Facebook URLs in Marketing Communications

Have you noticed the trend where some companies are now finding it advantageous to feature their Facebook Page web addresses more prominently than their own corporate web addresses in their printed advertising and marketing communications? While perhaps this primarily signifies the relative failures of many corporate websites against the ascendancy of Facebook, I think there is also a second story to tell here.

Implications of Multi-Variant Brand Mark Systems

© City of Melbourne

© London Olympics

© MIT Media Lab

Technology now supports the implementation of complex brand identity systems where the most fundamental elements, such as the brand mark, may now readily have multiple variations (examples include MIT Media Lab, Aol and London 2012 identities). In practice, what is the trade-off between the flexibility and freedom of expression and the overhead of time and resources needed to make such identity systems work effectively?

Rebranding the Office for Social Media Effectiveness

I wrote this fake news story for April Fool’s Day 2011 and we hosted it on the BFK site for that one day. I still like it, and want to archive it here.

Social media solutions within the civil service and the broader state sector.

We have just completed a major rebranding programme for The Office For Social Media Effectiveness to help them deliver on their strategic objectives. Established in 2009, the role and remit of the Office has expanded alongside the adoption of social media solutions within the civil service and the broader state sector. From today it is relaunching with a new name and corporate identity as “Status:State”.

Building Brands Roundtable Panel

Photo by Dublin Web Summit. 

The second panel at last week’s Dublin Web Summit featured Ray Nolan of Hostelworld, Breon Corcoran of Paddy Power and brand consultant Noel Toolin.

They talked around the topic of creating a brand for your start-up. The main trust of their conversation focused on elevating the audience’s thinking on brand beyond visual expression and into the realm of behaviour and culture. Very much along the same lines as the conversations I have with my clients.

Nine Recommended Books on Branding

I have curated this short list of recommended books on brands, brand design and other related branding issues for a lecture on corporate identity and branding that I am giving at the School of Art, Design and Printing in the Dublin Institute of Technology. I am sharing it here as it may be of broader interest.

Tasting the Bacn

Email is not a marketing channel I have given much thought to over the past few years. A quick review of my own email consumption behaviours, habits and patterns proved informative about the utility of the subscription emails in my inbox.

Splinternet in the Wild

I have been thinking about the views expressed here and here by Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research about what he calls the ‘Splinternet’. One other aspect arising from his thesis is that Facebook is becoming (or perhaps has already become) a de-facto second Internet alongside the primary Internet. There are many connections between the two. But it is becoming increasingly common for many people to spend the majority of time online within Facebook’s so called ‘walled garden’. This is therefore increasing pressure on organisations and businesses to communicate within the confines of Facebook.

Notes from Viral Marketing Presentation at Science Gallery

Jonah Perertti of Buzzfeed.com gave an interesting presentation on viral marketing on 17 April 2009 at the Science Gallery, as part of the Infectious festival and exhibition. Viral marketing is tangential to the subject of my MA research, but I noted some points that may be of interest.

Some aspects of his talk aligned with the observations of Shirkey regarding the societal forces that limit or promote the effects of Internet technology.

• In the case of viral marketing it is the social imperative that drives the passing-on of the viral content.
• The architecture of the underlying system influences how viral memes spread. He drew an analogy with a forest fire: it is not so much about the particular match as about the dry brushwood and the trees. “The network structure is more important than the influencers.”

There are a number of non-trivial problems with viral marketing that need to be mitigated against:
1 It is unpredictable and hard to control.
2 What tends to spread is inconsequential: free, simple, fun and instant.
Ergo most messages are not viral. Furthermore, the slightest drag makes something non-viral. To grow at exponential rate 100 people will need to tell 200, who then go on to tell 400 and so on. If the spread rate is only one-to-one or less, then it will die out.

He spoke about his categorisation of the ‘Bored At Work Network’. This seemed to posit some kind of viral elite who are too busy, too hip and too creative to ever have any time to be bored, as opposed to millions of numb accountants and claims-adjusters waiting to click on the next photo of a kitten on a skateboard.

In terms of viral marketing for things other than novelty, fun, trivia, he spoke about ‘big seed media’. This seemed to have an old-school Interruption Marketing basis, as its starting point was leveraging an installed base of email addresses. His example was the Tide detergent company emailing a million people to shift 40k of product samples.

