Mythology - The Meaning Behind the Marketing

Is Your Brand an Icon?

Our consulting practice, Mythology, is based on the idea that marketing is in a sense "belief management." How you and  your organization interact and shape the values associated with your brand in collaboration with the marketplace - how you shape beliefs in an authentic way that lead to positive responses - is what marketing is all about.

The book How Brands Become Icons: The Principle of Cultural Branding by Douglass B. Holt reveals how brands emerge as various "authors" tell stories that involve the brand. Those authors could be customers, critics, culture industries (media), or other companies.

Brands are created when markers of the product are filled with customer experiences. The logo, packaging or design become the material markers that are filled with a history. This creates brand meaning that consumers use to associate with the specific brand. Without this history of customer experiences, the brand is empty and does not exist.

Brands that embody the the ideals that consumers admire become cultural iconic brands, brands that help the consumer to express who they are and who they want to be.

The leaders in this iconic horse race are well known in American consumer history and popular culture: Coca Cola, Budweiser, Nike, Jack Daniels, Harley Davidson. Customers value these brands' stories largely for their identity value. Such iconic brands act as a vessel of self-expression and the brands are imbued with stories that consumers find valuable in constructing their identities.

The success of a brand is not built so much on advertising and traditional marketing capabilities anymore. Their power rests in large part on the brand myth that consumers can identify with. In order to satisfy the need to be a part of that myth, consumers will drink, eat and wear the brand.

Don't think that this brand mythology doesn't play into business-to-business scenarios as well. In past generations, an IT executive wanted to identify with the power of success of IBM; in more recent generations, many wanted to identify with the spunky independence and flexibility of the open source Linux movement.

With different generations come different myths that are appealing. How well a company is able to reposition and connect with more relevant myths can determine their long-term success - something IBM has actually done quite well by becoming an early supporter of open source technology.

Sweet SUCCESs: Are Your Messages 'Made to Stick'?

One of my favorite practical books of the last few years is Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. It takes up where the insanely popular Tipping Point left off by providing a clearer template for how to construct messages in a way that they would "stick", or have more viral pass-along potential.

The authors' formula is SUCCESs:

• Simplicity - Finding the core of the idea
• Unexpectedness - Combining surprise with interest
• Concreteness - Bringing it alive by engaging the five senses ("memory Velcro")
• Credibility - Tapping the power of authority - or anti-authority - to build belief
• Emotional - Priming people to care
• Stories - Generating involvement that leads to action 

Essentially, the more a message - including an advertisement or other commercial message - incorporates these stickiness factors, the more likely it will be remembered and even passed around to others in the Internet-connected world.

Advertisers have been fighting hard to cut through the clutter with unexpected - even shocking - imagery. A handy shortcut often involves the use of innuendo or overtly sexual images.

However, often these efforts are disconnected to the value proposition of the product. Which of us haven't seen a memorable commercial, but completely forgot what it was even advertising?

I thought it would be fun to review some recent commercials as I watch TV in my hotel room and see how many are "SUCCESsfully Stick" using the Heath brothers' formula:

• Castrol: Think With Your Dipstick - OK, a dipstick-wielding Scottishman who sneaks up on consumers about to make a bad motor oil decision and whacks them on the back of the leg got my attention. It's disturbingly humorous, I guess...And of course it has the "think with your dipstick" innuendo. But I didn't get the sense that Castrol's unique selling proposition came through and was almost overpowered by the abusive Scott. Why is Castrol EDGE better again? I'll remember the ad though, and may look behind me when I purchase motor oil again.
• Energytomorrow.com - An effort by the oil and gas industry to generate support for drilling. I think this one fails the sticky test. No stories that generated emotion or involvement. Nothing unexpected, just a nice lady telling me why it's important for America to be independent and how many jobs her employers provide. Nice info, but very forgettable. Certainly not powerful enough to take back the conversation from "green" advocates.
• Wal-Mart: Better Homes and Gardens Collection - Devoid of any stickiness. It's like Pam anti-stick spray was used on this commercial.

After actively paying attention to maybe 12-15 commercials this morning, it's quite amazing that the vast majority of commercials don't pay one whit of attention to the Heath Brother's elements of stickiness.

How about you? How does your messaging stand up to SUCCESs? It takes some practice. I'm going to go throw some honey on the mythologymarketing.com web site right now...

Empowering Your Team to Join the Conversation

Often there are two types of organization scenarios when it comes to participating in the social media revolution: those who try and lock down their employees by banning access to social media sites, and those who unleash them - but in an unprepared way.

