As a marketer myself, I have always found the concept of WOM somewhat vague and ambiguous. I know that many of my colleagues perceive WOM marketing as a random occasion that happens if you are lucky enough with your marketing actions such as an eccentric or a crazy viral ad clicked million times by viewers.  I was really looking forward to clarify some of these misconceptions and get some solid answers.  So, I asked Dave. You can listen to my whole interview with Dave at www.socalama.org/resources or read the discussion of the key points from that interview in the remaining of this post.

Dave summarized Word of Mouth Marketing as an act of identifying consumers who have an opinion and engaging them to communicate effectively with others. Word of mouth is one of the oldest and most natural human communication form that ever existed he added. What marketers are doing is basically trying to harness this very natural human behavior. According to Dave, WOM can not be created as commonly mistaken by many marketers, it already exists out there just waiting to be harnessed and amplified.

Many marketers are also having problems in distinguishing WOM from social media and viral marketing. I asked that question to Dave and his explanation was simple but smart. “True WOM is about engaging individuals for the long haul. Social Media is a great platform, mainly an outlet, to help developing effective WOM which can be truly engaging. And, there is really no such thing as viral marketing, but there are viral concepts/tools you can employ. Simply put, viral marketing is a 50-yard sprint, WOM is a 26-mile marathon.”

Dave emphasized that we should not be thinking WOM as an event. Rather, it is a process and it needs to be embedded in everything we do, so that it can enable the conveying of a brand’s story in multiple ways. Don’t think of the story as a linear narrative of the kind you would tell in a product launch, he asserted. Think of it as a 3-dimensional dialogue and don’t forget that foundations are not built over night, they take time and consistent effort he summed up.

Few days ago I participated in one of the premier AMA events of the year “American Marketing Association Leadership Summit ’10” which was held in Chicago, IL.  As the incoming President-Elect of SoCal AMA I was invited to this gathering by the AMA International Headquarters (IH),  and had the wonderful opportunity to network with hundreds of marketing professionals and marketing thought-leaders from across the country. It was a unique experience for me.

Since I am pretty much new to non-profit management, it was critical for me to gain more info and insights about board management, volunteer engagement, Special Interest Groups (SIGs), member acquisition and retention. I indeed did.  For the ones who don’t know or little know about AMA, American Marketing Association is the biggest professional marketing organization in the US with a member base of more than 45k.  Its main mission is to achieve thought leadership, contribute to the marketing theory and practice, and provide a platform for marketers from different industries to connect and learn from each other.

This was a 3-full day conference offering an intense learning and networking experience through breakout sessions on various topics concerning non-profits, key-note speakers, discussion panels and social mixers. Key takeaways from this conference for non-profit managers like myself were:

• Don’t reinvent the wheel. Look at what other professional chapters are doing and adopt best practices
• Use social media to engage members and non-members and always use tools that you can realistically track and measure
• Well define and articulate your value proposition and refine your strategies accordingly
• Due to limited resources prioritize your goals for the upcoming fiscal year
• Manage it like a business and always keep your eye on the bottom line
• Create valuable current content people like to follow
• Differentiate member experience from non-member experience as much as possible

Here are some pictures from the AMA Leadership Summit 2010  http://www.flickr.com/photos/kameryuksel/.

Feel free to leave your comments and/or questions.

]]> http://kameryuksel.wordpress.com/2010/04/26/ama-leadership-summit-2010-chicago-il/feed/ 0 kameryuksel LS10banner http://kameryuksel.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/ugg-ly-marketing-just-brilliant/ http://kameryuksel.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/ugg-ly-marketing-just-brilliant/#comments Mon, 11 Jan 2010 21:59:50 +0000 kameryuksel http://kameryuksel.wordpress.com/?p=297 ]]> Talk about one of the most successful brands of recent history – in my opinion, the ugly boot brand “UGG” was one of the most brilliantly positioned brands of the last decade. Just recently, I had the chance to visit an outlet center in Palm Springs and was amazed to see these long and never-ending queues outside an UGG store. Unsurprisingly, this is a very familiar picture in most of the UGG stores across the country.

