Fanatics

Sometimes the best customers (or users, or watchers, or players, etc.) can actually be a liability. Their fanaticism can actually push away those people seeking more casual relationships.

A few examples:

Ever play a competitive multiplayer online game? One I like to indulge in from time to time is Tribal Wars, for instance, but there a million others. The general idea is that each player develops medieval villages, wages war, and trades with others. Working in "tribes" with other players allows for a lot of support and interaction. I only dabble in it and don't devote an enormous amount of time or effort to the game. There seems to be tens of thousands of other players with a similar level of engagement. Unfortunately, a relatively small group of players seem obsessive and ruin it for the rest. They've figured out the exact best approach to the game and play almost mechanically, performing actions in a very formulaic way. To the game's producers, I'm sure these guys seem incredibly valuable: they spend a bunch of time online (which brings ad revenue) and they're the most likely to pay for a "premium" account. Because these fanatics are so deeply engaged, though, they easily defeat the casual players and make the game much less fun. I wonder how many thousands of casual players would be more engaged if the fanatics weren't there.

Similarly, in the real world, ever go to a professional sporting event? Even terrible teams have their share of fanatics. Most of them add to the overall game experience. They lead the cheers, they dress in team uniforms, they yell at the refs and get the crowd going. But some of this crew can also make the sport unbearable at times -- not just at the games, but ongoing. They yell and cheer so much that you can't hear the event, they stand in front of other spectators, they talk obsessively about the sport at work, at the bar, on the street... Sure, this group might buy every piece of merchandise they can find, but how many others' brand experience is harmed by this obsession and discourtesy?

Games and sports are easy examples. So what about more typical businesses?
Here's an example from my personal experience:
A couple of years ago I worked for a well-known, international consumer brand. The company had been around for about a decade and had established itself well. Its products are sufficiently unique and effective to have gained a strong following.
One of my responsibilities was marketing for the mail order division, which included online sales. Before "social media" became the buzzword of the moment, we were operating a very popular and successful online community. About half the discussions in this community were directly related to the company and its products. The other half was all over the map, but a great way to extend the brand. People with little else in common were brought together by various brand principles. The community had its share of fanatics. At times, they were our (the marketing department's) best friends. Many of them bought huge amounts of products. Most of them were invaluable assets for new customers who had product usage questions, etc. And their high level of activity was an excellent example and lead for newcomers. But... they were also some of the biggest thorns in our sides. Some took it upon themselves to speak for the entire customer base (often with limited actual support from others). Some used the community as a place to push personal agendas. Some used their leadership positions to unfairly push the company ("We're really valuable! Gimme gimme gimme!"). Some bullied the newcomers. And so on.
We had to very carefully manage the demands and expectations of this group while also supporting the new or "lesser" customers. Despite the fanatics' value, the long tail phenomenon certainly was in effect at this company, with a huge number of small customers providing a bulk of the sales.

I suppose the keys are:
1. Brands need to look at their "best" customers as more than one homogeneous group.
2. Fanatics can be great, but brands shouldn't be fanatical about them.

Content is Still King

As you've probably surmised from my previous posts on the subject, I have mixed feelings about social media marketing.

In general, my biggest concerns are with the faddy-ness of focusing on particular tools and tactics. MySpace leads to Friendster leads to Facebook leads to Twitter leads to FourSquare...

I recently pondered (see the last paragraph in that link) what evolutionary or revolutionary path social media would take as a marketing tool.

But perhaps that's the wrong question.

We really need to better understand and address what "social" is all about at its core.

First, there's the matter of identifying what types of social media channels/strategies/tactics are out there. I think it comes down to:
1. Networks. Systems that enable connections between individuals, brands, groups, etc. These connections then grow into conversations or other relationships.
2. Consumer Generated Content. In any form -- text, video, photos, music... and in any quantity -- from entire novels to one-word comments.
3. Leads. Things that help participants find and/or use the above. Trending topics and hashtags on Twitter, Digg and Reddit links, or even just a "Hey, I just tried..." posts on a forum.

Is there anything in the social space that doesn't fall into these groups?

So it really comes down to: having something to talk about and a place (and way) to do it.

At the heart of both of these is one simple thing: Content.

Social media Networks and Leads are just another way to spread content (or tell people where to get it). Consumer Generated Content is just plain ol' Content with more contributors.

Here's what I think:
It's time for marketers to take a step back and look at their marketing strategy as a whole as a Content Strategy.

What do you want your brand to say?
What do you hope others will say about your brand?
What existing content do you want to associated with?
Where's the best place to say these things?
How can you help others say these things?
What similar topics or ideas should you align with?
Where are conversations already taking place?
Where should conversations take place?
How can new conversations get started?
How can potential participants find each other?

