ANA Marketing Maestros

Content is the Killer App

By Will Waugh

We have heard about how a number of objects are killer apps - video, Firefox, love. I personally believe that content is the killer app, whether it's video, audio, the written word, photos, etc. At the ANA, we have been able to utilize the written word alone across multiple channels, most recently with our partnership with Yahoo Advertising. We are looking to "go digital" with our intellectual capital business and take advantage of the long tail - selling less of more.

Here are the lessons I have learned:

• Content -- in this case white papers, case studies, summaries -- are exceptional marketing tools. Recently a non-member of the ANA found some work we had done on Procurement and Marketing relationships via search, saw the value in our array of offerings and joined our organization.
• Split it up in as many ways as possible - With the multiple channels, sites, communities people are a part of online - why not have the same piece of content or a clip or summary in a lot of different places? I plan on taking our upcoming Trends in Agency Compensation and making it available in dozens of different formats, lengths and languages.
• People demand things when they want it and how they want it. For a membership organization, just like any client serving organization, why not give it to them their way? I have had members buy a piece of content from us that we had delivered to them previously for free. Get it in their hands in as many ways as possible.
• Partnerships are crucial - Don't stay out on an island or think that your stuff is so good people will seek you out. Share a little. Collaborate a little.
• More content creates more opportunity for people to share and talk about you. Ultimately, isn't that the most valauable component of all? (It has to be worth talking about of course) 

Technorati tags: content killer app marketing

Ten Columns Every CMO Should Read

By Will Waugh

Pete Blackshaw over at cgm has compiled a list of clickZ articles he authored in to Ten Columns Every CMO Should Read. This post is not to be confused with my Top Ten CMO List from a little while back. Pete is a smart guy who spent lots of time on the client side and has insight on what high level marketers should be looking at, particularly in the consumer generated space. The Pocket-Guide to Consumer Generated Media provides a perfect overview while The Third Moment of Truth breaks down A.G. Lafley's much publicized speech at our Annual Conference and what it means for marketers.

Technorati tags: consumer generated media marketing CMO

Do You Participate in the Conversation?

By Will Waugh

At the ANA, we conduct a number of surveys on anything from agency compensation to what keeps senior marketers awake at night. We do nothing focused primarily on this world; the "conversational marketing" space our friend Joe Jaffe over at Jaffe Juice is so actively engaged in. Jaffe, the crown prince of new marketing, is preparing a title for Wiley as a follow up to Life After the 30-Second Spot titled Join the Conversation (this link takes you to a wiki on the material). He is looking for brand marketers to participate in the conversation or, more pointedly, to take a survey to develop the framework for his new book.

I encourage all marketers actively engaged or curious about the space to take the survey (Joe is offering some topline nuggets before the book release to those who participate). Though the membership of the ANA are not all believers that the :30 spot is dead and buried like Joe (shameless plug for our TV Forum where we talk about this), there is an enormous amount of interest in the world of social media (or whatever you want to call it Steve). I, myself, look forward to the results.

Technorati tags: marketing social media

Engagement Is...

I have to defend my colleague Mike Palmer and slap my pal Steve Rubel on the knuckle. I think what we have is a "failure to communicate". Let’s not get caught up in semantics but remember that the past chair of the ANA board, Procter & Gamble Global Marketing Officer Jim Stengel, has talked publicly about how media – and marketers – are changing but measurement has not caught up. That is where the need for an additional metric to eyeballs was born. Call it engagement, call it Project Apollo, call it whatever you want but applaud the industry for looking beyond what exists today and recognizing the need to have a dialogue about the future.

And as you heard loud and clear last week at the ANA Masters of Marketing Annual Conference, marketers were saying that they are "letting go" and engaging in a dialogue with their consumers. It is no longer the marketer telling the consumer "you will buy our product and this is why". Instead, marketers are now talking with consumers since technology and new media allow us to do so. But since our CFOs and CEOs demand accountable metrics, we need to be able to respond to that request. The engagement metric work going on in partnership with the ANA, the AAAA, the ARF and key advertisers and agencies, is a solid first step.

