Demand creation is...well...demanding.  Marketing teams are often responsible for the majority of demand creation activities and tactics.  That responsibility translates into pressure; pressure to ‘fill-the-funnel’ with new, high-quality business leads while spending wisely and showing measurable results.

Adding to the chorus of pseudo-sympathetic violins, let’s layer on the complexity of creating demand for a relational (i.e. account-based) sales model which lacks the immediate performance feedback of a transactional sales (direct response) model.

Marketer or Firestoker?

Combine the above with the other strategic and operational challenges within the demand function and you’ve got an all-consuming marketing environment...eagerly snatching up resources.  

As such, marketers can quickly become the boilerman tirelessly (and sometimes blindly) focused on feeding fuel into a hungry sales engine.

[Note: steam train metaphor comes from watching an inordinate amount of Thomas the Tank Engine lately.]

The Problem | Funnel Blindness - A Symptom Of Demand (hyper)Creation
With so much focus on demand creation, marketers can lose strategic visibility into what their demand engine is actually producing.  However marketers, responsibly looking for a quantitative measure of their efforts, often turn to funnel metrics to provide key insights.  

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy demand funnel and waterflow metrics as much as the next marketer, but they are aggregate measurements.  As a consequence, these metrics - taken without other analytical perspectives - run the risk of carrying aggregate-analysis bias.

Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls (Seriously)
Again, thinking about demand creation for a relational or account-based selling model, we need more than just aggregate views of our funnel; massed numbers of inputs (leads), transitions, and outputs (opportunities/deals) only lead to general theories...not causal relationships.

We cannot optimally refine the strategic components of our marketing mix, message, or market approach with aggregate metrics.

The results we see in our ‘funnel math’ are directly related (with statistical significance) to the attributes, contexts, and motivations of the leads (and their associated inquiries) we feed into the top of the funnel.  That’s no surprise...and certainly not worth of a post (or your click)...but it is hard to measure.

The Inquiry Taxonomy - A Solution For Funnel Blindness
I developed the ‘The Inquiry Taxonomy’ to provide the necessary level of visibility and provide actionable insight into our demand funnel fuel.

The Inquiry Taxonomy is a simple but wildly insightful piece of analysis that organizes inquiries into key, actionable classifications.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Making It Actionable

Moving this analysis beyond a pretty visual, there are two key outcomes from this taxonomy analysis:

1. Mix Effectiveness - Visual representation of your marketing mix which can be easily rationalization against your goals and objectives.
2. Demand Management - Each key endpoint of the taxonomy is an area for specific operational focus for driving targeted groups further into your sales/buying funnel (e.g. tactics like nurture, tele-qualification, and targeted content.).

Within these key outcomes we have information that can be immediately actioned with our marketing and sales processes...and actioned with extremely valuable context (e.g. customer versus prospect messaging).

Give it a try and let me know how the tool works/doesn’t work for your particular industry, organization, or marketing culture.

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Marketers are busy. Email marketing is a particularly relevant example of marketing-production-overload; massed demand, retention, informational, and nurture campaigns are significant contributors to the tens-of-billions emails sent on a daily basis (80-85% of which is considered SPAM*).
 
With such incredible volumes of emails, it only stands to reason that we’re going to have some small mistakes...a broken link here, bad contextual reference there.
 
But what if this isn’t always an operational issue?  Can small mistakes be a really BIG deal?
 
Small Mistakes. Strategic Indictments.
As Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval detail in their book The Power of Small: Why Little Things Make All the Difference, small can be big.  The authors tell the story of New York City restaurateur Danny Meyer who found that, “you can’t fool people” and thoughtful attention to the small details is required for competitive success. 

I believe the spirit of that concept is illustrated in the following email from LinkedIn.

A Case for Inauthenticity

The ‘Literal’ Message And Its Context

 LinkedIn is positioning the message as a value to members; explicitly stated that adding such skills 'makes it easier to find [your profile]'.  The implicit context of the message; the more skills you add the greater your chances of ‘getting paid’ with a flood of job/consulting/investment opportunities...boom!

 What I See

 The reality, very likely conscious, is that LinkedIn wants you to fill their system with revenue-generating information.That information, which only its users can provide, is a key driver in their advertising and, likely, a selling point in their ‘hiring solutions’ products.**

Far Fetched Theory Or Likely Reality?
There’s a very good chance that the LinkedIn sales people are quoting similar numbers (plus, I’m guessing, some wildly interesting quantitative analysis we don’t see) to their prospective advertisers and hiring professionals.

My theory prompted me to review the volume of unsolicited email messages** from LinkedIn in January - March of the last three years.  Below are the results (note: LinkedIn’s IPO was in May of 2011).

See the full gallery on Posterous

Should I Stop Using LinkedIn?
No, that is not case I am making.  The value I have currently found with LinkedIn still outweighs their use of my information and the deletion of a handful of emails.

As a student of marketing, I love this example when used as a case study to check our marketing bravados.  

We need to be honest about our intentions and find ways to authentically meet objectives by returning true value.

From Platitude To Action
Rather than a ‘This Benefits You [starburst]’ campaign perhaps LinkedIn could reward members for completing their profiles.  

Continuing with that concept, LinkedIn could establish an exchange rate for profile information and certain premium features.  

For example, members filling out x number of skills and actively maintaining them would receive complete visibility into views of their profile for 14 days or x number of Inmails.

Sure, this takes some operational investment, but is most definitely a better way to engage the foundation of LinkedIn’s revenue streams...its users.

Notes:
*    Cisco IronPort Threat Operations Center - http://www.senderbase.org/index
**   LinkedIn 2011 10-K Annual Report - http://investors.linkedin.com/releases.cfm
*** Unsolicited emails - to define ‘unsolicited emails’ I excluded individually variable messages such as invitation requests, direct messages (and InMail), and subscribed groups.

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Just a few weeks ago, in an amazing twist of fate, I ran into Rihanna while shopping at Target. That’s right Grammy-winning, megastar Rihanna!

When you see something so memorable, what do you do?  Take a picture of course...and that’s what I did.  With total respect and class, without a hint of paparazzi, I took the following picture.

Not necessarily. 

Risk - What You Don’t Know And Who's Protecting The Celebrities

Admittedly celebrity can sell.  Tying recognized and trusted public figures to relevant brands can bring credibility and create demand for products/services.

The purchase-motivating popularity of celebrity, and especially sustained growth, is extremely fragile; subject to a wild, dynamic collection of outside forces like consumer taste, competitors, socioeconomic trends, etc.  

When considering the development of a fragile brand, like celebrity, marketers need to understand the one critical risk-point:

What we don’t know will be more impactful than what we know (or think we know).

I imagine that the people managing these star brands are smart, creative people that carefully review different brand/endorsement/merchandising opportunities.

However, my key point is that we truly do not know what affects popularity and over what time frame.  Apart from the dramatic consequences of a negative ‘front page event’, a decline in popularity may be due to a slow erosion by micro-events.

Back to our earlier example, it’s likely that a consumer sees both the product AND Rihanna on clearance at Target.  What are the collateral effects of those thoughts?  How are the perceptions of ‘cool’, ‘exclusivity’, and ‘glamour’ affected by seeing a star dominate a clearance rack?

Brand Clarity

Eventually, without thoughtful management, the defining vision of ‘Rihanna’ could become fragmented.  Is Rihanna coconut water? Gucci? Discounted fragrance? NIVEA? Barbados?
 

And what could happen to that fragmented brand when confronted with the next generation of amazing entertainers?

Granted, my thoughts come from an outsider to the world of entertainment and celebrity marketing.  A comment on the realities of building and sustaining a music industry brand may best come from an insider...say...Billy Joel:
 

Today I am your champion, I may have won your hearts
But I know the game, you'll forget my name
I won't be here in another year
If I don't stay on the charts

The Entertainer
Billy Joel

My marketer’s takeaway: put down the we’re-so-popular-we-can-sell-anything ego and pick up some perspective (i.e. re-read your copy of The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing).

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For many of us ‘tis the season for strategic planning...and it’s much less like sugar plums and gum drops and more like budget battles and resource land-grabs.  

It’s not all bad, we certainly enjoy skipping through the wild-flowered fields of strategy, delighting in our own brilliance.  However, our romp generally creates some kind of operational burden or conflict.  Our new (again it’s safe to say ‘brilliant’) ideas have to be funded, resourced, and executed...from a limited set of constrained resources in very high demand.

In preparation for corporate battle we done armor, gather our allies and head into battle.

My Ideas. Your Ideas.  Our Resources.

Inevitably, our planning process involves rationalizing our concepts against our available/planned resources...and those of our colleagues.  

As a result, there are likely to be some strong negotiations and maybe even some maneuvering.  However, the real stress falls on the core groups usually charged with executing these grand visions; like our IT, development, reporting, and design teams.

One of those main points of stress is getting ‘the business’ to understand what can reasonably be accomplished with the resources available.

From small to large business, resource managers and executives (especially in IT/development) struggle with getting business owners to understand the concept of limited resources.
Throughout my career I have seen some very creative and complex solutions for detailing/illustrating the delta between business demands and available resource hours.  

At some point, however, those solutions - independent of their technical superiority - lose their ability to effectively communicate a very simple problem:

We have more work than we have available time.

Why This May Happen

My belief is that we [business owners] are eventually overwhelmed with the technical tools of project/resource planning - Gnatt and burn down charts, critical pathing, process maps, etc. - and reach our cognitive limits of understanding.  

Consequently, resourcing devolves into micro-discussions of time, people, and efficiency (ask an IT professional how many times they’ve been critically challenged by a marketer on ‘how long’ a task should take).

My Concept...And Super-Simple Solution
So, here we are in our annual planning, left with two frustrated, opposing sides and seemingly no mutually productive way to communicate our operational realities (no, no...’happy hour’ is just the application of a Band-Aid to wet skin).

Time for the Ducks and Buckets!

In my experience, when we’ve reached such a stalemate it’s time for kindergarten-like solutions...we’ve got to oversimplify rather than reach for spreadsheets, Project, ERPs, etc.

Ducks and Buckets is my participative and physical process of high-level, organizational prioritization and resource planning.

As Chip and Dan Heath discuss in Made to Stick a tangible, physical exercise or story can powerfully deliver a concept.  Extending that concept to the unglamorous process of prioritization a physical process delivers ‘stickiness’ that rote rows of spreadsheets or presentation slides simply cannot.

The Players: Ducks. Buckets (And Blackholes). 

1. Ducks - represent available resources; FTE, contractor, outsourced, consultants, etc. over a period of time.
   1. For longer term planning, the ducks are better used as a representation of productivity - which can be flexibly adapted to standards of the business (e.g. a week of development) - than a person.
   2. For example, one FTE over two fiscal quarters may be represented by four ducks.
2. Buckets (in various sizes) - represent the resource demands of the business; the larger the bucket (work) the more ducks (resources) it takes to fill (complete).
   1. Especially important for organizations that operate as strategic business units and shared services.
   2. Blackholes - special buckets representing resources consumed by normal business operations:
      1. Issue investigation
      2. Meetings
      3. Routine responsibilities (e.g. audits, code review, etc.)

Blackholes? Sure I’m willing to admit its a little dramatic, but it represents resources sucked into, often critical, activities that are difficult to quantify (light escaping).

The Simple Process:  Purchase Ducks and Buckets. Put Ducks In Buckets.  Discusss.
Okay, that may be an oversimplification, but that is really all that is needed to have a pretty meaningful, high-level discussion of organizational priorities.  

Beginning the exercise is usually a process of defining the Ducks and Buckets and then followed by allocations into:

1. Projects in process.
2. Project planned.
3. Blackholes.

From there a facilitator would lead a discussion on where and how to allocate the remaining (should there be any) ducks.  

Any conflicts, restrictions, or allocation issues demand the group discuss and, importantly, play out the following options;

1. Ducks need to be physically moved from buckets (i.e. re-prioritization).
2. Buckets need to be re-sized (i.e. reduction in scope).
3. Ducks need to be added.
4. Ducks need to be made more efficient; which introduces some level of cost: financial, operational (learning), implementation, etc.

The Result: What It Is. What It Isn't.
This exercise is not intended to solve the operational constraints and conflicts faced by an organization nor is it designed to document projects.  This exercise is meant to have leaders physically face the realities of its operations and tangibly discuss their options.

And, in the right organizational culture, this exercise can be fun.

This type of prioritization exercise allows leaders to move past the mental block of what-resources-do-what and the quicksand effect of detailed project review.  

In doing so, leaders can focus their discussion on how projects and initiatives align with organizational objectives and potential ROI...and that’s how ducks should find their home.

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I recently finished the autobiography of rapper Prodigy - one half of the iconic rap group Mobb Deep.  An insightful book, Prodigy shares a rich blend of his life, career, and personal perspectives.  

I picked up the book out of personal interest.  Surprisingly, however, I found an extremely powerful business lesson for marketers; a lesson superior to the platitudes we disappointingly find in many of today’s ‘best selling’ business books.

The Lesson (..in just seven words)

I don’t compete anymore...I just create.

There is a lot of wisdom to be mined from Prodigy’s experience and perspective, but I found that quote particularly compelling.  The quote was placed within the context of Prodigy’s career and how he has matured beyond the superficial, narcissistic noise that dominates the rap and music industry.  

My Infamous Life promotional pictures: Simon & Schuster

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See the full gallery on Posterous

Super-cool.  Super-slick.  (I was reminded of the ‘wow’ campaigns I received during the ‘dot com’ boom; baseball bats, jack-in-the-boxes, branded Battleship games, etc.)  Additionally it seemed like good timing for a ‘wow’ campaign to try and capture prospects’ attention as many of us are working on 2012 planning and budgeting.  

This time however, my usual candy-store smile was quickly replaced with a contemplative smirk.  

As with any hyper-demonstrative marketing vehicle, I pause to think about the costs against potential returns (the postage on this piece, alone, was over $8).  But I was actually thinking of the environmental impact of this campaign; and collaterally, the level of environmental responsibility we have as marketers in the execution of our campaigns.

Putting conversion and campaign effectiveness aside, it’s highly likely that this promotional piece will find its way into the trash (we’ll hope for the recycle bin).

C’mon It’s Just A Lunchbox, Not A Bag O’ Asbestos (nod to the Dan Aykroyd SNL skit)
I know, it’s pretty simple.  Just ‘reuse’ the lunchbox.  

However, there’s no real attachment to this piece that would give it sustainable value.  The senior executive targeted by this promotion is not going to start a new daily lunch routine of PB&J, chips, and a juice box...then start toting it around in this thing.  

Perhaps this creative finds its way into a child’s collection of random stuff turned toy...but still, that only suspends the inevitable toss into the trash.

Connecting Responsibility and Brand Positioning
Creative campaign delivery?  Absolutely.  Fully connected execution? Almost.

I support the wild creativity of marketing but believe we need to complete our thoughts...especially when we have such impressive demand vehicles.  This campaign clearly pushes Hodgson/Meyer’s creativity to the forefront and how that creativity will be used to steal share from a prospect’s competitors.

However, this piece is missing an important opportunity to promote the agency’s applied, fully connected concepts of creativity.  As both a vehicle for promoting creativity and environmental consciousness, the lunchbox should include creative ways to reuse the piece (much like Target does with their shopping bags, pictured below).  

This piece should have included creative uses that simultaneously support the company’s brand positioning (i.e. ‘edgy, creative marketing’ which is my take).  For example, Hodgson/Meyers could suggest the lunchbox be used for:

• A Suggestion Box - for the prospect’s team to submit ideas on how their current agency needs to improve.
• Snack Box - introduce the concept of ‘team snack day’ (remembering back to your days in Little League, Pop Warner, etc.) where a member of the marketing team ‘owns’ Friday-snack-day and brings/presents it in the lunchbox.  (Note: following the pURL might also include a starter offer of Dunkin’ Donuts gift card for Munchkins.)
• Marketing Idea Box - members of the prospect’s team would deposit examples of marketing materials/advertisements/etc. over a period of time and discuss/reflect upon them during periodic meetings (e.g. monthly marketing meetings).

Failing to find any decent ideas in the ‘reuse’ concept, Hodgson/Meyers could alternatively promote a ‘we’ll recycle it program’ where the prospect returns (at no cost) the lunchbox for recycling.  With an ever-growing environmental consciousness, there may be a portion of prospects that do so (and imagine all of the rich demographic/psychographic information that gives you about the prospect).

Final Thoughts - Branding Can Be As Much ‘Micro’ As It Is ‘Macro’
Understanding the pressures and realities of business, it’s unlikely a prospect will implement any of those ideas (yes...even those suggested above).  

However, providing such suggestions positively presents an agency that diligently thinks through strategy, creative, execution, and audience perception...and, most importantly, this can be accomplished in parallel with its primary goal of prospect engagement/conversion.

Even with a fully connected concept, this marketing piece may still find its way into the trash.  Even if the trash can is an inevitable outcome, including the acknowledgement of, and an effort for, reuse provides an important opportunity to demonstrate how an agency can marry creativity to comprehensive thought processes.

It’s easy to miss the micro-concepts of our marketing activities, especially with such a tangibly impressive vehicle, but it is the micro-concepts that often carry a macro-generated reaction through to conversion.

As an important note, someone/entity attached to the campaign made sure that the lunchbox is identified as being, ‘made responsibly in China.’ A nice touch.

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In our world of new media marketing, there still some fixtures of consistency that withstand the gale force winds of modern convention; fixtures like branding and brand identity.  

Looking beyond modern tactical trends, thoughtful branding efforts can be traced back to the origins of commerce (like centuries old brewery Weihenstephan).  From pride in craftsmanship to competitive differentiation, branding continues as a fundamental strategic component for many organizations (profit and non-profit, B2B and B2C).

Branding?  Oh Yeah, We’ve Got This!
With so much history, we [marketers] should have this branding thing pretty much perfected, right?

Not quite.  Sure, brand identity is a fixture but our targeted audiences’ attitudes, needs, associations, and engagement continue to evolve...often ahead of our branding efforts and concepts.

For example, last year Gap’s release of its new logo was met with violent criticism from customers and, subsequently (and quickly), rolled back.

What Thrift Stores Have To Do With Enterprise Brand Identity Efforts
There was a significant amount of root cause speculation in the press regarding the Gap-logo-crisis, but the fact is that there is no single component of brand success.  Maintaining and evolving a brand requires continual investment.  

So while there is no single solution, I believe we need to take part of our brand identity work out of the conference room, out of deep SPSS analysis, away from focus groups, and into our local thrift stores for some ‘Brand Archeology’.

Brand Archeology - Learning From Our Branding Past
Okay, so I might be ‘marketing’ this one up a little bit...but essentially Brand Archeology is a physical, visceral, and tactile brand identity exercise that expands our thinking beyond market research, Illustrator, and design meetings.

By elevating your bargain-shopping-thinking you will find your local thrift store is a rich ‘marketectural dig’.  More than ‘good deals’, it is full of the brand identities of consumer and business products that have come before.

Decades old logos, campaign art work, mascots, and brand identities wait for an opportunity to teach us about brand history.

See the full gallery on Posterous

How To: Embarking On An Archaeological Brand Dig
For your next brand identity effort, schedule an outing to a local thrift store (those of you in large cities have zero excuses) for some deep brand immersion.

Invite a broad, cross-discipline team to participate in this exercise and use the following structure to keep the time productive:

• Focus: prior to the ‘dig’ highlight the key considerations for your branding effort; consumer tastes, competitive landscape, internal changes, etc.
• Document: mobile devices should be at the ready; have your team capture what they see and why they find it interesting.
• Discover: this activity should result in your team matching their finds up to the core considerations of your branding effort (e.g. how a parallel can be drawn between Coke’s use of Max Headroom and your current effort to capitalize on current youth sub-cultures).
• Share: now it’s safe to enter a conference room...have the team share their findings and how they suggest using that knowledge in your current brand/identity efforts.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Yes, I know you can use images.google.com in a similar effort but brands are ultimately visceral...even in the world of ecommerce.  You and your team(s) need to experience brands in person under the glow of industrial fluorescent light of the thrift store or in the daylight of the open-air swap meet.

Certainly we should not stop meeting, researching, and designing during our branding exercises but perhaps we should add just a little visceral nostalgia and kitsch into the mix.

 

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As originally published on Lumension's Corporate Blog - Optimal Security

The Responsibility of Data Ownership and the Care it Demands

Anonymous data isn’t always anonymous...despite our intentions or best efforts.  Just this week, I received an startling reminder of this fact in an email Newsletter from TheLadders CEO, Marc Cenedella.  

Through the contents of that email, TheLadders may be leaking the exact, personally-identifiable salaries of its customers (likely without their knowledge).

If so, this isn’t a mistaken release of sensitive data but rather an oversight of data management and process.

The Vehicle For Leaking Salary Information

TheLadders (theladders.com) is a online, paid subscription resource that assists high-earning professionals ('$100K+ positions') in their career/job search. The Monday, August 15th edition of Marc Cenedella’s newsletter was a positively themed message reminding business professionals and job seeks that ‘companies are hiring’ (in spite of our, still uncertain, economic times).  Marc supports those claims with data collected from TheLadders' own hiring records (quote and screenshot below):

In the interest of "show, don't tell", here's just a sample of 50 of the jobs accepted already this month by your fellow subscribers here at TheLadders

Marc then goes on to list the impressive collection of job titles and salaries for those 50 subscribers (screenshot below).

