Learning from a success

Without divulging any real secrets, CNNMoney sheds some light on the Trader Joe’s strategy. Some key points that can be applied to any business strategy are:

• Creating (and maintaining) a funky, cultural experience
• Keeping stock low and moving it quickly
• Staying niche and feeling small and local
• Growing and keeping a devoted audience
• Practicing great customer service
• Offering fewer options, leading to greater satisfaction
• Building trust in the selected items
• Letting distribution drive expansion
• Targeting store locations to demographics and psychographics

2. Minneapolis will pay $165,000 to zombies

The big payoff

Freedom of speech is not dead. In fact it is undead. Finding interesting ways to get your point across and spread your message pays off in the end.

3. Does Your Marketing Appeal to Every Learning Style?

Know your audience

This is a great marketing post by John Jantsch, whom we at Tippingpoint Labs love. It’s well worth a read. However, it’s also a great example of why it’s very important to know and write to your audience. This is posted at a site called Colour Lovers — a wonderful site celebrating color, design, patterns, and palettes.

As commenter sero* points out:

What does this have to do with color?

Exactly. Remember: think about context and write to your audience — both matter.

4. New Intel site challenges assumptions about how we shop

Know your audience AND execute with good UX

David Deal superhypes Razorfish’s new Intel site, which is basically a rich media recommendation engine based on “consumers’ passions.” A good idea that shows real knowledge of the target audiences.

According to Deal:

The team designed a simple, no-nonsense site: no fancy graphics, just a focus on quickly guiding the consumer to the right computer matched with the most suitable processor.

Unfortunately for Intel, the site is a terrible user experience. It’s not very intuitive at all. The audio content is repetitive and pedantic — as if it were trying to define to a user what she does with computers. When you go back and add additional attributes, it reads the new one and then re-reads the one you already heard.

No thanks. I’d rather easily learn about the product than be talked at.

5. What Happens When Facebook Trumps Your Brand Site?

Signs of enlightenment

AdAge has an interesting bit on Facebook becoming the largest web presence for some brands. As we’ve been saying for some time, your digital presence doesn’t revolve around your website.

N.B. It probably won’t always revolve around Facebook either.

Lesson to learn? Play where your audience plays.

He doesn’t need scripts to clutter what he’s trying to say. Max tells stories with emotive imagery. His videos are mini-cinematic masterpieces. Every shot (moving or not) captures a moment, a feeling, a reaction. He captures the human element.

Fireworks, hot dogs and the 4th of July

Google Image Search Results for Fireworks

Here (on the left) are the Google image search results for the words “4th of July fireworks.”

Exactly what you expected, isn’t it? 1.4 million photographs of fireworks exploding in the night sky.

But the Fourth of July isn’t about the Fireworks. It’s about America. It’s about independence and the great melting pot we live in. It’s about celebrating what we are.

Unlike nearly every other photographer in the world, Max isn’t interested in the fireworks. He’s interested in capturing the real story.

Sometimes the story isn’t the story

For almost 40 years, the Boston Pops have celebrated July 4th with hundreds of thousands of people on the banks of the Charles river. Their star-studded concert always ends with a spectacular fireworks display.

Photographers from all over the world arrive early to stake their claim on the best vantage point to snap pictures of the fireworks as they explode over the back bay skyline.

Not Max.

No, Max looks for the crowded spots. He looks at the people. He captures what they’re eating and what sports they’re playing. He watches others watch the sun go down. Max films the magnitude of the experience so we can taste the hot dogs, smell the sulfur in the air, feel the sweat on our skin, and the anticipation on the river bank.

Max’s Masterpiece

Watch Max’s masterpiece. Seriously, don’t skip this part. It’s four minutes of the most patriotic cinema I’ve ever experienced. There’s not one American flag, no apple pie, and not one shot of the Boston Pops. In fact, the fireworks don’t even start until three minutes in and there are only 11 (count ‘em) shots of fireworks in the whole video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This film gives me goose bumps. There’s no voice over or natural sound — just people. People playing, smiling, laughing. People watching in awe as the fireworks explode overhead. People pondering America. There are people from all walks of life, different nationalities and cultures all coming together to steal a kiss and celebrate this day.

