I was reading Chris Anderson’s Free: The Future of a Radical Price.  It presents several good case study on pricing and a good academic look at the price “free”.  The premise of the book rested in that “free” is generally not really free.  There are multiple economic principles in play, but ultimately, someone is paying for it.

Today’s technology does allow us to get very close to free.  The book provides numerous examples of how we proximate free, how we sample extensively for free, etc.  However, even so, a business is only profitable when it charges someone for cash.  For each service / product that business offers for free, it’s charging someone else for something that particular service / product ultimately powers.  For example, Google search is free.  The data the searches collect and sold to advertisers is not.

However, aside from the economic principle of the book, Anderson discussed the concept of the free.  In fact, he briefly discussed the word “Free”.  In English, “free” is a word that contains multiple meanings.  Not so in other languages.  What does the word “free” mean in English?  Merriam Webster online dictionary listed 15 definition.  The two most interesting ones are free as in not costing any money and free as in not held as a slave or prisoner. 

Free and Freedom is a powerful association that is worth exploring more.

Marketer has long played with the idea of free.  Free after rebate.  Free shipping and return.  Both of these “free” were meant to relieve you of your feeling of obligation.  It’s free, just fill out a form. It’s free to return if you don’t like it.  There is a sense of freedom that’s associated with the idea of free sampling.

Then, swing the pendulum further beyond free is money back.  Of course, the money back is always built into the pricing structure.  However, the sense of being pay to do something gives you permission to do what you otherwise may not.  Credit cards have played this game.  We’ll pay you back $1 for every $10 you spend.  You feel free to spend.

Such association of free and freedom is one worth further pondering.  This is a gold mine for a multitude of creative expression of pricing promotions, etc.

While Freedom isn’t Free, Free is Freedom.

Photo credit:  Book image via LongTail.com.  Credit card image via ChaseFreedomNow.com

Related articles

• Free. How today’s smartest businesses profit by giving something for nothing. Chris Anderson. (regnordman.com)
• Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine Promotes Freemium Business Model on Wix Website (pr.com)

The world has gotten flat.  You launch a product in the US.  Put up a website.  And a Arab customer may be emailing you about it.  So, as marketers, would we want to build global marketing campaigns?  After all, we want to be consistent around the world.  We want our consumers to know our brand, our quality, our standards no matter where they are.  We want them to trust us around the world.  So, we want one global marketing strategy.

Hold on a second.

The world may have gotten flat, but I’d argue that the world of marketing and branding is still very much a globe.  And a one-size-fits-all approach may be ill-advised.

Let’s first look at how we market products. There are two camps of marketing.  One being functional, and the other one being emotional.  Most successful marketing campaigns need to blend the two and lean toward emotional.  After all, as anyone who have ever fell in love can attests, the brain may suggest to the heart how to feel, but the heart can definitively overrule the brain on what to do.

Clotaire Rapaille is a renounced anthologist and marketing expert.  His book The Culture Code:  An Ingenious Way To Understand Why People Around The World Live and Buy As They Do decoded some of our basic concepts of lives into what it really means for us on a fundamental emotional level.

It’s January, so let’s use healthy and wellness as our example.  In fact, let’s use being fat specifically as our example.

Outside of having a medical condition, being fat in America is a choice.  We made this choice as a result of something.  It’s not simply a result of not exercising and eating poorly.  We make the choice of not exercising and eating poorly.  Then, the question becomes why did we make that choice?  Rapaille decoded Fat as “Checking Out”.  Through his research, he discovered that people “let themselves go” after they check out of their own lives.  Divorce or lack of professional success can do this.  Losing ones’ identity can do this.  The latter is a fundamental challenges for moms.  Moms lose themselves in the daily grind of raising children, and for some, they give up on their own success, their own lives, and they check out.  As they stop caring about themselves, they start to get fat.

