Brains on Fire

• 

  The Art of Black and White

  Posted on January 31st, 2012 by Eric Dodds and currently 3 commenting.

  Several weeks ago I needed to have a suit tailored. I contacted a gentlman who was recommended to me (1), and our conversation about my needs was very short:

  Me: “I need a suit tailored.”
  Bill: “I charge [x dollars]. It will be perfect.”

  I didn’t think much about it until a few days later, but when it did hit me, I realized how much impact his promise carried. It was the most starkly simple spoken promise I’d recieved as part of a purchase in a long time.

  To some extent, craftsman-type services afford you the ability to make that promise. They’re black and white. Either my suit fits perfectly, or it doesn’t. Either my car is running right, or it isn’t. Either my sinks and showers drain properly, or they don’t.

  I think that there’s something about ‘black and white’ things that we love as humans. It takes some of the guesswork out, and it can make meeting and fulfilling expectations a heck of a lot easer. Think about how nice it would be for a board to say to a CEO, “we need to increase sales by 10% next quarter,” and the leader’s response to be, “It will cost [x dollars] and sales will increase by 12.5%. I promise.”

  But that’s not always the world we live in. And that’s not always the world that craftsman live in either – we both live in a world where we interact with humans who desire beauty and creativity. Humans are less than predictable, and beauty and creativity are difficult to execute, and many times subjective.

  Nonetheless, the black-and-white art of tailoring my suit (which fits perfectly) led me to ask some great questions:

  • How can we make our services and their results more black and white?
  • Can we make measurement of our work more black and white?
  • How can I build my skills so that I can, like my tailor, make strong promises that I’m confident I can keep?
  • How can I instill confidence in clients?

  (1) If you live in the Greenville area and you need a suit tailored, contact Bill Mitchell of Billiam Jeans.

  Tags: black and white, Clients, clothing, Expectations, perfect, suit, tailor
• 

  Co-blogging Goodness Round 2: Eric and Jamie Tackle Scaling Community Online and Offline

  Posted on January 25th, 2012 by Eric Dodds and currently 2 commenting.
  

  Co-bloggin’ goodness, round 2: One is a seasoned corporate marketer working for Best Buy. The other is a small-agency young-gun in a constant quest for his spurs. Both are passionate about making positive change in the industry, and they want to share their thoughts with you. Jamie Plesser and Eric Dodds bring you the second post in a monthly co-blogging series that tackles tasty marketing topics from both sides of the line. Meet the crew:

  Eric: I was raised in Upstate South Carolina and roped in by a small, big-hearted agency called Brains on Fire. I’ve had my hand in qualitative research, account management, community management, and even a little bit of strategy. You can usually find me hiking outdoors, tinkering with a bicycle, or tackling the next improvement project at my house. (Oh yeah, I just started using Twitter again, too.)

  Jamie: I’m a native Kansas Citian but call Minneapolis home. The Twin Cities rock on many levels…except for the length of the winter. Work-wise, my gig is in the consumer marketing space at the corporate HQ for Best Buy. I dig live music. I wish I was better than a novice guitar player. I love Kansas Jayhawk basketball. And I am a Royals fan in hibernation. (If you’re into the Twitter thing, you can find chatting or ranting with friends and colleagues over there.)

  This month’s menu: “Scaling community online and offline: is online easier to scale than offline? If so, how? What are the main barriers to scaling offline?”

  ————————

  Dodds

  Ah, the online versus offline community discussion. I’m passionate about figuring out what role each plays for companies, so thinking through this month’s topic with Jamie has been really great.

  In the past two years I’ve actually had the privilege of being involved in both types of projects – one with a gigantic offline component, and one whose goal was online growth. For the offline project, my job was to beat the bricks to grow a grassroots community of both employees and customers. (Good times working with Jamie.) The other project focused on helping a company grow their online fan base, primarily through Facebook.

  When I think about both of those experiences, the simple answer to the question, “is scaling community online easier than offline,” is, absolutely. Why? For starters, it’s easier for both the companies and the customers – especially the customers. Click, click, done. Almost nonexistent barriers of entry.

