Atomic Ideas

Internet...Schminternet. (Nearly a third of Americans can't be reached online)

From a recent article that appeared on AOL, It would appear that almost one in three of us cannot be reached via the information superhighway.  Or even through any of the social media by-ways. (Of course, that means that 60% of us can be reached online!) All the more reason to first determine who your best potential customers are, and where they will be when you choose to deliver your brand's marketable truths.

Feb 17th 2010 By Jeremy Taylor

30 Percent of Americans Don't Use the Internet

MORE

• Happy Hour Hero
• News

15 Comments

Our happy hour fact to amaze your drinking buddies with.

Almost one in three Americans don't use the Internet at work or home.

New census bureau data, collected from 54,000 households, finds that seniors, the poor, underrepresented minorities and folks who live in rural areas lag behind the rest of the country, technologically speaking.

While a good chunk of the nation remains offline, high-speed broadband has made significant inroads with those who are surfing the Web. By late 2009, 63 percent of overall households had opted for the faster service, which is up from 40 percent in early 2007.

Still, we can't help but be baffled, and slightly insulted, by those who continue to shun the information superhighway, which we call home.

New MSU Brand Identity

I read last week in the Free Press that Michigan State is dropping their newly designed logo. New logo? What does it look like? Why do they need a new logo? Did something happen to Sparty?

Well, turns out, Michigan State’s athletic director, Mark Hollis, developed the new logo with help from Nike as part of a MSU branding campaign (that is planned for April). It seems this new logo was going to help give MSU a new fast-paced image. Apparently, something had broken and an updated Sparty was just the thing to fix it.

The logo above on the left is the old logo that dates back to the early 70’s. The logo on the right is the new Nike designed Spartan logo. What’s the big difference? They stretched the jaw out a bit, made the helmet brush bigger, and they filled-in the segmented spaces of the brush holder, no hidden swooshes. Hmm… these subtle changes should be enough to lift the Spartan spirit.

Not so fast- as the new logo was going through a trademark registration process, fans, students, alumni and the public got a peek at the update. They didn’t like it and let Mark Hollis know in great numbers. New MSU logo cancelled. Not even Tom Izzo’s endorsement could save the new logo.

What went wrong? My guess - they didn’t do any market research or testing. Surely, they would’ve found out about the consumer’s love for the existing logo had they done a focus group. Instead, they let Nike have a hand in their brand identity campaign. Maybe, that’s the problem. Does Nike’s great brand identity make them an expert in implementing a visual brand identity for someone else? You would think so. I admit I don’t know all the facts behind this marketing situation, but somebody forgot to do his or her homework. Somebody forgot to conduct a basic step in establishing or redefining a brand: listening. Listening to the consumer’s concerns, impressions and opinions.

The redesign of a company logo has to be warranted. It can’t be changed just to say it’s an update. Or that it’s refreshing. As I learned long ago in school from Roy Paul Nelson’s book, The design of advertising, logo design should be original, legible, stimulating, appropriate to the product, and easy to remember. Simple tenets. Logo redesign is warranted if there is consumer apathy toward it. In the case of the new MSU design, it seems more like client or corporate apathy. “If it ain’t broke, let’s fix it.”

Coca Cola, AT&T, Apple and Nike are all examples of great brands with tremendous visual identity. Logo changes came with great care and in gradual, subtle steps, over years. See below- In the case of Coca Cola, it’s pretty much been the same for a hundred years.

    

Social Media and Social Commentary

A recent You Tube video brings home one of the benefits of social media: people can speak out (either positively or negatively) about your product, service, or political situation. And no matter how controlling your company, corporation or government tries to be, they cannot control what people will say or do in various social media channels. All any organization can do is try to influence what people are saying about them. How best to do that? Give the people what they want.

Drunken Monkeys

When marketing anything, you need to do research in order to understand your best potential customers. What never ceases to amaze, is the sheer amount of information that's out there. 

In searching for background info for an adult beverage product, this video popped up. While it didn't yield much in the way of marketing insights, it did generate a lot of ideas for creative execution.

(Marketable) Truth will set you free!

Have you seen the new Domino's pizza commercials on TV lately? They fess up to their shortcomings and improve their products in order to deliver marketable truths, ie those attributes that will resonate with their best customers. How did they do it? First by listening to their potential best customers (through focus groups) then delivering what those customers wanted most. The result. They will sell more stuff! 

Here is a full video from which :30 TV spots were made:

At Atomic Ideas, we specialize in helping clients sell more stuff. How? By helping them find and then communicate their marketable truths in whatever medium(s) is most appropriate. So we applaude Domino's in finding their marketable truths and communicating them. And we wish them the best in selling more stuff!

