Experience Manifesto

RAMA CMO Summit 2010

I'm really excited to be part of the upcoming CMO Summit being put on by the Retail Advertising & Marketing Association (RAMA) in September. The Summit provides an exhibit free, relaxed environment for CMOs and Senior Marketing Executives at retail companies to network with industry colleagues and explore the future of retail marketing. Joining the retail executives are retail's thought leaders - visionary speakers and the industry's leading partners.

What's great about this event is that it's small and focused, giving the attendees a way to spend more time on the issues then most conferences. I'm also looking forward to leading the Kaleidoscope Experience that will happen in the afternoon. You'll have to attend to find out what we're doing!

Today’s Senior Marketing Executives are looking for clarity. Clarity in work; clarity in creative; clarity in what the consumer wants. At RAMA’s CMO Summit, part of NRF's DecisionMakers Series, we’ll help you find just that. Our program, focusing on this year's theme "Kaleidoscope of Clarity", will present different views, offer a fresh outlook, and have you discussing issues from blue sky to green grass. In the end you will leave with the tools and resources to have you seeing even more.

• Does Your Intuition Cloud Your Marketing Lens? Dan Simons, co-Author, The Invisible Gorilla
• Game Changers: New Analytics & the CMO Perspective, Jane Johnson, VP, Retail Practice, FICO
• The Kaleidoscope Experience: The shifting lens of the Retail Experience. I'll be leading some cool exercises for the afternoon.

The event is invitation only and for CMOs and Senior Marketing Executives, so please contact contact Megan Zatko at 202-661-3052 or [email protected] for information about getting an invite

You can go to RAMA CMO Summit 2010 for additional information about the program and the venue.

Draper Throws Jantzen Out

I've decided this should be a verb, as in "I'm going to draper that client." Who hasn't wanted to say this to at least one client during their career! Season 4 of Mad Men certainly started off strong.

Are Your Frontline Employees Part of Your SM Strategy? - Polinchock's Ponderings

David Teicher, writes in Ad Age, (What Marketers Can Learn From Starbucks' Foursquare Stumble) about a recent experience he had trying to use his coupon for being a Foursquare Mayor at his local Starbucks.

Late last year I asked the simple question -- Are Your Frontline Employees Part of Your SM Strategy? With all of the well placed emphasis on delivering better experiences online, it's now time to put some focus back into the offline world. As I wrote in my original post:

For far too many retailers, the frontline staff is treated like a necessary evil. Something they have to do, but wouldn't if they could figure out another way to accomplish their goals. They don't train them well and they don't seem to care if they're there or not.

But in an age of social media, how can companies be spending time, effort and money to create online social media engagements and then spend so little time figuring out how to create a social engagement in the physical stores? After all, each day, thousands of people walk through the doors of their stores, theoretically to spend money and buy their product. Yet, too many store employees act like having us in their to shop is an imposition.

If they want us to keep shopping, stores are going to need to beef up their in-store experiences to match the SM experiences they're creating online.

We'll see more stumbles, we always do. But brands need to really step up their in-store game in the SM world we live in. As I wrote several years ago, thanks to SM, everyone's a critic now. I don't even have to leave your store to be telling people how bad (or good) your experience is.

Are Your Frontline Employees Part of Your SM Strategy? - Polinchock's Ponderings.

You can read my thoughts on customer experiences at Polinchock's Ponderings: Customer Experience.

Digital: Study Says Most Marketers Should Forgo Foursquare - Advertising Age - Digital

A new study out by Forrester seems to indicate that there's not enough people using location based services for marketers to bother with them right now. Although they also suggest that people should experiment with these tools as well.

Well, I also have a study (well, not a study really, just a discussion with some smart folks) that I believe shows something pretty significant:

Most marketers, if not all marketers, should use the tools that best engage their audience, whatever those tools are. They need to stop listening to the many reports out there and start listening to their guts and their customers.

As I wrote here, I think it's even more important to make sure you're looking at everything out there and experimenting with what's right for you.

It's also why it's so important for brands to have a clear understanding of what their story is and who their audience is. As I recently tweeted, without a strong story, you may get attention, but you rarely get engagement.

So read the reports and the studies and then determine what works best for you. Not everything is good for every brand. That's been true for many years. But knowledge and awareness of what's out there and how to best communicate with your audiences is critical to your success as a brand today.

Digital: Study Says Most Marketers Should Forgo Foursquare - Advertising Age - Digital.