  Looking past simple answers, though, that this question about scaling begs an even bigger question: what is the purpose of scaling?

  Answering the purpose question is critical because online and offline are a [hack saw and a razor blade - come up with a different example?]: they both cut things, but they work best in very different situations, and produce very different outcomes.

  Here’s are some of the differences I learned working on those projects:

  Offline

  Without question, the work I did offline, which was for a relatively short time period compared to the year I put into Facebook for the other client, the connections that people made through the program were extremely strong. Far stronger than anything that developed online in the same project. I remember single offline events where meeting and working with people produced hours and hours of unsolicited investment in the community by members, hard-working promotion of the program by members, and actual friendships that lasted long after the program ended.

  I remember getting emails about the program from members 6 months after I’d met them, asking how I was doing me and updating me on their life / their involvement with the brand. That kind of strong-tie connection, though, doesn’t come without blood sweat and tears:

  Barriers to scaling offline:

  • Time: Building things offline is much, much slower. It’s a long-term investment that needs time to build and grow. From my experience, face-to-face relationships mature much more slowly than online relationships, and forging those bonds takes time. (How many ‘friends’ can you make online in a day?)
  • Money: Building community offline is much, much more expensive. Offline events and programs can drain budgets with surprising speed. Traveling is expensive. Offline collateral is expensive. Coordination is expensive. Personnel are expensive.
  • Manpower: Executing awesome offline programs takes a lot of manpower, and a lot of man hours, and in my case, sleeping on the floor of a band’s touring van for a few weeks. Depending on the type of event, you’re looking at setup, tear-down, staffing, support, and more. It’s a handful, and it can take a lot of hands to do it well.

  

  Beating the bricks offline: some connections I made on the road.

  Online (social media)

  The social media team that did the work of building an online fan base was only two people: me and someone from the brand. We had tons of amazing support from our managers and internal teams, but as I look back, the amount of growth that the two of us achieved by being the brand’s voice on Facebook is pretty amazing. Using content alone, we were able to almost triple the number of fans in less than a year.

  We fostered as deep of relationships as we could through that content and online conversation, but here’s what really struck me: the deepest relationships and strongest word of mouth that developed were a small number of instances where an initial online conversation led to an offline surprise and delight for the fan.

  Through some rather sticky situations, we also figured out that for this brand, social media was a really good way to disseminate important information about events at lightening speed, or keep people up to date on play-by-play happenings they might be interested in. It’s amazing how quickly information can move on the Internet.

  Lastly, we determined that for certain types of customer service, Facebook was simply more convenient and effective for both us and the customer.

  Like offline, though, all of the progress we made didn’t come without lots of hard work, but there were also some barriers that are unique to the medium:

  Problems with online scaling:

  • Measurement: Proving return on investment for social media is just plain hard. Not that it’s easy for other mediums, but since online is a different tool, it requires different reporting, which can be hard to sell.
  • Ease of coming and going: Since social media relationships are heavily weak-tie, your fans can leave at a moment’s notice, and they do. Or they just ignore you. In my experience, few brands ever ‘earn the right’ to be a regular part of a customer’s social media landscape, mostly because the real goal is selling something to them.
  • Monetization: It varies by industry and company, but in my experience, sustainably monetizing social media beyond coupons, giveaways, and short-term promotions is very difficult.
  • Customer service investment: Online customer service is still takes an incredible amount of investment – it was the most laborious aspect of anything we did on Facebook – and in some ways, it wasn’t ever as good as human-to-human offline service.

  Why are you scaling?

  I come back to the purpose for scaling: everyone wants a huge audience, but to what end? What type of scaling makes sense for your brand? What type of investment makes most sense for your long term growth?

  Successful scaling of either online or offline grows out of solid, measurable goals, and my guess is that many companies will use a smart combination of both.