And this is BEFORE even thinking about a particular channel, or even medium.

It's not about "social media". It's not even about "digital marketing". It's just marketing.

Every single one of the questions above might be addressed with traditional marketing vehicles or real-world venues. Or fancy-pants, newfangled Web 3.0 options might be the best opportunities. Or, obviously, some combination of the two.

I'm working with several clients who are taking this approach. Each is working to establish their brand as experts in their particular industries and/or associated topics (whether that association is through demographic, psychographic, or other qualities). From there, they're determining the best ways to ensure this brand attribute is shared, and to (legitimately) prove their expertise by sharing as much as possible.

I think this makes a lot of sense for building the brands in the long-term.

The sexy-tool-and-tactic-of-the-moment is still important, and is a part of most of these plans. But we won't have to reinvent the wheel when a new flavour of the month comes along.

It's also, frankly, a lot less work in the long run. The same content may be valid for TV commercials, blog entries, Twitter posts, Facebook Fan Page updates, live events, sponsored community organizations, contest, and so on and so on across the entire gamut of potential marketing tools. Effort switches from constantly re-defining what we say to adjusting how and where we say it.

Beware the Case Study

I really really like case studies. In general, when I attend a conference or industry event, the presentations that I find most interesting and useful are the stories about "Here's what we were trying to do, here's what we did, here's why we chose this approach, and here's what happened."

But I've begun to get a bit more jaded about them lately.

At a recent Internet marketing event that I attended, for example, several case studies were presented. In every case, the brands saw amazing results. The solutions/campaigns/technology used were absolutely the best choices that the marketers could have selected.

Same thing at a recent advertising awards show. Of course, because it was a "creative" event, they didn't actually show any results generated by the winners, but the reels and screenshots and sample images, etc. certainly implied that the featured ads were the greatest pieces of design and copywriting ever beheld by mankind.

But some of us in the audiences at these events wondered aloud -- were these examples actually any good? Is there much we can learn from them?

A campaign by a major beer brand comes to mind. Their case study showed how they generated thousands of contest entries (and, we would assume, a whole pile of brand building value) for a particular promotion. Why was it successful? According to the case study, it had something to do with the amazingly-chosen media mix and the fancy new creative unit (ad size) used. But maybe, just maybe, it was successful because the brand spent millions of dollars promoting the contest. Maybe it had something to do with the prize being a dream vacation. Maybe the fact that the ads were basically just images of beautiful people in skimpy swimsuits had some influence on success. Or maybe the brand's history as the leader in market share for decades helped a little...

I would actually be more interested in a case study where a campaign like this failed miserably. If you have a multi-million dollar budget, few imagery restrictions, a product that's inherently linked to fun, and a well established brand, how on earth could you possibly screw up?

Unfortunately, case studies, like history, are written by the victors. There's not much reason for a marketing manager or ad agency to tell the world about their mistakes. Unless they're blaming someone else, of course.

One of my favourite marketing books is The End Of Marketing As We Know it by Sergio Zyman. Zyman is former CMO of Coca Cola and has been a consultant for numerous other huge consumer product brands. The main message of the book is pretty simple: marketing is meant to sell. One of things that makes the content so interesting, though, is that he spends more time talking about the failures than he does about the successes. It turns out, for example, that classic ad campaigns ("Mean Joe Greene", "Tastes Great, Less Filling", and many others) didn't actually do anything for the bottom line.

Case studies can be very dangerous, and I think it's all about context. If you're a marketer, you need to look very carefully at the similarities and differences between your brand and the examples. Don't assume that because X (seems to have) worked for those other guys it will automatically work for you too. Are their budgets similar? Is their background similar? Is their audience similar? Are the inherent product attributes even remotely similar?

It's pretty obvious to say "Your small brand can't count on the same success that a big brand saw" or "Your boring product can't count on the same success that a fun product saw", but it also works the other direction. Everybody loves the "Little brand that could" stories of some guy in his his mom's garage growing into a multi-national leader. But just as that little guy had to start with a different approach than his billion-dollar competitors, his billion-dollar competitors couldn't just look at this up-and-comer and follow his approach.

Case studies aren't useless, of course. Like I said, I really really like them. The key is to identify the similarities.
If I'm selling banking products, maybe I can relate to the fun-loving attributes of a beer campaign. Who doesn't love money, right?
If I'm selling high-end cosmetics, there's probably something to learn from the techniques of other ridiculously-high-margin products like pharmaceuticals...
A huge baby stroller producer should be able to use similar insights into the minds of new parents as a small, local daycare...