Source: Flickr/thms.nl

This is indeed a marketer’s dream come true. Consumers waiting for hours to get a glimpse of what you have to offer. UGG does not even heavily advertise or use other traditional media channels, that most brands are wastefully spending millions of dollars on. Therefore, this brand represents an ideal example for marketers who are desperately trying to grab market share by running around like headless chickens, and trying out every possible marketing strategy till they get it right (if ever).

But how did UGG achieve this envious success? I think 3 strategies have played a major role:

1. No pushing or pitching: The brand found its way to the US market through a young Australian surfer Brian Smith in the late 70′s. He promoted this ugly looking sheepskin boots to surfers in California and grabbed their attention with this extremely comfortable all-season boots. The only marketing tool he deployed at the time was “personal selling”.  He sold 48 pairs of boots in his first year of business by just talking to those trendsetter surfers. The rest is history.  UGG did not pour multi-million dollars into advertising campaigns to promote the brand. They intentionally avoided constant pushing and pitching to the end-user. With the power of personnel selling, its founder created the initial demand and than by all the right pricing and distribution strategies, the brand was successfully positioned as a high quality, high fashion and exclusive footwear in the minds of the consumers.

2. Celebrity Factor: Celebrities played a major role in the brand’s overall success and the WOM it enjoyed. Surfers in California are like local celebrities and the things they wear have influenced numerous fashion trends for so many years. The surfing culture in California, combined with the enormous influential power of the movie and music industries and their stars, make this place a great terrain for igniting any kind of fashion trend. The founder’s decision to come to California and marketing directly to surfers was a very smart decision, which also led to several celebrities picking up the trend and further promoting it.

3. Limited Supply: Exclusive distribution through their own stores which are very limited in number and through few other high-end stores signal the exclusivity of the brand, and reinforces its “hard to obtain” brand image. Consumers feel very privileged to be able to get a pair of UGG boots. Production wise, the number of SKUs manufactured are also tightly controlled and limited to certain quantities. As a result, finding certain styles becomes even more difficult if not impossible for consumers, again strongly contributing to the exclusivity factor.

In my opinion, aforementioned strategies were essential in defining UGG’s current success and will be critical in maintaining their premium and exclusive positioning. Fashion has always been a risky industry to be in because of the rapid changes in tastes and trends. However, so far UGG has been consistent about the quality of its offerings and what the brand stands for in the minds and hearts of the consumers. It is adapting to changing fashion trends by including more fashionable styles into its existing line of  products. Also leveraging its strong brand name by launching complementary new product lines such as apparel and slippers, while keeping the brand’s core essence unchanged.

Sheila is without a doubt one of those business professionals whom you would feel privileged to listen to. She has started her company Care.com in 2006 and managed to create an exceptional business model and a multi-million dollar company in a very short time. Just a year later, her company was recognized by the Stevie Awards for Women in Business as Best New Company of the Year.  She has since become a household name having been appeared on NBC’s Today Show, CBS’s The Early Show and ABC News Now where she had provided families with care planning advice.

You are probably already curious about Care.com as a business. Care.com is an online service that gives people a simple way to find qualified caregivers in their area including babysitters, nannies, pet sitters, tutors, and housekeepers. It is a membership-based system where they charge care seekers a monthly subscription fee which can be as low as $10 a month.  It is also possible to find caregivers in your area for free of charge but if you would like to access to detailed caregiver profiles, references and background checks, then membership is necessary.

I think Care.com is a very smart business venture due to two reasons:

1. Moms are going online at an unprecedented rate. Today it is estimated that 34.3 million moms are actively utilizing the Internet (e-marketer, 2009) for various reasons. They look for information about family and children related issues, they read product reviews and connect with other moms generally through social media.

2. Baby boomers are retiring and there will be an unprecedented demand for senior care services. Between 2008 and 2020 there will be millions of baby boomers retiring and today there are not enough quality care providers to meet this huge demand.

Care.com addresses those two segments very specifically and provides a very user friendly, easy to access and most importantly reliable online service.

If you would like to listen to my whole interview with Sheila please visit www.socalama.org/resources. My interview focuses on start-ups and how to grow a successful business from scratch. However, for the ones who do not have the time to listen to the podcast, I highlighted some takeaways from that very special interview with Sheila.

