A Twitter case study
...in Twitter format:
We launch ZeeVee. John Dvorak tweets "What's this about?" 900 followers flood the website. The #3 traffic referrer that week.
Will expound more in followup post.
Business taglines more important than ever
Steve Cone from Advertising Age published an interesting article last week entitled “Help taglines regain lost glory: why creating strong slogans is a marketer’s most important job.”
He says powerful taglines – what he calls “powerlines” are largely missing in action in today’s marketing messages. Cone believes this is a mistake because the right words “have the power to awe, inspire, motivate, alienate, subjugate and, in a marketing context, change the buying habits of consumers.”He argues most consumer taglines “generally mean nothing or are relegated to small, unreadable type.” Cone also doesn’t like the fact most companies change their taglines every year or two, and sometimes within the same year. “Nothing could be more harmful to your brand and your business.”
The secret to creating a compelling tagline is attitude. Cone says “the brain is wired to seek the unusual phrase … and ignores phrases that seem ordinary and unimportant.” He also makes a compelling case for the power of sound, “Sound trumps sight by a wide margin in forcing the brain to remember something; you can’t turn off hearing.”
A current consumer powerline Cone likes is “Las Vegas: what happens here, stays here.”
Most of his top 10 favorite taglines hark from an earlier era when they were “the epicenter for all promotional executions:”
- A diamond is forever (De Beers)
- Think small (VW)
- Just do it (Nike)
- You deserve a break today (McDonald’s)
- When it rains it pours (Morton Salt)
- You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s rye bread (Levy’s Baking)
Some of my favorite consumer taglines are:
- Snap! Crackle! Pop! (Rice Krispies)
- It’s the real thing (Coke)
- M’m M’m Good (Campbell's Soup)
- We try harder (Avis)
- We bring good things to life (GE)
- King of beers (Budweiser)
- For life (Volvo)
- It’s everywhere you want to be (Visa)
- The ultimate driving machine (BMW)
- When banks compete, you win (Lending Tree)
Are taglines equally important in the world of B2B and technology? Is it more difficult to position a product that’s more complicated, or isn’t noticed/used by consumers?
Yes and yes.
I’ve met with hundreds of business people over the past decade to discuss how to create focused messaging. 80 percent expressed a passion for “dumbing it down.” They really, really, really wanted to capture their product benefits in a catchy way. The business taglines they most frequently cited to make their point:
- We don’t make a lot of the products you buy, we make a lot of the products you buy better (BASF)
- Think different (Apple)
- Intel inside
- The network is the computer (Sun Microsystems)
- When it absolutely, positively, has to be there overnight (FedEx)
- Invent (HP)
- Where do you want to go today? (Microsoft)
If you believe taglines aren’t that critical for business, think again. They’ve never been more important.Google never had a tagline until last year. Some people thought it was “Don’t be evil,” but that was their internal corporate motto. After a lot of introspection, they came up with: “Search, ads and apps.”
Salesforce.com had a pretty good tagline for years, “Experience Success.” But they changed it to “Success on demand.” They obviously care a lot about whether the new one is working because in January ‘08 they posted the following on their corporate blog:
“What do you think about the “success on demand” tagline? Is it memorable? Do you recall it when Salesforce.com is mentioned? Does it reflect who we are? Can it be improved?”
Look no further than Dell to validate the importance of taglines. They’ve created so many taglines it’s tough to keep track. Here’s a list of the ones I remember, most of which, if not all, are from this decade:
- Dude, you’ve got a Dell
- Easy as Dell
- Get more out of it now
- Purely You
- Yours is here (current tagline)
As Dell relentlessly morphed its tagline, the company’s brand reputation was frequently barraged. The two went hand-in-hand.
Taglines are important because they exist to capture the essence and promise of a brand. When companies consistently struggle to articulate this most critical message, it’s often a symptom they have lost their way.
Still not sure Twitter chatter matters, but...
The microblogging platform, Twitter, remains my Godot. I'm still waiting for someone to show me how it can be a useful PR and marketing tool. To that end, Jeff Jarvis has done a better job than most in making the case in a recent post on his blog.
I'm still not buying it...yet. I'm still in the same camp as Getting To First Base authors, Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo: maybe I'll change my tune in 6 months, but right now Twitter is primarily an ego distillery.
Yet Jarvis' argument that Twitter's cut-to-chase format is ideal for things like real-time political reporting, as well as the interesting new apps being built with its open API, has tempered my skepticism.
Now if someone could only point me to a decent, measurable case study...
Videophilia vs. Mother Nature
Bad news: our deepening intimacy with electronic devices is apparently to blame for our growing apathy toward communing with nature.“As a scientist and a conservationist, I find these results almost terrifying,” said Oliver Pergams, lead author of a new Nature Conservancy international recreation study published online by National Academy of Sciences. “We are seeing a fundamental shift away from people’s interest in nature, not just in the US but in other countries, too. The consequences of this could be deep and far-ranging for health, for human well-being, and for the future of the planet.”