In the Arab nations though, they view fat completely differently.  They view fat as a symbol of success.  A skinny wife suggests that her husband is not making enough to bring home the bacon.  Therefore, fat wives are a symbol of the men’s wealth, and they welcome obesity.  (Of course, it’d also be foolish for us to think that this trend would never change.  Every culture evolves.  Even in America, how thin are the models on magazine covers changes from year to year as our opinion on being thin and being healthy changes.)

So, would you market health and wellness the same in these two cultures?  And we don’t have to talk about a weight loss campaign.  But simply, let’s talk about fruit cup.  In America, you may want to market it as a health food, and as something you do for yourself.  In Arab, you may want to market it as a sign of wealth if you can afford a commercially prepared fruit cup.

Our cultures define us.  As Marketers, it’d be foolish to approach the global world in a one-size-fits-all manner.  You must take your great idea, and adapt it to the local flavor.  There is no such thing as a global marketing campaign.

Editor’s Note:  This is the first post on Marketing Globe Series

Photo credit: Nuno Santos

2010 is about to come to an end, and it’s a good time to take a moment to examine oneself and to set goals for the new year ahead. With that in mind, let’s talk about Sally Hogshead’s latest book Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation.

This book has been out for a few months now, and if you haven’t picked it up. Do so now. This book is about Sally’s research into the seven triggers that have fascinated us. As marketers, we have taken full advantage of these triggers. For example, we all know sex sells. Well, lust is one of the seven triggers. The others are power, trust, mystique, vice, and alarm. I think as we think through the seven triggers, we can immediately concur up different brand messages. Volvo uses trust. Godiva uses lust. Fedex uses alarm. Apple Computers uses several triggers, most notably prestige and power. Triggers help companies sell products off shelves, persuade shareholders to invest, and convince key employees to stay.

Of course, brand messages don’t just apply to goods or companies. Brand messages apply to people as well. Every day, intentionally or not, you’re using fascination triggers to persuade people at work and home. Whether you’re pitching a new client, or inviting a friend to lunch, or lulling a cranky toddler to sleep, you’re using triggers to elicit a certain response. Sally has designed an online test to help you find out your own fascinate triggers! So, check out her website and find out your own brand personality. Use this information to design the new you in 2011!

Sneak Peak: From the aggregate test results, the most commonly employed trigger is Lust. Apparently, many do buy into the sex sells message. But Lust isn’t just about sex, and there are many far more subtle ways to leverage lust into your brand message positively. Here is Sally’s video with more about Lust:

Happy New Year!

Within every mistake, there is a lesson. This week, I learned a good lesson at work.

I’ve been listening to Lis Wiehl’s Winning Every Time: How to Use the Skills of a Lawyer in the Trials of Your Life. It’s a good book covering the tactics lawyers use to build their case. Such tactics have real life applications outside of the courtroom. For example, by correctly choosing your juror, and building a solid case, you could win an everyday argument like getting credit for returning a product. For example, talking to a part-time store associate who didn’t want to be working at the store in the first place probably is going to be a waste of time. S/he is not going to care. A store manager, who’s focused on profit and store traffic, may be more inclined to listen to you in hope to keep your loyalty.

Another lesson I learned was that lawyers ask a lot of questions in the courtroom. However, good lawyers never ask a question that they don’t already know the answer to! This is powerful!

This week, I walked into the big boss’s office, asking for her approval on a piece of creative. I’ve done so so many times before, and generally such reviews go okay. This time was a little different. For reasons still unknown to me today (I was just having an off-day), I walked into her office completely unprepared. I did my homework. I checked the boxes and crossed the to-do list. I knew that my creative was solid on delivering on what the team wanted. However, I also knew that it was a much focused piece that intentionally left something off. I should have known that this could have been a point of discussion. I should have had my “evidence” ready. I should have had my “counter arguments” ready. I had them, but somehow, at that moment that matters, I just didn’t perform! I didn’t frame my argument. I didn’t present my evidence. I froze. And the review went very differently than what I had initially imagined.

