Webisode “Infotainment”: Can it Boost Your (B2B) Brand Profitability?

21 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by French On Brand in Alignment, Branding, Social Media and Branding

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brand, brand marketing, brand metrics, brand positioning, branding, branding ROI, marketing strategy, positioning, social media, track ROI, webisode, what is brand strategy?

A creatively relevant story about people’s lives can lead to stronger brand relationships…even in B2B.

Over the past decade, content marketing has become the staple best practice for strengthening brand relationships. Blogs (like this one), white paper marketing, book authorship, branded documentaries, and one of the most intriguing and creative forms—branded webisodes—provide today’s marketer with an expanded palette of options to deepen and broaden customer relationships. The use of Webisodes—part of a trend called branded entertainment—is growing because marketers are compelled to find new methods to reach consumers in an era when traditional media are losing personal engagement time to the Internet. Webisode formats can range from a previews/trailers; a promotional series, part of a collection of shorts, or conversely, segments of a long form piece such as a TV series.

In any of the above formats, effective webisodes:

Use entertainment and video storytelling to engage stakeholders
Television and movies taught us that visual storytelling is the “killer app” for engagement. Done well, ironic humor and humanitarian appeal are especially effective approaches.
Emotionalize the brand
Emotion adds dimension more powerful and motivating than even logic to any relationship.
Relate to issues first
Focusing on issues or cause (social, life stage, cultural, moral, political, or other lightning rods) tap into people’s mind at a visceral level in contrast to sales approaches that trigger emotional barriers.
Promote buying v selling
When people “buy in” to a cause or an issue, selling isn’t needed to make a transaction.

Historic analogies

As my mom used to say, “Everything’s different but nothing has changed.” Blogs are really just reincarnations of the company newsletter with one big difference: WordPress and other digital blogging tools make it easier for anyone with a computer to be a publisher. White papers are still one of the best tools for thought leadership positioning. The difference here is digital creation and access. And webisodes are very much like early radio and TV serials, sponsored, owned, and produced by advertisers and their agencies instead of by producers and networks. The difference is the medium: broadcast versus the internet, the latter providing some game-changing advantages.

Media trending toward web video

It’s no longer news that web video is taking a bite out of TV viewership. Nielsen’s (television audience research) most recent study indicates that viewing by 18-24-year-olds dropped by a little more than 4-and-a-half hours per week. ^{http://bit.ly/1p7nVvc} That’s equivalent to roughly 40 minutes per day.

At the same time, YouTube now reports that:

YouTube reaches more US adults ages 18-34 than any single cable network
More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month
Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube—that’s almost an hour for every person on Earth
100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
YouTube is localized in 61 countries and across 61 languages

My purpose in citing these stats isn’t to diminish TV advertising. It’s still the 800-pound gorilla to beat. But rather, my point is to emphasize that webisode marketing done right—with focused objectives, cogent strategies, and the right metrics attached—can now create a serious competitive advantage with clear ROI. For many brands that either can’t afford TV time or don’t fit into the TV advertising model (such as B2B), webisodes can present a green field of opportunity.

Can webisodes deliver real business results?

Many media historians portray our current period as the “post-broadcast era,” implying that audiences are sharing more of their video consumption with the web and media other than broadcast. Not to say that web entertainment will replace broadcast or cable TV. That would be like doomsters of the 1940’s and ‘50s who presaged TV replacing radio. And though it probably won’t displace TV, web video does contribute to an ever-fragmenting, increasingly complex media landscape in which consumers have so much choice that traditional media-driven marketing it is neither practical nor effective. That’s why content-driven marketing provides a sorely needed solution. It creates valuable, targeted content to repurpose in as many media as possible.

On the flip side, in order to get views, web video needs to be supported with targeted search marketing, SEO techniques, social media, and traditional promotion. This support allows audiences to discover what’s important to them, in a compelling format, on demand—when they have a specific heightened need or interest. Webisodes fit this solution profile like a glove, versus dubiously relevant promotional content force fed as an inline component of entertainment programming (aka TV).

Early webisodes

On October 6, 2006, rapper Sean Combs (aka P. Diddy) debuted DiddyTV, sponsored by Burger King. Today, YouTube shows the first webisode garnering more than 993,000 views and 70,000 subscribers while building a social web brand community for a cultural niche. Not bad for an inexpensive webisode series. However, if you look deeper into the comments and thumbs down click counts, you might see a balanced story.