The fireworks aren’t the story. The people are.

What we can learn from Max

Sometimes, in fact most times, the best story isn’t the most obvious story. It’s not the loudest noise or the biggest splash. Those are the attention grabbers, but the story that dives a little deeper, past the superficial, is far more valuable and powerful. That story is unique.

Max’s stories are about people and his films evoke emotion. (If you still don’t believe me watch this one.) He connects with people.

Every brand, every marketer and every storyteller can learn something from Max Esposito.

Don’t follow the fireworks, follow the human sparks.

P.S. Check out Max’s “Two minute portraits.“

A bit of how-to can make it possible for your company’s know-how to flow freely online and extend your company’s digital reach.

Says who?

Have you noticed your HR department using more online resources for sharing information with co-workers and consumers?

Is it obvious yet that Customer Service should be able to add a question and its answer to FAQ? Fulfillment should be able to enter a new price, change inventory, update a feature. Product designers should find it easy to voice their perspective in a company article.

Why rely on an outside agency to make the simplest or the most routine updates to existing content? When an agency realizes that a company’s consumers are most interested in hearing from the company staff — not from a firm hired as the mouthpiece for the company — how does that agency hand over the microphone, so to speak, and encourage the company’s staff to step up?

We’ve got to hand it (over) to you

Clearly, the company’s FAQ, eCommerce store, corporate website, and so on need to be built in a way that makes it possible for staff to edit and add to content. But then there’s that little gap — you hope it’s little — between “It’s ready,” and “It’s all yours.” To bridge this gap, you empower staff to use the tools, to address their consumers, to hit publish.

But let’s also use three other terms so we can triangulate on the issue of helping information flow as freely as possible from its source to its destination.

• Entitle — See to it that the people closest to desired information are entitled to present it with the fewest obstacles.
• Facilitate — Make it easy, make it clear, make it simple: how do I change a price? how do I post an article? how do I add an image? It isn’t rocket surgery, or secret, or sacred. It’s just steps.
• Initiate –  Prime the pump to get the content flowing. Find the person, find a way, and find the impetus; mix and serve as soon as possible.

Those who can, teach

You’ve hired all the right people for the jobs. It’s time to take the next step and let them represent your company online.

How do you enable your experts to feed the content stream? Who’s entitled? What facilitates the process? How do you get started — how do you initiate the flow?

So what?

This, to an extent, is the purpose of this post. So what? What did I learn?

First off, the number one question to always ask is, “So what?” School teaches people to think critically, but it all boils down to that question. Going through web analytics and data for different clients, I learned that it is not enough to have the data and present it. You need to look at the information you have and ask that question, “So what?”

The number two question that needs to be answered is, “What now?” Once you analyze or interpret the data, you need to start thinking about where you can go from there. Good data can help you plan for the future; it is not enough to know what the data tells you, you need to put that knowledge to use.

Answer your own questions

Now that you have two stand-by questions, be sure you answer them. In writing these blog posts, I spent a lot of time pouring over my notebook, writing down questions to guide my thought process. The problem was that my posts never went anywhere until I started going back and answering those questions.

When in the brainstorm process for any project, it’s easy to ask questions and think you will come back to them later. Save some time by seeking an answer for any question as soon as you ask it.

Stay current, be timely

At the beginning of this month, I wrote a blog post about Mad Men that was published within a week of the season premiere. It quickly became the most seen, most visited post I had written. This happened because I wrote a fringe article about a pop culture reference when it was at its highest prominence.

Once I saw the numbers on how many people clicked on that post, it became eminently clear to me that tying my writing to current phenomena attracted a much larger audience.

Be timely, be brief

Just as important as being timely is being brief. This is something I have always struggled with as a writer, despite many many teachers and now bosses telling me to keep it short and sweet.

Considering how much time I spend on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media sites, I should know just how short the web attention span is. But knowing and doing are two different things, so when you’re inclined to keep writing, stop.

Think of a story

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point, he describes how infants watching the TV show, “Blue’s Clues,” learned best from a narrative style story that they could follow along with.