This taught me that no matter how many times you’ve done something in the past. No matter how many times you’ve won the game (to borrow an Olympic inspired analogy). You have to be 100% prepared and ready to perform your best every single time! Every meeting is a trial. You’ve won if you achieved your objective. You’ve lost if you did not. In order to win, you need to present your argument with evidence. Every meeting is a trial; no exceptions.

When I asked my boss what she thought about the piece, I should have known the answer. Again, never ask a question that you don’t know the answer to. I should have known that she would contest the points that were intentionally left off the piece. In order to secure a winning judgment from my boss that day, I needed to address why certain points were intentionally left off. I needed to establish that the points we chose to include on the piece were the most impactful one for delivering on our needs. I should have framed my argument carefully, slowly leading her to the conclusion I wanted. If I had acted like a lawyer, I would have presented a logical argument that would have left her no choice but to must award me the decision I sought. A winning verdict for that piece of creative.

Every meeting is a trial. Every meeting has juror(s). Every one of us has a lawyer inside that could help us win our everyday cases!

Photo credit: Joe Gratz

Recently, I read / listened to via audiobooks How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer and Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Both of which were really great books, and I’d highly recommend both. Instead of posting plain book reviews of these two books, I’d like to highlight what I’ve learned.

1. From How We Decide, I learned that people can only be expected to take into consideration seven facts. Therefore, when managers ask for analyses that include everything but the kitchen sink, most of that information just becomes noise. In fact, such noise may distract the decision makers from the facts that are truly impactful, and they may end up making the wrong decision as a result. This is also the root cause of what sometimes people referred to as “analysis paralysis.”

2. From How We Decide, I learned that we should listen to our gut. Sometimes, we unconsciously pick up clues about a particular situation that allow our subconscious mind to lean toward a particular opinion. The example in the book was that a trained operative was able to pick up a delay in a particular radar signal that he could not consciously realize. But he followed his gut instinct and made the right decision. However, the important key to this was that your instinct has to be honed. In Outlier, it was established that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in a subject matter. Therefore, if you work 10 hours, 5 days a week, and 50 weeks a year (assuming 2 weeks of paid vacation), it’d take four years before you’re an expert in that particular subject. But, if you have that experience, go ahead and trust your instincts. They may be more finely tuned that you realize!

3. From Outlier, I learned that to be exceptionally successful, you have to be at the right place at the right time. For example, to be a Bill Gates, you have to be born at precisely the right time, so you get to be at the forefront of technology. If you were born too early, the technology wouldn’t be available. If you were born too late, someone would have been ahead of you. However, I also learned that “big breaks” are really just the opportunity to work really hard. All those who had become exceptionally successful had put in a lot of hours to hone their craft! I don’t know if I have been born at the right time, but I am going to work really hard. Even if I am not going to be wildly successful, honing my craft will help hone my instincts!

Photo Credit: Suchitra Prints

Seth Godin recently release an e-book WHAT MATTERS NOW, in which he asked a few of his friends to discuss what matters now. May it be Change, may it be Sleep, may it be Productivity.

To me, two things matter most: Passion and Curiosity. Passion had been wonderfully covered by Derek Sivers, an entrepreneur and programmer, within the e-book. But Curiosity was curiously missing! Allow me this opportunity to express what I believe matters now:

Curiosity

It is an emotion.

It allows us to grow.

Seth’s full e-book available for download via this link.

Photo credit: hapal

You’ve been waiting for this one. The final primal code highlighted in Primal Branding by Patrick Hanlon. We’ve discussed in previous posts the creation story, the creed, the icon, the rituals, the pagans / nonbelievers, and the sacred words. What else is left?

The Leader

Every brand needs a captain. Someone to steer the ship. Someone to set the direction. Someone to make decisions.

