P&G thanks our agencies while poking fun at ourselves

I came across this interesting site from P&G thanking our agency partners as we won Advertiser of the Year at Cannes.  Honestly at first I wondered if this was an officially sanctioned P&G effort but it appears to be.  I need to find out who did this internally to applaud them since it does a good job of not taking ourselves too seriously, while still talking about Brand Purpose through our efforts like HERO/Proctecting You, Protecting Futures. Check it out at: http://www.thankstoallouragenciesforhelpinguswinadvertiseroftheyear.com/

My 100th post – need your feedback

So I didnt notice it but last week I wrote my 100th post here on Hard Knox Life.  I think that is cause for a little bit of celebration if I do say so myself!

But it is also probably a good time for self reflection and getting the feedback of the community.  I would love to hear your feedback on what you like about Hard Knox Life.  Any particular areas you would like to see more of?  I have a few thoughts of mine own so I’ve included a poll to get the feedback of the community.  Please case a vote by clicking the link below (unfortunately WordPress won’t let me embed the poll)

http://www.vizu.com/poll-vote.html?n=102720

Do you know What Teens Want?

At BrandWeek’s “What Teens Want” Conference, my friend Tina Wells from Buzz Marketing Group just did a great presentation on teen trends.  In the presentation she covers what’s hot in music and technology, while also giving a comparison on why The Hills is performing better than Gossip Girls with teens.  Most interesting to me were the 6 key teen trends she highlighted including:

• Wharholism: Teens & their 15 minutes of fame
• Massclusivity: Teens want exclusive products designed for the masses
• Technoholics: Youth thrive off new technology
• Global Mobiles: Teens are globally connected, while the world is big & portable
• Insta-Messengers:  Teens consumer content instaneously and want immediate communication
• Transculturism: Merging and converging of cultures

Another stellar video from Nike

Nike does it again with their Director’s Cut of “Take it to the next level” from Guy Ritchie.  The original video was good but this extended version is just stellar

Have you thought about your User Experience

Lately I have been thinking more and more about the concept of User Experience and how it applies to design…especially digital design.  Well leave it to David Armano from Logic + Emotion to point out an amazing example of User Experience courtesy of the Google guys.  Google sums it up beautifully with their aspirations and ten key principals.  Click below to read their full UX promise

How Should Brand Managers Think About Twitter?

I have been meaning to write about Twitter for awhile now, but every time I got around to it, the site seemed to be experiencing either extreme fandom (like around SXSW) or extreme hatred (with all the site outages).  Well it seems like things have calmed down a bit at the moment so I was finally about to put my thoughts together.

Let’s start with a little Twitter 101

Now first, if you haven’t heard about Twitter yet, David Armano provides my favorite summaries with the two below graphics about the service (click for larger images):

Now with Twitter 101 out of the way, the real question is why should you as a Brand Manager care about Twitter.  I’ll be the first to admit that I held off embracing Twitter for awhile.  I just couldn’t see the value of a service that was about listening to updates on what my friends were doing.  But I ever since I caved in a couple of months ago, I have been a true Twitter fan and advocate for why it matters for marketers.

Twitter is about conversations

For me, I have found Twitter to have three big values for marketers.  They are: 1.) Customer Service/Community Management, 2.) Consumer Research, and 3.) Personal Learning.

Customer Service/Community Management:

Some of the smartest people in the industry are talking about why Customer Service is the new marketing and I couldn’t agree more.  After all, as the title of Blackshaw’s new book says “Satisfied Customers Tell 3 Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000.”  What is great about Twitter is that it can put this customer service in the hands of the Brand Manager without you having to go through your Customer Service Department.  Zappos is an amazing example of this as their CEO and almost 200 other employees are on Twitter, monitoring the community around the brand.  The powerful of this is that consumers know they can engage directly with management AND employees can actively monitor any mentions of the brand.  This can create some remarkable customer service stories, all because of using Twitter to directly connect with people.  Brands like Jet Blue, and H&R Block understand this…so have you checked if your brand’s Twitter name is available?

Consumer Research:

The power of monitoring conversations is the consumer research that you can find in the every day conversations.  Sometimes this will lead to Customer Service/Community Management opportunities like the above.  But just as often, the conversations will be able to serve as your own mini-focus groups.  Through a site like Summize, you can plug in your brand name and get alerts whenever a person mentions it in Twitter.  Likewise, if your Twitter brand has enough followers, you can start using it for proactive consumer research, asking polls and questions of the audience to help influence your decision.  You could instantly tap into the collective wisdom of your biggest brand fans to help influence decisions.  Talk about cultivating a powerful relationship with your users.

