Facebook: Not for “Marketing as Usual”

I’ll go ahead and toot my horn, and in the process republish a “Q&A” via Outside Consultant column in Twin Cities’ Star Tribune:

Q Give me three practical tips to grow my business using Facebook.

MARK GRIMM
PRESIDENT, MARK
GRIMM COMMUNICATIONS

A. I’ll respond by rephrasing the statement, addressing a more pressing strategic question: “Is Facebook a way I can actually grow my business?”

Only after this concern is addressed should the tactics of how to use Facebook for marketing be tackled.

Facebook, the reigning champ of social networks, has been described as a continuous “lifestream” of communications about users’ daily activities. The extent to which people choose to include brands and businesses as part of this lifestream varies, but one thing is for sure: Only companies that engage in real and honest conversation have the chance to earn their way into a Facebook user’s electronic “life.”

Viewing Facebook as yet another form of media through which one-way advertisements and promotions can be delivered to consumers will quickly result in being unfriended, dis-liked, or simply ignored.

Have a look at the Facebook Wall for Ernst & Young Careers. Instead of displaying TV-like commercials or blasting announcements no one cares about, it engages in conversations and posts interesting, relevant and useful content like testimonials from current employees or “a day in the life of” video documentaries.

This authentic and value-added approach to interaction has landed Ernst & Young more than 50,000 fans — and this is an accounting firm, mind you.

To follow this example, commit to doing three main things:

•Avoid the temptation to use Facebook as an advertising medium.

•Create compelling, comment-worthy content that is entertaining and helpful to potential or current customers.

•Engage in consistent and frank conversation with anyone who posts a comment or asks a question.

SCOTT RADER
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
OF MARKETING
OPUS COLLEGE OF BUSINESS
UNIVERSITY OF ST. THOMAS

The Reason Blockbuster Video is going down: No Competitive Advantage

While I agree with Scott Jagow at Public Radio that Blockbuster is “probably toast,” it doesn’t/didn’t have to be that way.

I rarely rent movies. I dropped Netflix because of all the scratched discs. Otherwise, it was a great service. I’m considering GreenCine (Netflix for film snobs). I usually buy DVDs that I like because I’ll probably want to watch them again. An exception happened the other day when I was looking for a film I wanted to “preview” before buying and couldn’t find adequate clips of it online. So, I went to my local Blockbuster Video to rent It Might Get Loud, a documentary on the electric guitar told via Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), The Edge (U2), and Jack White (White Stripes). It was a great documentary and I’ll end up buying it. But, the experience at Blockbuster was the intriguing part.

As I walked into the front of Blockbuster Video, I noticed a large banner above the door where they compared themselves to Netflix and Redbox (who are certainly encroaching on their market share). The upshot of the sell was “we’ve got you covered.” Next, I spent way too much time trolling through ramshackle eyes, stepping past posters of the Beatles, toys, small appliances/game systems and everything but videos until I got to the section for Documentary/Music. The film was nowhere to be found. Stubbornly, I looked in a few other sections, confused as to whether the slipcase of the DVD meant it was in stock or not. Finally I asked the employee, who looked it up and found that it was “along the wall somewhere” under New Releases. The film was released last summer. What constitutes a “New Release” then?

Why can’t Blockbuster increase the value proposition by offering a self-serve kiosk, tied in to a remote/iPhone application, to allow customers to see directly into inventory and, importantly, where a film is located within the store? Even better, show the number of rentals/reviews/throughput through all BB stores, etc.

Esquire: Why are you hiding your customer service phone number?

Everybody’s heard a story like this. I’m going to tell mine anyway. I needed to change the address on my Esquire magazine subscription. Dutifully, I went online and found that I needed an account number, which I don’t have, or I could put in my name, which didn’t work. Alas, there was no phone number for customer service anywhere on the web site. I had an old issue (with the mailing label torn off, so I couldn’t find my account number) and there was no phone number for customer service anywhere in the magazine.

Folks, this is 2010. The old days of hiding behind a web site are so, well, 2000.

I searched Google and the first link returned the appropriately titled “Gethuman.com,” where I found Esquire’s customer service number, which is 1-800-888-5400. Called, punched through the convoluted menu to get to a human and got my address changed. The customer service, by the way, was excellent. As I was being sold on another product from Esquire, I did chip in that hiding the number was a bad idea. The person on the other end, while polite, stated: “That’s the way of the future.”