20 Essential Twitter Tools For Business.

I subscribe to an essential tool for marketers. It's called marketingprofs. For a nominal fee you gain access to a phenomenal information resource and other goodies. For instance, today I was able to download a marketingprofs white paper on Twitter which includes 11 case studies of businesses using the platform and the extremely useful list below... $49.95 for the complete study to non-subscribers, FREE to me. Outstanding!

In the the spirit of the holidays I'm sharing. But if you want the rest of the info, I highly recommend you sign up at marketingprofs.com. You won't regret it.

Twitter Account Management

• TweetDeck: This popular desktop widget offers great functionality for posting business tweets, including the ability to sort tweets into direct messages, topics and keywords. For instance, you can set up a specific column for mentions of your company or industry, and another for those of your competitor. TweetDeck has a sleek Adobe Air interface that looks like a cockpit on your desktop. Plus, it integrates with Facebook.

• HootSuite: A fast-growing free Web service, HootSuite is perfect for businesses needing multiple Twitter profiles and multiple users. It allows you to easily schedule tweets and switch back and forth between accounts. The service also includes a URL-shortening service called “ow.ly” that lets you see how many times your links are clicked. HootSuite counts Google Enterprise, Steve Case and Threadless as users.

• CoTweet: Multiple people from the same company can communicate through a single Twitter account, thanks to CoTweet. Each person maintains his or her own profile and activity record. CoTweet boasts such customers as Macworld, Ford and Whole Foods. CoTweet is accepting private beta registration.

Contact Management & Directories

• FriendOrFollow.com: This is a powerful tool for seeing 1) which of the people you follow are following you back and 2) which people are following you, but you have yet to reciprocate.

• Twitoria: You may have a lot of followers, but how many of those are active? This simple application allows you to see which of your followers are active on Twitter over the last week, two weeks, month, two months, etc.

• WeFollow.com: It is a user-powered Twitter directory. Simply enter the tags you want to be known for (e.g. #socialmedia, #marketing, #measurement, etc.) and you’re finished.

• Twellow: This tool bills itself as the Twitter Yellow Pages. You can search for users by a wide range of categories. You can also add yourself to a group so people can find you.

• Just Tweet It: Another directory service that notifies you of new additions to people in your particular industry.

Tracking & Metrics

• TwitterCounter: This sleek tool lets you chart the number of followers over time, from last week to last month.

• Bit.ly: This incredibly useful tool not only shortens your URL but enables you to track metrics on how many people click on your links. This provides insight into what types of links resonate with your client base. Retailers, such as Dell, use bit.ly to track click-through rates.

• Twitalyzer: A new tool from the folks at Web Analytics Demystified, Twitalyzer goes beyond basic metrics to show the influence, signal-to-noise ratio, generosity and a whole host of other metrics related to your Twitter account. Take one trip through Twitalyzer, and you’ll have a clear idea of where you need to focus to make your Twitter use more effective.

• Google Analytics: To measure the number of people visiting your website from the Twitter.com domain, try Google Analytics.

• Omniture: This enterprise Web analytics package recently added Twitter integration, enabling clients to view brand comments over time, influencers vs. detractors, and a host of other metrics.

Monitoring & Alert Services

• Search.Twitter.com: Though there are several options for monitoring what people are saying about your brand on Twitter, this one might be the easiest. And it’s free. Use this service to set up RSS feeds related to the words you care about. (Please note: It does have limitations, such as how far back in time you can go.)

• TweetBeep.com: This service is like Google Alerts for Twitter. Enter your keywords
(e.g. company name, product, competitors, etc.) and receive regular updates whenever someone mentions those words in social media.

• Monitter: This new service provides a live streaming view of what people in your location are saying about your company or employees.

• Radian6 and Techrigy: These two enterprise-class monitoring tools help a company listen to conversations happening throughout the social media universe, not just Twitter. The tools are loaded with additional powerful functionality for managing your brand.

Marketing Tools

• TwtQpon: Use TwtQpon to create exclusive deals for your products or services, and share them with your followers.

• TwitterHawk: A novel marketing application, TwitterHawk connects you with people actively talking about your product or service within your area. For example, if you own a sandwich shop and someone in town tweets about getting a sandwich, you can automatically send them a customized response. The service costs five cent per tweet.

• TwitBacks.com and TwitterGallery.com: Want more than the design options that Twitter provides? Use either of these services to improve the look and feel of your Twitter page. TwitBacks.com allows you to provide additional business contact information, and a photo or logo as well.

So there you have it, so have at it. And don't forget to thank marketingprofs by signing up and getting access to all the great stuff available on their site. And by the way, I'm just a big fan - they're not endorsing my admiration.

Tweet us @atomicideas

Happy holidays!