Neither of course are very effective. The former essentially proves just how much your firm doesn't "get" how marketing has turned into a conversation. The latter often leads to unintended consequences and messes to clean up.

What about (gasp!) an enlightened approach where you encourage your employees to build the firms' brand through effective social media interaction? What if you equipped them to represent your organization effectively on Twitter, Facebook and other communities?

IBM, not necessarily a company you would think of as progressive in the Web 2.0 world, has been a leader in this area. As far back as 2005, they got ahead of the curve and realized that a) their employees have a ton of value to contribute to the world, and b) they should probably just lay down a few guidelines that they are expected to adhere to when representing the company on blogs, message boards, etc.

Here is what they came up with.

It's fantastic. It's straightforward, connected to IBM's values, and empowering. Way to go Big Blue.

What IS the Future of Advertising?

I read an interesting post recently on www.widgify.com on "The Future of Viral Marketing: Service-Oriented Advertising." The author proposes:

I call this concept Service-Oriented Advertising. People will pay to have their messages delivered across services.  It’s a bit geek-shique, but the idea is that marketers will seed the delivery of their message through multiple web services, or channels, and pay for the enhanced distribution of their messages on a performance basis.  There are some primitive versions of this that exist today.  The CPI, or cost-per-install, model for widgets is a subset of this paradigm.  People pay for their message (widget) to get distributed across a subset of channels (social networks) on a performance basis (install on a page).

It's been a mantra over the last several years (with philosophical underpinnings from the Cluetrain Manifesto) that marketing must morph into a conversation, a collaboration between vendors and their constituents/customers. While many companies still react with "Huh?", others are blazing trails on what exactly this looks like.

The conversational approach has great emotional appeal, but marketers have struggled with how to measure it, how to manage it and how to profit from it.

Whether it looks like the "pay for propagate" model as Hooman suggests, I'm not sure. But as word-of-mouth influence continues to challenge television and traditional media as THE source for new product/service information, it's clear that rallying your tribe is of utmost strategic importance.

The keys seem to be:

• Is your tribe made up of the right people?
• Is your tribe truly influencing people down the purchase funnel?
• Is managing the tribe really more efficient and effective than traditional marketing?
• Can you convince your boss of all the above?

Is your Team ready to live your Brand?

Is your team ready to live your brand?

Most organizations make significant investments in marketing. These investments represent a commitment to reaching out to the marketplace and engaging potential customers. If the campaign or activities are successful, the potential customers begin to engage with your products or services and with your team.  It is important that at every point of customer interaction, your brand gets reinforced positively. Internal alignment empowers your organization to consistently live up to the promises you make to your customers. It is important to consider the internal readiness of your team to deliver on the promise of your brand and continue to build belief across both customers and your team. 

How do I know if my team is ready?

One important step is to conduct some type of an assessment of your team before you engage the market with a new campaign.  You can do a fairly simple assessment of your team by asking them some basic questions about your organization or you can look a little deeper by examining knowledge and skills related to key areas such as customer service and products.  Once you have understanding of your team's readiness, you can then look for ways to address the gaps.

How does this work?

In 2007 Sony Electronics Inc. conducted a survey that looked at employees engagement and feeling of empowerment in three areas, industry benchmarks, cultural factors that influence employee perception, and consensus on management effectiveness, behaviors, and strengths. Among the findings they found that 3 in 5 employees were fully engaged and 10 percent were not. (Read the full article here.) This data provided them the opportunity to address their weaknesses in an effective manner.  As it mentions in this article, levels of empowered and engaged employees correlate significantly with many key business metrics, such as turnover, sales, efficiency, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty.

How can I provide my Team Support?

There are many effective ways to support your team.  If the assessment indicated that your team is weak in how to clearly communicate your message you can provide specific opportunities for practice in-house. It is important that these are active and engaging activities and not a classroom lecture on the company communication policy. It is also very effective to provide a lot of information via your internal website. Internal blogs and wikis can support the flow of information and allow various departments to ask specific clarifying questions across other typically remote internal departments.

When you are marketing your company, remember to be sure your team is ready to live the brand!

Empowering Your Customers to Share

When considering that up to 55% of people share their experience with services and products it is easy to see how important it is to ensure your customers have a positive experience with your product or service and as a marketer to create a platform that empowers your customers to share these positive experiences with other potential customers.  Here is an analysis of a great example.

A national pet supplies retailer has recognized the significance of fostering customer stories. In addition, they have recognized the importance that emotions play into customer experiences.  On their website, Petco has created the ability to allow their customers to share their stories.

