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06
Mar
Branding Beyond the Brief: The Digital World
Jeannie Chan

As a young marketer, I have learned so much from so many on the internet. Recently, I participated in a discussion about the difference between a brand and a commodity. In this discussion, I came across an experienced marketer that gave me so much to think about. It also inspired my contribution this week on CPG Branding and Marketing Forum. Check it out here!

In so many ways, the internet has been a wonderful tool. Yet, as a marketer, the internet has brought many headaches.

As the digital world grows more and more robust, brand managers are struggling to keep up. There are many whispers about control. Have marketers lost control? Have the newly empowered masses took control? How would marketers regain control? Should marketers try to go backward or just go forward? Are marketers even equipped to do our jobs in this changing world? Or does this new world of marketing require a different set of skills? A different way of thinking?

There are many questions, yet there are few answers.

We may not have the answers. We may not be ready. But the world is changing. I know that as a marketer. I also know this as a consumer. Last week, I was trying to attend a virtual event. I had problems logging in. My first thought was to twitter for help. My second action was to comment on the facebook wall of the organizer. I did not do so for the sake of whining and complaining. I did so expecting help. In fact, I expected immediate help!

The old rules of marketing are becoming null and void. Yet, new rules have not been thoroughly defined. The internet has the power to influence everything. But how? We thought that the internet killed the TV. Yet, the recent Olympic Games show that there is a water cooler effect of sort that’s happening online, thus boosting TV viewership! So, the internet is killing and reviving TV at the same time. It’s a very confusing time, where the rules of game are constantly revolving.

And it’s not even just about the internet. So much is changing so fast. But, each of that deserves their own posts. Watch out for them!

It’s a challenging time to be a marketer, but an exciting time.

More reading:
Water-Cooler Effect: Internet Can Be TV’s Friend
WSJ.com – Establish Brand Image in Online Media

Photo Credit: takuhitosotome

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11
Oct
Money vs Time
Jeannie Chan

This week I learned that the more money you have, the less time you have to spend on any particular tasks. You could hire someone to do it for you.

However, if you don’t have the money, you’d have to spend more time.

This is the equation that any marketer must understand. You don’t need to have a lot of money to have a successful campaign. However, the smaller your budget, the harder each dollar must work, the more creative you’d have to be, the more work you’d have to do yourself. The larger the budget, the more crazy stuffs you could try, the more you could have someone else do the work for you.

However, a small budget shouldn’t limit the success of your marketing campaign.

What’s sad is that this formula, that’s so obvious with small businesses, is sometimes forgotten by big companies.

This is the new economy. This is the new reality. This is a new year. This is the new budget. Everyone of us needs to learn to do more with less.

Photo Credit: funny money, originally uploaded by Material Boy.

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29
Sep
Twitter is a Public Plaza
Jeannie Chan

Why hasn’t more companies adopted social media? Because social media is not social at all.

According to a recent study, only 20% of tweets are meant to share information. 80% of tweets are private thoughts that just happened to be shared with the world. However, that’s still a private transaction. That social media network is a small group of friends, and that tweet is the electronic version of a private conversation.

Consider my version of the real-life equivalent: An email conversation is completely private. That’s like a group of people in a closed door room having a conversation. A tweet, for these 80% of people, is a conversation that happens in a public place. Since it’s a public place, sometimes people overhear and chime in. “Sorry, I hear you’re talking about that new restaurant. I was thinking about going, you say it sucks?”

So, yes, private conversations can be extended to strangers. However, these are still strangers. At the end of the conversation, each party goes back to their separate ways.

Now, if this stranger happens to be Oprah, you may all of a sudden call Oprah a “friend”. “Oh yeah, Oprah and I the other day was talking about restaurants. She suggested that I should go try the one on ABC Street.” Now, of course, this doesn’t have to be Oprah. This could be a local celebrity, or a celebrity within a specific circle. Or, just someone, someplace, something that’s well known and well regarded within a specific audience.

Or, if you happen to run into this particular stranger everywhere, you may begin to be interested in getting to know this stranger. Obviously, you have like interests. (For example, I have made it a point to get to know someone after seeing that particular person at various art shows around town.)

My hypothesis is that social media works the same way.

If you are strangers, you will remain strangers. There are a few ways to overcome this. One of which is to form an offline relationship. Be the Oprah that they want to get to know better. The other way is to engage your audience in their natural habitat and keep “running into them”. That’s why musicians were successful with myspace. Recruiters are successful with LinkedIn.

This may also explain why Twitter is particularly challenging for marketers. There are no specific purposes for Twitter. Twitter is a public plaza. Many different conversations happening, but it’s virtually impossible for a marketer to form an engaging relationship with any one of them. It’s very similar to a marketer holding a product demonstration in a public plaza. People may just ignore them, or they stop, watch, and move on because they’re there to meet someone. They don’t have time for marketers.

That doesn’t mean that Twitter doesn’t have value to marketers. What’s a better way to disseminate news about a crisis than to use a speaker over a public plaza? No one putting up a flyer would ignore the public plaza, because at the end of the day, it’s a numbers game and there are a lot of eyeballs in a public plaza. Twitter works the same way.

In conclusion, social media has its value, but as always, it’s only a part of your marketing mix. Perhaps even only a small part.

Link: STUDY: 80% of Twitter Users Are All About Me

Photo credit: New York Public Library Outdoor Plaza, originally uploaded by celikins.

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