I believe that people continue this tendency, and that a story is a more memorable means of communication than any non-narrative, informative communication.

Wrap it up

Stories are a progression, they have a beginning, a middle, and an end. I came to Tippingpoint Labs in May. I learned an unbelievable amount and met a ton of amazing people. Now my internship is over, and it’s time to go back to school. The end.

Thank you, everyone, for reading these posts. It has been an incredible experience.

Think locally

We recently conducted a media consumption survey for one of our clients, and roughly thirteen-thousand people participated in the survey. One of the results that was most surprising to me was the frequency with which people referred to their local newspaper for information.

There is a tremendous amount of power in “local.” People tend to trust local sources and have sentimental ties to local elements. There also tends to be an assumed quality to small, locally produced products. The question is, how can larger businesses capitalize on small and “local”?

Dream big, but think small

You can’t take the “mass” out of mass media, but you can remove the mass mentality. People do not normally think as a mass. People think as individuals within the context of their own lives, their social ties, their families, and their predispositions.

While your content may be distributed to the masses, communicate to individuals by addressing potential customers and their lives directly. Always address subjects personally; “I,” “we,” and “you” connect much better than “it,” “those,” and “that.” There are plenty of television commercials that use the personal address, but don’t be afraid to roll up your sleeves and implement this elsewhere. Your support sites and social media outlets are a good place to start.

While it will always be impossible to please everyone and to engage with every one of your customers, the very fact that you make the effort with as many people as you can will go a long way. Customers notice direct feedback to their support questions, comments, or criticism in various channels. Even if their specific query has not been addressed, your engagement in human interaction can create a lasting impression.

Small changes to small details can pay off big

The internet brings new capabilities to the table when it comes to content distribution, and the smallest details can make the greatest difference. Geo-targeting is one such capability that opens a lot of doors for advertisers.

When sending out content, whether through email, Twitter, Facebook updates, or any other social media platform, utilize the tools provided to ensure timely delivery. In sending out emails for our clients, we often use separate lists to stagger the emails according to time zone. This can be especially important in social media, since content sent too early or late can be buried so far down the list that it is never seen.

Go a step further and take 15 minutes of your content producers’ time to include even just one geographically relevant reference. If thousands of customers live in California, for instance, it would be time well spent to include a reference to make the content more local than just something sent out to the entire world.

Speak to their home

image via flickr @TMView

You don’t actually even have to know where their home is, but if you can make people think about what it is that they consider home, you can capitalize on the sentiments and nostalgia tied there.

For one client in the food industry, this meant highlighting the value of fresh, locally grown food. This obviously means different things to different people in different places.

Takeaway

By thinking local and thinking small, you can gain big. In an age of content overload, people are becoming accustomed to finding content relevant to them. While large businesses cannot tailor their content to each individual, they can increase the relevance of their messaging.

Over the past two years, he has tried to help publishers, publicists, and agents change their business models and evolve their processes. One publishing CEO “worked as hard as she could to restrain herself, but failed and almost threw me out of her office by the end.” Maybe Seth should have taken her to the Aalsmeer Flower Auction.

Laptops, Cell Phones, and a Clock

The Aalsmeer flower auction.

Welcome to the Aalsmeer Flower Auction. Here, in the third largest building in the world, flowers are sold in what’s become known as a “Dutch Auction.”

Every single day, more than 21 million flowers are sold and shipped around the world from this building. So, those tulips you purchased at the local grocery store, they were most likely bought yesterday during a brief layover here in Amsterdam.

What’s amazing about Aalsmeer isn’t its sheer size, or the volume of flowers they ship. It’s not the high-tech, precision supply chain management process they employ. It’s the financial model they use to set the price of one flower.

The Dutch Auction

Every morning at 5:15 am, hundreds of flower brokers take their seats in the giant auction hall. Their laptops are open and their cell phones are at the ready. Then the auction begins. Every 100 seconds a trolley train of flowers is wheeled into the room and the lot of flowers appears on the giant screen overhead.