Brandhackers' FourSquare Mobile Marketing Meetup - Join the NYC Brandhackers Happy Hour Speaker Series (New York, NY) - Meetup.com

I'll be moderating the upcoming Brandhackers panel on Foursquare this Monday night, so please join us as we explore the future of check-in services, best examples of work today and where it might go in the future. We've got a number of great panelists and it should be a interesting conversation. Details below and click on the link for registration information.

Mark your calendars and join fellow brandhackers on Mon, July 26 for a panel discussion on "FourSquare Marketing - How location-based services and tools will put your brand directly into the hands of your target business consumers"

**Make sure to check in at "Brandhackers" on FourSquare the night of the event**

In our next brandhacker meetup we'll host a small panel of experts who will weigh in on:

• What Foursquare is (www.foursquare.com), what is a sponsored badge, mayorship and what they mean for the future of advertising (Tips, Specials, Badges)
• How to leverage Foursquare to expand your business and brand reach, engage with consumers, provide coupons and offers and build brand loyalty
• The new $20 Million in funding Foursquare has received; how should FourSquare use it? How should it grow?
• How developers can leverage the Foursquare API to help build online brand community, offline
• How brands can use consumer checkins with loyalty point programs
• How Foursquare measures up to competitive service tools (Gowalla and Google Latitude; even Facebook?)
• The best corporate case studies of leveraging location based mobile advertising
• Discuss trends and relationships Foursquare has going which allows businesses and brands to reach customers, partners and clients in new, innovative and immediate ways
• Discuss if Foursquare is hype, a fad, or here to stay as a true digital marketing channel
• How to integrate FourSquare marketing with full marketing campaigns

The Panel:

• Marci Ikeler, Director of Digital Strategy, PUBLICIS
• Scott Bender, Vice President of National Brand Sales - IGN Entertainment at News Corp. Digital Media
• Rafael Pocasangre, Media Contacts/HAVAS DIGITAL
• Joshua Karpf, PEPSICO
• The Moderator: David Polinchock, Innovation Catalyst, Location Based Branding; former Chief Experience Officer, Brand Experience Lab

Brandhackers' FourSquare Mobile Marketing Meetup - Join the NYC Brandhackers Happy Hour Speaker Series (New York, NY) - Meetup.com.

Should advertising be accountable for total sales? - Jon Burg's Future Visions

Jon Burg has a good post asking the Should advertising be accountable for total sales? His answer:

No.

Media, creative, planning, research, strategy, retail agreements, shelf placement, pricing, packaging, customer service, brand health, not mention product... there are too many variables to hold any one agency fully responsible for the net number that is total sales.

As I responded on his blog, my answer is that it depends upon what the agency promises. If they promise to move the needle, then that's what they need to deliver. I don't think that everything needs to be directly tied to immediate sales, but if advertising doesn't increase sales in the long run, you have to ask why you're doing it. Tony Hsieh, speaking at the Word of Mouth Supergenius conference made this point:

Take the money you would spend on advertising and put it into making a great experience.

I think that many companies should at least think about this. If they at least thought about it, even without doing it, they might think of new ways to improve their experience which would in turn increase the success of their advertising.

Now the good news for Old Spice, Jon has some updated numbers and they look pretty good:

The brand's ad agency Wieden + Kennedy developed and coordinated 186 customized video responses that contributed to a 107% increase in Old Spice Body Wash sales over the last month, according to Nielsen data from Mike Norton, director of external relations for male grooming at P&G.

That's a pretty spectacular increase. And if that kind of growth keeps up, well Old Spice and W+K will both have a bona fide hit on their hands. Product + advertising + sales is the trifecta all brands should be looking to hit.

We'll have to keep watching to see how this works out for Old Spice. It would be great to see all of this conversation lead to engagement and sales.

Should advertising be accountable for total sales? - Jon Burg's Future Visions.

Old Spice goes beyond hot-man-in-towel approach to boost sales - PRWeek US.

A New Thought About Old Spice - Polinchock's Ponderings.

Can Old Spice Deliver Through Its Product? - Polinchock's Ponderings.

Sure, You Take Care of the Customer, But What About Your Employees?

I've written about my first job experience here and was today I was speaking about my experiences working at Disney and reminded about something Disney did for us as employees.

When I was there in the early '80's, for two Saturday night's in December, they would close down the park and re-open it for an employees and their guests for our holiday party. We were able to invite up to three guests and pretty much everything in the park was free that night. Again, remember that this was before they had EPCOT or MGM Studios or any of the other attractions down there. So, closing the park meant that they were turning away paying guests and incurring all of the expenses of keeping the park open.

