’s what wins the game.

And if I would crunch everything I learned about me in one line?  I really want to win.

I just spent a week going across Canada to do donor focus groups for a client. The journey jolted me back to the basics of communications.

1. Don’t confuse your icon with your brand.

Trite? I don’t think so. As a crowd breaker, we showed each donor group a set of icons. Each icon had been stripped out of their name and stood on its own. I tested my client first… they identified less than 20% of the icons. Donors identified less than 10%. In fact, the client’s own logo was on the paper in front of them. Still, less than 10% of the donors in the groups were able to identify it.

That would make sense, if I had used obscure charities. But when I went through the icons with the names of the organizations, the organizations were easily recognized by most of the donors. They could tell me about the organization, but they couldn’t identify the logo. While we went through the list, in each group at least 50% of them told me they sponsored a child through World Vision and they were looking for that specific logo. Less than 10% actually could identify the World Vision logo without assistance.

I tested my own staff… they were able to identify at least 80%. (I breathed a sigh of relief.)

2. Don’t expect donors to grow with you.

I know, it seems harsh. Especially because we put a lot of time into our communications. In this case, the organization had expanded its focus about 15 years ago. That was a surprise to most of the donors. Interestingly, one of them told us how excited he was about the Christmas Gift Catalog. In fact, he asked his family and friends to use it when giving him a Christmas gift. The catalog clearly describes the breadth of the work. He was still surprised when we explained that the focus had been expanded.

The organization also offers a monthly program. Clearly, few people who attended the focus groups understood the unique details of the program. Even those who were members of the program.

It made me realize that we need to keep our programs really, really simple.

3. The donor wants to make a difference

If you work in a complex business or a charity that addresses complex human need, you understand that describing your product is often difficult.

I just bought a new lap top (Kevin was embarrassed to have me go out with my old lap top… it worked, but it was slow and lacked the sophisticated design of new products!). It’s awesome…. A touch screen, it straddles the line between the ease of the tablet and the full performance of a desk top — exactly what I needed. But if you tried to tell me all the details of how it is made and the performance enhancers… I would tune out.

I don’t want to know the technical details. I want to know that when I swipe my finger across the screen my document appears (and it does!!!).

Think of that when you are describing your program. In each group, the donors were clear. They wanted to impact change. They wanted the money they gave do something. They understood that there were admin costs. They were even OK about giving a part of their money to admin costs. But they wanted to see that the money they gave touched someone’s life. They didn’t want fancy program names or elaborate philosophical rationalizations. They wanted to know that a little girl who was hungry received food. Or a young man whose legs were twisted by polio was given training to do a job so he could by food for his family.

Let me end with one story…. Ed forgive me….

There was a young man in Zimbabwe who faced many challenges. For his entire life, he was different. He had Cerebral Palsy. Even though he could do most daily chores, his simple mind and twisted body set him apart. He lived in a small hut beside his mother. Even though he was in his mid thirties, he depended on his mother for everything: clothes, food and shelter. Then he attended a training school.

For the first time he had an opportunity to earn his own income. He received two goats from a Canadian supported organization. Those goats were his to care for and to use to generate his own income. For the first time in his life he had something that was his very own… a job he could do and thrive at.

“What are you going to do with the money you earn,” he was asked.

Without hesitating, he answered: “I’m going to buy a purple shirt.”

“A purple shirt?”

“Yes,” he explained. ” I have have always wanted a purple shirt. But my mother buys my clothes and she doesn’t like purple shirts. But now, I have my own money. I can buy a purple shirt!”

He turned to walk to his hut, clapping and laughing…. dreaming about his new purple shirt.

Your donors want to give someone a dream. They want to give a young man who has nothing of his own the chance to dream about a buying a purple shirt.

Straight from Wikipedia:

Content marketing is an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation and sharing of content in order to attract, acquire and engage clearly defined and understood current and potential consumer bases with the objective of driving profitable customer action. Content Marketing’s basic premise is to “provide some valuable information or entertainment – “content” – that stops short of a direct sales pitch or call to action, but which seeks to positively influence a customer in some way.”^[1] This information can be presented in a variety of media, including text, video, Q&A’s, photos, etc.

OK… I think we used to call this marketing or advertising.

Naming or, in this case, renaming, is a great way to introduce the old as something new and create a buzz.

But I have to tell you, this stuff always trips me up. Seriously. How can creating and sharing content with our clients, customers or donors in a way that engages them be new? Or earth shaking enough to focus a conference on it?

But let’s step back and think about this.

The Globe and Mail featured several top web marketers who were drawing increased numbers to their sites because they shared information that the customer found useful. http://www.cityandbaby.com is a great example. It gives tons of advice to pregnant moms. J. Crew has Erica who will give you personal style advice.

