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  • The Brains on Fire Curiosity Team

    Posted on November 30th, 2007 by Jennifer and currently 3 commenting.

    I know. It’s been a while since I’ve mentioned the brilliant band of {insert clever and alliterative word here} who make up The Brains on Fire Curiosity Team. But just because I’ve been quiet doesn’t mean they have been. Quite the contrary!

    For those who don’t remember, The Curiosity Team is a group of people who have agreed to lend their brains to me occasionally. Usually I simply ask them to respond to a word or a concept. Maybe I ask them to take a survey. But really, what they do is contribute a little bit (ok… a lot) of extra inspiration to our creative process. I am extremely grateful to them for their thoughtfulness, their humor, their opinions… everything!

    And I finally get to show them!

    curiousity-team-cat-web.jpgThis week, I sent out a little care package to all the curiosity team members who supplied their addresses. Just a little something to say thank you. But it was more than that. The real fun was that we had developed an identity for the team… so this thank you also got to be an unveiling for our own little brand, our own little mark to bind us together. AND, we have created our own little space on that fancy interweb. So whether you become a die hard member of the team (and believe me, there are some Curiosity Team rock stars!) or just happen to meander by the site and feel like adding your two cents, there’s plenty of room for all to play!

    So… to commandeer the tiresome web lingo of today… welcome to Curiosity Team 2.0.

    Update: PS: I want to make it clear… I am a big time cat lover. See… this is my Chloe kitty.

    chloe-kitty.jpg Isn’t she cute?

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  • Like Fame, Word of Mouth Costs

    Posted on November 29th, 2007 by Virginia and currently 4 commenting.

    As I was reading Tuesday’s Online Spin review of a review of PQ Media’s Word of Mouth Marketing forecast, I was reminded of Debbie Allen’s words in the opening credits of Fame. But before I give you the link to a video of that 80’s gem (what did we do before YouTube?), I’d like to explain how I got there. In the article, Joe Marchese, president of a media company, shared his understandably media-centric takeaways from the PQ WOM forecast. Among them:

    ‘Most would…say that these people (friends/peers/consumers/influencers) will lend you their mouths for free. I would take exception…

    • Treat word of mouth as any other media buy/channel. Agencies can activate word-of-mouth for you if you treat it as a paid media channel with dedicated budget.
    • Consider the consumers/friends/peers/people you hope to be your word of mouth channel as the equivalent of any other media channel you hope to spread your message through…’

    I disagree with almost all of what is quoted above, except that word of mouth is, most assuredly NOT free.

    The actual PQ Media report does indeed recognize WOM Media, but identifies it as only 1 of the 4 types of content & service practices within Word of Mouth Marketing. Per the report, WoM as media is the area where the growth rate of marketing expenditures is actually decelerating instead of accelerating. This deceleration is credited to brands progressing from dipping a toe in Word of Mouth Marketing to employing it more strategically. Opening up a conversational, 2-way relationship with your customers is far more involved than treating people as ‘any other media channel you hope to spread your message through’. To open a dialogue is to kick off the training wheels of WOM media, but it is the only way to realize the full value of Return on Community. If you approach word of mouth solely as a push media channel, why would you expect to see returns that are different or better than any other push channels?

    Creating a conversational community with your customers is definitely a serious investment:

    • WOM dialogue costs time ” truly listening to what consumers want to tell you takes time & resources - you may even need help from an agency, researcher or technology monitoring company to make sure you are hearing everything.
    • WOM dialogue costs ego ” you have to be willing for customers to say things about you that you will not like. For community benefits to spread beyond marketing to product development, you have to be willing to be told that your baby is ugly. This can save millions in the long run, but bruise egos in the short term.
    • WOM dialogue costs money ” once you open a conversation with your customers, it is very difficult to simply turn it off if there is a reorg or you want to cut in-quarter costs. Plan to invest in your relationship with customers over the long term.
    • And finally, WOM costs sweat ” your conversations will grow and change as your company, offerings, and customers do. Recognizing those changes and rolling with them is hard, rewarding work. Hit it, Debbie:debbie.JPG
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  • iPhone vs. ?

    Posted on November 29th, 2007 by Spike and currently 5 commenting.

    So AdWeek ran an article yesterday entitled, ‘T-Mobile Goes After the iPhone,’ which talks about how T-Mobile’s new phone, called Shadow, is a new offering that’s ‘being likened to a less-expensive version of the iPhone.’