Let me explain the “way of the future”: word of mouth. Continue to use antiquated methods to run from customers and find yourself, and your “secret” phone number, in a blog somewhere — like this one.

Just for good measure, I’ll repeat: Esquire’s customer service phone number is 1-800-888-5400. Press 0 to reach a human.

Asians (Asian-Americans) as the “Model” Minority for Illiteracy, Poverty, Obesity (?)

I just drove 1,000 miles across the American Midwest this past weekend. En route, there were plenty of billboards to look at. Interestingly, many of them were public service announcements. Perhaps even more interesting was the fact that many of those billboards featured images of Asian people that supposedly represented a need group targeted by the public services. Being a marketer in an Asian/American (not Asian-American) household (my wife is a native and citizen of Vietnam), perhaps I (we) are especially sensitive to this phenomenon. But let me recount the billboards we saw:

• Illiteracy – a 30-something Asian man was pictured in a billboard that featured adult literacy programs
• Obesity – a 20-something, fairly round Asian woman’s face was pictured in a billboard that featured obesity awareness/prevention
• Child proverty – an Asian child (female) was pictured in a billboard that attempted to draw awareness to some statistic about American children who live in poverty
• Lupus (disease) – an 40-something Asian woman was pictured in a billboard that advised of the symptoms of Lupus erythematosus, a degenerative tissue disease

Since the billboards were stereotyping (most mass advertising does — that is its nature), I’ll go ahead and stereotype too (without doing proper research on my claims here). Namely, Asians (or Asian-Americans) do not jump out to me as a group of people who would warrant prominent placement in these ads. I do know of the stats in terms of per capita income and living standards (they rank higher than whites in these areas). To that end, I think that illiteracy and poverty would probably be relatively low among Asians. Maybe for illiteracy, they were thinking ESL (English as Second Language), but that’s not the same service as illiteracy programs. And obesity? While there is certainly an obesity problem here in the U.S., if I were putting my marketing dollars to work, I don’t think I’d put a lot of them into targeting Asians. (Ironically, soon after we saw the obesity PSA billboard, we saw one for a weight loss program that featured a stock photo of an ultra-skinny Asian girl in a bikini). Can’t speak for Lupus disease, although I believe it does affect non-Europeans more.

So what’s next, Asians in anti-meth ads?

Does anyone else think this is weird?

Business Grad Students Rank 4 Social Media “text books”

There’s no text book out there (yet), but here are the books about social media that I assign to my grad students as part of our Communication Technology class. I took a quick survey of the class opinion on the rank order of usefulness to them:

1. Groundswell by Li and Bernoff (great book; Forrester web sites includes updates to the stats)
2. Inbound Marketing by Halligan and Shah
3. Trust Agents by Brogan and Smith
4. The Cluetrain Manifesto: 10th Anniversary Edition by Levine et al.

While The Cluetrain Manifesto ranked last, I think it is important nonetheless in establishing a “big picture” understanding of the changes in communication technology that have occurred during the past decade (it was published in 1999). The other books are certainly more “tactical” in nature, but I consider The Cluetrain Manifesto an important strategic grounding.

I’m thinking of replacing Trust Agents with Putting the Public Back in Public Relations by Brian Solis. Solis is a PR guy and I like his approach to new PR thinking.

I would like to hear anyone’s feedback on any of these books, or experience in general about teaching communication technology/social media.

Product Placement vs. Bureaucratic Tidal Wave

Does product placement in movies and television adversely affect the artistic value of program content? Should advertising be limited? Such questions have generated much interest during the last few years. A popular book entitled No Logo by Canadian journalist Naomi Klein confronts these issues and is described by The Economist as “eloquently setting out the suspicion and resentment that many young folk feel for large companies.”The Monthly Review stirred the pot a few years ago with an article called “The Commercial Tidal Wave” that addressed similar concerns.

Naomi Klein, the authors of The Monthly Review article, and most people I discuss this issue with all have plenty of criticisms, but are typically reluctant or unable to provide solutions to the alleged problem of increased product placement. The consensus seems to be an ambiguous call for “struggle against advertising.” I’m not sure what that means, but I’m always left asking, “So what is the solution?”

At risk of oversimplifying things, I will at least proffer two ways to handle capitalism-cum-advertising that some people, especially “young folk,” seem to be concerned with. A society could either: a) restrict freedom of businesses to advertise, and concomitantly consumers to choose, or b) rely on the age-old, yet perennially reliable barometer that drives all commercialism and trade: consumer taste.

