2011: End of Year Wins

Twitter released their official Year in Review “Hot Topics” for 2011.

Much to my surprise and excitement, the inspirational hashtag Maria Shriver and I created back in March — #threewordstoliveby — was the #3 most popular hashtag on Twitter, following #egypt and #tigerblood. Amazing! And, even after 10 months, people are still tweeting their three words to live by.

In addition, a FastCompany blog recently included Maria Shriver on a list of the “7 Greatest Communications Successes of 2011.” For those who don’t want to click away and read the article in its entirety, here is the section that references Maria Shriver.

Maria Shriver: Shriver handled her husband’s very public betrayal in a way consistent with our times. She had recently established herself as a leader in the women’s empowerment movement, one of the characteristics of which is telling it like it is in the daily act of juggling work and family. She reached out to her legions of followers by releasing a series of unglamorous, do-it-yourself videos in which she asked for their advice about getting through tough times. This endearing tactic cemented the relationship all but ensuring attendance at future Maria-sponsored events.

Onward to 2012…

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- Matthew DiGirolamo

Fred Wilson Confused About Marketing

In his latest blog, venture capitalist extraordinaire Fred Wilson comes out against marketing budgets in startup environments. His point: if you don’t make products that suck, you won’t need marketing.

Early in a startup you need to acquire your customers for free. Later on, you can spend on customer acquisition. So if you need to acquire customers for free early in a startup, how do you do that?

Just when I thought I understood where he was leading us, Fred then offers eights ideas (I know because he numbered them like a dutiful blogger) for how to “acquire customers for free”.

All of which are marketing ideas.

And most which are not really free because time, attention and energy spent on any business activity impacts the bottom line whether there is a line item devoted to it or not.

But be that as it may, Fred is expressing a commonly held confusion about marketing – that it’s just paid advertising. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding.

Any business activity that is aimed at connecting a market to a company’s product or service is marketing. It doesn’t matter if the connection is earned or paid for…it’s all marketing.

Fred obviously thinks “customer acquisition” activities are important. So my question is: if a company commits itself to his proposed activities (and diverts resources away from other activities like product development), wouldn’t it be better to account for it and be transparent in the budget? And wouldn’t it make more sense for that company to employ a professional to manage it all?

I don’t get it. Have you come across this thinking in your own work?
-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
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- Matthew DiGirolamo

A Full Communications Society

Kara Swisher moderated this (slightly subdued) conversation on the evolving landscape of communications at the 2011 DLD Conference. Featured panelists included Silicon Vally/tech communications gurus Brandee Barker (former Facebook Communications Director), Brooke Hammerling (Brew Media Relations) and Margit Wennmachers (Andreessen Horowitz).

The inside baseball conversation covered a range of issues, from managing virality and communications crises to the evolving role (and power) of executive, employee and customer voices in “a full communications society” – as Kara Swisher dubbed it.

All three communications professionals shared some candid and useful insights into their mistakes and “PR disasters” along the way. In typical fashion, Kara gave ‘em hell.

Margit made a great point about the importance of managing the tone of communications — getting the tone right first — in this new media environment where transparency, authenticity and audience engagement is paramount.

I’ve found the same thing to be true. Always manage the message before you try to manage the media.
-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
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- Matthew DiGirolamo

Banding Together Against Rebranding

In the wake of Starbucks announcing its new logo, followed by yet another brouhaha, The Economist explores why consumers seem to uniformly despise rebranding efforts:

One answer is that people have a passionate attachment to some brands. They do not merely buy clothes at Gap or coffee at Starbucks, but consider themselves to belong to “communities” defined by what they consume. A second reason is that the more choices people have, the more they seem to value the familiar. These days there are so many choices available to Western consumers—the average supermarket stocks 30,000 items and America’s patent and trademark office issues some 200,000 patents a year—that they are in danger of being overwhelmed. Homo economicus may be capable of carefully considering all available products…

The debate about logos reveals something interesting about power as well as passion. Much of the rage in the blogosphere is driven by a sense that “they” (the corporate stiffs) have changed something without consulting “us” (the people who really matter). This partly reflects a hunch that consumers have more power in an increasingly crowded market for goods. But it also reflects the sense that brands belong to everyone, not just to the corporations that nominally control them.

Companies have gone out of their way to encourage these attitudes. They not only work hard to create emotional bonds with consumers (Victoria’s Secret is one of many firms, including The Economist, that encourage customers to “like” them on Facebook). They involve them in what used to be regarded as internal corporate operations. Snapple asks Snapple-drinkers to come up with ideas for new drinks. Threadless encourages people to compete to design T-shirts.

I wonder: Is the recent string of logo redesign flops (see also here and here) more about poor rollout communications strategy than about the logos themselves?

Since building a strong brand naturally requires the customer — it develops through daily top down and bottom up exchanges — why wouldn’t rebranding proceed in the same way?

I think it’s now becoming essential for communications plans to identify appropriate ways to engage, and tap into the passion of, their loyalists through key stages of the rebranding process if they are to secure buy-in.

Go read all about it.
-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
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