The Flower Auction Clock by @interchangeableparts

A giant clock begins ticking down the seconds from 100 and the brokers spring into action. As the time ticks down, so does the price. The first person to bid gets the flowers at that price. The trick here is to secure the flowers at a good price without being beaten to the punch by someone else.

This is what’s known as a “Dutch Auction,” and it’s been taking place since 1860.

Cutting out the Middle Man

In 2004, just a few years after the dot-com bubble burst, Google wanted to go public (in an Initial Public Offering or IPO).

Traditionally, a company like Google would hire an investment bank to evaluate what the company is worth, survey the market to gauge demand, and then recommend a pricing formula for the IPO share price. After the dot-com bust, many investors were disheartened by this traditional process and were skeptical of the high investment banking fees and the tired approach to market valuation. Investment firms had amassed billions of dollars with huge “pops” on the first day of an IPO, while the long-term potential of the companies they represented faltered (and even died).

That’s when a few companies, like Overstock.com and RedEnvelope.com, decided to cut out the middle man (the investment banks). They looked to the Aalsmeer Flower Auction as a model for going public. This new approach set the stage for one of the most innovative and successful IPOs in market history: Google.

In August of 2004, Google went public with lower fees and a more diverse investor base. It demonstrated the power of democratic finance at its finest. Google proved that an innovative approach to raising money (more than $20 billion) existed outside the widely accepted and traditional approaches to investment banking.

The flower clock is ticking for traditional publishers

Seth Godin, author

Fast-forward to 2010. Traditional publishers are in a frenzy. Book publicists, agents, and the publishers themselves are challenged with disruptive technologies that are “destroying” their traditional business models. It looks a lot like Wall Street after the dot-com bust. There’s confusion and frustration in the marketplace. And here is where Seth Godin fits in.

With each and every second that passes by, traditional publishers are watching their market erode. The first publisher willing to stand up and bid on a new publishing model will set the standard for the future. But don’t wait too long; the perfect model is out there and someone is going to beat you to the punch.

Borrowing models to innovate markets

Google, Overstock, and RedEnvelope all saw a successful, market-driven approach to pricing a commodity in a fair, democratic way at the Aalsmeer Flower Auction by cutting out the middle man.

They were tired of the traditional investment banker approach to delivering their product to market, and they challenged those traditions by looking to other models that delivered success for over a hundred years.

I challenge all of you to look outside your industry for opportunities to cut out the middle men in your business. They are the ones fighting to hold on to their market position, justifying their existence at every turn. Don’t fall for it. Look to the most efficient path to your customer in other markets and chart a course based on sound models.

Tick, tock, tick, tock … the flower clock is counting down.

While creating content that goes viral and gains meme status is something most companies would love, using existing memes has become a popular strategy. Here’s a look at how memes can work in advertising, and how they can fail.

Memes can help or hurt your advertising plan

There are certain risks and rewards with incorporating existing memes into advertising.  The viral nature of the original can help generate a huge audience, while the memorable humor can create a sense of familiarity.

The risks, however, include either destroying or overstepping the humor of the meme, or imitating the original work closely enough to bring copyright questions into play in some circumstances.

Sorry, but Isaiah Mustafa will not actually be playing vuvuzela in this post

Click here to view the embedded video.

Following an ad aired during the 2010 Super Bowl, Old Spice launched their YouTube campaign of videos featuring Mustafa replying to customers’ tweets.

Since then the advertising world has been going wild about the innovative approach, spawning a huge following and turning Mustafa ads into the latest internet meme. The use of content created by the users, through a user-based service (Youtube), but with professional production made the campaign surprising, interesting, and unique. Once meme status was achieved it wasn’t long before other companies were trying to gain from Old Spice’s success.

Know your limitations, and the limitations of the meme

World Vision, a non-profit charity from Australia, tries to imitate the Old Spice campaign, rather unsuccessfully. While the concept is interesting, the execution comes up short due to the producer not realizing the limitations.

The Old Spice ads were so funny and popular because of Mustafa’s dry tone and witty dialogue. Too much of this is copied in the World Vision video, by a character who doesn’t have the comedic timing or tone of Mustafa. In addition, the production budget impedes World Vision from recreating some of the more interesting aspects of the original ads, the scenery changes.

