One of the recurring iMedia events is something that its organizers call “One Minute Matchups.” It’s essentially a speed-dating concept in which “buyers” sit at tables around a room and “sellers” rotate every minute or two and pitch their product or service. As odd as it may seem, it can actually be very useful. For both buyers and sellers it is a low-investment way to quickly size up whether there is enough interest to merit a follow-up discussion, and both sides get to weed out those that are not a great fit.
On Thursday evening, just 36 hours before my flight out, I got an email from the folks at iMedia with a list of companies that I would be matched up with. I actually had no idea that my keynote address would afford me this opportunity. As an agency guy at this conference I was to be in the “seller” position, so now it would be my turn to see if I could do a better job of pitching. I huddled with Jonathan Richman, my Director of Business Development (and top blogger over at Dose of Digital). We quickly decided that I had to do something meaningful in my matchups, and likely something related to my keynote topic. We decided that the best thing to do would be to bring each company one or two ideas for how they might practice meaningful marketing. I stayed up until 1 a.m. that night coming up with ideas by using their websites and my gut as a guide. Then on Friday Jonathan and Carole Amend from our team worked on turning these ideas into blown-up cards with the idea on one side and my contact information on the other. I picked them up Saturday morning on the way to the airport and they looked great. The image at the top of the screen is one example (the person from Atkins didn’t show up), and at the bottom you can see the contact info side.
One of the best things about this approach was that I really enjoyed these one-minute matchups. The decision to bring a unique idea for everyone forced me to do my homework on the companies, and better prepared me for longer discussions with prospects over meals and cocktails. The ideas gave me more confidence in sitting down with a stranger for 90 seconds, and I felt great knowing that I would be giving them something worth remembering when they got back to the office later that week. This approach was more meaningful to me, too.
Read more on the Marketing With Meaning blog
Dunkin’ with Meaning
Regular readers know that I’m a big fan of any marketing campaign that gives people the chance to squeeze their creative juices in and around a brand. So it should be no surprise to hear that my favorite case study from the iMedia Brand Summit where I spoke this week was the “Create Dunkin’s Next Donut Contest.” The case was presented by Cynthia Ashworth, Dunkin’ Donuts VP of Consumer Engagement (a title the audience loved). It was obviously not the first “make your own product” contest, but the results show that people’s hunger to be creative and make a brand their own can never be satiated.
In my book, I spend several pages writing about how brands can forge meaningful connections with customers by allowing them to be creative, personalize their brand experience, and share with others. I talk about how brands such as Kroger, M&M’s, Jones Soda, LEGO, The Simpsons Movie, and Pringles have all seen strong marketing results from this way of meaningful engagement with customers. The core reason for success again and again is that people are literally putting themselves into the brand when they have a chance to co-create. Instead of just leaving a dull “impression” with traditional, interruptive advertising, customers who co-create a brand build a deep link to the core of what makes them who they are. And they often cannot resist sharing their creations–and a little piece of themselves–with the friends and family in their digital worlds.
Read more on the Marketing With Meaning blog.
Adweek: Building Brands, One Act at a Time
I’m writing from the Delta Sky Club in San Diego today as I wait for my return flight to Cincinnati after a whirlwind iMedia Brand Summit. My keynote speech yesterday went very well and I got to hand out 400 copies of my new book to an audience of brilliant digital marketers. I got to meet many of them, and, thankfully, my Twitter feedback on the presentation was strong! I’ll share more of my experience and lessons from iMedia in the next few days, but for now I wanted to share an article that I wrote for Adweek, which just hit today.
In this piece I put traditional equity building ad campaigns in the crosshairs and call out several examples of big brands that have failed to turn themselves around despite big spending and slick, celebrity-laden ad campaigns. Meanwhile, a handful of companies are making tremendous revenue and equity gains by creating marketing that actually adds value to people’s lives.
Take a read and let me know what you think!
Can Big Brands Adapt to Marketing with Meaning?
Traditional, interruptive, impression-based marketing is one of those existing models that a lot of big brands have gotten very good at mastering. They can tweak that commercial to perfection, squeeze out more efficiency in a media buy, and even find new ways to gauge consumer reaction to an ad (such as brain scanning) and new places to put an ad (airplane trays, anyone?). But those skills are all spent in polishing a model that has decreasing marginal returns—and with the revolution in consumer power and media options, these actions might be leading to decreasing returns, or at least widening opportunity costs from not embracing meaningful marketing.
Lululemon went from zero to a $1 billion market cap thanks to marketing with meaning. But it did so because it had zero to start with. This challenge forced Lululemon to think differently from the start. But big brands have the disadvantage of lots of money and existing equity. This mirrors the evolution of life on earth—the specialties that made plants and animals successful in one era can become weaknesses when the climate shifts.
Time will tell which brands are able to make the leap. I believe thousands of small brands will rise from the chaos, and a good number of big brands that quickly admit the challenges and commit to a new path will make the journey as well.
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