The following year, Mini Cooper launched Starsky & Hutch/Dukes of Hazzard webisode spoof “Hammer & Coop.” The effort, which centered around a six-episode web series, generated 1.5 million views and consumer interest that eventually translated into 800 vehicle sales (at least that’s the official report). But Mini didn’t just entertain visitors, it also presented a Mini web configuration tool to bring visitors closer to buying. The official report is: “Three hundred seven thousand unique visitors went directly to Hammerandcoop.com and spent an average of six minutes viewing the videos. Another 722,000 connected there through miniusa.com. Of the 722,000, 355,000 of them configured a Mini (by model, engine and extras); 22,000 people saved their configurations; and 2,400 of those sent them to dealers. Min reports that data represented about a 33% conversion rate that translated to about 800 vehicle sales.” ^{http://adage.com/article/madisonvine-case-study/initial-results-mini-s-hammer-coop-effort/116193/}

While I see a couple holes in the metrics strategy (from what I can tell, the 307,000 hammerandcoop.com visitors weren’t directly connected to configuring a car or the resulting sales funnel), this early example of webisode infotainment broke new ground for the medium. Bottom line: Mini Cooper sales were down 4% Q1 2007 YOY. However, US Mini Cooper annual sales hit their highest historic point to date in 2008, at 54,077 units. ^{http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2011/01/mini-cooper-sales-figures.html} It gives pause for thought.

Webisodes for B2B

What about for business to business brands? Blendtec makes blending technology for home, manufacturing, and foodservice. They launched their webisode series “Will it Blend” (www.willitblend.com) in 2007, featuring its founder, Tom Dickson, in a wacky role as a lab technician attempting to grind up everything from cubic zirconium “diamonds” to iPhones in Blendtec brand blenders. YouTube shows more than 6.7 million views on the “diamond blend” show including more than 16,000 likes and only 2013 thumbs down.

AnotherB2B example is an animated production by Lawson, a provider of software and service solutions in the manufacturing, distribution, maintenance and service sector industries. This webisode provides a good competitive positioning tool, effectively promoting Lawson’s “Simpler is Better” brand. It’s no slouch for such a nichey industrial target at more than 89,000 views. I’d like to see a metrics bridge that connects these views to results in a shift in positioning, revenues, and/or margins.

Business-to-business brands can use content marketing—including webisodes—to exploit market niches with a fresh approach to engaging their customers, limited only by imagination and, of course, budget. Unlike broadcast TV, web presence is free, so the only cost in getting a series on the web is production, which can be managed incrementally with theme, creative development, and production values, which new technology has made dramatically more efficient.

But wait. TV has built-in audiences (that’s what you pay the stations and networks for). With webisodes, you’ll have to generate the audiences yourself (you knew there had to be a catch). This “detail” has been the primary barrier in the success of many web videos.

What’s the right objective for webisodes?

Social media and advertising can get pretty expensive in the quest to promote your webisodes for customer acquisition. So why not start by using them to improve the lifetime value of your current customers? One excellent use for webisodes is cross selling lines to existing customers. Webisodes can provide context (relevant issues and situations that uncover real needs) in dramatic, comedic, or simply interesting ways (how to, etc.). This leads the customer to buy into a larger brand context and a larger solution set. With effective funneling surrounding the webisodes, it’s possible to tightly track ROI on existing or past customers.

A proven ROI formula?

Despite a few days of exhaustive research on the web, I haven’t been able to identify any recent B2B webisode examples. Maybe that’s because there’s not yet a tried and true formula that links webisodes to ROI. GroPartners is now engaged with one of our clients in an effort to do just that. We’ll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, if you have any additional information on webisodes that you’d like to share on my blogpost, please leave a comment (link top of page). I’d love to post it.

LinkedIn Endorsements: Do they help or hurt your reputation?

17 Tuesday Dec 2013

Posted by French On Brand in Social Media and Branding

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brand, branding, endorsement, LinkedIn, personal brand, personal branding, recommendation, social media

Do you think LinkedIn’s Endorsement feature is less credible
than real recommendations?

LinkedIn is one of the greatest networking tools in history. By and large, its networking, research, sharing, employment opportunities, security, thought leadership and other features have changed the way the world does business. But how many times have you endorsed someone on LinkedIn for skills you really weren’t familiar with? It’s ok. Most of us have done it (though we might not admit it). But what does that say about the value of the endorsement feature of LinkedIn?

It seems that when you accept an endorsement from anyone, the next time you login you’re greeted (or assaulted, depending on your perspective) by a large endorsement panel featuring profile blocks with the smiling faces of people you know. I’m sure you’ve been through this: You see one of your close business buds in the first group of endorsement blocks and you want to support him or her, so you click the Endorse button. But it doesn’t stop there. The endorsement panel continuously reloads, going through your entire contact network soliciting every possible endorsement for each contact until you just give up and run.