Great read over at Open The Dialogue, where they don't agree with Steve or Michael.

A New Way of Thinking: People Versus Consumers

As marketers we think our job is to sell to a specific demographic. The What do we sell, Who do we sell to, and How do we sell them. Jim Stengel, P&G global CMO and past chair of ANA, suggests that marketers need to stop thinking of their customers as segments and start thinking of them as people. To do this, we need to engage with people by talking to them, listening to their needs, then acting on their needs. But act in a way that allows our customers to have control over the interaction, the engagement. We need to be more empathetic, more in touch. And as a number of speakers at our annual Masters of Marketing conference  said, being in touch means giving up control. Engagement is the act of listening, sharing, creating a dialogue. It is not a one way conversation which we control.

People versus consumers. What an insightful change in the way we act, think, manage, market. The benefits will be enormous. People are personalities with wants and needs, desires and hopes, dreams and visions. You interact and engage people; customers are profit targets for which we have to affect a behavioral change. For some this may be a subtle change, but it is one I think has the potential to substantially impact how we can engage people and how they will engage with our products and brands.

Rubel You're Wrong: We Should Care About Engagement

Normally lucid and very informative, I think Steve Rubel is this time misinformed. Engagement is about connecting to people. I think Steve understands this because he suggests in the Oct 9th issue of AdAge that "marketers who want to see engagement find the right communities, build programs that empower people to connect, then get out of the way". But in the paragraph just prior to his illusive statement, Steve writes, "As marketers, we shouldn’t care about brand engagement."

On the ANA stage at our annual meeting last weekend, AG Lafley said quite clearly that marketers need to put things into the consumers’ hands, then let go. Engagement comes from the letting go part. What marketers should care about is learning how to engage. We marketers have been control freaks for too many years. We need to let go, because only then will the consumer engage in our brand, in the community our brand can create, and with each other with our brand at the center.

Engagement is a great moniker for marketers. They need to learn to invite, welcome, encourage, open up their brands by letting go and allowing their consumers to engage in the way the consumer wants. Then measure how they’re doing so they can do more of the good stuff, and less of the ineffective stuff.

So marketers, listen to Steve when he says ".. to see engagement, find the right communities, build the right programs, then get out of the way." This is the sage advice we expect from Steve.

Also: View some videos and read more on the subject at Engagement by Engagement.

Engagement, Brand Idea and Consumer Insight

The engagement steering committee (aka MI4) comprised of the ANA, AAAA, ARF and several of our constituents, developed a deceptively simple definition after several months of discussions with those in the industry working on engagement. Why is this work important? Well as one of our task force members said: in the future advertising will be something that consumers do rather than something they only see. Thus, a definition was our first step on our mission to find a metric relevant for consumer media consumption in the 21st century.

Our simple but elegant (and still complex) definition: "engagement is turning on a prospect (current or potential user) to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context."

At the heart of this is the brand idea – it has to be grounded in solid consumer insight. Then one progresses to engaging the consumer with that brand idea via the surrounding context. And the last component is that this engagement results in action – either a change in behavior (purchase intent) or attitude. The reason each component is so important is that a lousy brand idea won’t be enhanced by terrific context and conversely a good idea can be pulled down by the wrong surrounding context. To learn more about engagement and the work going on in this space, join us on September 28 – 29 at the AAAA/ARF Engagement Symposium. On September 28, I will be leading an afternoon panel that you won’t want to miss about how one teases out from all of this a comparable, meaningful engagement metric. It is not easy, it will probably be an agonizing process, but it should result in a more accountable way to evaluate media choices.

Engagement -- The Latest from the ANA

Our very own Maestro, Barbara Bacci Mirque was interviewed over on the Engagement by Engagement blog, set up to talk about Advertising Week's Consumer Engagement Conference.

Click here or view the embedded video below: