Hello Viking

How Much Brand Utility Is Too Much?

A recent article in Adweek prompted a question, “Would every company benefit from creating a community around its product?”

In his coverage of the 2008 Cannes Lions Awards, Adweek’s Brian Morrissey interviewed the forces behind Nike+, last year’s big winner.

The article gives a good look into Nike’s evolving brand philosophy. (And it’s important to emphasize evolution here. Brands do, and must, evolve.) Nike appears to have taken the lesson taught by this new Website/Community/Service to heart, spinning their digital presence into a new focus: The creation of services important/helpful to people in general.

Stefan Olander, Nike’s Global Director of Digital Media says, “If we can do something good for someone, no matter the product, it's going to be good for us,” sharing the stage with Bob Greenberg, CEO of Nike digital agency R/GA. “The goodwill value to us is gigantic.”

With two new services for different sports niches, Boot Camp and Ballers Network (a facebook app.), and a third one crafted around shoe customization, Nike’s going the whole nine yards, and seems pretty committed to it.

Which begs more questions: Is creating a relevant service for people the best way to connect with them online? Would people tire of the increasing amount of participation warranted by the growing number of product communities?

Free!

Chris Anderson's latest in Wired, "Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business" is definitely worth your time.

From an opening anecdote about razor magnate King Gillette, Anderson outlines the economic and technical forces that have evolved to create the business ecosystem we all work within today:

"It's now clear that practically everything Web technology touches starts down the path to gratis, at least as far as we consumers are concerned. Storage now joins bandwidth (YouTube: free) and processing power (Google: free) in the race to the bottom. Basic economics tells us that in a competitive market, price falls to the marginal cost. There's never been a more competitive market than the Internet, and every day the marginal cost of digital information comes closer to nothing."

It got us thinking.

If, as Anderson puts it, "The moment a company's primary expenses become things based in silicon (i.e. digital advertising infrastructure), free becomes not just an option but the inevitable destination," we've all got a lot of soul searching to do.

Advertising won't go away. Nor will it become entirely free to create or distribute.

The lesson here is to think differently about what advertising does, or is supposed to do. And to constantly evaluate our roles within this mutating system. Then be open to unusual thinking as it reveals itself.

Test this.

We attended a very pleasant Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association "salon" this evening featuring Jamie Roach, founder and president of Offermatica.

Our Twitterings from the presentation are vague, but we were excited by Jamie's logic. Optimization and testing can be avenues to increased creativity, more relevant messaging and greater overall efficiency.

If you have a reasonable-sized audience (and budget), why wouldn't you engage in a variety of tests with all factors of your website?

It's as much about providing balance to a culture of guessing--which occurs inside even the brightest marketing organizations--as it is about providing mechanisms for continual learning. From a creative standpoint, this kind of testing isn't about rating the worthiness of a singular idea, it's about the democracy of concepting and the reality that any testing means more than one idea is required. In essence, a culture of testing will produce and "air" more ideas than a culture that doesn't test.

Jamie also mentioned Cliq, a new blog-promoting tool sponsored by Offermatica. We'll test it out.

And kudos to MIMA for hosting the event in the swank Minneapolis Club, with its fascinating wall of genteel past presidents.

We'll be back.

Who do you trust?

We were intrigued by a report on the Discover Small Business Watch by the Center for Media Research that discussed the economic confidence among 1,000 small businesses with five or fewer employees. Most of the article discusses economic confidence and cash flow. But we perked up towards the end...

"The buzz that general-interest networking sites are generating hasn't struck a chord with the Main Street small business crowd... " Rachakonda said. 55 percent of respondents said they would not consider using a service or small business that they heard about on a social or business networking Web site.

The study found that younger business owners use online networking the most. In the 18-29 age group, membership at general online networking sites reached as high as 41 percent at some of the more popular online networking communities. Membership among older age groups at the same sites is still significantly lower.

So we've crafted this poll.

Where do you wind up on the issue of utilizing social networking for business? Who do you trust?