Notice that they titled it "The Moment Your Pet Changed Your Life." Clearly they are tapping into the core emotional element of owning and caring for a pet.  Then they ask their customers to share that emotional moment on their website.  They have created a lead-in page that explains the idea and allows them to review all the stories that are posted. This establishes trust with the customer that their story is important and that they are not going to do any nasty marketing tricks with them or the story.

After the customer logs in with an email (that's it, no long form to collect information) they are presented with a simple form that has "Helpful Hints" if needed.  Once the story is submitted the customer can preview it, then send it.  I am guessing Petco has an internal review process to ensure the quality and authenticity of the stories.

Once the story is public, they have also provided the opportunity for those reading the stories to share them on Facebook, Digg, and Delicious.  This is great on multiple levels, viral sharing of emotional stories and a deep linking campaign for search engine optimization.  A great story about who a pet changed your life sent around the web linking back to Petco.

It is quite fascinating to see a retailer use some basic marketing principles, emotions sell and empower your customer, combined with the reality that the web is a great hub for customer engagement to build a great campaign.  

Mapping Marketing to Purchase Funnel Decisions

IDG Communications released a report recently demonstrating how the web site content provided by technology marketers is not relevant to the needs of their customers 50% of the time. The online research conducted last October captured feedback from 400 technologists and business buyers on what they prefer as they move from general education to business case development to final decisions in purchasing products and services.

In other words, as prospects moved through the purchase funnel, they did not find the relevant content they needed to make a decision. (This problem is addressed by  Mythology's first pillar of Empowered Marketing: Understanding.)

On average, the report found that six decision-makers from IT, business units and finance were involved in a typical IT product/service purchase. Note how influential each source of information was in their decision-making:

In addition to finding relevant educational and transactional content on a vendor's web site, the decision-makers reported that peer dialogue and independent authority dialogue were major influencers. Are you building this into your marketing engagement plans to assist prospects in making informed, credible decisions?

Tactics such as featuring a blog with guest posts from actual customers, or video clips featuring industry experts speaking about your products are very powerful influencers and are a welcome part of the decision process with customers.

The survey respondents reported that they could find relevant content on IT vendor sites only 42% of the time. The lack of relevant content reduced a vendor's chance of a sale by 45%! In light of this lack of information, decisions often go to the vendor who answered their questions and connected them with peer and expert content.

Your web site is your conversation hub, and a rigorous content management approach is critical to using the web to help move customers down the purchase funnel from Awareness to Purchase...and hopefully over time, Advocacy.

A Reminder from the Past on Relationships and Relevancy

A friend of mine, Gary Beach, Publisher Emeritus of CIO Magazine, sent me this vintage reminder from McGraw Hill in 1958 of the challenges that marketing must overcome in order to drive sales:

How We Decide: Emotion-Driven Decisions

Ever wonder how a Republican and a Democrat can look at the same set of facts and come up with radically different interpretations? The new book How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer is the latest validation on what great marketers know: it's emotion - not a logical analysis of facts and figures - that primarily drives decision making.

Actually, it's a complex mix of emotions, bias, facts, societal validation and other factors, but emotional reactions generated through those filters seem to be the most influential factor in making decisions, including what we decide to buy.

However, the development of the right emotional connection with customers is one of the most neglected areas of the marketing discipline. Consumer packaged goods companies, particularly those targeting women (see almost any Johnson & Johnson ad targeting moms), are among the best. But many other companies, especially those in "business-to-business" categories such as IT and professional services, seem to think they are above all that emotional nonsense and stick to the facts. Surely a senior buyer in a large company sets emotion aside and makes the most logical buying decision based on the evidence, right?

They are sorely mistaken. Even the most seemingly rational category of decisions are often dominated or at least significantly influenced by emotions and their deeper manifestation, relationships. This is especially true as individuals get more hurried in their decision-making; we all tend to default to emotional comfort levels to make faster decisions.

That's why you're seeing more B2B firms developing their emotional connection, such as the longtime association Accenture has developed with Tiger Woods to tap into the aspirational emotions of executives:

Matching the right emotion with the right customer and decision-making situation is the trick. What emotional role does your product or service fulfill for the customer? And how can you deliver that connection in your marketing?

We have a neat map of how brands attach to various emotional triggers. If you're interested, drop us a line at [email protected] and we'd be happy to send it to you as a PDF file.

For now, think about your own marketing materials and messages. Does it look or sound like a list of feature/functions? Or is there an emotional hook that will attach you to the minds of priority customer segments you're seeking?