The other neglected limitation is that of attention span. The original Old Spice ad was 32 seconds, and all of the response videos on YouTube were under a minute long. The World Vision video stretches for over a minute and a half, which may seem short, but when making a play off a 30-second spot, is too long. Never go longer than the original.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Allow some separation, and be clever

A more successful use of memes in advertising is Off!’s vuvuzela commercial. Off! plays on both the outrage caused by the vuvuzela at this year’s World Cup, and the comparisons of the South African horn to a horde of bees. Of all the products that could tie to the vuvuzela, insect repellent is not one I would have thought of, but once you see what it’s for, it’s clever.

Another important reason that this ad has more success playing off a meme is the fact that while the vuvuzela is still a fairly fresh meme, Off! allows some separation from the original meme, which was more soccer-centric. Off! takes only the relevant part of the meme that is useful to them and prevents the reference from becoming overdone.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Remember the real priority, the client

The most important thing to keep in mind is that you’re promoting the client, not the meme. A New Zealand energy drink company, V Energy, currently is running a campaign focused on “pomparkour” a mashup of ladders and parkour, an activity focused around urban acrobatics wherein the participants vault themselves over obstacles encountered in the city. Parkour  gained its meme status with a flood of homemade videos on YouTube.

The problem with the V Energy drink ad is that it does more to promote the meme than it does to promote the product, and their website only reinforces this by devoting much of the best space to pomparkour.

While there was branding present at the end of the ad, after watching the video multiple times in writing this post, I was thinking more about pomparkour than about energy drinks. When the creative only succeeds at the expense of product or brand, the ad has failed.

More memes, more potential

As I try to think of how I might use a meme in advertising, there are simply too many options to choose from. With lines like “Is this real life?” and “Why is this happening to me?”, David After Dentist is packed with potential. Along those lines, Charlie Bit My Finger features another kid with some funny things to say. Steven Slater’s resignation from Jet Blue last week hasn’t made it to meme status yet, but it too has potential.

Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing Isaiah Mustafa playing a vuvuzela…

Memes are all about finding humor in odd, eccentric places. Be creative, be sensible, and don’t be afraid to mix it up. For more on online parodies, check out this Tippingpoint Podcast.

What’s your favorite meme?

Hip-hop star Wale just put out a mix tape last Tuesday. It serves as a sequel to his first mix tape released in 2008 and follow-up to his freshman album Attention Deficit released last year. I discovered the album via twitter when a follower sighted Wale’s album More About Nothing as a worldwide trending topic #moreaboutnothing.

I’ve been a Wale fan since his ’08 mix tape, but hadn’t found him on twitter until today. Check him out @Wale. Though I’m a little embarrassed I didn’t hear of the upcoming drop, announced back in July, it serves as a lesson that I found it now.

Looking back on Wale’s Twitter feed, he’s been hyping the mix tape all month, especially hard over the past few days. When Wale woke up the morning after his album release morning he posted 24 tweets and before 11 am. This high volume kind of posting is exactly what led me to finding him and following him. The high volume posting and re-tweeting was enabled by his product. He had something to talk about. Although this particular mix tape is being distributed for free online, it earns him more bottom line potential via ticket sales and future album sales from its help in growing a larger fan base.

The lesson for marketers and individual artists is transparency. Post any collaborative work you are doing, any contracts you are negotiating, or any products you are developing as they happen. Let your fan base (or customers) follow your record (or book or product) through its early stages until its completion. This includes ideas and goals. This type of openness will inevitably help you build buzz online for your offering. In Wale’s case, building his fan base and his personal brand online will prompt his fans take offline actions such as purchasing his CDs or going to his shows.

Listen to our podcast on Matisyahu to hear how another successful artist leverages twitter and social networks to stay connected to his fans and promotes himself online.

How would Don Draper handle the Internet?

My freshman year of college, just before I switched my major from journalism to mass communications studies, my roommate tried to get me into the TV show “Mad Men”. It is now one of the only shows on TV that can get me to sit down at a set time to watch it.