Does it look legit?

How does it look to legitimate employers or prospective business partners and clients when they see one person endorse you for every skill set listed? It can look like a love fest or reciprocal pay-off, but probably not an earned endorsement for highly developed skills, right? I don’t know about you, but I’ve rarely–if ever—tapped all of the skills of any single contact. So how could I legitimately endorse them all? The endorsement generator asks, “Does (fill in the name) know about (fill in the skill)? Even if the answer is yes, there’s a big difference between awareness and expertise.

In my opinion, the most credible endorsement blocks show a bell curve with the most endorsements in core skill areas and fewer in peripheral skills. Theoretically, the graphical layout of the endorsement section could be used as a credibility gauge for each of one’s skill sets. In reality, however, LinkedIn endorsements have turned into a popularity contest, spiraling out of control, diverting the original intent and undermining its own credibility. LinkedIn is classified as social media, but unlike Facebook “likes,” LinkedIn endorsements can build an erroneous profile of an individual that is less likely to be scrutinized in an open forum. Imagine if people were able to comment on the validity of the endorsements!

Credibility isn’t the only thing potentially undermined. Security can be at risk as well. Recently I experienced an incident where a virus caused a former client’s LinkedIn account to endorse my skills every day for two weeks! Creepy.

Remember real recommendations?

Remember the pre-endorsement days of LinkedIn, when there were real recommendations? People had to actually write an original statement of tribute and confidence. It may have been difficult to get people to devote the time and energy to provide recommendations, but that’s what gave them real value. Today’s endorsements are just too easy to click off, cheapening the currency of real, thoughtful recommendations. Why?

They have no QA process
They’re too easy to create and distribute
They’re not discerning
They are “suggested” by LinkedIn rather than “originated” by the contact

Maren Hogan on Recruiter.com wrote a good article on how to use endorsements to your best advantage (http://www.recruiter.com/i/6-ways-to-make-linkedin-endorsements-worthwhile/). She suggests the following ways to create value with LinkedIn endorsements.

Add strengths to your profile
Skip endorsements that don’t speak to your best strengths
Accept the LinkedIn endorsements only from people you know
Endorse selectively
Start using and providing ‘old fashioned’ recommendations

Do you feel LinkedIn’s endorsement tool is credible? Could it actually harm your reputation? Share your comments by clicking the link at the head of this post.

The True Measure of Customer Delight

07 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by French On Brand in Measurement

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brand, brand brand focus, brand marketing, brand metrics, brand positioning, brand promise, brand ROI, brand scope, branding, branding ROI, change management, internal branding, marketing branding, marketing strategy, operationalization, operations, positioning, social media

Delighted customers are worth more than their individual revenue streams.

In my August, 2010 frenchonbrand.com, “Is Customer Delight Overkill?” (http://wp.me/pU6PC-25), I downplayed the concept of customer delight as potentially over-performing on the premise that people don’t necessarily want to be delighted, merely satisfied. My logic was that over performing in this area causes excess cost. Since then, and as a result of one of my reader’s well-informed and thoughtful comments (thanks, John H. FMB!) — and more research on the subject — I’ve moderated my position on customer delight and pass along the following convincing metric: a way to measure the impact of customer delight on word-of-mouth promotion to optimize the investment.

I realized the impact of customer delight extends far beyond the customer, after a review of W. Edwards Deming’s Profound Knowledge and Fred Reichheld’s “The Ultimate Question” (Net Promoter Score a.k.a. NPS). In this holistic approach to business, operationalizing customer delight becomes essential to its importance. Instead of viewing “delight” as overkill, I can now reconcile it with other favorable business results, such as increasing the lifetime value of a customer (promoter) beyond the customer revenue stream, and into areas such as:

Low-cost customer acquisition via referrals (reduced marketing costs)
Viral customer acquisition (referrals of referrals)
Lower customer attrition (customer loyalty)
Lower employee attrition (employee loyalty)
Lower customer price sensitivity (perceived value)
More nimble market response due to vibrant customer connections (innovation)
Continuous improvement of operations through cultural alignment (operationalized brand)
And many more

The result is sustainable growth.

To measure customer delight word-of-mouth radiance, Reichheld offers the following formula (this can be modified per individual situation). A customer survey is needed to capture the information needed to perform the calculations below (contact GroPartners for specific survey content).

Pick a benchmark date in the past (for example, the past 12 months, or last fiscal year). Then use this measurement process.

1. How many delighted customers do you have?
Find out how many of your new desirable customers were referred by other delighted customers (NPS of 9 or 10, meaning “on a scale of 1-10, how likely would you be to refer a friend or colleague to your brand?)