MIMA Summit 2007

So we joined the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association last week, and attended the 2007 Summit today.

(Check out our photos here. And our tweets here.)

Over 630 people showed up. The event was sold out. We got there a bit late and missed the first keynote. But overall, we had a really good time. Our highlights:

"Quantifying the Overall Value of the Web Channel"
Jason Burby, Chief Analytics & Optimization Officer, ZAAZ (Seattle, WA)
Interactive/digital work is inherently measurable--it's unescapable--which is both a blessing a curse. Because on the one hand, we finally have a basis for understanding what works and possibly why. On the other, we've got a massive responsibility to do something with the information. Burby's presentation was a solid exercise in understanding the role of metrics as a foundation for monetizing user behavior -- and then figuring out what to do about it all. We'll be buying ZAAZ's book on the subject.

"Unconventional Collaboration: Insights Gathered from Three Years of Collaboration at 37signals"
Jason Fried, Founder, 37signals (Chicago, IL)
We use Basecamp from 37Signals, so we were biased in favor of this presentation. It was really nice to discover we share many of 37Signals' operational practices: Working apart--working virtually, no (or extremely few) meetings, focusing on smaller decisions that can be solved quickly versus the paralysis of large problems. Plus, Jason sounds oddly like our friend Dmitri Cavander. What Jason proposes is powerful stuff, and it clearly works--the challenge is in scaling the methodology up to larger entities. But an awesome presentation, nonetheless. And we're buying 37Signals' book as well.

We weren't nuts about the huge bottleneck to get to the free lunch, so we ate across the street at Subway. But the open bar at the end was nice. One comment: Seems like a vast majority of interactive marketing people in Minnesota have very well-designed eyewear.

We'll be back.

Use me.

We've been churning through various proposals lately, and there seems to be this common thread of a desire for "usefulness" or utility in all. In some cases it's blatant and in others it lies just beneath the surface. But as Martha would say, "It's a good thing," this desire to create useful advertising-like objects.

The old Bernbach Paradigm springs to mind here, but with a twist. (Bold words ours.)

"The truth isn't the truth until people believe you, and they can't believe you if they don't know what you're saying, and if what you're saying isn't timely or relavent to their individual needs, and they can't know what you're saying if they don't listen to you, and they won't listen to you if you're not interesting or interactive or communal or responsive, and you won't be interesting or interactive or communal unless you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly and allow them to respond in kind."

It's likely not enough to simply state your case, however imaginately, these days. Advertising that creates impact now creates utility and compells interaction.

What do you think?

biz cards from moo!

We just started to get our first business cards. The entire process of creating, ordering and receiving them has been fantastic. All because of MOO. They've got an outstanding website, customer service and the product kills.

We ordered 100 cards each. The back side is the same for all. But we ordered 10 different images for the fronts (so, 10 of each). Printing is tasty, on thick non-gloss stock. And they have a solid upload interface. You can use their Photoshop templates or images from your flickr, etc. accounts.

MOO is a definite gold standard in digital-enabled business. Order yours today.

Making The Broken EP

Caught this on YouTube over the weekend while doing research for a client project.

What caught our eye was the idea of value this video conveys. Because it's not just a music video. And it's not just a "making of" effort.

Essentially, you're watching the handmade production of a (limited) mass quantity item: a 4-track CD, by the New York "electronic-pop superhero" Jen Scaturro, who performs as iamjen. (CD Baby distributes the EP, which was sold out when we checked. But you can download it off iTunes.)

Before we saw the video, iamjen was just a musical effort, a band -- a listening experience. After the video, her music became more than music. Because we've come to realize she's also a clever storyteller and meticulous craftsperson.

Imagine if the people who made your car, your shirt, your desk chair, your courier bag, your shoes, etc. followed iamjen's lead? But with as much style, grace and attitude as the "Making The Broken EP" video. That's the challenge. iamjen's success here is in creating a video that does more than entertain, it provides insight into character and motivation -- part of any product anyone is buying.