For those who have never seen the show, Don is the creative director at a New York ad agency, and he is extraordinarily good at what he does. Could his success translate into the internet era? Here are a few ways it could, and a few ways that his shortcomings could be ameliorated to replicate his success today.

Don would say screw SEO

“You are the product. You feeling something. That’s what sells.” – Don Draper

Part of Don’s success comes from his memorable and effective copy. Working in print, the slogan and copy attached to the images was as important as the images themselves. Don realizes the value of creativity in copy, and wouldn’t sacrifice that for anything.

I recently read a Washington Post column by Gene Weingarten that expounded on how SEO is killing creativity in headlines. According to Weingarten, catchy headlines are left for print editions, while titles and headlines for online editions are changed to be more conducive for search.

Creative headlines can draw readers in to a story, and so to will creative copy draw in users. Use a proactive approach to your content and maintain the creative element that makes content valuable. Never compromise the message to appeal to anything or anyone other than a human audience.

Don would make it personal

“Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And do you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you’re doing is OK.” – Don Draper

In the first season finale, Don pitches a campaign to Kodak for their slide show carousel. He uses photos from his own family, and it’s one of the most moving moments in the series. The campaign is made out to be an enormous success.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Don knows the value of connecting with the audience on a personal level; it makes them associate with the brand in a more human way, which leads to loyalty. Connecting with the audience is hugely important, and the internet allows that more than ever. Don’t be afraid to interact with the users on a personal level.

Don is able to speak directly to the audience in such a way because he knows his audience.

Don would embrace the tools

“Change isn’t good or bad. It just is.” – Don Draper

Therein lies Don’s internet downfall. Don’s knowledge of the audience is strictly anecdotal, and thus highly subjective. He’s successful because he’s better at it than anyone else. What exactly drives this knowledge is the way he looks at the world. But in his world, it’s his secret and can’t be taught.

The tools available today, such as those illustrated by Tippingpoint Labs’ Drew Davis, completely change the game. It is no longer enough to use subjective guesses when objective data can be incorporated. Don’t forget the human side, but realize that any one person’s impression is not necessarily the truth, objective data can, at least, get you closer to truth.

Takeaway

“I have a life and it only moves in one direction: forward.” – Don Draper

Don Draper is successful because he sticks to his guns and thinks about the customer. He also lives in a time of fairly unscrupulous advertising and made assumptions based on his impression of society. Don Draper and his skinny tie have today been replaced by the likes of Drew Davis and his bow tie.

Side note for Mad Men enthusiasts: It is true, Don usually drinks rye, but I love a good alliteration.

What does this have to do with the Internet? Recently I had a chance to do some work on a New Media Life Cycle Analysis, and I realized that web services often live or die by the critical mass of their audience. It is important when developing or considering any new service to consider the critical mass.

For many developing services, their potential cannot be realized or even seen without such a critical mass. Think of it this way, if Craigslist did not have so many users, it would not be so useful to newcomers. The same is true of Facebook; if there weren’t so many people already on the service, there would be little draw to participate.

Here are three lessons that the bikers teach us:

1. Beware of overexposure

Don’t get too spread out. If the bike mass is spread too thin, then cars get in and disrupt the flow of the ride.

Overexposure early in the game may sound like a good thing for developing services, but all too often a sudden influx of users can destabilize the quality and purpose of the service. This puts too much stress on expansion and support, rather than refining the actual product.

2. Know the leaders, then follow them

On any given Critical Mass ride there is no set route, no designated leaders. The few riders at the front of the pack make spur-of-the-moment judgments for the entire crew. Early adopters online are these leaders; they will shape how the ride goes, or how the service develops.

Make sure you get the right users early on. Know what you want your audience to be, learn about them, and engage them.

3. Timing is everything

Facebook is an excellent example of critical mass in action. The service started small and limited; their original release was for college students only. Once they built up a strong, active user base, Facebook became a desirable location for those not included in the original release. Once it was stable and reached the critical mass, it was made available to all.

Takeaway

All new media follow a process and are influenced by the same forces. Consider whether the critical mass has been reached or not, or how it can be achieved before jumping onto a new medium.

You can’t control the road with five people, nor can you do it with 300 people stretched over a mile.