PJA Blog: The Complex Brand

I was in New York recently listening to some focus groups on enterprise security. The people on the other side of the glass oversaw the safety of tens or hundreds of thousands of employees. They were smart and articulate (and God bless them, they also liked our creative). When we came to the channel survey portion of each group, it was striking how many subjects enthusiastically supported the idea of a one-minute video or even a one-minute podcast as a call to action.

“Sure,” one of the more cranky executives said, “I’d give a minute of my time to hear more.” (more…)

This intriguing question comes via a media colleague, who found it in a Columbia Business School ad.

Clearly, we will be building mass brands and niche brands in the future, but what sort, with what tools and with what kind of partners?

I thought Kevin Maney’s perspective on this question was pretty interesting in his new Portfolio piece, “Free for All.”

When you look at the tectonic shifts in the music industry that have taken place since 1999, those days of paying $9.99 for a new B-52s album and $28 for a ticket to see them live seem like 200 years ago. For example:

* Radiohead lets the user choose the price for In Rainbows

* Nine Inch Nails releases its latest album only to its Web site (though, like Radiohead, you could pay a huge premium for a deluxe edition, both of which have sold out)

* Timbaland has cut an exclusive music deal with Verizon Wireless

* 99% of all downloaded music in China is illegal, and 85% of all CDs sold are pirated

* Concert revenue is surging ($3.9 billion in 2007), CD sales are cratering. If you’ve purchased a concert ticket lately, you know that all too well.

So what may be coming?

* All musical content becomes free, with a mass brand paying seven figures to give the CD away free with its identity and messaging associated with it. (Or to quote Maney, “Any day now, I expect to find a flash drive with a Radiohead song on it inside a specially marked box of Cap’n Crunch.”)

* Groups make money only from sponsorship and touring, using their music as the content play. (Since when did anyone ever pay for a music video, or a CIO for a white paper?)

* Lots more experimentation, “like a teenager’s goth phase.” To this list add Elvis Costello’s Sundance Channel talk show, U2’s 3D movie, and any number of endorsement deals, commercials, and merchandising plays assembled from industry fragments as the music labels begin to crash and burn.
In the end, it’s about giving away the perfect format of the artist’s brand for free (why not? It can be produced and sold for virtually nothing) but exacting a premium for the non-reproducible, thrilling, experience of the artist’s brand.

Does anything here apply to brand building in our world?

If the future of brands is about stepping beyond the perfect print and TV ad proscenium into the human experiential, I’d say just about everything.

I was reading an interview this week with the incoming president of RISD, a 41-year-old named John Maeda who has never run an institution of higher learning. When he was asked why he decided to leave MIT Media Lab, he said:

“I’d been at MIT for quite a while, but I was a bit tired of technology. I think all of us are. We have so much of it, more of it every day, and we’re not sure why we’re buying so much of it. It’s kind of like a summer movie – except it lasts too long.”

The day after I read this I lost my cell phone (”Lucky you,” quipped a colleague) and decided I wanted to downgrade from a smart phone to something a little less brilliant: a Motorola Razr is what I was hankering after. I expected this swap to be a simple process since I have cell phone insurance, and even to be complimented, at least in a backhanded way, for choosing simplicity.

The mobile phone insurance rep was having none of it. “I’m sorry, sir. You’re not allowed to downgrade. We can only replace the phone that you lost.” He was immediately on to his next activity screen with me, but the whole thing set me to wondering: At what point are we using too much technology in our lives? Will we even know when we’ve passed the overload point?

The Economist had a wonderful special report recently on the rise of technology nomads (if you’re reading this, it’s a fair bet you are one) and how cell phone technology has strengthened our ’strong bonds’ with immediate family but further deteriorated our ‘weak bonds’, the ones we have with strangers, acquaintances, contractors, neighbors and so on. If we’re always attached to a piece of technology, are we really reachable? Are we really living in the moment?