Personal Learning:

Finally, Twitter creates an amazing personal learning opportunity for marketers and brand managers.  Every day we are nose to the grindstone in delivering the business.  We are running from meeting to meeting, worrying about shipping the next case or getting a qualified copy score.  This unfortunately can leave little time for personal learning besides the occassional reading of BrandWeek or AdAge.  There are tons of conferences we would love to go to but little time and travel budget holds us back.  The beauty of Twitter is that these don’t need to be barriers to your personal learning any longer.   Through hashtags you can monitor anyone on Twitter who is talking about a conference, be it SXSW, Mix08 or TED.  Or some innovative conferences (like Chicago New Media Summit) are even creating their own Twitter profiles.  This allows you to monitor the entire conversation around a conference from the comfort of your office.  This is how I experienced the Resource Interactive iCitizen conference this past May and it was truly great.  You are able to listen to the conversations, find out which speeches were worthwhile and then download the presentations on SlideShare.net.  Talk about convenience of personal learning on your own time.

So those are my three reasons why Twitter should matter to a Brand Manager today.  What do you think?  What would you add to the list?

PR / Influencer Marketing done the right way

Have you heard about the BK Crown Card?  It is a great example of Public Relations and Influencer Marketing done the right way.  The premise of the program is simple: if you have the card, you get a lifetime of free meals at Burger King.  And with only 12 cardholders in the world, the BK Crown Card is the ultimate “status symbol”…more so than an AMEX Black Card could ever hope to be.

The program has been around since 2006 but recently got a PR bump when Hugh Laurie (star of TV show House) claimed to be a BK Crown Card carrying member.  The key word in that sentence is claimed since unlike Jay Leno, Jennifer Hudson, or Robert Downey Jr, Hugh wasn’t a card member.  But thanks to the PR buzz from his claim, he is now.  Ahh the perks of the rich and famous…

Nike pushes the boundaries of what digital marketing means

 “We’ve been viewing digital as less of a marketing channel than a place for services.” -Stefan Olander, Nike, Global Director of Digital Media

I am fascinated by how Nike is embracing digital.  While others are content to view digital as another marketing tactic or ad medium, Nike is taking it a step further.  They are viewing it as a place to reinforce their brand equities by providing meaningful servies…or what they call Brand Utilities. 

Digital marketing through brand utilities

They first entered this space with Nike+, the training system partnership with Apple that lets runners track and share their data online.  Though I am not a runner, I still consider Nike+ one of the coolest brand experiences of the digital age and their RunLondon mash-up is a regular feature in any presentation I give.   Now Nike is giving me even more fodder for presentations as they expand their Brand Utilities to Soccer (through a program called Boot Camp) and Basketball (with a Facebook application called Baller’s Network).

What is fascinating as a Brand Marketer is how Nike is reinforcing their tagline of “Just Do It” and Brand Mantra of “Authentic Athletic Performance” through these programs.  If you aren’t familiar with Brand Mantra (also known as Brand Essence), it is the “heart and soul of a brand” and “is constant across product categories and countries.”  It sets the boundaries for a brand to work within. 

A partner instead of a product

Thus, through these Brand Utilities, Nike is defining itself as more than just an athletic apparrel company…more than just a shoe company.  Nike is elevating themself above competition.  They are giving a meaningful service to the athletes and becoming a partner instead of just a product.  Just think about that for a moment.  Instead of treating digital marketing as an ad buy, they are treating it as a way to form a deeper relationship with athletes all over the world.  They are going beyond a funny viral video, MySpace profile or beautiful banner ad and instead creating a digital brand experience that forms a connection with their audience.  Few, if any, brands are thinking about digital this way but they should be. 

How could your brand use digital to connect with people?

Passing of a great man

“I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.” – George Carlin

So I woke up this morning to news that George Carlin had passed away at the age of 71.  Carlin was not only one of my favorite comedians, but one of the great social commentators of our time.  Many were turned away from his comdey because of its crudeness, but behind the words were some amazing insight into human nature.  I was going to share one of his videos, but realized it might not be work appropriate for many of you.  Instead, here are a collection of some of my favorite quotes from the man himself:

• When someone is impatient and says, “I haven’t got all day,” I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?
• Is a vegetarian permitted to eat animal crackers?
• Before they invented drawing boards, what did they go back to?
• Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
• Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?
• As a matter of principle, I never attend the first annual anything.
• Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
• Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

New look to Hard Knox Life

Over the weekend I launched a new look to Hard Knox Life. A huge thanks to Jina Kiem at E9 Digital for the design of the new logo and header. Jina was formally my Creative Director at Saatchi & Saatchi X and I’m thankful for the chance to continue to work with her. She did an amazing job of capturing my desires for this site and the look I was going for. I would recommend Jina and E9 in a heartbeat so if you like what you see, you should e-mail them at info@e9digital.com.