There are hundreds of examples — I know you have your favourites.

The key  is to be content driven NOT marketing driven. While that may seem like a fine line, I think it goes right back to the very basics of marketing. You see, content marketing is designed to be customer/donor centric. With the amazing analytics available, you can actually know if the audience wants that information or not. Watching the pathways on your web site are critical. You can bet your marketing budget that Amazon spends a lot of resources on studying those pathways.

But I want to get back to sharing engaging content.

Let’s start with the word “sharing.”

The word implies relationship. Unless there is somebody there, I have nothing to share. It’s impossible to share with myself. But, and I see this all the time, companies and organizations, continuously try to do it.

Forgive me for repeating myself, but when we talk to our customers or donors, we need to stand in their shoes and talk to them, not at them, not over them, not under them. Catching people’s attention has to, well, catch their attention.

That is often known as “engage.”

We use it in every sentence: engaging copy, engaging our customers, engaging user interface.

But do we actually know what it means. Engage is when I turn my lights off at 3 in the morning because the novel I’ve been reading is so engaging I can’t put it down. Not engaged is when my husband gently tugs my tablet from under my chin because I’m drooling onto the blank screen where the novel fell asleep with me.

Big question: does our content engage our audience to the point where it distracts them enough to listen?

The best example of talking to oneself is the first launch of the Blackberry Playbook. (You may not remember the product, although one can buy it at a very low price right now. It’s RIM’s version of a tablet.) Frankly, the tablet is awesome. It’s small, easy to use and is controlled by easy swipe motions. I love it. (Although, sigh, I have replaced with the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, I can talk about that some other time).

The name: PLAYBOOK is perfect for their identified market share. Every successful business leader has a visionary, innovative Playbook close at hand. Unfortunately, RIM’s marketing agency identified the fact that it had Flash. Yeah, that caught my attention. While a kind of classic RIM marketing miss…. it’s just so not content savvy.

Each of us, in our businesses, has riveting content to share. We have content that people want to know. But until we understand the words “share” and “engage” we will miss the mark. You see, even if the specs of our products and services are a little boring, it’s the marketing team’s job to make it sharable and engaging.

Steve Jobs was an intuitive. He studied his audience and, without judging, attributed response from them. When you remove that intuitive mind from your marketing team, you lose a lot of power. Understanding people is the heart of our work. I fear that defining tactics is our focus, not that intuitive study of people. Even though we can build elaborate algorithms predicting human behaviour, humans continue to surprise us.

A great marketing team understands: share and engage….

That’s why we get paid the big bucks!

Raspberry Crisp……

• Two-thirds of respondents said the divide between marketing and sales is a result of the teams being driven by different targets and objectives. Nearly two-thirds felt that political conflict between senior managers was a cause of disconnect between the teams. Poor communication between departments, a failure to value each other’s contribution to the business, and lack of understanding of each other’s roles were also highlighted as issues by more than half of respondents.
• 57% of respondents said lack of a cohesive strategy was a source of problems with their organization’s go-to-market approach. Nearly one-third felt that marketing activities were too often driven by short-term goals and admitted that around a third of planned marketing activity doesn’t ever get implemented.

For many of you in the thick of marketing or sales, this is a no brainer — you experience it every day. For fundraisers, it may not be as apparent, but it lurks in the divide between fundraising and communications.

What puzzles me is each team’s blindness to the reality: you are speaking to the same people. When your marketing and sales (fundraising and communication) are at odds, you lose the most powerful growth mechanism you have: brand-direct.

So let’s talk about brand-direct.

For generations, marketers have carefully separated brand development (marketing… sorry, few non-profits focus on brand… to their detriment) and sales. Building the brand (communication) was seen as an ethereal activity — high creative genius but little practical application where the rubber hits the road. While sales (fundraising) was darned hard work and required flyers, faxes, unlimited text or twitter. The messages often change with the sales person (fundraiser) — because they can’t believe the marketing team came up with that lame campaign.

So the battle ensues.

Companies and organizations that are able to focus their message — making sure their brand/marketing campaigns have direct response urgency, understand their unique selling proposition and build consistency in all interactions with their customers (donors).

In the end brand-direct wins the game.

Because it focuses on the end user — the customer, client or donor. Brand-direct marketers step over their own preferences to understand the unique preferences of their customer. Brand-direct sales teams (fundraisers) trust their marketing team and build on the campaign to get their sales numbers.

So I guess the question really is: are you playing to win the game or to advance your own teams political agenda?

Steve Jobs said: “It isn’t the consumers’ job to know what they want.”

