Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

I recently had the pleasure of being a panelist at Kellstadt Marketing Group’s 2011 symposium: Click: Emerging Media and the Empowered Consumer. My panel covered Business Intelligence, and how managers can get CRM working in their enterprise. One of the questions the audience put forward was about how to start, and what to expect as you start to bring actionable data in.

In our discussion we compared the stages of the enterprise to the evolution of a new country or civilization - where some brave souls have to enter the wild frontier, and establish outposts to grow from. As cities develop and expand, the industry and economy evolve into new and more powerful forms, eventually becoming information-based.

The first stage is The Frontier - a scary wilderness where the enterprise functions without any structured data at all.  Some businesses have huge areas of activity that don’t collect or manage any data at all. Up until recently, many consumer packaged goods manufacturers were in this phase.  Just like the frontiers of old, this creates vast unknown areas, brimming with opportunity and ready for exploration. And it only takes one brave soul (or a group of them) to get to the next step.

Colonization - the stage where companies start to use data to make suggestions to users, or personalize experiences.  Companies in this stage are testing the waters, so just like the first colonies, there are only a few outposts - not a real support network. They are looking to provide a solid case before investing any real infrastructure money. That said, if you’re in this situation, then make sure that your operation is properly set up to prove ROI, because your ’supply ships’ will stop coming if you can’t prove that using data is a winning proposition. Many services companies get caught in this phase, with their management waiting to see proof that it makes sense to invest in anything more than a basic customer database. Once a case is made and accepted by management, then expansion into the next phase is possible.

Industrial Revolution - the stage where things start getting automated at scale. More and more of the company becomes dedicated to getting customer personal and behavioral data pulled into the stream, and infrastructure gets built on a massive scale to expand the reach of data both in the company and out to users. Some banks are good examples of this kind of enterprise - with each product group in the company depending on their customer data to excel, but tending to work in silos, without a centralized view of the customer. Just like in the actual industrial revolution, there are stories of both winners and losers. Some companies will not adjust fast enough. Some areas of the company will hang onto ‘how things were done in the past’.  Winners get to move to the next step, which is also a revolution.

Information Revolution - this is where data becomes so central to how the business operates, that the company can say that information drives the business forward.  In this economy, if you’re out of the data stream, you’re out of the picture. Due to technology advances in handling large structured and unstructured data sets, massive amounts of internal and external data get joined together to predict behavior, needs and barriers. Models are built to ensure correct customer handling, even with imperfect data, and the enterprise continues to search for what new metadata could be added to make better decisions and offers. Things change quickly in this economy (five years ago who would have predicted that social media would need to be tracked in consumer databases?), and companies like Amazon and Netflix are good examples of leaders that know that continual reinvention and innovation is crucial in order to stay ahead.

With this path to sophistication in mind, we can recommend some steps to get you from where you are to the next level in these Evolutionary Stages:

1. Know where you are. You have to be honest about ‘Where you stand Evolutionarily’.  And there are likely to be multiple, conflicting opinions in the company about how data is used. Talk to stakeholders, and avoid proclamations too early in the process. It will take time and persistence to develop a clear picture that everyone can accept.

2. Start at the top. Does your CEO know where the company stands? Does he or she agree that data can help the company evolve?  Educate through examples - showing how adding data into company operations can avoid costly mistakes, angry customers, and ineffective campaigns.

3. Make the case to evolve. Investment in infrastructure and process change must be earned. If tests and pilots are not planned to give evidence of ROI, then all the logic in the world won’t convince management to take action on data, so keep the end in mind when agreeing to how experiments will be structured, run, and measured.

4. Think big, but start small. Develop a vision of how your company could be operating if you had perfect knowledge of your consumer, and use this to guide an long-range plan. But since you know you can’t get there overnight, keep the steps in the plan small and manageable. Many successful companies value failures for what you can learn, but it’s also true that a CEO’s favorite ‘learning’ project is small, fails quickly, and delivers information that lasts.

So, are you an Information Revolution company? How are you planning to get there (or stay there)?

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An interesting idea came to me via Grant Zemont. Puma started a website called Life Scoreboard which allows people to essentially create simple polls about things they are currently engrossed in or pondering or wanting to find out about. At first, you might wonder, what does this have to do with Puma? Where is the product reference, etc?