Camping, hunting, fishing and national park visits have declined sharply for two decades, the researchers found. TV, video games and Internet use – videophilia is the term – are way up.
What’s a planet to do?
Almost as scary as the research is the fact it will take a new strategy to, yes, market nature: Said the authors, “Less exposure to nature seems to mean less environmental awareness and appreciation of nature for its own sake. Instead, people may come to value nature more for the goods and services nature provides, like photosynthesis and pollinators. Making people aware of the incredible value of such ecosystem services would become the more pragmatic approach.”
Ecosystem services? I think I need to take a walk.
PR’s Super Bowl contrasts
Eight hours of mind-numbing Super Bowl ads reminded me how true public relations is different from hype.
PR isn’t advertising. I joked about this a couple weeks ago in my “What do you do for work?” blog. Advertising exists to sell. Advertisers can communicate whatever they want (within reason) because they pay for it. They can decide what to say, where to say it and how often they want to repeat themselves. It’s a controlled process. PR is more uncontrolled, but highly personal and believable. Here's an interesting exercise: think of the top five Super Bowl ads you liked, try to remember the advertiser name and reflect on whether any of them motivated you to take action.
PR isn’t best at awareness building. There are lots of ways to build awareness. Advertising does a great job with this. So does direct marketing, events, paid sponsorships, newsletters, RSS feeds and product placements. While PR is excellent at building awareness, its secret sauce is building credibility.
PR isn’t narrow, it’s broad. It’s in the name; PR is all about relationships. Properly practiced, PR takes into account every single stakeholder (or “public” as the PR industry calls it) your organization deals with in its daily life. Employees (your brand ambassadors); local communities; partners; stockholders; local/state/federal government; analysts; consumers; reporters; analysts; customers and prospects.
PR isn’t self-serving, it’s serving others – An organization earns a trusted reputation with each stakeholder by acting in their best interests – not just for its own myopic agenda. When you listen, care, are transparent and consistently deliver value, your company’s reputation grows.
PR isn’t sales, but it influences sales. Think about the process of buying a new car. Which is more persuasive – (A) a flashy TV ad and sales circular or (B) a test ride editorial review and word-of-mouth from a friend? Nearly everyone would choose (B) because it’s more objective and trustworthy.
PR isn’t one-way, it’s two-way. When you push out an email blitz, hang sponsorship banners or issue a news release, these are examples of one-way communication. Your company has something to say, and you say it. By contrast, PR is an open-loop system. The goal isn’t simply to communicate, but rather to be understood and believed. You want to engage in a conversation, not just shout from the mountaintop.
PR is less about mind and more about heart - When two parties trust and respect each other, something special happens. Caring breeds understanding. Understanding fosters believability. Believability yields a positive reputation. A positive reputation feeds brand loyalty. Brand loyalty blossoms business success.
PR isn’t fabricated, it’s real. The technology industry learned a valuable lesson with the dot com bust. If you spin stories that aren’t true, this fabric doesn’t survive many wash cycles. Effective PR isn’t rooted in hype. People eventually figure out untrue, unfounded claims. And when they do, it comes back to haunt a company’s reputation.
PR isn’t about me, it’s about you. People become loyal over time when a positive experience is consistently repeated. To become a valued brand, a company/product/ service must become a personal thing – an individual experience – that feeds their own needs. Great PR thoughtfully triggers this kind of attitudinal transformation.
PR isn’t publicity. Yes, it can generate wonderful levels of media visibility, but PR is de-positioning itself if solely focused on media coverage. C-level execs care about their ultimate strategic business endgame. Their view of PR increases exponentially - from a tactic to a highly positive, critical corporate need – when it helps them measurably improve business relationships and get them where they really want to go.
Hair-Club-For-Men Marketing
This morning I heard a crazy radio ad. It was narrated by the owner of an identity theft protection company. His gimmick was revealing his entire social security number on the air. Pretty ballsy, I thought, daring any cyber-thief to try to steal his personal data. And he backs up his service with a million dollar guarantee to boot. It’s straight from the Hair-Club-For-Men school of marketing. You know…the guy who plugged his hair loss treatment company on TV by showing off his own company-installed hair plugs? “I’m not just the owner; I’m also a client,” he quipped. Other examples that come to mind are James Dyson, who invented a new fangled vacuum after being frustrated by vacs that sucked at sucking; and good old Victor Kiam, the former NE Patriots owner who liked Remington razors so much that he bought the company.
I have to admit that the identity theft guy’s ad caught my attention. I’ve been way too promiscuous online, recklessly handing over my personal information to any web service that caught my fancy. The only place my online identity hasn’t been is Heidi Fleiss’ little black book.
So that got me wondering: do ads like these work? Do companies in which the owners have skin in the game come across as credible, or is it just personalized snake oil? Do these ads compel you to buy? I want to know. Vote up or down in the poll below.
