Digital Reputation Management Event

Tonight was another great educational event put on by the fine folks at MIMA. One of the things I'll miss about moving out of the Twin Cities will be access to these events. The topic of the evening was Digital Reputation Management. The discussion reminds me that the principles and theories of good communication and constituent relations haven't changed because of the internet or Web 2.0, as much as they have been accelerated. Great conversation with Ward about this topic as well. Anyway, if you're not doing so already here are three tools you can use immediately to try and "listen" to what people are saying about your business:

1. Spy - http://spy.appspot.com/
2. Google Alerts - http://www.google.com/alerts
3. Twitter Search - http://search.twitter.com/

Other advice from the panel included embracing transparency, being honest and human...and not creepy. That's pretty good advice regardless of setting.

Best and worst brand names of 2008

Reposting from The Lead. The folks at Pollywog address the best and worst in brand names from 2008.

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Welcome to the Iowa City Readers: Constituent Lifecycle Revisited

I realize that we may have an increase in readership to this blog from readers in the Iowa City/Cedar Rapids area. To that end, I will repost some more in-depth entries that will apply to specific marketing and communication roles. As a start, please take a look at this post regarding student life cycles, constituent relationships and the symbolic identities associated with higher education institutions.

The Here & Now in Advertising

Brands and symbolic identities need to continue to ground themselves through changing times. Their ability to do so, without violating dominant here and now issues, are critical to sustaining or growing the life of a message. Two commercials of late have done a great job in doing this. Allstate acknowledging the recession (perhaps the most dominant here and now issue we're facing). Allstate reinforces their genesis story and the length of time they've been around and that they continue to provide "good hands" for their customers.

Hyundai's latest campaign is more impressive. They say that "we're all in it together." To back this up, they now tie future ownership of one of their vehicles to your employment status. One's fear of losing their job seems to be the greatest barrier preventing the purchase of large ticket items. Hyundai significantly reduces the risk. Additionally, they remind consumers that they have previously worked to reduced risk when they were the first to provide factory power train warranties for 100,000 miles/10 years.

With both companies, their genesis story and/or history align with ways to help consumers through the here and now, which, I think, should continue to build brand equity.

Business/Technology Break Through from 2008

Looking back, Apple was able to keep their hot streak alive. In '07 they changed the smartphone landscape with the introduction of the iPhone. In '08, they released a new iPhone, but more importantly they opened up the ability to deliver applications created by other programmers. The model is the same as their iTunes store. More details are in this Washington Post article.

Beyond the money Apple is making (30%) from each transaction, it turns out that this may be more of strategic move, rather than a short-term money-maker in a down economy. Here's what I found to be the most interesting paragraph in the entire article:

Apple won't say how much money the App Store is taking in, nor will it say how many of the 300 million downloads were free apps and how many cost money (most apps are free; the others cost anywhere from a buck to $10). Apple gets a 30 percent cut of revenue generated by apps. But for Apple right now the money isn't the point. The big thing is the race to become the dominant mobile-computing platform, the way IBM-standard PCs running Microsoft operating software -- first DOS and then Windows -- came to dominate personal computing in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Best wishes for a safe, happy, and prosperous 2009.

If they were smart...

Great post on Church of the Customer regarding CEOs travelling to DC with their hands-out for a handout.

If they were very smart, the CEOs would drive unreleased, next-generation
cars that get 100 MPG. They'd stop in a half-dozen towns along the way and
invite a newspaper editorial board writer to ride shotgun for a dozen miles.
They'd update their status on Twitter. They'd write a few posts for the company
blog. They'd shoot video on a Flip camera and talk about how they screwed up at
their first appearance, how they're selling their
fleet of corporate jets, and their plans for the future. If they behave like
real people instead of CEO machines, they might arrive in D.C. backed by some
pretty good word of mouth.

MIMA Blogger discusses the Obama Approach to interactive marketing

Interesting post from the folks at MIMA:

Obama’s seamless integration of so many interactive tools makes his approach look simple and easy. For the most part, it is. Consensus among writers from Fortune Magazine, CNN.com, Fast Company and more is that what made it work was Obama’s clear sense of knowing what his key messages and strategy would be from the beginning.

In an election-night interview with “60 Minutes,” Obama’s staff said that they knew from day one what their messages and strategy would be. They stuck to it and never wavered.

As my EVC counterparts have long said -- no random acts of marketing. Make sure your tactics are tied to your strategy and desired outcomes.

Outliers

I hope that everyone is recovering nicely from Thanksgiving. It was a relaxing and fun day for us in Minneapolis. We did not travel as we are preparing HQ for another junior agent.

I finished Gladwell’s Outliers last night. It was a great read. Using the term Outlier in it’s scientific and statistical sense, Gladwell describes stories of successful individuals, but moves beyond the Algers-esque stories of a strong individual. He looks at the socio-economic, cultural, and historic elements that also contribute to working for or against one’s success. Here's Gladwell talking about why he wrote the book:

In the case of Outliers, the book grew out a frustration I found myself having with the way we explain the careers of really successful people. You know how you hear someone say of Bill Gates or some rock star or some other outlier—"they're really smart," or "they're really ambitious?' Well, I know lots of people who are really smart and really ambitious, and they aren't worth 60 billion dollars. It struck me that our understanding of success was really crude—and there was an opportunity to dig down and come up with a better set of explanations.

I was surprised Gladwell did not explicitly acknowledge or reference Anthony Giddens’ theory of sturcturation. In a similar vein, I was surprised that Tipping Point did not acknowledge Rogers’ work on Diffusions of Innovation…while I’m at it, why Bourdieu’s work was not surfaced in the cultural discussions. Those nits aside, I really enjoyed the book and thought it is a great way to help us think more critically about the socio-symbolic construction of reality.

Some of the more interesting stories for me were those of Bill Gates early high school opportunities; Bill Joy’s college experience (some similar elements to that of Gates’ high school experience – both had, at the time, rare opportunities to program on time share clients); the Beatles early days in Hamburg, and the socio-cultural elements of Columbian and Korean co- pilots that make it difficult for them to raise questions or provide a change of course in times of emergency. Yet the most interesting for me may have been the discussion of the KIPP (knowledge is power program) in the New York City school system.

I recommend the book.

Takeaways: Culture and history continue to provide “here-and-now” phenomena that shape our symbolic reality; and the boot straps story is really kind of hogwash (sorry Ayn Rand).