Marketing

Voters aren’t that stupid

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Dear Political campaign manager,

If there’s one certain way to get a voter to disbelieve your candidate, it is the inane, silly postcards like these you send out. Having dumped hundreds of these in the recycling bin without so much as glancing at them, I would like you to know that I will most certainly vote for the person you vilify because (a) Your communication skills and your morals probably line up with your candidate, and (b) If the only thing you want me to remember are the ‘dark secrets’ of others then you do not seem to have a leg to stand on.

Are you in marketing? Or did you just learn Photoshop over the weekend? You do not deserve to represent anyone but the scorpions that occasionally show up during this time of year.

That is why I wanted to shine a black light on your work so that when your candidate loses, you will at least know why.

We voters aren’t that stupid. Grow up and go back to marketing school.

Cyber-warfare – a new definition is overdue

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

Used to be that cyber war was considered actions of an adversary to take down a system using the Internet. Like crippling a financial system, hacking into and holding hostage a web site, compromising power and communication grids etc. That definition  is really old now!

As authorities uncover Russian interference – specifically the work of trolls, fake social media accounts, and even advertising piped through Facebook, Twitter and Google – we should understand that cyber warfare is more subtle, and has outgrown the old definitions. It is about disrupting the behaviors, and messing with the minds of citizens. Before we show our irritation with foreign culprits, we should be unhappy with how we citizens are easily manipulated by what is online.

The glue that holds us together appears to be easily dissolved by what passes for ‘information.’ As the Philadelphia Inquirer story reveals, we are experiencing high-tech cracks and wedges to undermine us. They worked because of a critical mass of people who unthinkingly re-tweet and share posts and sponsored content. Content that few care check where the source of the post is.

Consider this sponsored ad (featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer story). It looks so silly, and poorly crafted that you’d think any person with some common sense would not even read it, let alone pass it along to others. Variations of these include chain-letters, and memes that no one knows the origin, but often accompanies a statement like “Could I hear an amen?”

For the record I never respond with an amen, for two reasons. The word is a statement of approval or concurrence reserved for prayer. It’s not the linguistic equivalent to the Like button. Also, someone’s rant does always not require public approval to make it more valid. You can still be a friend whether or not you agree with someone’s pet peeve. And for heaven’s sake (pun intended), don’t Like or re-tweet this post unless you a read it in its entirety.

Cyber war is no longer just about attacking hardware or infrastructure. It’s about unhinging us through the things that pass through the pipes that connect our hardware. It’s not about a denial of service, but about a denial of common sense.

Pepsi lesson: Our B.S. detectors still work

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Brand storytelling can be too fixated on featuring celebrities, weaving them in for name recognition, rather than for something they represent.

So why did Pepsi take this latest tack with Kendall Jenner? After all it had decades of insight, having used people from Michael J Fox to Michael Jackson. (Remember this one, in which Michael J Fox braves traffic, and rain?)

Inserting Jenner into a protest movement means nothing to Millenials. Unless Pepsi assumed they would fall for the fake anti-establishment story line. (Throwing in a head scarfed photo-journalist into the mix.) Or they thought most young people would like to see a can of soda solve a street crisis. Maybe they were trying to borrow from the iconic image of that calm activist in Baton Rouge who walked up to armed police.

It reminds me of the cringe-worthy tweet by Kenneth Cole in 2011, trying to hijack the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt with a brand message about its spring collection.

Writer Eric Thomas called out the lame Pepsi ad as “the holy grail of offensive media.” He dissected, frame by frame, what Pepsi got so wrong. He noted that as storytellers, we owe it to ourselves to “fight for more understanding” –and by this he means coming up with course corrections for other storytellers. “Millennials have hyper-advanced B.S. detectors,” warns Thomas.

To me there was positive that emerged out of this brand story. The hoi polloi detected the B.S. and told Pepsi in no uncertain terms.

Whatever happened to music lyrics? Are good songwriters going extinct?

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Tell me if you’ve felt this way – that the words of many recent songs are beyond awful.

We’ve got some oddly eclectic music going on at our home, so I do hear a wide range – from Adele and Chris Stapleton to Merle Haggard and Sting. But in so much of the other current music (and I know this sounds like a dad talking!), they are passably listenable, until you actually hear the words. You’d think a bunch of blindfolded monkeys were given word processors and the results were set to music. And while I’m at it,

I know there are folks who think, for instance that Adele’s lyrics are very old. Such as that refrain “I must’ve called a thousand times.” But she does tell compelling stories (River Lea, for instance, which has been the subject of literature before), and those stories never grow old, accentuated by the quality of the voice.

There’s a good article on the music industry on the business model of making us like bad music: How The Music Industry Is Brainwashing You to Like Bad Pop Songs. Basically it’s that ‘Stockholm Effect’ combined with virtually bribing radio stations to play terrible music until they infect our brains.

