Top 10 Things I Learned from in the Past Five Years (Don’t take my word for it, each number has a link):

10. Don’t break yourself of daydreaming, it leads to break throughs.

9. There’s nothing new under the sun.

8. We are not gadgets.

7. Instinct trumps reason.

6. Copywriting still matters - really.

5. Multitasking is a drug - don’t get addicted.

4. Email isn’t always the best form of communication.

3. Get a clue. Hopping on the digital train is still a craft.

2. The Four P’s are out – they only give you yellow snow.

And the number one thing I’ve learned,

1. Anything is possible – people can taste color!

Today the Internet has made markets networked and given a voice back to the consumer. And with that voice brings craft: work by individuals motivated by passion. In response, marketing needs to become a craft. Craftworkers listen design the house to fit with the landscape. By listening, marketers re-learn how to talk and engage customers in their story. What are the ingredients of this new brand story? Five Easy Pieces.

Years after Cluetrain marketing guru Seth Godin gave us five building blocks, “Five Easy Pieces,” that take marketing above the bazillion tactics it has become. It is time to move past the applied mindset of the four “P”s and look at marketing through five elements: Data, Stories, Products (services), Interactions and Connection.

DATA is observational. What do people actually do and want? How do they get to  and “get” your brand?

STORIES define everything you say and do. The product has a myth, the service has a legend.

PRODUCTS/SERVICES are physical manifestations of the story. Push the product to be the story/myth.

INTERACTIONS are all the tactics the marketer uses to touch the consumer. Interactions are everything.

CONNECTION is the end goal. Connection between you and between customers – tribes of the faithful.

Sunzi taught us in The Art of War that strategy was not planning by working through an established list, but rather responding to changing conditions. In the diner scene from Five Easy Pieces, what was the strategy (story) of the diner? Was it built around the customer? If it was, then the waitress’s tactics could have changed to meet the needs of Robert (Jack Nicholson). Robert (Jack) was willing to pay the price of a chicken salad sandwich to get his toast! A customer approach considers value. With instant Internet comparison shopping strategic differentiation now comes from the value a company can provide.

Today Jack gets his side order of toast or he’s Tweeting about it to hundreds of followers. And now there are ten other diners in the same strip mall. You’re also competing for his attention. You need brand stories built around customers that are told in the channels (touchpoints) most likely to reach them. Today you need customer-centric marketing in order to succeed. Get on the Cluetrain and build your brand on Five Easy Pieces or like Robert you’ll be in the fast lane on the road to nowhere.

In my Consumer Behavior class we study the Rokeach Value Survey which classifies values into terminal values like happiness which is a desired end state and instrumental values like ambition which is a prefered behavior to get you there. Mostly I’m trying to get students to think beyond simply marketing product benefits like “fast” for a sports car. Instead we should try to leverage the instrumental or terminal values a target consumer wants to feel. Your message and creative should match product with that value.

For example, does the new Dodge Charger make the driver feel “fast?” Or does driving it activate their instrumental value of “independence” or terminal value of “freedom?” This consumer is chosing an American muscle car in a recession during high gas prices. How does that consumer’s values differ from the value one feels driving a Mazda Miata or a Porsche Boxster?

Going a step further from product characteristics like “fast” for sports cars to values like “independence” and “freedom” can create product differentiation and powerful emotional appeals. Can you see how Dodge has been using consumer values to segment their marketing from other “fast” cars? Check out this example:

Another post talks about the practice of #followfriday. It started out as a good idea. You recommend your favorite Tweets, but in practice people mindlessly flooded long lists of Twitter usernames every Friday – turning a social media into a broadcast media. And NPR recently reported about teens using Twitter to organize flash mobs for illegal activities.

Are we all really meant to generate content? If  we all have blogs and we’re all trying to generate traffic to them, yet there is already too much out there how will that ever work? Maybe some consolidation needs to occur like in any industry when there are to many providers of a product or service. Maybe we need to take a lesson from old media and have fewer blogs but more unique contributors to those blogs. Remember newspapers? They attract or used to attract a large audience for dialing sharing of information, but they have a staff of writers responsible for generating that content.

The author of the blog The Nonist closed his blog after 5 years of publishing. From his experience he generated a satire of a disorder called Blog Depression. You can check it out at the link below if you wish. Here are two of his “facts.”