I think what is interesting about this idea is that it has given the brand a way to enable people to start exhibiting a new digital behavior with the potential to become quite viral. Instead of exchanging links and status updates, people exchanges scores. So, instead of just trying to make the brand part of existing platforms the target audience is using and emulating or fitting into that behavior, this idea tries to create a new one.

http://www.lifescoreboard.com/

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Fun video of an interactive window installation concept for We Are the Superlative Conspiracy.

Interactive Display Window Concept from Gustaf Engström on Vimeo.

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Tron Legacy Premiere - A Light Session from ENESS on Vimeo.

Old-time skaters ENESS jumped at the chance to bring skateboarding into the future by blending interactivity and high-tech mastery for the Tron Legacy premiere.

Each rider is equipped with an ipod and our custom-built app to measure their air time and trigger graphics whilst in the air and on landing.

Music By: Galapagoose - galapagoose.tumblr.com

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Check out the great piece over on the Strategic Marketing blog on the Berry network about Decoding the Consumer.  There, Alan See outlines how marketers need to reflect the consumer’s dizzy journey from awareness to purchase and beyond.

It’s a great post - with a version of what I have been repeating for a few months now: a sort of mantra that helps my clients consider how we’re integrating the experience across some specific areas that customers are really into right now.  It’s a mantra because it always contains about the same elements, but naturally gets reconfigured and recreated as needed based upon the Brand purpose I’m working against.  Alan talks about the ‘primary combination key’ for decoding customers as having Search, Social, and Mobile components.  These are all areas that do require serious consideration, given the world we live in, and are also powerful trends that continue to shape it.

I would only add, however, that Site and Retail/Place might belong on our decoder ring - expanding it to be Site, Search, Social, Mobile, and Retail/Place.

Site and Search need to work together to provide quality content to land on for the user who’s looking for you - and that’s true whether you have a Brand.com or not. For example, if the Brand has a great partnership then the search needs to support people who are looking for that partnership information.  And some Brands use their Facebok page as their landing place.  The point is that there has to be a place where the Brand expresses the purpose that gives it meaning and a reason for being.

Retail/Place is all about making sure that there is a continuous consideration of the customer journey all the way to the location where they buy or experience the brand first-hand - which often times can be supplied by mobile, but there can be a role for in-store as well, so I like to consider it separately.

Do you have a mantra?  What do you use to decode the world?

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I just read an interesting article from Augustine Fou over at ClickZ about Digital being at the root of modern advertising, and it seemed to resonate with some discussions we had been having in the Frankfurt office over the last few years.

The point is not that everything begins and ends with a website/banner/facebook page, but rather the cultural impact made by the rise of all our digital options for living.  And it’s not that people live their lives online, but rather that people use digital ‘properties’ to do so much STUFF in their lives, even when they don’t think they’re ‘online’.  You use digital technology when you pay for gas with a card.  You use digital when you check the movie times on your phone.  You use digital when you Google the actors in a TV program you’re watching. You use digital when you watch a screen in a store while you wait to check out.  Your TV is as digital as most computers are.  It’s kind of everywhere, and you relate to it and use it, even if you’re not actively searching for information about a product or service.  Ultimately, there is more and more human behavior that is linked, or tracked, or enabled by digital properties. And due to the Request/Receive nature of digital properties, this behavior can be leveraged to understand needs and desires.

The value of this information about behavior (digital breadcrumbs left in our modern world) can’t be overemphasized.  Integrating digital at the core of marketing activities allows for unprecedented analysis of data related to how people interact with digital properties, making the case for more efficient and effective work, especially when it is designed from the beginning to take advantage of human insights and behavior.

I’m not sure I buy that Digital is the center, but I prefer to think of it as a key element of the modern human landscape, rather than a channel, for sure.

Via: Stephane Grunenwald @sgrunenwald on Twitter

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Good news from P&G: their digital guy gets it. Well, in fact, even though they are the biggest marketer in the world, which could mean being slow and rigid, P&G actually already has made many forays into “new” media over the last couple of years already. Some were successful, some weren’, but failure is not the issue. Says Dave Knox, corporate marketing brand manager for digital business strategy:

“Take risks with unique ideas and see what happens. In this digital world, failing doesn’t mean defeat … but the key is being able to fail fast so you can get on to the next idea.”

and:

“If every idea is run through a committee and validated with consumer research, you will just end up with a watered down idea,” Knox said.

Kudos, we love that attitude. Now let’s hope the next 5 years are actually the next 5 years where marketing will finally be transformed. Because I’ve been saying this sentence for the last 15 years, and I hate sounding like a broken record.