But to get back to the main point of this: Is the music industrial music complex ignoring good songwriters just to churn out radio hit after radio hit? Isn’t it odd that while there is so much of emerging musical talent via TV talent shows, songwriting talent seems to be going down the slopes.

Mr. Paul Simon, where are you when we need you most?

Playing to the cameras – Politics as usual

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

In the swim suit contests for our future president, the conflict of style vs substance is hard to miss.

These debates are, after all political theater, set up by TV networks. Sometimes I wonder if we have the right to even complain that it is such a frivolous affair, and we hardly come away with substance about a candidate.

So this month, in my column, I covered it from the premise that the candidate who really masters the ‘camera angle’ of this theatrical exercise, is the one who could win.

If you watched the incident in Iowa a few months back, when Donald Trump was interrupted by TV journalist Gorge Ramos, from Univision, you’ll know what I mean. The cameras rolled, and as crass and disingenuous as Trump was, he demonstrated camera mastery.

It’s no longer Public Relations 1.0. The groundswell of offline and online conversations is creating new possibilities. It’s possible now to follow real-time commentary in the Twittersphere, On Facebook, Instagram, or via ‘Vine’ while a campaign speech is being delivered. And these short burps of commentary, are fed by what comes to us via the camera soundbite.

 If you want to read more on this it is here.

Branding theories under scrutiny in “Absolute Value”

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

To call advertising as the ‘art of relative persuasion‘ is sure to get the major advertising practitioners to put you on their black list.

I just completed the book Absolute Value, and found it to be a larger thesis than the title implied. In some ways it’s a systematic take-down of several sacred cows of marketing, branding, the role of persuasion and much more. But what’s impressive is how the authors (Ithamar Simonson and Emanuel Rosen) do it in a calm, intellectual fashion, trying to assure readers they are not really picking a fight.

Book - absolutevalueThey observe how we customers have a hard time assessing the quality of products, so we typically use ‘quality proxies’ such as a brand name, prior satisfaction, country of origin, image of the store at which the purchase could be made etc. Oddly enough, we change these proxies over time. Think about this: There was a time when ‘made in China’ meant superior quality, but not anymore. There was a time our prior experience with a brand determined its replacement. Today? (I recently ditched another carrier for T-Mobile because prior experience wasn’t exactly great.)

Absolute Value gives you a three-part theoretical framework of how to promote brands –the P-O-M Influence Mix. I find it interesting how the authors steer clear of calling it the Marketing Mix. It stands for Prior Preferences (P), Other People (O), and Marketers (M).

Does this mean the death of branding? No! But it does reveal serious cracks in what is typically considered brand management –tied to Positioning theory, Segmentation etc. Today we are nearer to having perfect (or ‘absolute’) information about a brand we are considering because of the abundance of reviews, and websites dedicated to testing, comparing, or even disparaging brands. Bloggers and journalists prod and pry a brand’s claims to see if it is living up to it or the market hype, exposing the slightest flaw, or lesser-discussed breakthrough feature. Social media is a big part of this, obviously.and marketers should understand that their primary role is shifting from persuasion to (and this should not come as a shock!) communication!

In this scenario –this has to be troubling to ‘positionistas’ and those running loyalty programs—customers can evaluate a brand for what it is, rather than how it compares with other “choice-sets” they are allowed to see.

Sidenote: There’s a great story about Jonney Shih, who created a brand following with hardly any brand advertising. I was in the market for a laptop a few weeks back, so having sworn by a Toshiba for many years, guess what brand I bought?

How medium size ‘decoys’ mess with your head – ‘Absolute Value’ explained

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

As I mentioned, I am reading ‘Absolute Value, a book that will certainly rock the world of marketers who have sat on their bottoms with the idea of branding. The idea that the ‘brand’ equity they create, can determine people’s choices.

This explanation by Itamar Simonson on NBC, explains the concept of why manufacturers ‘frame’ the price to provide an imperfect set of choices.

Simonson is a really good interviewee –he firmly, and politely disagrees with the host of the show and others at the table) to make his point and clarify the thesis of the book.

Two things, he says, worth noting:

  • Marketing as we know it is no ‘trick’ – just an outdated way of providing consumer choices, so they make an irrational compromise.
  • Brands are not the same ‘filters’ as say Facebook is. They were proxies for value that do no work as well now. The best filters live outside of the control of brands.

http://www.viddler.com/v/bceefb4a

“Absolute Value” confronts traditional marketing theories

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

We’ve all been influenced by customer reviews, right?

Whether it’s a low-ticket item (ordering food online) or not we use the “knowledge” gleaned from other users as a habit before we make up our minds.

