Social Strategy for Boring Brands

Was flipping through my monthly Marketing News magazine from the American Marketing Association and found and interesting article called "Social Strategy for exciting (and not so exciting) brands", written by Josh Bernoff, VP at Forrester Research.

The article discusses how "talkable" or popular brands have an easier go with social networking because people already want to discuss them and talk about them. In a recent survey of theirs they asked online consumers whether they'd like to interact with various forms of social applications with their favourite brands. 42% of respondents said they would like to. Thats a pretty nice number. When it came to how they preferred to interact it was a little different
- 1 in 4 would prefer a discussion forum
- 1 in 6 would be interested in connecting through a social network profile (ie. Facebook)
- 1 in 5 would prefer watching online videos
- Only 12% would want to read a blog about the brand

Interesting stuff.

Now onto the "boring", non-talkable brands that no one really cares about or wants to interact with (much like insurance, which is the sector I primarily work within).

"Boring brands have a different problem, but social applications can help them, too. The key with boring brands is to get people talking about their problems, since they won't talk about your brand. In advertising, you can force messages on people watchiing other things. In a social context, this fails miserably."

An interesting point, and one that I agree with wholeheartedly. Ie. the post that I did earlier on the pharmacy centre advertisement. If they wanted to get into social networking they could provide a place where people could talk about what ails them, etc. and help provide health advice and that sort of stuff.

An interesting article, its not up yet on the http://www.marketingpower.com/ website but check back here soon and it should be http://www.marketingpower.com/AboutAMA/Pages/AMA%20Publications/Marketing%20News/MarketingNews.aspx

Using your blog for good or evil

Let me preface this post by saying I understand writing your own personal blog is about building your brand and promoting yourself. But if you have developed a loyal following of people reading your entries when does too much selling yourself lead to a drop off.

I have followed the Pow! Andy Nulman blog for 7 or 8 months now and there was often some very interesting entries. He would talk about recent marketing campaigns that had used the Power of surprise to catch peoples attention and thus land themselves a good return. It was thoroughly interesting and I always looked forward to his newest post until.......

He got a book deal.

Now pretty much every single post is selling his book. Now he does mask it with promotions he is offering with the book, and contests he is running, and how he is trying to Pow! sell his book. But it all feeds back to being about his book, and in reality trying to sell more copies of his book.

Fair enough. You built your blog up, you built the brand of it, you got a book deal out of it so why not use your blog readers to sell copies. But what's going to happen when those loyal readers start to tire of seemingly the same thing every day. I know I am.

It's just like an overused advertisement. Wassssssupppp!!!!

Writer's Block...or just Lazy Brain

Why can I not think of a new blog posting? It's just the same old thoughts that keep coming up in my head. Writer's block? I have no imagination? No creativity????.........

Nope, my brain is just lazy according to an article from Fast Company Magazine.

"The brain is fundamentally a lazy piece of meat. It doesn't want to waste energy. That's why there is a striking lack of imagination in most people's visualization of a beach sunset. It's an iconic image, so your brain simply takes the path of least resistance and reactivates neurons that have been optimized to process this sort of scene."

So thats great. Now I have to work out to stay in shape and somehow find the time to work out my brain also! Sheesh it is never ending. But according to the article the more you experiment and enjoy new experiences the more workout your brain undergoes because it has to process all this crazy, out of place stuff. So that is why social networks, and reading blogs, and heck even travelling and experiencing new things is so important for marketers and other creative types. It allows you to exercise your brain. Now I think i've stumbled onto a way to expense a trip to Thailand.