FACT: Meta-bloggers may experience particularly severe blog depression when they realize everyone is continually posting the same stuff, on every other meta-blog, over and over and over, the realization that meta-content is never “owned” can be painfull.

FACT: Blog readers want to be entertained, the vast majority will do so passively, you are like a tiny television network to them, if you do not blog for your own pleasure you’re in for some serious blog depression.

Why do you blog? Why do you Facebook? Why do you Tweet?

Lets start by figuring out what that number means. In the past, one of the undervalued assets of companies was their brand, because they are off-balance-sheet items. Haigh & Knowles, (2004) tell us that today, looking at a typical company like Microsoft, net tangible assets make a small percentage of total value. When comparing brand value to percentage of market capitalization we find that, based on the 2005 Interbrand study, Microsoft’s brand value was $59.9 billion compared to a market capitalization of only $13.2 billion.

So why does the Microsoft brand contribute so much to its value? There has been this value shift from tangible to intangible assets. The tangible assets of Microsoft including land, equipment, inventory, networking, only account for roughly 22% of its value. Especially in a software company like Microsoft, its real value comes in its intangible assets such as patents, distribution rights, customer data bases, brands/sub-brands, and the quality of their workforce and management. Intellectual property rights, trademarks, trade names, patents, and designs protect these intangibles and help make a brand a valuable asset.

Brands like Microsoft establish a level of quality and performance in the minds of individuals and businesses. These satisfied buyers choose to buy the product again. The brand loyalty represents predictability and security for demand. It also makes it very difficult for competitors to enter the market. As the old saying goes, “No one ever got fired for buying IBM.” All the years of marketing and product experience have helped secure a competitive advantage for Microsoft. That’s why there is such a price premium paid for companies like Microsoft. Imagine trying to build a Microsoft from scratch? Even if you were given the 22% in tangibles of equipment and other assets it would be a difficult task. In creating a new software company from scratch that 78% is a high hill to get over.

A good example of how the power and value of Microsoft’s brand created competitive advantage was back in the late 1990’s. Netscape tried to compete with Microsoft by getting into the Internet browser arena quickly while Microsoft underestimated its popularity and potential.

Discovering it made a mistake as Netscape gained prominence, Microsoft used its brand power to squelch Netscape’s threat to its desktop software dominance by pressuring its distributors (PC manufactures) to restrict the distribution and usage of Netscape’s browser. Today Wal-Mart uses its brand power to negotiate, or as some would say demand, lower prices from its supplier.

Do you think the rise of store brands lowered brand value in package goods?

I believe maintaining that visually continuity is especially challenging between traditional advertising mediums and the expansion of new digital forms. But I think I found an example of a brand that is doing it very well. I once again point to the Pepsi refresh project.

This was a brilliant integrated campaign built on a social media strategy but they use many traditional and non-traditional forms of marketing. And as I think you can see in picture below the visual elements of the campaign are all tied together well.

What you should notice in the examples is the design of the campaign is very simple and brilliant because it starts with the product – package design. From there they pull colors and the logo to make a simple and very appealing design in magazines/print ads, billboards, microsite, blog, Twitter, YouTube and a toolkit brochure.

Do you think it is too simple or is that where the brilliance comes? Even across traditional and digital mediums Pepsi is achieving harmonious, unified design.

Digital unity is so important these days that it has literally changed the way we work. The traditional creative team has expanded from a copywriter and art director to include a web designer as well. Throw in a PR person and you’ve got a real integrated marketing team.

What I really liked on the landing page is a short video with sound that automatically plays animation of a paper monster. Then you can click to watch a video product demonstration. Directly below are product photos and prices with bold “BUY NOW” buttons.

The next print ad I found was for a new book on social media marketing called The Dragon Fly Effect. It features a picture of the book and large testimonials. What drew me to their ad was the use of a QR (quick response code). This graphic was in the bottom corner inviting you to watch a video. The ad itself wasn’t very creative but the use of a QR Code is still relatively new and it makes the printed page more interactive.

After scanning it with my smartphone I was immediately taken to a video featuring the author talking about the book and an opt in option requesting my email and name to obtain more information. The top of the page says “Thanks for scanning our ad in Fast Company. Here’s a video just for you.” They have created a unique QR tag and website for each ad to measure response. The video was hosted on Vimeo and featured easy share options including embedding links and the url.