Thinking of the last five movies I’ve watched, I do not recall any overt advertising. Is this due to the producers’ desire for artistic integrity and their ability to resist the “commercial tidal wave”? Or is it because I am not attracted to the type of entertainment that can “get away with” product placement?

The last movie I watched was Run Lola Run. There was a prominent sign for a Bolle shopping center. That might be an actual brand in Germany. I wouldn’t know. Before that I watched Hero starring Jet Li. This was a “period piece,” so nothing modern was in the film, aside from the special effects. Last month I watched Saving Private Ryan again. I guess that could be seen as “product placement” for the Army. Spirited Away was a Japanese animation that might have had something in it, but nothing obvious that I remember. Baran was an independent Iranian film so no ads there — naturally they’re down with the “revolution” I suppose.

I’m not saying that product placement doesn’t exist. It is certainly increasing in popularity. But my point is, I have great faith in people, who are ultimately all consumers (and hopefully producers), to separate the wheat from the chaff and make decisions that, in a free market anyway, will drive businesses to latch on to popular responses and divest of bad ideas. If media outlets become saturated with things people don’t want and disgusted consumers begin to take flight and seek other outlets, competition will take its natural course and provide different, more desirable outlets.

Markets are extremely diverse because they are made up of people. Not everyone likes the same things. I read magazines with no ads at all that most people consider boring. Sometimes I look at magazines just for the ads. Electronic Musician or GQ comes to mind. In some situations product placement may provide entertainment value. I expect to see James Bond driving a BMW or an Austin-Healey. What other kind of car would he be driving? An “Acme” roadster?

At least two possibilities seem to flow from what Klein and other advertising critics are presenting. On one hand you could say that people are stupid and naïve to fall for advertising and must “struggle” against it. Or you might conclude that people are freely making choices according to their individual tastes. If the critics are alluding to the former, then how can Klein or The Monthly Review have any faith in the choices of their own readership? Most social critics and intellectuals do not have enough trust in people to accept the latter.

Perhaps Klein and other critics intend to send a warning signal to indolent consumers who might otherwise be “suckered.” Something like: “Hey, watch out! There are ads out there and they can affect the human experience.” Maybe that’s what they mean by struggling against advertising. But in the end, none of the critics I’ve talked to or studied really propose a solution. The authors of The Monthly Review article actually come close. They state:

“Advertising is part of the bone marrow of corporate capitalism. Yet it does not happen on its own. It requires advertising-friendly policies and regulations to allow it to flourish.”

They never explain what they mean by “advertising-friendly policies and regulations.” But preventing advertising from flourishing (read: censorship) would ironically require policies and regulations. Addressing the perceived “tidal wave” of commercialism still leads to one of two things: Either freedom of choice (for both producers and consumers) or restriction and regulations along with the inevitable bureaucracy that follows.

Professional Appearance for Job Interviews

Teaching undergraduates involves a lot more than just conveying subject matter. For professors who are close to their students anyway, it also involves mentoring, career advice, and just listening to students’ challenges. The biggest challenge right now, of course, is finding a job. Business students are discovering that it is harder and harder to land internships and entry-level jobs even though career fairs and campus interviewing continues on. In short, employers are still hiring, but are increasingly picky and competition among job candidates is at a fever pitch.

What follows might seem extreme, but it is a result of several of my students asking little one-off questions here and there about personal appearance. As a manager who has interviewed and hired people over the years, I can say that the way a person dresses and presents is certainly never the only factor to landing the gig, but it can be a major factor. You might think the advice that follows is picky, but rest assured: people pay attention to the details, especially at the good jobs. And applicants need every edge they can get in this economy.

Here are tips that I’ve thrown together, which aside from the first point and the bonus “protocol tips” at the end, are mostly aimed toward the guys:

1. The main piece of advice is that you want the person to remember you, your personality, and your face, not something you have on. Subtlety is the key with dressing professionally, so …
2. Absolutely no facial hair unless the prospective job includes the words “art,” “music,” or “creative” in the title. Same goes with bushy or long hair styles. Think Anderson Cooper, not Keith Urban. If your head isn’t shaped weirdly, very short is fine.
3. No flashy cufflinks, tie tacks, tie bars, rings, jewelry, piercings, eyeglasses or other accessories. This goes for your mobile phone too. Silence it, hide it, and for god’s sake don’t answer or use it during the interview or while interacting with prospective employers. Likewise, avoid chunky, shiny, plastic or digital watches that look like they’re designed for an arctic expedition, not a job expedition.
4. No cologne, perfume or after shave. Trust me on this one.
5. Suit should be dark and conservative: preferably navy, gray or black (in that order). Wear a two-piece, two-button (preferred) or three-button, single-breasted suit that fits . Leave the vest, pin-stripes and patterns to the bankers, NBA players and mafia. Same goes for double-breasted cut. Your goal is style, not fashion. You want to dress like Cary Grant, not Jay-Z. Three very important things about suits:
• Nothing says “I’m a slob and will probably show up late to work” like an ill-fitting suit. You’re better off with a cheap suit that fits well than an expensive suit that looks like you borrowed it from someone else. So plan on spending extra, because an off-the-rack suit will always need alterations from a tailor, particularly with regard to the length of the pants. Make sure your pants are hemmed and not dragging the ground or scrubbing the heels of your shoes. Go for a very slight break in the front. The tailor will know what this means.
• Regardless of what the salesperson tries to tell you, try on a suit that is one number size smaller than what is supposedly your size. Again, trust me on this one. With arms hanging at your side, your dress shirt cuffs should show from beneath the suit sleeves by just about a half-inch.
• Never button the bottom button of your suit jacket unless you are auditioning as a waiter or butler. So, that means the top button buttoned on a two-button suit or the top two (or only middle) on a three-button suit. Unbutton discreetly when sitting down.
6. White shirt (no colors or patterns) in slim or “athletic” fit. Solid colored or very subtle patterned, simple tie of traditional width: not too skinny. Avoid gaudy colors or ties that have silk-screened/printed patterns unless you paid more than $100 for it, and even then it should be conservative … not a “power” tie. You don’t have any power (yet). Otherwise, printed ties basically say one thing: Sears. A four-in-hand or half-Windsor knot should be sufficient and the tie should hang at or just a bit below the top of your belt. Should you learn how to correctly tie these knots? If it appears that you can’t handle a knot, what about a complex project?
7. Shoes should be leather lace-up dress shoes. Black or ox blood cap toe oxfords are a safe bet. Do not go for buckles or slip ons/loafers. Your belt color should generally match your shoes. Important: Shoes should be SHINED. No exceptions. If you live in sloppy snow conditions like we do here in Minnesota, carry some paper towels with you and wipe down your shoes just before the interview. A quick spit shine is permissible (if nobody’s looking). I know plenty of execs who would get a read on someone’s attention to detail by having a look at their shoes.

Bonus tips on general protocol:

1. Look people in the eye.
2. Say “ma’am, sir, please and thank you.”
3. Never begin an email with “Hey” or “Hi” to anyone other than your closest pals.

America Needs A “Third Place”

A “third place” is a social space that is distinct from the two “usual” environments of home (i.e. “first place”) and work (i.e. “second place”). In both popular press accounts
and marketing/consumer research, third places are often characterized as readily accessible social venues frequented by regulars but open to all comers. Something like a community center, coffee house, cafe or “mom and pop” restaurant. Third places become community congregation points and, importantly, provide a centralized “sense of place” that facilitates creative interaction among people. This interaction can amount to “everyday” social engagement (i.e. water cooler chat, gossip, laughing with friends), but hopefully also includes civic discourse. The idea is to give folks an outlet to talk to one another, and address issues that are important to them as a community.

Compared to what I have experienced abroad in the tea shops and espresso houses of Asia and Europe, the United States has a relatively underdeveloped “third place infrastructure.” I have not examined the historical evidence, but I believe during the early development of the nation, citizens participated more in third place interaction.

Chalk it up to modernization and the rise of digital interaction, but the third place seems to have diminished in importance in American society. While I still see vestiges of third place interaction at Starbucks or even discussions among neighbors in the parking lot at Wal-Mart, these outlets are “impromptu” third places and do not constitute a consistent, welcoming space for regular engagement, which is an important criterion for being a third place. In the case of Starbucks, despite presenting a seemingly inviting space with soft couches and hip jazz music, their coffee shops are largely designed to maintain customer throughput, not congregation.