Is this  new? Not exactly, because in the pre-Internet era, we bumped into this information in a haphazard way — chance conversations  during our commute, by trading opinions over our fence etc.

But it’s less haphazard now. It’s ingrained in our purchasing behavior.

In the just about to be released book, Absolute Value, by Itamar Simonson and Emanuel Rosen,  we see how this stream of information is what marketers must now lose sleep over.

I just received an advanced digital version of the book from Rosen, and I have to say it is a compelling idea –the idea of how “nearly perfect information” could disrupt the pillars of marketing we know of as segmentation, positioning, promotion etc. And if course the whole basis of branding and brand value would be in question, if their thesis is true.

The New York Times described it as a book that deals with the power of online reviews, based on Dr. Itamar’s decades-long research at Stanford, prior to this.

Here’s how they summarize how the power of information from ‘other people’ tilt the balance.

Customers’ purchase decisions are typically affected by a combination of three things: Their prior preferences, beliefs, and experiences (which we refer to as P), information from marketers (M), and input from other people and from information services (O). …

…If the impact of O on a purchase decision about a food processor goes up, the influence of M or P, or both, goes down.

For those whose business is all about the M — the marketing push and the brand strategy, you better start paying attention to how the hoi polloi, those “other people” might matter, after all.

Meet the panel –for Chat Republic launch

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

It’s going to be an interesting round of conversations for the launch of Chat Republic in Colombo in a few weeks. The event, on June 18th, will focus on the power of social media across many disciplines.

The ‘knights,’ as Bates Chairman puts it, will include:

Shehara De Silva – GM, Marketing, Janashakthi Insurance

Virginia Sharma – VP of Marketing, Communications and Corporate Citizenship, IBM India/South Asia.

Dinesh Perera -Head of Digital Business / Creative Director, Bates

Nalaka Gunawardena – Citizen Journalist / LIRNEasia

Lakshaman Bandaranayake — Multi-Platform Publisher / Chairman, Vanguard Management

Shamindra Kulamanage – Magazine Editor

Ajitha Kadirgamar — Journalist, Social Media Specialist

Nimal Gunewardena – Moderator / Chairman & CEO at Bates Strategic Alliance

Here’s how the media has reported it, calling this an ‘interrogation’:

The interviewers will each straddle a different facet of the topic raging from social media’s use in marketing, adoption by ad agencies, vital value in PR, impact on mainstream editorial media, its mobilisation by citizen journalists and monitoring and analytics.

Not sure about a round table being interrogation technique. I’m there to learn as much as I could from these eminent folk. More details of the event, here.

Brand Voices vs Brand Conversations

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

It’s easy to confuse the power of voice, when discussing ‘brand voice.’

(Don’t bother Gogling it, as there are some 441 million results, some of it with the predictable talk about signage etc.)

The Voice of the Brand belongs to two groups, depending on whom you speak to:

(a) The people who define the brand, and “know” what it stands for, and articulate it in their channels. This is really what I would call Brand Talk. Sometimes I cynically call it Bland Talk.

(b) The folks to buy it or use it, and talk it up in their own communities, and sometimes on the brand-owned channels. These are, arguably, more authentic Brand Voices. They tell you why people are using the product or paying attention.

But let’s cut through all this and look at brand conversations, to figure out what are the most valuable conversations? These are what social media helps us unearth: those incomplete, poorly phrased sentences, the angst-ridden, or cult-like exchanges in a forum, or comments section. Those self-appointed ambassadors and know-it-alls…

Sadly, brand managers are not always up to snuff on handling the latter; this sort of anarchy; of data-mining conversations; of engaging with those the bosses instinctively want to block or ban those outside voices from the website.

ONE OF THE FEW AD-MEN who bucks the trend and critiques one-way Brand Talk, calls for true brand conversations.

Nimal Gunewardena, CEO of Bates Strategic Alliance, happens to be moderating a round table discussion I will be part of, when I launch my book, Chat Republic, in Sri Lanka in a few weeks.

His screed about Brand Conversations, called for an abandonment of ‘sales talk’ and the 30-second-commercial mindset. It seemed akin to 1st century monks arguing against using calligraphy.

“It’s time to start thinking beyond that 30 second commercial. It’s time to combine the power of TV with the connectivity and engagement power of digital and social media. It’s time to explore new formats. Two-way conversations, rather than one-way broadcasts. It’s time to talk to communities who have common interests.

To which one person commented:

“oh how our vocabularies have changed recently! We are all part of a social media revolution and it’s simply not possible to have our heads deep in the sand any more.”

It’s so easy to provide knee-jerk responses to the role of conversations: To engage, to discuss, to share etc. I try to pry these apart in Chat Republic, and encourage readers to think of conversations as the ‘operating system’ for their community (OK, maybe the brand) they manage.

We cannot bury our brand-saturated heads in the bland.