I can't speak for all of my fellow employees back then, after all, there were about 13,000 of us, but things like this made me really enjoy working at Disney and encourage me to give what I gave to the company. Remember, I was a frontline employee, not management, and many days, my job was not only mundane, it could be pretty hard. It was hot; many days I was talking to people who didn't speak the same language as me and really, I sold t-shirts in the Emporium on Main Street when I wasn't doing the parade.

But, they gave me extra perks and I gave them extra when I was on the clock. I was young and maybe today, these kind of things wouldn't have the same meaning. But taking my Mom & Dad to those holiday parties was a great family night for us. Heck, it's been 30 years and I can still remember them very vividly.

Sadly, they don't do things like this any more. And when I go to a Disney park, I don't get the vibe that I know I used to give when I worked there. I feel like I encounter more employees who work there because they get the pay check. I worked there because I really wanted to work at Disney.

I see companies like lululemon athletica and how they treat their employees, I think there's hope. Customer engagement can't happen without employee engagement. If you're not taking care of your employees, they won't be taking care of your business.

A New Thought About Old Spice

I've had another thought about the Old Spice campaign campaign. A few years back, I went to the Charmin bathroom in Times Square. I thought that it was one of the best brand experiences I've been to and understand that it is the second largest "advertising" expenditure for Charmin, only network TV costs more. I use it in every presentation I give. But, more importantly, we now only use Charmin in our house. After all, how could I point it out as one of the best examples of a brand engaging people without being engaged myself.

I'm wondering how many people in the ad industry have even tried Old Spice, let alone switched to Old Spice, because of this campaign. Sure, we can say that we're to old to be part of the target audience, but shouldn't we have at least gone to the local store and given it a sniff? I'm thinking that for all of the talk about engagement, even ad people haven't been engaged with the product.

Leave a comment below and let me know if you've switched to Old Spice thanks to their current campaign. If you haven't switched, have you gone to the store to check out Old Space? I'm challenging the ad industry to put its money where its mouth is. If you really think that this is one, if not the, best campaigns of the year, then you should at least be going to the cologne aisle and take a sniff. Buy a bottle and let's see if the ad industry can reverse the reported 7% sales decline.

Hitting the Events Circuit!

I'm going to be at a number of events next week, so if you're going to be there, let me know. I'll be blogging and Tweeting from these events, so there'll be lots of updates and hopefully a lot of great content. Of course, there's also a #140conf Cocktail Party this week as well, so it's going to be a fun week in the city!

Monday, IAB Marketplace - Mobile.

Tuesday, Word of Mouth Marketing Supergenius!.

Tuesday evening, Augmented Reality New York Monthly Meetup.

Can Old Spice Deliver Through Its Product?

For many years, when talking about WOM & viral marketing, I have said that if I were giving a presentation naked, I could get lots of people to talk about me, but I probably wouldn't get anyone who would sit with me at lunch.

Well, lately, Old Spice has been getting a lot of coverage about what they've been doing with the Old Spice Guy. The commercials certainly are clever and fun to watch and they've garnered millions of views on youtube. The latest commercial alone has close to 7 million views and that's not counting all of the very clever responses that Old Spice and Wieden put up yesterday. They each have 250,000+ and those numbers will surely go up significantly as they were only put up yesterday. But, according to a July 12th Article in Adweek:

For instance, P&G picked up the Film Grand Prix this year for Old Spice's "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" spot from Wieden + Kennedy. Launched in February, it's racked up nearly 12.2 million YouTube views. But in the 52 weeks ended June 13, sales of the featured product, Red Zone After Hours Body Wash, have dropped 7 percent, per SymphonyIRI (this excludes those sold at Walmart). P&G execs were not available to comment. (See the full article at To the Cannes Victor Go the Spoils.)

So the question now for Old Spice is whether or not they can convert this traffic to trial and/or conversion. And maybe this is just the old ad guy in me, but there's also no call to action. There's no plan for a place-based, experiential element of the campaign that would get people somewhere where they could try the product. They should be hosting Old Spice events that help drive an Old Spice experience. There should be perfect looking men in towels on street corners handing out samples to woman and saying "this will help your man look like me. Or at least smell like me."

They've done an excellent job creating the online conversation, but now it's time to take it offline. It's time to see if people are just talking about Old Spice or if they're ready to have lunch with Old Spice.

B.L. Ochman writing on her "What's Next blog, had a similar thought. Take a look at what she had to say at B.L. Ochman's blog: Old Spice: a brilliant tactic whose strategy (and scent) reeks.

Make sure you go to YouTube - OldSpice's Channel to see all of the Old Spice videos.

One of my favorite responses to Old Spice. Wondering if it really is sponsored by Dove.