Marketing Renaissance: The Age of the Consumer

On Wednesday, June 2, 2009 I was on a panel at this year's Mediabistro Circus. The topic was Marketing Renaissance: The Age of the Consumer and here is the description of the topic:

Marketing Renaissance: The Age of the Consumer
Social Media. Search. Customer Engagement. Word of Mouth. Authenticity. These terms are critical drivers in a new era of marketing and advertising strategies. This group of digital marketing experts will discuss how customer behavior is evolving around technology, explore emerging trends and business models that will shape marketing, PR & advertising in years to come.

There were four of us on the panel. We were each given 10 - 15 minutes to speak about how our individual occupations intertwine with the topic.

First up was Doug Jaeger who works for the agency Taxi where he is the Innovation Director. Doug showed us the power of social media by exhibiting the inspirational Jumping in Art Museums.

Then Valeria Maltoni from ConversationAgent.com presented on the social media landscape as a whole. You can see her presentation and notes HERE.

Then Garrick Schmitt, VP Experience Planning at Razorfish gave a very entertaining presentation showing the power of social media as recently exhibited by Starbucks and through a recent Razorfish campaign celebrating Barbie's 50th birthday. You can see his presentation on Slideshare.

Finally, it was my turn. Here is my presentation...

The number one reason people buy something or try something is because someone they trust told them to.

That's Word-of-Mouth

A few years back a caveman was sitting out in the cold, freezing his ass off, and he rubbed a few sticks together. He started a fire.
He told another caveman who also started a fire. That cave man told another, and so on.


Word-of-Mouth

Fanscape is a Digital Word of Mouth Marketing Agency

We are hired by brands and by agencies on behalf of brands to create and foster conversations about their products online.

It is also known as Social Media Marketing because the Internet has become a very social place.

We used to write letters to each other, call each other on the phone, hang out at bars... But now we just do that all online.

We're friending each other on MySpace, uploading videos of ourselves on YouTube, Tweeting on Twitter, and re-connecting with people we haven't seen since 3rd grade on Facebook.

For a brand, it has become more complicated to reach people to tell them about their products.

Which is where we come in.

Now, there is one rule we've learned in our 11 years of business

People do not like to be interrupted.

Let me give you an analogy. On most Monday nights you will find me and my wife on our couch glued to our television set watching 24. Each week we watch Jack Bauer try to save the planet. He's beating people up, being beaten up, stopping bombs, you get the picture. We're enthralled. Action packed excitement. And at 12 minutes, bam! A commercial. There's Valerie Bertinelli telling me how she's lost 40 pounds thanks to Jenny Craig. I'm sitting there, with food all over me, sitting literally at the edge of my seat. I don't care about Valerie.

So what did I do? A couple of years ago I went out and purchased a Tivo. I've trained myself to now watch 24 delayed by a 1/2 hour or even a week. Basically whenever I want. And when the clock ticks on 24 and Valerie shows up, blip blip blip I skip right through the commercial.

That's what people have learned to do on the Internet. When we were getting to much Spam, we installed Spam filters. When pop up ads began to annoy us, we installed pop up blockers. We even tune out the ads that surround our favorite websites.

So once again, how does a brand reach the consumer when the consumer is tuning them out?

First, understand that social media is searchable. You can actually see what people are saying about you. And they are talking about you. Odds are somewhere, there is someone talking about your brand or product. So step back, take a moment, and...


You don't have to jump in and start marketing immediately. Just see what people are saying. And yes, there will be complaints. But a lot of people just have questions. They don't understand something. They need clarification. They need help.

Once you've observed for a period of time, then you can identify who is talking and who you should be marketing to.

At Fanscape, we take our time and we make lists of places we need to reach out to. And once we've made our lists then we stop.

We step back.

We imagine ourselves as the customer. We put ourselves in their shoes and we ask the question...

If we were being marketed to, what would we want? Why would it be ok to interrupt us? This is how we start EVERY campaign.

Let me give you a case study example of what I mean.

A few months back we did a campaign for GameStop, one of the largest video game retailers in the US. Each month GameStop does a promotion tied in with the release of a major game. We helped with a campaign for the latest version of the tremendously successful GuitarHero franchise.

It was a dream promotion. GameStop was giving away the opportunity for someone to win a chance to actually be in the next version of GuitarHero. Yes, a GuitarHero fan could find him/herself immortalized with a character of themself in the next game. All they had to do was upload themselves to the special promotion website and then the people with the most votes would win. There would be a winner every week for 8 weeks.

Now stop for a moment and think about that. This promotion addresses the two key issues I previously mentioned...

A) The audience is huge and definitive. Gamers. Specifically gamers who play GuitarHero and similar games such as RockBand. There are literally thousands of websites, social network pages, YouTube channels, and blogs dedicated to people's love of these games.

B) This answers the question: "Why do I care?" Isn't this the ultimate prize for a fan of GuitarHero? To be in the game!

So, we made our lists and we reached out to the influencers, the people who loved to broadcast their skills and their love of the game.

Which brings us to Freddie Wong...

Freddie is the definition of a GuitarHero guru. A few years ago he uploaded a video of himself hopping off a motorcycle, having his "roadie" strap on his "guitar" and shredding to the Rush classic, "YYZ."

That video has been watched over 6.5 Million times.

And it's both hysterical and amazing. I recommend you watch it.

Since then, Freddie has built up quite a following. He has over 10,000 people who subscribe to his YouTube channel. He has a a blog, a Twitter. He's a true influencer and considered one of the best, if not THE best GuitarHero player on the planet. He's even jammed alongside some of the greatest real guitar heroes like Joe Satriani.

We told Freddie about the promotion and what did Freddie do? He created a video. He asked his fans to vote. But Freddie went a step further. He told his fans, if they vote - and he placed a direct link on the video - then he would give away a $400 Peavy GuitarHero guitar that he had won himself.

Note: We didn't give anything to Freddie. All we did was tell him about the promotion. Freddie went the extra mile and created his own promotion, a thank you if you will, for his fan. Incidentally, that video he made has been viewed nearly 50,000 times.

And Freddie won the week. Hands down.

Turns out, over the course of the 8 weeks 65% of the votes to the promotion came as a result of people we reached out to.

Needless to say, the promotion was a tremendous success. The goal was to make people aware of the promotion and get them to the site. The RIGHT people! And we succeeded.

Keep in mind, we weren't the only thing going on. There was a lot of money tied up in this promotion and it was spent on advertising, activation, implementation, etc. We were a relatively small part. But we drove 65% of the activity.

That is the power of Digital Word of Mouth.

And we're just scratching the surface here. Social Media encompasses so many sites and avenues for reaching and interacting with people. Social bookmarking sites, social networks, blogs, wikis, information sharing sites, are just some of the outlets we use to create conversations with people on the web.

Now, the question that comes up most often when we're hired is measurement.

How do we measure success?

The GameStop example shows that success was determined by traffic to the promotion. But each campaign and each client is different. The object is to identify what is important to the client and that is what we establish as the goal and then we attempt to measure based on the achievement of that goal.

This graphic shows a snapshot of the various forms of measurement.

The list of measurements goes on and on. And what I tell each client is that we have to identify the Goal.

Once we know the goal, then we plan the strategy to achieve that goal. And our measurement is based on how we achieved that goal.

It is rarely that simple, but that is how we approach each campaign.

Because ultimately we want to move the customer. We want to engage them. To excite them.

And if we do it right, then they tell someone else.



You can see the whole thing here, but it doesn't really come through without the words, does it?

Media Bistro Circus June 2009

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