More interesting was his overview of the real-time audience data informing the editorial decisions on the Huffington Post home page. Articles are promoted or demoted based on their audience figures. This reinforces Shirkey’s analysis of the new paradigm of ‘publish first and filter second’. It is the same Darwinian methodology that kills off unpopular television shows, but whereas that process takes months this happens in hours.

Finally, in strategising how best to propagate your particular message, he advised “it is best to think like a Mormon rather than a Jew”. That metaphor is about focussing as much on the mechanism of how your message is to spread and not just on the content of your message. This is probably his most insightful point. Looking to the Irish graphic design blogosphere the greatest failing seems to be that most effort is expended on the content and little on ensuring both that the content is read and that it facilitates being read. Building in hooks for propagation whether by social imperatives or other means is part of the key to success.

Quote of the Day 12/02/09

“When in doubt, overwhelm a small niche.”
—Seth Godin

Quote of the Day 07/02/09

“Marketing is telling a story that sticks, that spreads and that changes the way people act. The story you tell is far more important than the way you tell it.”
—Seth Godin

A Cup of Recession Joe

Marketing Analysis (6 of 6)

Denis spoke about how factors outside of your company’s direct sphere of activities have to inform and effect your marketing decisions. I came across a good example of this today reading about how McDonalds is aggressively targeting Starbucks in the US coffee market. I am unsure if the same is true over here in Ireland yet. Even up to earlier this year I would have been surprised by the thought that McDonalds could compete effectively in the same market space as Starbucks and appeal to the same target markets.

Lets look at the marketing factors in play here. Given the deteriorating Irish economic environment, people are either looking to rationalise their discretionary spending or, if they have been laid-off, they are having to abandon it. In this climate it is difficult to justify spending five of six euros for a Christmas Gingerbread-Topped Triple-Strength Mocha With Whipped Cream. So everyone is increasingly in the market for a price-sensitive morning coffee. OK, so Starbucks could theoretically make changes to their prices, but a substantial part of their marketing message is still the theme of ‘The Third Place’ – in essence the idea that you are paying premium for the environment, the service and the sense of place that is uniquely Starbucks. So getting into any downward pricing spiral will either damage their brand or really start to reposition it in people’s minds. On the other hand, McDonalds never makes any claims to providing a wonderful environment, but they have proved themselves pretty adept and nimble at successfully adapting to market changes over the years. They now sell a surprising amount of salads and have had their McCafe offering in play for a number of years.

Operationally, once you start selling espressos and mochas to attract in the customers who are open to migrating away from the Starbucks and its ilk, you are faced with an issue of educating your existing customers who have been used to ordering black coffee or white coffee (or perhaps a Latte if if they are feeling particularly adventurous). That poses another marketing challenge. I have found the online component of this campaign: UnsnobbyCoffee.com This site mostly works as customer education: training McDonald’s existing customers to understand the variations of coffee the company is now selling. I presume these marketing messages are mirrored in-store, but I have not been State-side to investigate.

Realpolitik Design

Marketing Analysis (5 of 6): Bord Bia Pork Crisis National Press Advertisement

This full-page advert ran in the national newspapers yesterday. It is interesting as it crosses over the lines between PR, marketing and advertising as discussed in this MA module.

This advert plays an important part in the ongoing pork crisis PR activity and it serves different purposes aimed at the different publics it addresses. To the general pork-consuming public this is an ‘Important Public Announcement’, it puts forward the official Department and Bord Bia version of the facts surrounding the Irish pork recall. It is designed to be informative and factual. The design is very basic, arguably crude, but I propose that is an intentional choice. It needs to shout, to get attention and to be read. While being very factual, this advert is intended to reassure pork-eaters and put them back into a state of mind where they will begin to happily start to buy Irish pork again.


This advert is also indirectly addressed at the food industry, as the various stake-holders on that side need to see that the relevant Government agencies are taking proactive actions to get product selling again. That is why the advert is jointly accredited to both Bord Bia and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Joe Public cares little about who is responsible for such official pronouncements, but the industry insiders are very attuned to know who is acting in their interests.