Read the whole article on WARC

via Matthias Eylers FB Stream

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Last weekend some strategy and long-term digital agency career friends (Dirk Reinhardt, Shailia Stephens-Würsig, Björn Sternsdorf, Gerald Hensel and Angela Becker) and I held a seminar at our Leo Burnett offices on digital planning for traditional planners.

To be honest, we were a bit sneaky. To most of us, there ain’t no such thing as “digital” strategy. Or can you tell me what “analog” strategy is?

Fact is, there is so much confusion and mystery regarding the term “digital”, even to supposedly “channel-agnostic/media-neutral” strategists, that it seemed like a great strategy (haha) to offer a course in “digital planning”. In doing so, we had the pleasure to work with the top 20 of Germany’s planners who don’t just hide behind the hackneyed term “channel-agnostic” for lack of their own change-ability, but rather exercised their confusion tolerance and went into the whole thing full-on. The most engaged folks I had the pleasure to work with in a while!

Hence, our aim wasn’t sneaky at all: debunk the myths around digital planning, its complexity and hopefully provide some pointers that alleviate some angst concerning new terrains in research, discovery, strategy development and shaping the creative outcome. And above all: make the segregated planning community come together.

Therefore, the day started with the statement:

“Digital” strategy doesn’t replace traditional strategy. Strategy is strategy and always was. It simply rams home the point that we need to extend strategic planning overall so it can remain relevant as a discipline that can lead brands to success by making a qualitative difference in people’s lives again.”

Techniques and tools (such as information architecture, touchpoint analysis, contact planning, purchase funnels, etc) have existed for a long time before the term “digital strategy” became the mot du jour. They   may have given us an irritatingly confusing mess of terminologies, but also a gift: we can make brands relevant again, without unsuccessfully and repeatedly pressing the “mass media onslaught” button because we’re out of ideas.

Therefore, we see digital strategy as a way to go back to the roots and deliver what strategy was always about: know what to do, not just what to say. This is the most relevant job a strategist can do in a time when people wonder if they should listen to your brand.

Therefore, we try to make digital the stuff that adds a PLUS to your strategic effectiveness versus being a completely new discipline:

Each section of the workshop then explored each PLUS with practical exercises and theory moving along the planning process from research to strategy to creative briefing and team constellations.

Result of the workshop:

At the end of the workshop, we had a discussion on whether we succeeded in offering an intergrated approach to planning, and if indeed digital (and other) planning methodologies in fact can be seen as a plus or if it isn’t really something different out there.

Here are excerpts of the discussion:

On brands:

“I think one of the biggest issues is still that brands and their clients feel that they have to be perfect. But people don’t expect you to be perfect. They want a conversation about your products. I mean, would you trust a person who disappointed you and walks away when you want to talk to them?”

“I think if brands didn’t understand the importance behind people’s digital behaviors before, flailing a dead business and brand model, the recession could end up helping in finally understanding it. There didn’t seem to be enough pressure to have to change. Maybe now marketers will understand that it’s not them that change everything, but rather the people themselves. Strategic planning needs to accompany that.”

On Technology:

“Traditional planning has been moving this way anyway, but there seem to be so many barriers still for brand planners because they think they can’t do something that in the end requires a technological solution.”

“I am so relieved the new planning isn’t about technology. On the contrary, I am happy that it is even much more about people than before. Looking at human behavior and having all this detailed insight instead of just asking people is what we should do anyway!”

“For brand planners, it is second nature to look at trends in categories. It might help to think of technology as a thing that keeps generating trends that change people’s behaviors. It is much better than getting scared about technological details. And we need to know what people do anyway. How else can we plan for anything?”

On the planning process:

“What really helped was to understood that my team just got so much bigger and what the different roles are. It helps me because I now that my brand strategy is not seperate from digital stuff and I feel there are people to talk to about my strategy and get it working everywhere else.”

“Digital always seems so overwhelming when you don’t know you don’t have to know everything. Knowing there are experts really helps.”

On taking clients into the digital space:

“I am still worried about being able to give a client security about delivering, so he moves forward into the digital space, but to be honest was I ever able to give him this security before? My client spends loads of money on TV and I can’t really say if it works anymore either.”

“In a way, tradititional planners have an advantage: they speak the brand and marketing client’s language better than some digital agency people. Using that advantage, also in terms of tradititional techiques to make them feel comfortable to try out new stuff is a big opportunity.”