#1 Are you driven by pain business or pleasure business? Your personal struggles can be the source of brilliant business ideas, as it was for Sheila. She struggled plenty to find good quality care for her son when she was working full time and commuting between New York and Boston.  Care. com has come to life because of those personal challenges. Sheila says that if you are driven by a pain business, in other words solving problems and helping others is important to you, then you should focus on these areas when you are starting your own business. However, you might as well be motivated by pleasure business and there are great opportunities there as well. Consequently, it is very important to decide what really motivates you in life and where your passion lies!

#2 Proper Market research and feedback: Market research is important and critical. Surveys and focus groups would help you to channel your time and energy on the right tool. However, Sheila also strongly believes that part of market research is to put your product out there and get feedback on the real thing. She warns against analysis paralysis which might prevent you from going forward fast enough and gaining from enacting some type of a decision. Because sometimes self reported survey responses may not reflect the real situation on how people might feel  when they experience the real product, in real life. So put it out there and get constant feedback.

#3 Writing a solid business plan and having a strong board of advisers and mentors. Advisers can come up in many different forms. It could be a family friend who is in the same business, it could be your neighbor or your former professor from college. The key is developing those relationships before you need something. Be transparent and don’t be shy to ask for help. You would be pleasantly surprised to see how many people actually will try to help you.

#4 Team & Execution beyond the idea: Many times entrepreneurs are scared to share their ideas because they don’t believe their ideas  is unique enough. There will always be some version of that idea on the marketplace but what will make your idea successful is a great team of people striving to deliver great value for customers and the excellence of execution. Before Sheila got into this business, she says there were many other local nanny agencies or similar other services around.  However, offering this service online as a one-stop care destination for almost all of  family care needs and providing caregivers’ in-depth profiles along with references and background checks have constituted her unique selling proposition.

#5 Marketing is a combination of people and data. It is so important to use your left and right brain at the same time. What makes you achieve in business  is not just creativity or understanding consumer psychology, but also looking at the data objectively and being able to respond to that data. Don’t be intimidated by data. It is, in most instances,  just basic math: X, -, + and /. If you rarely need complex analysis you can always hire a statistician or get help from one.

Eight months ago when I decided to do this triathlon, I was not exactly aware of what I was putting myself into.  I said to myself since I can run 3-4 miles every four or five times a week, I should be able to complete a triathlon too, right? Soon, I realized that I wasn’t exactly right.

I thought I was physically in good condition and had plenty of motivation. But I also needed an accomplice. So I  convinced my husband, Can, to work on this with me. We have started our training six months before the actual triathlon date. Our training kicked off with 3mile, later 4mile early morning or late night runs and then we added the swimming and biking to our training routine. It was not easy in the first day and never really became easier along the way. Running as part of your daily routine is not the same as completing a 1/2 mile swim, 18 mile bike and 4 mile run consecutively. It is an extreme physical challenge and a psychological war at every second. Your body just wants to stop, but you push yourself and keep moving, although the end is not in close sight. Nevertheless, if you can finish it, what you get is an amazing satisfaction from witnessing that your hard and long hours of training actually paid-off and you have achieved something that only few people even dare to do.

I really look forward to my next triathlon, although it is really not about the actual race for me. What I care and enjoy most is the whole effort, preparation, and training that goes into it and if you can do it with someone you love, it is even better!

Here are some pictures from that day:

Their cause marketing effort kicked off with a designated website at www.helpthehoneybees.com and a viral bee boy dance crew video on YouTube  aims to get attention on the problem of vanishing honey bees in the US. According to the information provided, honey bees are responsible for pollinating 1/3 of all the foods we eat, including many of the natural ingredients used in ice creams. The bad news is that over the last three years more than one in three honey bee colonies has died nationwide. Chief reason is identified as Colony Collapse Disorder, in other words, bees abandoning their colonies in search of pollen elsewhere and never returning back, most probably dying on the fields.

If honey bees die, simply put, our food supply is in serious danger! From a humanitarian perspective there is no doubt that this problem should be addressed and resources should be allocated to mitigate the damage. All causes are equally important. There is really no such thing as big or a small cause. Meanwhile, from a marketing perspective it is worth to discuss the selection of the cause and how it relates to the overall brand strategy. As it relates to this specific example, lets breakdown the fundamentals of cause-marketing success and discuss the extent to which the honey bee saving mission is performing at each level.