  ————————

  Jamie

  The idea of brands building communities always brings a wry smile to my face.  Why?  First off, I believe that the majority of people within companies don’t have a good understanding of how brands should think about consumer communities and how they can help solve marketing challenges.  I’ve been in more meetings that I can count where the idea of building a community was suggested as a solution to a business or marketing challenge.  When in these meetings, I ask questions and seek to understand why there is a need to do something community oriented.  I usually get an answer that has to do with “connecting with the influencer” or “getting to the mommy bloggers.”  I’ve found that if I hear these rote explanations it’s pretty much a red flag that the people aren’t really sure of what they are talking about.

  The second reason why I’m fond of this topic is that I’ve worked on the front lines of trying to bring together a group of kindred spirits and I know how hard it is.  It is not easy work but when done well it can be rewarding.

  On the surface, today’s co-blogging question is pretty easy to answer from a national brand perspective.  Online approaches to scaling a community are easier than offline.

  

  But the important question is why is that such as easy answer?  Really, it gets back to one word in the original question: scale.  National brands are built on the premise of trying to leverage economies of scale.  When it comes to trying to either connect with communities or trying to develop one, digital and online platforms represent the opportunity to build scale quickly while being able to manage costs and maintain efficiencies.

  What’s the cost for a brand to establish a Facebook page? Zero.  A Twitter account? Zero.  A Google+ page.  Zero.  A Tumblr page? Zero.  An Instagram account?  Zero.

  Now I’ll admit that I’m being a bit facetious here.  I know that brands do spend legitimate money on developing digital experiences, spend media dollars on platforms like Twitter and Facebook, and invest resources on teams of community managers.  But my point is that it costs roughly the same amount of investment to build a digital community presence for one person as it does for 100,000 people.

  While digital tools represent the ability to get to scale cheaper and easier, my perspective is that automatically going with this approach may overlook what I think is a very important component to communities: the power of personal connectedness.  If you look at data from Keller Fay, you know that far and away the majority of word-of-mouth conversations happen offline.  If you look at data from Nielsen, you know that active social media users are even more social offline.

  To me, this signals that there are benefits for brands to build offline connections with consumers that may not translate automatically to communities in the digital space.  This doesn’t mean that it cannot happen within an online environment; rather, it may not have the same depth as it does offline.

  For brands to be well served in community efforts, I believe they require groups of kindred spirits to come together and connect.  Certain brands have this happen innately in their consumer base and those folks aggregate together naturally – both offline and online.  For these brands, it’s easier to go with a strict digital approach and let the offline connections foster on their own.

  For other brands where this connection with consumers is not quite as organic, then honest discussions need to take place about what the brand is looking to achieve through the creation of a community, what the expectations are, and whether those expectations are achievable through a strictly digital approach to the program.

  (Photos courtesy of creative commons license: Jeremy Brooks.)

  Tags: brand community, Community, digital, economies of scale, Jamie Plesser, Marketing, offline, online, scaling, Social media
• 

  The Technology of Good News (Part 2)

  Posted on January 16th, 2012 by Eric Dodds and currently 0 commenting.

  Last week I shared a few thoughts I had about the news industry, and the role that good news might play for companies in the business (1). While writing that post, my mind went on a short technological tangent involving television, content, and mobile devices.

  I thought sharing some of the ideas would be fun. They’re not perfect, but hopefully they’ll spark some thought. Here we go:

  When I created this image for the original post:

  

  I immediately thought, “It would be awesome if I ran across an awesome story at a Good News Stand, and I could download it to my iPhone to read when I’m not on the move.” Not a new idea, but my wheels were turning and I made this image:

  

  Would you like to read the full story on your iPad?

  Of course, everyone is wondering whether paper-and-ink newspaper kiosks will be around in 10 years, but that’s for another conversation. I’m more interested in the relationship between physical, non-mobile displays and people’s mobile devices.

  Thinking about these relationships led me to consider the content interaction / exchange between different types of devices that serve media in the same genre: in this case, news. People still read newspapers, and they still buy magazines. And they still watch TV. A lot of TV (2). Which inspired this image:

  

  Would you like to read the full story and see more photos on your iPad?