“It makes sense to think in little steps and strategies instead of trying to solve for everything at once and selling the client a holistic castle in the sky. Taking the client on a journey with achievable milestones and giving them a sense of success in the space and growing from there works better.”

Conclusion:

While not all myths can be debunked in one weekend, not all issues solved, we feel we started a discourse in the right direction and everyone involved feel that this kind of collaboration can open doors to better strategy with less siloes. As workshop participant, Stephen Rothman, Head of Strategy Saatchi Frankfurt said:

I believe that as the world of marketing and communications moves forward, the work will demand that we come to the place where classic vs. digital planner will become an anachronism. Because “consumers” aren’t digital or classic. This seminar got us all started in that direction.

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ReadWriteWeb has an interesting article on the realities of establishing web 2.0 in the white house. As the web 2.0 is gaining more and more attention in Germany by parties and individual politicians including experiments on how to engage voters, this is in interesting topic. When you do make digital channels work for you in a campaign, how do you make it work afterwards in government?

As Swire points out, it was easy to ask a North Korea expert about what to say about a developing situation in North Korea during the campaign and to use that expert’s opinion as a talking point, but now, White House bloggers don’t just speak for the campaign, but for America, and a talking point could have real, potentially dangerous consequences. Now, the White House team has to get clearance to post about pretty much any topic.

Read the whole thing here.

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In his coverage of Renny Gleeson of W+K, entitled “Stop branding start participating,” Rich Cherecwich quotes

“Agencies are built to make ads, not come up with marketing solutions and solve problems,” he said. “Marketing teams are built to approve ads, and publishers are trying to sell eyeballs, but what they need to sell is relevance.

and, citing social media as a way to deliver relevance:

In the search for the shared experience, brands have an incredible role to play,” Gleeson said. “They’ve always been the glue that binds. Now they have the opportunity to be the glue and part of the shared experience for the people who buy them.

How very true. Many, including us have said similar things. “The brand era is over, it’s the people era.” and “Acts, not ads!” are Leo Burnett mantras.  However, concerning the headline “stop branding”: really?

Before looking at Social Media as a solution to make brands relevant again (which it can be), I wonder why agencies and brands have had a hard time reinventing themselves.  Because I believe, regardless of what tools (such as social media) you are using, it will be a crap-shoot in terms of relevance for your brand, until brands and agencies have consummated and internalized one very basic mindset shift. It’s not so much about having to “stop branding” and “to start participating”, but it’s more like:

In the people era, it’s about doing something that makes a qualitative difference in people’s lives, not just saying something. Because delivering deeds and experiences that make a qualitative difference (however big or small), is branding for the people era.

Yet, agencies and brands haven’t adapted their business models and “creative delivery systems” to actually be doing something  instead of just messaging. And to top it off, even when they are doing something, it is usually so brand-centered, that it becomes a backfiring farce.  There are many such examples of brave attempts by brands and agencies to use “innovative” digital channels, such as social media, in the hopes that it will engage people with their brands again. The ones that happen to work, we all hear about. But there are many more attempts we don’t hear about. Why don’ t they work? Because moving to the people era doesn’t just mean picking the digital channel du jour, and applying your brand message.  Fact is, agencies and brands that have not internalized what their brand can mean in the people era, and will continue to try to use channels to force-feed their brand message. Brands are so used to being the sender of a message, that they don’t know how to let people message for them, but that’s what the ultimate consequence of the people era is. This is what Gleeson refers to when he says, “what brands need to do is grow the campaign out of an existing community, rather than simply drop it on top of a community.” 

So I agree that brands and agencies need to reinvent themselves. But it’s a shift that needs to happen, not a replacement of things.

• Brand era SHIFTS TO People era
• Doing things to people SHIFTS to doing things with people
• Brand message SHIFTS to Brand experience
• Reason to Believe SHIFTS to Reason to Interact
• Single-minded propositions SHIFT to allowing fragmented, multi-faceted experiences 
• Branding SHIFTS to delivering experiences that make a qualitative difference
• Creativity in formulating messaging SHIFTS TO Creativity in designing experiences 
• Brand Metrics SHIFTS TO People Metrics
• Consumer Insight SHIFTS TO Behavioral Insight

So, in summary, yes, stop branding the old way but start branding with an understanding of shifting brands into the people age. Only with that in mind, social media and other digital channels, as well as the traditional channels can serve purposeful strategies that are not left up to luck to succeed.

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