In the past month there has been a flurry of writing on the value of traditional consumer or donor research… or lack of value. It all makes perfect sense… when asked, people tell you what they think they would do. But much of our lives lie in unconscious process. New research in neurological activity shows unexpected patterns when consumers look at products. Choosing what to buy isn’t always logical.

Einstein said: “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” While Google continues to play with algorithms, the human mind continues to create and discover beyond its science.

Currently, in the US, only 2 out of every 10 products launched succeeds. When we ask customers what they want, they speak from their own knowledge, they rarely imagine beyond what they already know. Inventors are  wacky people who imagine nutty things. They are poets of change, discovering the new and unimagined.

Marketers — you and I — are artists. We use words and images to take the invention (the product) and present it to the world. Often the inventor, the person who has imagined the product, forgets the user and becomes enamored with the technology, style or creation. The wise inventor relies on the marketer to entice the audience to consume their product.

In the nonprofit world, Penelope Burke has spend many hours and many dollars on interviewing, researching and gathering donor perspective. As she releases her insights, be careful. This is what donor say they are going to do. Make sure you test. Donors will tell you that they do not respond to mail — but our results show that mail continues to life overall results. Organizations which have depended on mail should continue to mail. Two of our clients deliberately reduced their mail. In one case, within a four year period, half of their donor base was lost. In the other case, the client wisely stopped they no mail strategy and went back to mail, but continue to struggle to regain the momentum they lost.

That doesn’t mean that you should depend on the mail. Test new things, get to know the people you talk to regularly. Use your instinct to understand change. Continue the things that work while investing in new tactics.

Depending on consumer or donor incites inhibits success. Testing in ways that allow the consumer/donor to make unconscious decisions is critical in order to truly understand  their responses.

Who knew that furry, ugly, unflattering, UGGS would be an amazing success? Who knew that Old Spice could actually revive its product with a few beautiful man ads? Who knew parents would flock to he stores buy a Furby?

Marketing success is a bit of guts, a bit of knowledge and a lot of research. There are unlimited lists of the core ingredients of great marketing — but all comes done to knowing people, knowing things and knowing data.

I wish you the best in the New Year as you study your audience, looking for insights that help you know them better.

Last week Fast Company released data on the cost of brand for various high profile companies — you can read the article here….http://www.fastcodesign.com/1670972/infographic-the-cost-of-a-famous-logo-from-0-to-211-million#1

But let me say that I’m disappointed that one of the most read business magazines would mess up the idea of brand so badly.

The article lists the cost attributed to the development of company’s logo. It’s a fascinating read — you should read it.

But my beef is with the interchange of verbage between “logo” and “brand.”

I will just spit this out… a logo does not equal a brand.

Brand is the profound centre of a company. Brand is what distinguishes it from their competition. Let’s be honest. The Gap, Old Navy and Penningtons all sell t-shirts and jeans. But I’m pretty sure you have a clear idea of the personality of each of these clothing retailers.

Brand is not the differentiation of logo or of product. It is a poignant characteristic that defines the overall customer experience. It is the values and the nature of the company.

In the next decade, with the rise of mobile and digital environments, brand is becoming even more critical. Brand helps customers, clients and supporters find you in the confusion of billions and trillions of mega bytes of data. Brand wiggles its way to the top of the pack.

Investment into brand requires three critical pathways:

1. Understanding your audience

No, your product is not appropriate for EVERYONE in the world. There is a select group of people that are crazy about your product. Talk to them. Visit them. Get to know everything about them. Talk directly to them while the rest of the world listens in (because they will listen )

2. Leave the ivory tower

Resist the temptation to define your product from your own vantage point. Our friends  at RIM had no desire to use a touch screen…. and the logic of their thinking was that if they didn’t want to use it no one would… well, we know how that story ended.

I just received an email from a friend who is incensed at the lack of copy writing skill of the writer of the Brad Pitt ad for Chanel. She wanted me to say — “yeah, I’d never write that….” but, fact is, I would if I was talking to women who would pay $100 for under 2 ounces of fragrance. But you see, that’s not even Chanel’s audience. Their audience is 50+ women who think a fragrance will get them time with a Brad clone.

3. Listen

You won’t know your audience unless you get out there and engage with them. More than that, you won’t understand your audience until you have reliable tests and research that helps you understand the precise audience you are talking to. Resist the temptation of looking in the mirror — that is not your audience. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard a client say that “I would never buy that.” OK…. but maybe you aren’t the audience.

I love advertising for motorcycles. The audience is a unique group of people who want to wear a paisley head scarf and drink coffee (?) out of a mug with orange flames. It’s so not me. And frankly, if I was thinking about me, I wouldn’t really develop that…. but you see, it’s not about me.

I  am barely resisting a brand lecture — but give me a call and I will pour out my wisdom over a cup of coffee.