What’s the link to PJA? On a weekly basis we see plenty of marketing programs that use a scattershot approach to technology. One prospect recently showed us a series of YouTube videos he’d posted about his company. Vaguely interesting, but they weren’t attached or tied into anything, and therefore had few hits and almost no impact.

On the other end of the spectrum, I continue to see many case studies on the continuing power of opt-in email marketing. Fast Company recently highlighted the enormous boost Barneys New York has realized with Sheldon Gilbert’s startup Proclivity. The big secret: use predictive algorithms to tune an email program, and realize 10-fold response rate increases.

I wonder if my wireless carrier and their insurance company could have seen the sales opportunity within my service request: give me a simple piece of technology that suits my needs, and I’m likely to use it more.

Maybe next contract.

Burt Helm has an interesting piece in the new BusinessWeek about how many advertisers are now offering free services to lure people into looking at, interacting with, or forwarding on their brand information. Anyone who has used Free411 rather than spending $1.50 to get a simple number is a consumer of these new ‘useful’ ads. A few cool examples:

* Being able to text live to a sports event screen, a la wiffiti

* Being able to send ‘goodbye’ photos from behind security to a digital billboard in an airport’s departures area (the idea of distance is demolished a little more every day, it seems)

* Being able to contact an avatar on your mobile device to get you a cab or a designated driver because you’ve had a few too many.

The more you contribute as part of your sign-up, the more information the company takes away. The longer you look at the screen, the longer your brand impression. Etc.

In the BtoB world, we’ve clearly got deep roots in providing valuable content in exchange for a prospect’s attention. In one case, years ago, we convinced HP to postpone another glossy brochure and go with a buyer’s guide for the technology category that was lightly sponsored by the brand. It was more work-intensive to put together an editorial board of doctors and nurses, but the result was so popular it was reprinted twice and placed on a national regulatory recommended reading list for healthcare information systems.

The same rules apply online, of course: give someone content they couldn’t find elsewhere or that makes them more competitive and they will be more loyal to your brand. Amending that list for the Web 2.0 world is in order, too. You can also connect with:

* content that allows people to connect with their peers and exchange that information

* content that allows people to test their skills in real time

* content that allows for co-creation or near real-time collaboration with a brand

The list could probably go on forever. The point we like to make is, don’t just interrupt someone. Inform them. Educate them. Inspire them. That’s got to be a part of the brand territory now.

I had some interesting conversations today about marketing and the future evolution of brands, a few hours’ worth with one of my favorite clients, the rest with my favorite colleague and someone I was meeting for the first time. It has always been interesting to me how spending time with truly creative thinkers ups my game as a thinker. As the old Yiddish saying goes, “When you make a friend, take a step up.”

What I was pondering today was this: most Web sites in BtoB are silent films. There’s a sort of backdrop quality to them, a lifelessness, and almost no meaningful sound or vision. They are like the 2D sets in silent movies and just about as authentic in feeling. They don’t really talk to or interact with you, so until the next little injection of content, the intertitle card with the language on it, you really have to guess what the characters are saying, what the narrative arc is, and what the key dialogue is. The expressions are somewhat exaggerated or off (bad stock photography is the wooden silent actor of the 21st century). You’re held at a remove from it all because it’s…silent.

Where Web sites want to move is into the Talkie era: the era of full stereo sound synchronized to movement, the era of storytelling that really reaches out and involves the user, the state of a medium starting to realize its full potential. In film that era began in 1927 or so, with The Jazz Singer. There’s only about two minutes of synchronized talking and acting in the film, but movies could never go back afterward.

It might make sense to look at your Web site the same way. Is it really engaging your audiences, or is it mute? Does it deliver a story, or just a series of title cards? Is it experiential, or just a 2D storefront with a few frills attached?

One of our major goals for 2008 is to bring BtoB companies into the era of the talkie Web presence. Once you’ve seen the engagement measures and longer visits to your little marketing theater, you really can’t go back again. And that’s a very good thing.