• Is the cause unique?

Haagen-Dazs selection of such a cause is indeed unique and has not been addressed by many companies before. As a consumer, only other time I have heard about the honey bee problem is through DreamWorks animation flick “The Bee Movie”. The best possible positioning strategy is always to get into consumers mind first, as rightly asserted by Ries and Trout. If the cause is indeed original, it has a better potential to create unique, longer lasting and stronger associations between the brand, the cause and the consumer. On the flip side, companies have to spend more in order to educate the consumers about a lesser known subject. Nevertheless, it might well worth the investment.

• Is the cause relevant with the brand?

Since bees pollinate dozens of crops and are essential for our food supply, then yes it is directly related with the brand. Although the connection is not straightforward for many of us, it gives the company a wonderful opportunity to tell a compelling story that we might all be interested in listening.

• Is the company sincere about the cause?

Well that’s not an easy one to answer. Obviously, time will tell if Haagen-Dazs is indeed invested in this cause and willing to support it for years to come. So far, the signs are positive. Since solving this problem is directly related with the company’s own  survival, I would like to think that they are genuinely interested with this cause.

Company’s genuine interest to be part of the solution is really what differentiates cause or mission marketing from any other marketing effort. There has to be a longer term company vision and a committed upper management. The company should be wiling to allocate considerable resources and be consistent about it. Consumers notice what is real or fake, as a result brands exploiting causes just to generate short term gains will not go unnoticed. It is critical for companies to be able to commit both financially and emotionally to the cause. If the company is not at that stage, I believe it is best to stay away from cause-marketing all together. Immature attempts, abandoned causes hurt company image and increases already high consumer skepticism.

• What is in it for the consumer?

Honey Bees are in danger! But why do we care? According to a 2007 McKinsey survey, 87% of consumers say that they worry about the environmental and social impact of the products they buy. Nevertheless, only 33% of them actually bought a product that is considered to be green or socially responsible. What we say we care does not necessarily turn into action, mainly because supporting a cause is not the primary motivation behind our purchase decisions, at least for now. Consumers will still buy Haagen-Dazs because of its ultra-creamy texture and tasty flavors and the pleasure of eating it. However, recognizing that they are at the same time supporting a cause can enhance the overall brand experience and introduce more meaning to it, as long as they do not pay a premium for the cause.

All in all, Haagen-Dazs has initiated what looks like a brilliant cause-marketing effort which gives the brand that extra edge over the competition and has the potential to strengthen its already favorable brand image. However,  since cause-marketing on its own, is not likely to generate short-term gains, time will tell if the company will continue to pioneer this cause or change its strategy.

The program, entitled “Arts and Business Learning Community” at the College of the Canyons, is going to be an interdisciplinary program targeting both Business and Fine & Performing Arts students. Curriculum will be designed to teach business students different art forms in a way that will foster their creativity, at the same time will teach students of Arts (acting, dancing, painting etc…) the fundamentals of business. This program is addressing a crucial and yet an unmet need for both areas: for business people learning to be more creative and for artists understanding the business of the arts performed. There is no other similar program in California, offering this type of an educational bundle and bringing together two distinct but actually quite complementary disciplines.

With such an exciting task in my hands, my job was to come up with a visual illustration that will represent the unique nature of this program in a way that was original, powerful and relevant to its target audience. As a Brand Manager, my responsibilities did not directly include creating the Creative by myself. Generally, I was the one who prepared the creative brief and gave a direction to the agency and made the final call on the  creative strategy. This is the case for almost all Brand Managers because this kind of visual work requires some level of graphic design or visual arts training, as well as strong Photoshop skills. I did not have the formal arts training but I consider myself a creative person and also competent with Photoshop. So I welcomed the challenge!