2. What is your average new customer worth?
Calculate (or see industry analysts’ calculations) what your average new customer is worth in dollars and cents.

3. Calculate the total value of those new delighted customers
Multiply the data from #1 (above) by #2 (above)

4. Calculate the value of positive comments
In your NPS survey, also ask respondents for positive or negative comments that support their NPS rating. If x number of positive comments generated $y in revenue (from 3 above), divide y/x to calculate the value of each positive comment

6. Calculate the value of each promoter
In your survey, find out the number of people per year to which each promoter might have commented, and multiply the average number by the value in #4 (above) to get the value of word-of-mouth per promoter. This is the “magic number” that helps optimize customer delight.

Anything can be measured. Even the power of customer delight. Now I’m a believer. How about you?

frenchonbrand.com is content published by

GroPartners Consulting helps middle-market organizations bridge strategy and execution for better business results.

Brand marketing. Oxymoron? Or CEO Secret?

24 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by French On Brand in Branding, Measurement

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Brand is the network of relationships that surrounds a business or product, including all its touch points.

I once spent the better part of a year convincing the CEO of a marketing organization that brand was not a subset of marketing, but instead, the reverse. To my surprise, during that year, I noticed his perspective is fairly common, even among marketing folks.

To many people (especially direct marketers and finance folks), “brand” associates with really fluffy connotations. In reality, brand is much bigger than marketing. In fact, it’s bigger than the products brought to market and even bigger than the companies that make the products that go to market. Why? Because the brand includes not only the company and its products, but relationships among its people, all its functions, channels (distributors, etc.), customers and even – to a degree – its competitors. It encompasses values, purpose, beliefs, and ultimately, identity. Essentially, brand is about that precisely dicey issue of “what you stand for” and what that means to people in the context of their lives. Finance guys often get heartburn from brand discussions mostly because they can’t easily and accurately prove out ROI on brand investments. An operationalized approach to brand investments can quench the heartburn. This means placing strategic metrics among and between internal operations, customer touch point metrics, marketing results, and financial results.

The difference between Marketing and Brand

Click image for a larger view.

Marketing builds and measures transactions. Brand builds and measures relationships. Even though marketers refer to building relationships through marketing, the goal is transactions, so technically, there’s a little brand blended in with the marketing mentality. Brand relationships continue after marketing has delivered products to customers. The goal of branding is to build relationships as a pipeline for transactions.

Where marketing is about all the intelligence and activities it takes to drive transactions, brand focuses on the underlying relationships and expectations among stakeholders around the transactions. When positive relationships exist and expectations are met, the stage is set for a continuous stream of transactions (i.e. successful sales and marketing campaigns).

This sets into motion a chain of operational implications, both internal and external. Brand-aligned organizations use this as an opportunity to examine the dynamic and causal relationships among employees, customers, and operations. Identifying cause-and-effect among these forces builds business value – the goals at the core of business operations. To do this successfully, an operationalized brand metrics program should first be in place (for more on this, contact Gropartners).

The truth is, most people feel more comfortable gaining a level of trust before they take the leap into a transaction. Until they experience a level of satisfaction or value as “compensation” for the currency they trade, customers experience anxiety and feel vulnerable. But they may not even take the leap until they feel they can trust the seller (kind of “chicken-or-egg” first). So whether an ad campaign puts a friendly face on the brand, a sampling campaign lets you “try before you buy,” or a recommendation from a trusted friend disarms you, some level of pre-transaction relationship is usually required to help minimize the feeling of risk and start the flow of transactions. This, and it’s post-transaction counterparts (“customer care,” etc.), wrap the transactions up in “relationship wrappers.”

Brands are relationships between people and products, services, or ideas, which are made of three fundamental elements: focus, distinction, and trust. The word “brand” should be distinguished from ‘branding.” “Brand” focuses on the strategic dimensions of a relationship while “branding” refers to execution. “Branding” is a term that broadly defines the scope of activities that bring the brand to life for stakeholders –- creative application of brand values, identity and communications (logos, taglines, guidelines, messaging, etc.). These activities “voice” the brand to stakeholders. And while these are certainly essential elements of brand, they are usually products of creative execution under strategic direction.

So when you hear or use the phrase “brand marketing,” it generally relates to issues about customer relationships and delivering on the promise. In contrast,”product marketing,” issues are mainly about transactions and delivering the product. That’s how brand marketing and product marketing work hand-in-hand to build business value. And that’s why you find many high-profile CEOs personally driving brand conversations and initiatives. The big picture guys get it.

Your thoughts? Post them below!