Perhaps the loss of the third place banter has something to do with the ongoing outbursts and general lack of civility during town hall meetings across America (which seems to have spilled over into congressional engagements). Dramatic changes (perceived or otherwise) in the way the nation is being governed is certainly an impetus for the passionate exchanges during these meetings. But could it be that the prior lack of ongoing face-to-face discourse and dialogue — impromptu town hall meetings on a small scale via third places — has contributed to the current powder keg?

Talk to my customers? Are you kidding?

Strangely, many marketers scoff at the prospect of actually rolling up their sleeves and talking to end consumers of their products or services. Marketing research seems to be synonymous with throwing together a survey or questionnaire and blasting it out to a selected sample of people. While this allows for convenience and breadth of coverage, it does not dig deep into what really makes consumers tick — and how products fit into their everyday lives.

Consumers are people first, and consumers second. Tapping into what makes them people provides valuable insight into not only current “usage scenarios” with your products and services, but potential situations for use, and thus opportunities. The argument for this deeper, richer level of research, often posited under the guise of ethnography, has been well documented elsewhere in books like Hidden in Plain Sight by Erich Joachimsthaler or How Customers Think by Gerald Zaltman.

But the fact that marketers often avoid doing this nitty gritty heavy lifting is disturbing. Even worse, I’ve found that engineering and R&D types can be even more averse to the proposition of listening to the “voice(s) of the customer.” The (Veblenian) attitude seems to be that if customers raise concerns over the designers’ creations, the problem lies with the customer and not the design of the product. In the world of help desk support, this attitude can be heard in the saying “the problem lies between the seat and the keyboard.”

The paranoia surrounding relinquishment of brand ownership and product design to the “sweaty masses” or “hoi polloi” via social media is an extension of this aversion to actually listening to what customers have to say, warts and all, and embracing (as opposed to criticizing) their natural imperfections as part of usability design. New product development professionals and marketers can either run from or attempt to exert control over the conversations going on in social media about their products, or they can listen and probe and better understand the lives of their customers — and how their products fit in.

Social Media is About Connecting, Not “Marketing”

By connecting I mean engaging in conversation. That might lead to the marketer/PR rep’s holy grail of varying degrees of a “relationship” or it might simply remain conversational and relatively superficial. But the key is to approach social media as a tool for engagement, not an outlet for marketing.

The “traditional” media used for marketing (e.g. television, radio, newspaper, outdoor) are largely one-way venues of communication. The internet, web and “Web 2.0” are interactive media, thus two-way venues of communication. Marketing is all too often associated with one-way communication (note that “one-way communication” is a bit of an oxymoron since the root word of communication is communicatis, or an act of sharing — think “commune”). But anyone involved in the discipline of marketing knows that it is just as much about listening as it is broadcasting. The diagram below is my attempt to present the two-way function(s).

In the center of the diagram, marketers act as “boundary spanners” and engage with consumers. The “market” is represented by consumers on the left and the “company/organization” is represented by the building on the right. Marketing actually involves three levels of interaction:

1. The blue arrows represent research-oriented interaction between marketers and consumers. Inquiring and listening to what consumers do, what they want, what they don’t want, what they like and what they don’t like.
2. The yellow arrows represent the new product development (NPD) interaction with the organization/company that marketers work for. Marketers should be advocates for the consumers that they engaged with during the research interaction.
3. The red arrows represent a return to consumers to “communicate value” through marketing communications such as sales and advertising. This what most people think marketers do all day. But importantly, the red arrows “close” by coming back to marketers with responses from consumers — and this is the important part. The first leg of the loop is about broadcasting. The closure of the loop is about listening and conversation. It really represents a continuation of the first “blue” cycle of research-oriented interaction.

All of these activities can be greatly facilitated by social media. Social media creates “touch points” with consumers that generate many opportunities for the three levels of interaction represented in the diagram:

• research by engaging with and understanding consumers
• customer “advocacy” through support/problem resolution
• new product introduction and education
• co-creation/co-production with consumers
• and last (and probably least), a potential channel for “pure-play” traditional marketing communications

One could argue that in the “yellow interaction” of new product development, social media can be leveraged to put consumers directly in touch with new product developers, alleviating marketers as intermediaries. I think this is useful if new product developers (e.g. engineers, designers) are willing to listen. But I still think marketers play a role in guiding and aggregating the conversations with consumers.

The key for all of these opportunities is addressing the new shift in balance of power. Consumers are no longer passive recipients of information. They engage in it, they are savvy about and even averse to pure-play marketing, and they will become engaged with your product/company/brand if you display sincerity in listening, not just broadcasting.