I spent several days constantly brainstorming for numerous ideas by looking at other examples (preparation stage), in search for a creative way to bring together these two different disciplines and still make the final output appealing and eye-catchy. Even during my sleeps, my brain was constantly processing (incubation stage). Finally, after three days of constant torture to my brain and numerous mundane ideas, very early in the morning I suddenly woke up with a very clear idea of the creative in my head (illumination stage). I directly went to my computer and implemented it. After this painful creative process, I created the following:

My approach was to merge images that would represent the Business and the Arts separately and I could not think of a more simplistic way to represent the Business than a “Balance Sheet”. The colors on the Balance Sheet represent different art forms and together with the tagline “where business makes artistic sense”, the Creative is making a statement that neither business nor art education will be as usual, rather this new program will be transformational. At the end, I was very happy to hear that the College really liked the creative and my approach and is planning to use it in their soon-to-be launched program’s print materials:)

Lessons learned: It is indeed extremely difficult and most likely painful to create something from scratch especially bringing together so many different concepts and still managing to make it look coherent and powerful at the same time. It was very educational for me to experience all the creative stages I mentioned above, and face the creative challenges by myself. This experience definitely further enhanced my respect and empathy for creative teams working at the agencies.

I don’t know if you like the creative or not but either way let me know what you think and share your own creative experiences.

A striking example to how quickly things are changing can be found in the recently published CDCP report. CDCP reported that, in 2007, 40% of all the new births in the US were to unmarried moms, up 25% from 2002 and up 50% from 1980. One might expect the cause to be the increase in teenage pregnancy. On the contrary, more than half of those moms were 20+ in age, which represented a 50% decrease in teenage mom pregnancies. Andrew Cherlin, Professor at the Johns Hopkins University and an author, claims that while marriage is still considered ideal, like many other Western countries US is also moving away from marriage as an institution. He further states that, although 90% of all women project marriage in their lifetime, US has the highest divorce rate (50%) among the Western nations. According to Cherlin, this can be attributable to the contradictory dilemma in the US, between the value placed on marriage and on personal liberty and self-realization at the same time.

I can not help but ask how this fact alone can affect the marketing environment that, predominantly targets moms and generally assumes conventional family structures to start with. Obviously, there are some major demographic changes, let alone the changes in psychographics. Today it is not uncommon to see men, married or un-married, taking an active role in the household and childcare duties. And we see many stay-home-moms eager to start their own businesses with the unprecedented convenience provided by the Internet and social media. For instance, when moms are asked about the best ways to relate to them through advertisement, 86% say they would rather be depicted as multitaskers (Report: State of the American Mom 2008). May be we should think twice, when we choose to depict moms just cooking or cleaning, instead of showing them in front of their PCs blogging but checking on kids and the dish at the same time.

As marketers since we can never ignore moms as a vital audience, we would be better off if we track these lifestyle changes more frequently and more seriously. Finally, if these changes are consistent and solid, we should not be afraid of addressing these changes and revisiting our current marketing strategies.

Zyman

Creativity factor in broadcast media is important to break through the commercial clutter and grab the consumers’ attention. Especially if you think of the fact that, actual message exposure is 25 to 50 percent of program exposure. Brands are competing to get a share of the viewers’ already very limited time and attention. Under these circumstances, everyone feels the pressure for creating ads that are attention-grabbing and memorable. But there is a fine line here. Most of the time, we are missing the point. The whole point of advertisement is to get measurable results. Obviously, this means prompt increase in sales or enhanced brand awareness, which will lead to increased sales.

I believe creativity in advertisement should never be the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is to deliver your brand messages to your audience with sensible brand associations and encourage them to take action. Advertising agencies have other motives that lead them to perceive the creativity factor as fundamental. The more eye-balls the agencies get with the creative, the more people talk about it, the more their reputation and business is enhanced. Therefore, it is the clients’, especially the Brand Managers’ responsibility to set and prioritize the goals for the agency. Unfortunately, what we see in real life is Brand Managers also being enchanted with the creativity factor and loose sight of the real goal. But why is that? I think sometimes Brand Managers prefer to take the safe road. Since ROI for advertisement is not always very clear and is hard to quantify, Brand Managers depend on creativity as an easily-seen, easily-understood and comparatively justifiable success factor for their ads.

Ultimately, Brand Managers should keep in mind that it is their responsibility to persuade the consumers to buy their brands. This requires more than just a memorable ad. Don’t get me wrong. I am not against the creativity in commercials. On the contrary, I believe it is very much needed to grab the attention in this massively cluttered platform. However, the main role of a commercial, the art of persuasion, starts after you get that precious attention.