Black n' Blue Friday

Seems just about every retailer  has a "Black Friday" sale.  "Black Friday" sales are definately the "hot" marketing tactic. 

In fact, I even saw a TV commercial for Maaco for their "Black Friday" sale. Seems you can save big on every paint service they offer until Saturday at noon. The problem is, I saw the commercial at 11:12 pm Saturday night. 

Not only have they wasted their money by not utilizing this "hot" tactic correctly, but now I actually have a lower opinion of them. If they can't get their advertising right, what else will they mess up? My paint job?

It's the same with marketers and the "hot" tactic of social marketing. Done incorrectly, companies at best lose their window of opportunity for influencing consumers at the proper point in the buying cycle, and at worst, they risk converting a neutral attitude to their product or service, into a negative one. 

E-Conomy Bogs Down E-Tailing. Still a Lack of Growth in Ecommerce.

---

Came across some interesting stuff to share today.

According to Comscore, the news in retail e-commerce is not going to make anyone jump for joy. After the initial online exuberance of the last few years, the reality of the economy is taking its toll. Q2 retail e-commerce sales estimates show spending down 1% over last year. Not surprising and hey, it could have been worse, right? It is only the second quarter on record when e-commerce spending has been lower than the same quarter the previous year. 

"The marginally negative growth in Q2, on the heels of flat growth in Q1, signals that online retail spending has yet to turn the corner after a disappointing end to last year,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “Unfortunately, it appears that the reality of nearly 10-percent unemployment and rising gas prices, coupled with an increased savings rate, continues to hold down consumers’ discretionary spending and it may still take some time to dig our way out of this recession.”

Also, from MarketingProfs, the top 10 online retail categories.

Social Media -- Should it be your primary source for consumer insight?

The consumer is King (and Queen, of course).

While it may seem you've heard it a million times these days, the fact remains your brand is defined by its consumer perception.  While companies and brand managers try to control and influence how a brand is perceived, it is the consumer that determines a brand's position in the market.  And that is why understanding the voice of the consumer is paramount to developing and managing a brand.

The number of avenues open to consumer market research is ever evolving.

From mail surveys, to in-person intercepts, to telephone, to Internet, to panels, to focus groups, to anthropological interviews, to social media analysis, market research can take many paths.  Too often the methodology choice is reflective of what is the latest and greatest, regardless of whether or not it is the best practice.  All research techniques have pros and cons, and it is necessary to select the tool which maximizes the pros and minimizes the cons.

Are traditional techniques headed for extinction?

I say no. Much has been written and hypothesized that traditional research techniques are quickly becoming dinosaurs and the key is to maximize analysis of social media. Check out this article on the subject by Adam T. Sutton on MarketingSherpa.  However well-meaning that thought process, in my opinion, it is not necessarily correct.  Social Media research is very important, but like all research techniques it is most effective when used properly; is responsive to a clear set of objectives and the respondent base reflects a core set of demographics.  There is a significant amount of discussion surrounding the idea of replacing traditional research tools with in-depth analytics on Internet activity, especially blogging posts.  While this should be an important tool in understanding how some consumers are reacting to a product, retailer or service, it should not be the sole source of future consumer intelligence as some have suggested.  The important factor is to understand who is blogging. Is it your core customer? Are they potential evangelists who you want to spend more time listening to? Or are they just a small core of disgruntled customers who do not represent the majority and whose voice is limited and just appears loud to you because you are following them?  Traditional market research tools are no more dying than Social Media research is the panacea to understanding a brand.  An interesting article on this discussion can be found right here. 

Evolution of the species.

The palette of tools available to smart marketers is simply evolving.  The key is understanding how to use the information and not be blinded by the glitz of the technology.  Just as a company should evaluate and make use of multiple media outlets to maximize its reach and communication, its market research efforts should also be diverse.

Evaluation and integration can lead to higher-order research.

Clearly, utilizing social media research should be a key element of understanding your customer point of view.  However, traditional surveys (whether executed through the Internet, telephone or other techniques) and focus groups can still be important as they can focus information collection in a manner that can yield insights that may not be uncovered through analysis of social media.  Just as it is important to have a strategic communication goal with a diverse execution, you need a strategic research plan that clearly defines key issues for evaluation:

• What is it that I need to learn?
• What do I need to know for developing  marketing objectives?
• How should I evaluate whether or not the consumer views my brand the way I want them to, etc?

And, just as you understand that different media options have can have different levels of effectiveness, not all research tools are appropriate to answer all questions. In other words, a research plan should be flexible and utilize all the tools available.  The value of the research is often found with the practitioner of the research and how they can work with the information and condense it into meaningful information that can be used to move a brand to the next level. 

Those are my thoughts. Let me know what you think.