The marketing component of this advert is the promotion of the new ‘Pork and Bacon Approved’ label that consumers are going to see on-pack*. It is important that they are made aware of its existence, although just this one full-page advert is not enough to get the word out about that. I would have also run small follow-on adverts the next week specifically about those new labels. I would have supported those with in-store posters and materials circulated to all retailers.

* Speaking from a design perspective, the new label is a very poor piece of communication. But I have an scenario in my head of the designer saying “we can make this communicate far more effectively if we work on it for more than eleven minutes” and the Man From The Department replying “every hour that pork is off the shelves the industry is losing X-million euros, just send it to the printers”. Real-Politik wins the day.

Quote of the Day 11/12/09

“[You] just can’t have an intelligent conversation with a Coke bottle. People do not wish to speak with brands.”
—Richard Binhammer, Member of Dell’s Digital Media team.

Quote Of The Day 10/12

“That world got blown up and the new democratised world of the enfranchised consumer and the occasional angry crowd has forced businesses (and the PR people and firms that advise them) to open up.”
—David Brain, CEO Edelman Europe, on the empowered consumer.

Talking to His Tribe

Marketing Analysis (4 of 6)

I never listened to an audio book before I downloaded the two Patrick Lencioni books onto my iPod, as I needed the first one in a hurry for module one of the MA programme. Since then I have now taken to checking out the audio book section in iTunes, which I had never bothered with before. I was pretty interested to discover that Seth Godin’s new book ‘Tribes’ is on sale there for 95 cents. Yes that is 95 cents, and it is a complete unabridged book, clocking in at more than three hours.

Seth Godin is my favourite writer on marketing. As evidenced by the fact that his daily blog is the highest volume contributor to the Thought-Of-The-Day posts that I have been interspersing throughout my online Learning Log blog. He primarily writes about marketing, but regularly crosses over into leadership, customer relations, and entrepreneurship; the whole enchilada basically. Most of his books are best sellers, ‘Purple Cow’ and ‘All Marketers Are Liars’ are two of his most successful titles. His daily blog is not only a must-read, but one of the few I have kept in my RSS-reader since my great MA Clear-Out Of 2008.

His interesting new business model/marketing strategy is to continue to sell a €20 hardback edition of his new books for those readers who want an archival edition, or one to give as a gift. But if all you want are his ideas (and, like all good business authors, he wants his ideas to spread) then you can purchase his book for less than a euro. From a marketing perspective I find this fascinating. It rewards the early birds, the Godinites who follow his blog and make it to iTunes within the 95-cent window (I am assuming that ultra-low price-point is not fixed). It also gets his book quickly into the hands of the people most predisposed to talk about it and to spread his reputation by word-of-mouth. Finally, by using dynamic pricing, he is assured of hitting the top five audio book list in iTunes, at least initially. Which raises his profile across target markets who may not be familiar with him.

Now I have not listened to ‘Tribes’ yet (all that required MA reading to get through don’t you know) so I cannot yet vouch for the quality of this new book But for less than the cost of most chocolate bars, it cannot hurt for me to take a punt on this one.

Quote Of The Day 22/11

“Advertising is a tax for having an unremarkable product.”
—Robert Stephens of The Geek Squad.
—From David Taylor’s ‘Never Mind the Sizzle... Where’s the Sausage’

A Marketing Plan For TypefaceBook™

This week’s group activity for the Marketing module of our MA Programme was to create a new product or service for the design sector. How do you segment your market? Which segment(s) do you target? What is your market positioning relevant to the others? Why have you chosen said marketing positioning?

I tapped out this response on my iPod on the train in this morning (so it is pretty lightweight) but it is something our team can start with for tonight.

A marketing plan for TypefaceBook™We have launched a new online social networking service for graphic designers called TypefaceBook™.

Our Services

• Type designers can upload their typeface designs for discussion.
• Other users can then rate all of the typeface designs, review typeface designs, give advice on improving them, etc.
• Type designers can crowd-source Unicode characters. This is: design the core character-set of your typeface and have the TypefaceBook™ community iterate the related global character-sets: Cyrillic, Greek etc. This would also work for alternate characters: small capitals, non-aligning numerals, all of that good sexy stuff. I guess that is more open-source typeface design than crowd-sourcing. All TypefaceBook™ fonts are Creative Commons licensed.
• We offer multiple RSS feeds, so that our users can subscribe to whatever level of feed they like. Follow the ‘Humanist Sans Serif Typefaces group, or even subscribe to the feed for just the letter ‘R’.
• Using our site is free, our revenue comes from Google Adsense, with a substantial click-through rate.
• We may offer a Pro-User service from Q3 2009, for a subscription fee.

