SharedBook: On Demand

Age of Transparency

One of the few formal procedures in place for this blog is that we have a rotating schedule to ensure that at least one member of our management team posts here daily. We had a late in the day change up today, and it seems like a good opportunity to cover a timely topic. Everywhere I turn these days, it seems like there’s another mention of the importance of being open, honest and transparent when communicating with your customers. In fact, I just did a quick Google search and pulled up an article that was posted today by Matthew Creamer of Advertising Age. After reading this, I can honestly (in keeping with the theme) state that I am thrilled to be working for a young company where the greatest challenge is not in the what (thankfully, no restrictive layers of messaging) but in the how to best communicate those messages. Which is a challenge that I believe all companies face in this time of authentic communication.

What Is It About Ad Agencies?

...and marketing firms that seemingly makes them the most resistant to change and new ideas? Isn't this the antithesis to why the clients have hired them in the first place? I experienced this first in the new media world when brands just started discovering online, but now I am with a company that is truly trying to change paradigms in how we think about media and consumer engagement. We not only deliver the hot Web 2.0 topics like consumer generated media and word of mouth marketing to brands but it is funded by the consumer. Let me repeat that... FUNDED BY THE CONSUMER!

We like to talk directly with companies, but I really feel the agency world should be looking at ideas like this so I continue to try. Here's what happens. After dozens of reach out attempts to our friends at the agencies, cold, warm and hot, I finally have a meeting and the feedback is "hmmm… cool idea" .....................zzzz........grass growing.......birds chirping.  They have no idea what to do with it. Yes, there are exceptions but I've worked for a world class media company and I've worked at a start-up and the experience is the same.

I know what you are thinking: "Maybe your idea stinks?" But it doesn't. Trust me. Brands get it. You talk to people with a stake in generating revenue or creating real consumer engagement for their company and their eyes get wide when they hear.

I know the pressures of agencies and the slim margins they work on, etc., but I have to think they're not helping themselves by being as inaccessible and as task-oriented as they seem to be.

Are consumers smarter than ever?

Are consumers smarter than ever?  Depends on your definition.

If you think they make wiser choices because they’ve been trained by the marketplace and they simply know better, well, I’m not too sure.  It hardly explains why anybody at all buys a Chevy, and why there are twice as many search engine inquiries for “Hummer” than “Prius.”

But today’s consumer certainly has far greater access to information than ever before.  And far greater access to a larger selection of goods than ever before.  Plus, at the top of the consumer pyramid is the wired consumer, who seemingly has access to just about everything.  These consumers are using access to information to assist in making a vast array of decisions, from which kitchen contractor to hire, to what model automobile to purchase, to where to get pizza delivery.

By far the biggest change is the advent of user-generated content, and its use as critical decision-making data by consumers.  Recommendations, from Amazon to Zagat, have an increasing amount of influence over purchase decisions.  The influence of opinions, coming from everywhere in the blogosphere, is also having an impact.

Inasmuch as all this information has the potential to allow consumers to make better choices, there will always be the issue of sorting the credible from the uninformed, and the incorrect.  Just because someone posts on a blog that Kanine Krunchies are great doesn’t make it so.  (You do remember 101 Dalmatians, don’t you?)

Even NBC’s Brian Williams understands the online credibility issue.  Recently, while conceding the new order, he remarked in an NYU Journalism class, “All of my life, developing credentials to cover my field of work, and now I’m up against a guy named Vinny in an efficiency apartment in the Bronx who hasn’t left the efficiency apartment in two years."

Caveat Emptor.

How Branding Has Changed in Today’s Marketplace

It’s all a matter of attention.  Marketers used to expect it.  Routinely.  And consumers gave it, freely.  Back when the country gave its attention, in aggregate, to one of only three national television networks, marketers always had consumers’ attention.  And from that attention, great brands were built.  You know them: Tide. Coca-Cola. Wheaties. Sony.

With attention evermore scarce, how will the next generation of brands be built?  We think on the basis of delivery of True Experiential Value.  A brand’s TEV, the answer to the customer’s question, “What can you DO for me, really?” will determine its success or failure in the Internet Age, the age of transparency.

Today’s best brands deliver TEV by outperforming other alternatives, or by filling a previously unfilled consumer need.  Google: demonstrably better and more relevant search results.  Apple Mac: Easier, virus-free functionality.  Regent Seven Seas Cruises: A service experience like no other.  (Full Disclosure: Regent is a client of ours.  And their vacations are truly wonderful, believe me!)

To break through the attention barrier, a company must deliver TEV, which can then be spread through word-of-mouth, using online communication as well as offline.  This person-to-person brand building is a critical component in today’s marketplace because consumers are bombarded with so many messages (I see ads on taxis, on blogs, and even at home on my beloved TiVo Series 3!) that they tune out most of them, and rely even more than ever on the recommendations of friends and family.  And trust that the online community will help them sniff out the players from the fakers.

So is it really harder to build a lasting brand in today’s marketplace?  Everybody says so.  Perhaps. 

But maybe...maybe it’s easier. IF you can deliver. Because today, if you deliver TEV, or what we used to call “the goods,” the networked economy can bring to bear velocity of messaging which truly can create a tipping point to allow your brand to achieve visibility.  And then, your brand won’t be based on a jingle, or a slogan, which is why we don’t hear much from Pepsodent or Rambler anymore.