Don’t confuse the leader with the icon. This person is not necessarily the spokesperson, or the face of the brand. This is the person that truly decides how to put all the elements of the brand together.

Without this necessary element, all the other part of the brand would fall apart. Without someone with a vision, the icon would not work with the sacred words. Without someone who knows how to listen, the rituals would not leverage the pagans.

I could dedicate not just this post, but this entire blog on leadership. However, taking my tip from Marketing Job Search 101: Read Seth Godin, read Tribes. Alternatively, read this stable on many manager’s shelf, One Minute Manager.

And here you have it: The entire primal code. The code is designed to help a brand tap into the existing emotion of a consumer, to help them to believe you so they could follow you and your brand.

• They need to know where you came from – the creation story
• They need to know what you believe in – the creed
• The physical attributes of your brand would become your icons
• Drive repeated interactions between your brand and your consumers with rituals
• Acknowledge that you can’t be all things to all people and accept the pagans
• Give those who follows your brand a language all to their own – the sacred words
• Have someone who could put all these elements together – the leader

Related articles online

• Book Review: Tribes (LearnThis.ca)

I’m starting a series of posts on job hunting. Why? Well, for my particular career path, marketing for a big CPG, recruiting season is right around the corner. If I could offer anything that I’ve learned along the way to help my readers get into the field, I’d be happy to offer it.

To launch this series, I thought I’d recognize a marketing legend: Seth Godin.

Anyone reading this blog probably has read enough posts about how important it is in the job search process to become more knowledgeable about the industry. Well, you reading this blog is already a good start Allow me to share with you another one of the easiest ways to become more knowledgeable if you’re trying to get into marketing.

Go to your library, borrow a book by Seth Godin. He publishes a book each year, so there are plenty to choose from. I personally recommend Purple Cow or Tribes. These are two of his books that are the most frequently referenced right now. Purple Cow is a book on innovation, and it may be Godin’s most popular book. Purple Cow has literally become a proper noun in the industry. (If you’ve been following my Primal Branding series, think about how Seth Godin has created his own sacred words.) Tribes is his latest book on leadership.

Why is reading Seth Godin one of the easiest ways to get knowledgeable about marketing?

Because first and foremost, Seth Godin is a recognized marketing guru. He is even an action figure! Who in marketing has action figures? (Unicorn shown above sold separately.) The fact of the matter is that basically anyone in the industry would have heard of him. If you’re going to pick a book to read, may as well pick one that you could causally drop into conversation with another marketer…

Secondly, they are short! I know how much time you need to dedicate into the job search process. For some of you, you’re trying to do this on top of being a student full-time. There are other books out there that I’d recommend for generally reading pleasure (such as Patrick Hanlon’s Primal Branding), but they are too long and involved to be considered as “one of the easiest ways” to become more knowledgeable about the industry.

Lastly, Godin posts on his blog everyday. You can subscribe to it. Then, the next time you talk to a recruiter, you could open with “Hi, so what did you think about Seth Godin’s post today?”

Photo Credit: Seth Godin Rides A Unicorn, originally uploaded by zoomar. Technorati: pmqw25z8sy

Related articles online

• Seth Godin Talks Tribes (enquiringmimes.com)
• Tips for Job Hunting During a Recession Part I (halliecrawford.typepad.com)
• The Best And Worst Cities To Look For A Job (techcrunch.com)

Continuing with my series on Primal Branding by Patrick Hanlon. I’ve discussed in previous posts the creation story, the creed, the icon, the rituals, and the pagans / nonbelievers. This week, I’ll be focusing on the sacred words.

What are sacred words? I believe the best example is Apples’ “i”s. iPhone, iPod, iMac, etc. Apple has created a language all their own for their products.

Smaller businesses have sacred words too! Remember that bake shop / candle shop / soap shop that has really smart names for their flavors? That’s sacred words in action.

Have you ever heard the following phrase just roll off of somebody’s tongue? “A grande non-fat sugar-free vanilla latte, extra hot, no foam, please.” That’s sacred words in action.