Our Target Market

• It is a global audience, but our community is:
• Typeface Designers (professional)
• Typeface Designers (amateur)
• Typeface Users (professional) people who would purchase from type foundries.
• Typeface Users (amateur) people who would mostly download free fonts.
• Typophiles
• The graphic design industry

Our Marketing Strategy

• Our intent is to run a viral, Marketing_2.0, marketing campaign. Word-of-mouth will be the only way this service will take off given the budget that we have. Running with old-school marketing methodologies means that we will fail, so no press adverts in design magazines and the like. (Although we may partner with design publishers to have a TypefaceBook™ postcard insert inside hardback typography books, and inside copies of the Helvetica documentary DVD for example.
• Our competitors are other social networking sites and other design community sites. Our offering can not supersede any of the established players who have a pre-existing first-mover advantage. Rather our service will have to co-exist alongside those and find its own place within the online design sector ecosystem.
• Our initial service roll-out is a closed beta, invitation-only. Our intent here is to create some desirability and define our tribe. We will build-in incentives for beta users to invite and convert ten or more of their friends: send them a limited-edition type poster or something. If they convert more than fifty, then we send them an exclusive designer tee-shirt.
• Our PR plan is that we will conduct a brace of online interviews with leading design bloggers to raise awareness amongst the design community. Those designers who are most active online are our people.
• We will produced sustained news and become industry spokespeople in relation to our sustained news campaign. We shall generate informed opinion through TypefaceBook™ which will help us to drive customers to our site.
• We shall leverage social networking tools: we will establish a suite of Twitter accounts, Flickr pages, we shall even create a shared group page on that other ‘Facebook’.
• In future there could be an offline component to our marketing plan as well. We could host some annual TypefaceBook-Live™ conferences with type-design speakers and type workshops. One conference in Europe and another State-side to begin with.
• Type is still primarily about print, so we could partner with a design publisher to produce a hardback annual ‘The TypefaceBook™ Book’ (nice meta-title that). This would be available at a discount to our Pro Account members.

My Thought For The Day 20/11

“With all the pretend profits I am making from this imaginary business and marketing strategy I am writing, I am a real makey-uppey millionaire.”
1:39 PM 20 November, 2008 from my Twitter feed.

I’m New, Reuse Me

Marketing Analysis (3 of 6): 

Celebrations Recyclable Gift Pack

With Christmas fast approaching, the next six weeks is the market window for the various purveyors of boxes of biscuits and gift-packs of sweets. This is when they sell the majority of their inventory for the entire year. How does one gain competitive advantage within this particular market? Doing so through innovation in packaging did not seem the most likely approach to me. That was until Valerie brought home a few boxes of Celebrations chocolates at the weekend. It turns that what enticed her to buy them was this clever flash on the lid.

This is a compelling marketing mixture: retaining the indulgent and gift-giving aspects of their brand offering and combining that with an innovative new aspect. One that speaks to the green-aware, thrifty, recession-wise consumer. They have thought-through the whole life-cycle of their product packaging and made it more useful. There is some level of technology transfer at work in the background here, not anything too high-tech, rather an approach which is simple and effective. I imagine that these new packs are lighter and cheaper to transport, and also more durable than what existed before. By investing in the nature of the plastic that they use in their packs, and enhancing the underlying manufacturing technology, they have enhanced their overall brand proposition and story.

They could support this with advertising, or more usefully, in-store displays, but the real clincher here is the flash on the pack, that is what seals the deal. Finally, there is a viral component to their brand story. If I give you a present of this pack of confectionery, I can point out the utility of the packaging. Equally, if I get one as a gift, the story behind the pack makes a talking point as well. There is a compelling narrative here. Successful branding is worth talking about.

Quote Of The Day 15/11

“Using networking technologies in the way the Obama campaign did is an insurgent strategy to try and gather up an audience. The price of the strategy is you must let go of the control.”
—Karlin Lillington, The Irish Times