  Those thoughts led to me think about Instapaper (3), but on super-steroids. Devices talking to each other. Any type of content, coming from any device (‘new’ or ‘traditional’), capturable and saveble for future consumption.

  Things like this already exist, but (from what I’ve seen) on a limited, proprietary scale (please post examples if you have them). Maybe revenue models and content license agreements will keep progress slow, or maybe 2012 will see an entrepreneur strike gold through building seamless relationships between devices.

  Innovate on.

  • (1) You can read the original post, Thoughts on Good News, Part 1, here.
  • (2) You can read about growing TV viewership in The Ad Contrarian’s commentary on the 2010-2011 Nielsen report on TV viewing here.
  • (3) If you don’t know about Instapaper, it’s incredible. And so is the way that the creator monetized it. More here.
  Tags: Content, instapaper, Internet, ipad, mobile devices, technology, TV
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  Thoughts on Good News, Part 1

  Posted on January 10th, 2012 by Eric Dodds and currently 7 commenting.

  Not too long ago I was walking through an airport and saw a newspaper kiosk. I had a thought that many people have had: “I’m so worn out by bad news that I don’t want to think about opening a newspaper right now.” Then I thought, “what if you could buy a newspaper full of GOOD news?” Instead of a plain old news stand, could you have a good news stand? I know this is idealistic, but stick with me for a minute.

  

  This isn’t a new idea by any means, but after searching around a bit, I couldn’t find the concept implemented on a large scale by a major news provider. (There are several websites to this end (1), but it doesn’t seem to be a priority for the big players. If you know of one, please share.)

  I’m not saying that it’s healthy to put on your rose colored glasses and ignore the reality of economic perils or dictatorial oppression, but I do think there is potential impact (and business opportunity) for a news service that makes an intentional effort to report about hard realities in conjunction with stories about the heroic people who are making real-life changes to solve problems. Sure, it happens, but how many times have you picked up the paper and felt a little more courageous, a little more encouraged, and a little more inspired to go out and do something? I can pick out a few times, but overall it’s rare. (How about you?)

  I can’t say for sure, but I hope that more people would get involved making change if we made a big deal out of the amazing stories of people who already are. I also don’t know the workings of the news business well, but I do think it’s a big missed opportunity for providers to differentiate themselves.

  I know that for myself, good news would keep the fire from dimming in a sea of constant head-shaking when I browse headlines.

  Tags: good news, News, news industry, Opportunity, optimism
• 

  Problems, Problems

  Posted on January 5th, 2012 by Eric Dodds and currently 0 commenting.

  What would you say if someone wanted to engage your agency in a project around finding and sharing recipes? Of course it would include a website component, a mobile app, etc. With Facebook integration it would have the potential become a part of people’s lives…

  I had a conversation along similar lines recently, and it led me to ask some interesting questions. Here are a few I can remember:

  • What would you be offering people that they can’t already get using any number of the existing sources (including communities)?
  • Is your idea good enough to compete with Google’s utility as a ‘recipe finding app’?
  • If you want to jump into the content competition, do you have the time, money, expertise and creative firepower to bring something remarkable to the table?
  • What problem will your ‘recipe app’ actually solve?

  There it is. It’s been rolling around in my head a lot lately: “What problem are we solving?”

  The question came up again this recently when someone told me about their experience judging entries for a marketing competition: “You just wouldn’t believe it. So many of these entries are simply about how the agency increased the number of Facebook fans on a brand’s page. Is that what agencies do these days?”

  Here’s a really great quote from scientist Richard Hamming on solving problems in the field of science (1):

  If you do not work on an important problem, it’s unlikely you’ll do important work. It’s perfectly obvious. Great scientists have thought through, in a careful way, a number of important problems in their field, and they keep an eye on wondering how to attack them.

  In 2012 I am going to consistently ask what problems I’m solving, and I’m going to keep my eye on wondering how to attack them.

  • (1) You can read the transcript of Richard Hamming’s speech here.
  Tags: Facebook, Marketing, problems, recipes, solving problems