Allow me to share with you a story. My co-workers and I regularly visit this sandwich shop for lunch. They have many options for the sandwiches. What size? What kind of bread? Cheese? So, we challenge ourselves to go through the entire ordering process without them having to ask us one single question. This is us learning their language, their sacred words. That’s sacred words in action.

Why are sacred words important? Because every culture has a language of their own. To have your own culture, your own cult, your own following, you must create the language your culture / cult / following will use.

As I have done in previous weeks, I’d like to take these primal branding principles to the next level. I’d like to see how scared words are leveraged not only by businesses, but by people. What works for corporate branding should work for personal branding too.

What does sacred words mean for personal branding?

There are two fronts to this question. Are you a follower or are you the leader? At any given time, you are both.

First, you’re a follower in your industry. You must know the sacred words in your industry to fit into that cult. This is to know the jargons. This has obvious implications if you’re looking for a job. Your resume needs to reflect the right jargon. You need to be on the same page, speaking the same lingo, with your interviewer.

Second, you’re a leader in your industry and in your own personal brand. In your industry / company, you define the words your people would use.

Allow me to share another story. A boss of mine used to use the term “EEC”. Always act and speak with EEC. What’s EEC? Energy, Enthusiasm, and Conviction. EEC was his term. This was his scared word.

As a leader of my own personal brand, I have built a reputation of being a good worker with a good attitude. When was the last time you heard someone say “spiffy”? I used to say that all the time when people ask “how’s it going?” In fact, once I didn’t say “spiffy”, I said something along the line of “great”… my co-worker called me out! “Oh, not spiffy?” This was how I knew that “spiffy” was my scared word.

As I grew in my career, I’ve retired “spiffy”. Currently, my default answer is “can’t complain”. Simple enough right? But it’s actually quite powerful when it’s integrated with other aspects of my personal brand. Consider the following conversation that actually happened:

Marketing Director: How’s it going?
Me: Can’t complain.
Marketing Director: Well, you wouldn’t even if you can.

My simple “can’t complain” reinforces my personal brand of being a good worker with a good attitude.

How do you answer “How’s it going?” What are your scared words?

Continuing with my series on Primal Branding by Patrick Hanlon. I’ve discussed in previous posts the creation story, the creed, the icon, and the rituals. This week, I’ll be focusing on the pagans, or nonbelievers.

This is perhaps the easiest code to understand as a marketer. You always go to the market with a single minded message, and this is what this code element is all about.

You need to know what you are. More importantly, you need to know what you are NOT. You CANNOT be all things to all people!

If you’re the creative type, you are not going to be the all about math type.

If you’re selling imports, you are not going to be carrying locally produced goods.

Now, there are several caveats.

One, you don’t have to have just one brand. You could be selling imports and locally produced goods. However, they have to be different brands. You have to have different stores, and they have to have different positioning. On a personal branding basis, this would be harder to execute. In the end, you are your personal brand, and you are somewhat limited to one positioning. Maybe you’re a Jack/Jill of all trades, but you can only be a true expert in one thing. It takes a LOT of work to be a subject matter expert. So, if you claim that you’re an expert in everything, you would have a credibility problem…

Two, this does not give you the license to be bad at something. There is still cost of entry (ie. minimum requirements). Just because you’re the creative type, doesn’t mean you cannot do basic math. You still need to know enough to keep track of your hours, billings, etc. For a business that focuses on imports, this does not mean you could forget about the locally produced goods business. You still need to keep an eye on all your potential competitors, and that often include those that you’re not in direct competition with. After all, there are only so many dollars in your consumers’ wallets, and these dollars move across different categories and segments.

Why is it important to stand for one thing? Then you know who you’re trying to target, and more important who you’re NOT trying to target. It makes your marketing effort more effective.

So, do you know what you stand for? Do you know what you are NOT?