### GF

Try this quick and easy brand focus metric

08 Wednesday Sep 2010

Posted by French On Brand in Branding

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brand, brand focus, brand metrics, brand promise, branding, message mapper, message mapping, social media

Focus makes your brand strong

Do your customers, staff and partners view your brand the way you want them to? Is your brand living up to its promises? There’s a surprisingly quick and easy way to pull a general brand metric and reveal critical alignment issues that could be hurting your brand.

Brands spend millions of dollars every year to measure their alignment (i.e., does our brand really stand for what we think it does with stakeholders?). And while rigorous research is certainly in order on a periodic basis, it usually costs a ton and takes a long time.
There is an alternative to the time and expense of formal brand alignment research: a simple survey and analysis approach you can actually do by yourself in a day or two.
Ask 10 to 20 people (the more the merrier) holding diverse positions within your company (from executives to the stockroom) the following question: “In five words or less, what does our brand stand for; what are we about?” Whether it’s a company or product brand you’re measuring, hold on to your socks. You may be shocked at the misaligned perceptions.

You can do the “asking” with a web survey tool or simply walk the halls with a clipboard. Note the most commonly used key words or phrases in their answers. Count how many times they were used among all the answers.

Next, ask five of your best customers (or users) the same question: “In five words or less, what does our brand stand for, what are we all about?” Again, note how many times the same key words or phrases appear in the answers your customers provided?

Now tie this data to your brand. Does your company have a tag line? Does the key word or phrase identified in your surveys appear in your company tag line? Does the tag line accompany your logo in all uses? If you don’t have a tag line, does the most popular survey keyword or phrase appear in the top line messaging for your organization…consistently on every marketing communication? If not, your brand is misaligned with your stakeholders perceptions.

While this may not be the most scientific of survey techniques, it can help you form a hypothesis about what action to take. Maybe additional research, a formal brand alignment initiative, or it can simply provide the impetus to get your message straight using Message Mapping or other alignment techniques.

Contact GroPartners Consulting for more information on how to launch this quick and easy brand focus survey.

Social media changes brand’s role from host to guest

04 Tuesday May 2010

Posted by French On Brand in Branding

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

brand, brand promise, Facebook advertising, social media

Greg French, M.S.M.C.

As The Most Interesting Man in the World says in the Dos Equis commercials, “Find that thing you do not do well … then do not do that thing!”

Today, accountability for brand performance is heightened exponentially by social media communities, whose members can be ruthlessly truthful about brand performance v marketing promises — in in a highly public setting (blogs, Facebook, etc.). Social media, in essence, becomes the “brand promise police” (or lynch mob). So, more than ever, it is essential that brands deliver flawlessly on their promises.

According to a 2007 global Nielsen survey of 26,486 Internet users in 47 markets, consumer recommendations were the most credible form of advertising among 78 percent of the study’s respondents. According to a 2009 Nielsen report, “Global Faces and Networked Places,” two-thirds of the world’s Internet population visit social networking or blogging sites, accounting for almost 10% of all internet time. Putting these two studies together projects a pretty powerful position for social media in shaping brand perceptions.

Back in the day, marketing was mostly a monologue, with snapshots of research guidance, where brand messaging was a one-way street from brand to consumer. Brands hosted events, ads, and other promotional events to push messaging and product. Today, social media creates a running dialog, taking the neighborhood “fencepost” to a new level. It forms a nexus of potentially millions of people where opinions of brands are voiced in a gloves-off mosh pit of customer/consumer scrutiny. So today, it’s even more essential than ever to NOT over promise brand delivery. Instead, brands must be “surgically” precise in defining their value propositions, while consistently articulating and supporting them through every brand touchpoint, especially product and service performance. Finally, they should be certain to include a continuous feedback loop to update messages in real time to address the shifting sands of vox populi at any given moment.

In contrast to a simple brand model with the customer at the center of the universe, today customer issues are at the core with communities forming around them. These communities accumulate consensus and can reposition brands outside of the brand’s control. If a brand’s promise meets its performance, it is considered “a good brand.” If not, well … then do not do that thing! Or modify your promise.

One way to look at this new paradigm is to understand that brands are now the guests of communities, instead of their hosts. Today, communities more often form around issues than individual brands. And rather than enjoying that time-honored “competitive cushion” offered by media, which avoided competitive ad adjacency, social media pits brands mano a mano in a public forum. This is where your evangelists are indispensable, defending your brand among the detractors.

Bottom line? Promises are intrinsically meant to be kept. Social media trends are simply another club over the head to remind us that we must keep our brand promises faithfully, and that our brands are not the center of the universe, but rather servants of demand.

Your thoughts?