    First of all, AdWeek, nowhere on the T-Mobile site or in the article does it say that Shadow is their answer to the iPhone ” the Senior Research Analyst at consultancy IDC does. And he’s smoking crack. The only similarity between the two is that they are phones. To try and compare the two is like saying the Kia Rio is a less-expensive version of the BMW Z8 because they are both cars and have brakes, an engine and wheels.

    Seesh.

    So here’s the rest of my rant: Just like you can’t out-Google Google, you can’t out Apple Apple. So instead of phone companies trying to create an iPhone killer, they should be concentrating on themselves. As Cordell always says, ‘Your competition isn’t the guy down the street. Your competition is life.’ What makes the great brands great? They are industry disruptors. They don’t compete with anyone except themselves.

    So don’t ‘go after’ anybody. That’s stupid. That’s right, I said ’stupid.’

    (Insert big sigh here.)

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  • Many things to many people

    Posted on November 28th, 2007 by Spike and currently 0 commenting.

    So while I was in the Minneapolis airport yesterday morning (where it was 6 degrees Fahrenheit outside, BTW (man, I love Greenville) ), I was doing my weekly Google search for ‘Brains on Fire’ to see what popped up. One of the results was our client at a WOMMA conference talking about her experiences. I hadn’t listened to it in a while, so I pressed play. All her words were great, but this time around, one set of them really stuck in my head:

    ‘It’s so great because this word of mouth movement means so many different things to so many different people.’

    And I think that’s the beauty of an organic, sustainable word of mouth movement. It’s not about viral videos. It’s not about a spike in conversations. It’s not even about giving away product and telling people how to talk about it. It’s about putting it out there, providing tools and letting people do their own thing. In the past, John Moore has talked about the difference between AT and WITH marketing. But I think it goes even beyond that. When someone picks up a tool that you’ve given them and does something that you (or your client) would’ve never thought of in a million years, it’s not AT or even WITH marketing. I don’t have a name for it, but it’s good stuff.

    In addition, it allows that company, product or service to mean different things to different people. It’s not widgets being sold to people widgets. People aren’t widgets. Each one is unique with nuances in their life experiences, values and beliefs. But when they apply those life experience, values and beliefs and take you under their wing ” watch out. You never know how it will manifest itself. We’re constantly amazed at how individuals in communities use the tools they’ve been given. And we’re also humbled by it.

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  • I Love Charlie

    Posted on November 27th, 2007 by Jennifer and currently 8 commenting.

    First things first. I will go ahead and confess that I am one of the backwards luddites who has the nerve to still listen to the radio - not even the HD radio - just the plain old radio in my car. I know. I should be shunned.

    Anyway, a while ago… maybe as long as a year, maybe as little as 6 months… we got this great radio station in town. Part of the Greenstone Media Network, it was women’s talk radio. The hosts were intelligent, the topics were engaging… I loved this station.

    Of course, if you are astute, you’ll note the copious use of the past tense in the preceding paragraph. So there ya go. My great station that I had gotten oh-so-attached to disappeared. And one would assume that the replacement would be more inane, whiny, Top-40 schlock… probably with some shock jock DJ as the cherry on top.

    Well, one would be wrong.

    The station that has replaced my beloved WGVC is named Charlie. Charlie is partnering with a natural food store to give away a Prius. Charlie has no DJS and Charlie has no rhyme or reason. Charlie is random. The line that is repeated every few songs is quite simply, “We play everything.” And they do. Just on my lunch break, I heard Blues Traveler, something that might have been by Phil Collins, “Dancing Queen,” the theme from Cheers and a cover of Iko Iko. I love this station. I have heard songs I haven’t heard in decades - some had been deservedly absent, but it doesn’t matter. Even when a song I don’t know or don’t like comes on, I stay put, knowing that it’s only a couple minutes until there’s something else entirely. It’s not just the music I listen for, but for the non sequitur, (one might even call them socialist) playlists. All songs and all listeners get equal weight on Charlie.

    It seems almost unfair that we can just plug in some music-phile’s iPod, get some call letters and call it a radio station, but really… who needs another obnoxious DJ? Simple, straightforward… with sister stations in Portland, OR and Milwaukee, WI, and cousin stations in still other markets… could this possibly be a successful embodiment of all things to all people? {shrug} I guess time will tell. In the meanwhile, you can keep your XM. I’m stickin’ with Charlie.

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