References:

Bhargava, R.  (2006). Personality not included: why companies lose their authenticity and how great brands get it back. McGraw-Hill.

Zyman, S. (2004). Advertising doesn’t work. Creative Review, 24(7): 44-45.

I do understand the needs to define marketing in a plain,  standard format. First, it is important to lay a basic foundation that can be built upon. Second, it is very difficult to come up with a definition that would be considered inspirational by everyone.  However, I would like to use this opportunity to articulate my own thoughts on the role of marketing and quote or cite Mr. Ogilvy in support of my arguments. Mr. Ogilvy’s video that I embedded here, is a great educational source for marketers and advertisers. It is a long conversation, almost an hour, but it clearly represents Ogilvy’s genius and his straightforward approach to marketing and advertising. I would highly recommend this video to anyone in this business. I know it is little old but there are timeless lessons to be learned.

Like many other definitions, my definition of marketing is neither perfect nor complete, but it highlights areas that I deem most important and inspirational. I believe marketing is an intelligent and creative discipline, which involves delivering meaningful value for consumers and finding authentic ways to communicate with them on a personal level which will help to educate, inspire and take action. Let me further elaborate on the individual components of this definition, along with specific references to David Ogilvy:

• Meaningful value for consumers

Meaningful value for consumer can be achieved through the products and services provided, as well as all the marketing efforts aimed to benefit consumers in some way. New products and marketing efforts can address an existing, well-defined need or a yet-to-be defined, potential need. In order to identify the first, market research is needed and is extremely important for a company’s success. Ogilvy suggests that successful advertising for any product is based on information about its customers. He credits his past work experience as a young researcher at Gallup research organization for teaching him the basic principle of marketing and advertising “knowing your customers”.  For the latter, a marketer needs to see more than what the research indicates. David Ogilvy suggests “good judgment” is the key. Without it, it is impossible to create revolutionary, category defining products and marketing campaigns that actually work. Market research has its limitations when it comes to predicting the future for us.

• Being authentic and communicating on a personal level

Without a real understanding of the consumer and their intimate needs and expectations, we can not be authentic and communicate with the consumers on a personal level. But why is this important in the first place? The reasons are simple. Consumers would like to hear sensible arguments from brands on why they should choose that specific brand over the other. Consumers expect brands to talk to them directly and provide rational reasons, as if she/he is the only customer of that brand.

• Marketing to educate, inspire and take action

Marketing’s role is to educate, inspire and motivate consumers to take action. Educating the consumers is very essential in marketing and is well supported with Ogilvy’s personal experiences. When you look at his well-recognized campaigns such as Guinness Guide to Oysters and Shell campaign, what pops up is the educational aspect of those advertisements. Advertisements, which provide true information, are more likely to resonate with the consumers and have the potential to shift consumer behavior in major ways. Knowledge triggers permanent behavior change.

One critical role of marketing/advertising that is not emphasized enough in the interview by Mr. Ogilvy is the inspirational aspect of it. Our experiences have already shown that, successful brands are the ones who can touch to the minds and hearts of the consumers. Mr. Ogilvy eloquently explains how to reach to the mind of consumers, but does not elaborate on how to capture the hearts, which is equivocally important. I believe this can be attributed mainly to the era he practiced advertising actively. That era did not see as much competition as we see today and products offered notable differences. With the inflation of products and services, real differentiation between the products has been minimized. As a result, the main challenge for marketers has become finding ways to capture the hearts of consumers, through emotional and subconscious connections.

Finally, I think the most important role of Marketing and advertisement is to motivate consumers to take action. As Ogilvy is suggesting, function of marketing is to sell. Without real measurable results, money spent on advertisement is not money well spent.  I read a very interesting research on the sales return of  creative advertisements that won multiple awards for their creative genius and originality. 84% of the award winning advertisements from 1999 to 2001 incorporated humor, entertainment etc to their ads but only 22% actually made a call to action, meaning increased sales for their brands (Zyman, 2004). This is a very relevant point and certainly, on its own, another topic for a separate discussion.

I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to send your comments on your understanding of the role marketing and advertising.