The last ad I found was for Citgo. Gas companies are facing public image challenges and this must be Citgo’s attempt to reach out to their consumers in a friendly way. They emphasize the fact that all Citgo stations are locally owned and contribute to the local economy and how they support local causes and charities. The bottom of the ad invites us to visit a micorsite FuelingGood.com.

The microsite is very people focused and features a map of the U.S. I couldn’t detect ways to track website traffic from the specific ad, but they would get numbers on general hits coming from all communication. They also have a live feed from their Facebook page showing the current number of Likes (2387) with an invitation to sign up to see what your friends like. Clicking to go to the Facebook page would enable them to track how much Facebook traffic is coming from their microsite. The site also has links to their Twitter account and a YouTube channel where they could track the same traffic activity.

The interactive map shows charities/non-profits in your state and area that you can vote to support. Last year Citgo rewarded seven charities with a year’s supply of gasoline. The creative skeptic in me says, “That’s been done.” But the mature marketer and decent person in me says, “Keep it coming!” What do you think? Should more companies follow the Pepsi Refresh model of getting people to submit ideas and vote on causes to receive corporate support?

The call to action debate continues today. A client will tell a marketing firm to put “Click Here” on the banner ad, but advertising people argue that consumers know to click for more information. What about in print? Do more people call phone numbers with the word “Call” in front of it versus just listing the number? I instinctively always write “call now” or “call today” with my phone numbers, but sometimes the art director wants to put the number by itself somewhere else. Click here for an article that says having the phrase “click here” on your banner will increase clickthroughs.

Online call to actions come in many shapes and colors. Recently a British design blog debated about designs for call to action buttons. You’ve seen them, but unless you are a web designer you probably never put much thought into how they look. Click here to see examples of 25 different call to action buttons. The article says, “As a designer, it’s your job to make it as easy as possible for visitors to achieve these tasks and call-to-action buttons are the most powerful tools at your disposal.”

Another web innovation is call to action domain names. One example I found about ViewMyHome.com. This becomes a simple and powerful message that doesn’t need any explaining. It’s easy to remember and it has a personal touch that you don’t receive with the regular company website. And you don’t have to build an entire new website. You could just do a landing page with a redirect. Click here for this reference about call to action domain names.

A survey by the Direct Marketing Association showed that the majority of companies that are investing in social media marketing are doing so to increase customer loyalty. So social media call to actions have become important. It is as easy as printing “Follow us on Twitter” on the bottom of a mailer, adding “’Like’ us on Facebook to receive up to the minute event information” to an email message and adding buttons to link to social media profiles or for customers to share information on your company on their social media pages. Click here for a link to the DMA social media survey.

The picture on the right is a mobile text message call to action. This happened during last year’s live broadcast of the Oscars as millions of eyes saw the director of Cove hold us his SMS call to action to get people to sign his online petition. Click here to sign it yourself.

During the height of the campaign, Keep America Beautiful received more than 2,000 letters a month from people wanting to join the local team. Keep America Beautiful local teams helped to reduce litter by as much as 88% in 300 communities, 38 states, and several countries.

If we were to launch this same campaign today what kind of PR and digital media integration would we build around it?

My first thought is a social media release with facts, pictures and resources. We could us PitchEngine.  What about a microsite with tips and links to local chapters with a blog to update information? Maybe something like the TOMS Shoes blog.  I would also consider a “What makes you cry?” promotion and invite user generated videos of people submitting their own 30 second versions of the pollution in their neighborhoods. Think something like the Pepsi Crash the Superbowl contest.

What else would you do?

The great thing about a campaign on Pandora and/or Last FM is you can really segment to your audience by format. Does your target like adult contemporary, hip hop or Barry Manilow? There’s a station for that! You can also geo target your buy by top markets or distribution regions and the nice thing about a Pandora ad is that it has both audio and visual elements.

Recently Toyota has struck a long term deal with Pandora for some of these very reasons. A company executive promised, “The campaign will be the largest in scope and span to ever run across all of the Pandora internet radio advertising platforms.” As part of a new, multi-year “Legends & Icons” advertising series, Pandora will brand stations and artists with Toyota models. The Highlander will be on the Top 40 station because the demographics of the care model match the listener demographic for the station. Different models will brand different stations with lots of customized channels, artist spotlights, exclusive releases, radio ‘mixtapes,’ and video integration. Toyota executives say they have a broad target demo of 18-49, but though different stations and content slivers they can be more segmented.  Pandora now has 80 million registered users.

Has your company joined the digital media conversation? If not find the right channel and jump in!