Totally Harmless.  Totally Anonyous.  Right?  Not Exactly.

As I read through the email I began to see a pattern developing within the set of job titles; some of them were very specific...unique almost.  Additionally, the salaries themselves were very specific; no ranges, no mention by Marc if they were modified from their actual amount.

My initial perception, as I’m sure TheLadders marketing team intended, was that the information was powerfully authentic.

Soon after, however, I began to think that the uniqueness of these titles might be a problem.  What if I knew someone that recently moved positions with one of those unique titles?  I could potentially know their salary.  Taking that thought a step further...what if I’m simply connected to one of those people?  

So I turned to the advanced search on LinkedIn.com and found, what I believe, are some very unsettling results.

TheLadders may be inadvertently releasing the salaries of its customers and the salary ranges/negotiation practices of its recruiting customers.

Tying An Email To A Person’s Salary

Here was my very simple process:

1. Copied titles listed in TheLadders' newsletter that Marc sent.
2. Pasted them into the title field within LinkedIn’s advanced search, selecting ‘Current’.

Using the advanced LinkedIn search, I found several examples of extremely narrow results...including single matches (one person).  Even in examples with larger results set, simply adding a geographic location narrowed results sets to single digits.

(Note: I have intentially blurred the data so as to not continue the potential exposure of individuals/companies and focus instead on the number of results.)

See the full gallery on Posterous

Again, What Could it All Mean?

It is potentially possible to tie salaries provided in a simple TheLadders’ newsletter to personally identifiable information...down to the exact individual.  A little context like location and company is all that is needed to reach near certain accuracy.

Additionally, this same information can be tied to the hiring company which exposes potentially morale damaging salary information throughout an organization.

Marketers, Your Responsibilities Have Widened Exponentially

We [professionals and organizations] are the keepers of an ever increasing set of very sensitive data that, even when we don’t expect it, can cause harm to our customers, audiences, and employees when not treated with extreme care.  This reality has been tangibly manifested in the form of governmental regulation for some industries, but situations such as TheLadders’ email illustrate the need for strict data discipline in every industry.

Our headlines are increasingly dotted with the stories of malicious data breaches by hackers and organized, electronic crime.  As our marketing operations are collecting an increasingly valuable set of data, our systems and processes are now prime targets for attack. Marketing databases provide hackers of wealth of potential victims for their 'social engineering' attacks (e.g. phishing).  

This concern is not a marketing-doomsday prediction it is a very real threat.  

Marketing Systems Have Been Dramatically Breached

In a recent example, marketing email service provider Epsilon ('the world’s largest permission-based email marketing provider' - Epsilon.com) revealed in April that their database had been compromised by hackers.  

Analysis later revealed that 2% of its clients' had been exposed.  A look at the list of companies exposed by the Epsilon breach (SecurityWeek) contains some very well know and respected brands (e.g. Best Buy, Marriott, Capital One).  The theft of email addresses has potentially exposed individuals to socially engineered attacks.  The threat is so real that Epsilon's homepage, four months later, prominently features a message about thwarting such attacks.

Our responsibility as marketers has grown beyond the traditional principle of 'honesty in advertising/messaging'; we must protect the data with we are entrusted.

From a marketing perspective we need to:

1. Identify the sensitivity of data we are using in our marketing activities.
2. Think about the consequences, however unlikely, should that data be misused or used in error.
3. Depending on the answers above: find alternatives that meet our goals but mitigate those risks.

So What Now...Just Do Nothing?

Absolutely not, we have a duty to tell stories and reach audiences with engaging content...we just need to be more careful in our approach.

For example, alternative approaches to Marc’s email could have been:

• Good: Replace the specific title with a general role or type of position
• Better: Replace both the specific title and salary with general role and range of salary
• Even Better: Remove the titles, group into functional areas (e.g. marketing, IT, etc.) and average salary

Any of the above, while not providing the exact same result, would result in comparable efficacy and an equally powerful message...and do so without jeopardizing customers’ privacy.

A Final Note...The Benefit of A Doubt (Hopefully)

I don’t know the full story and there may be some reasonable explanation, perhaps:

• TheLadders team is aware and accepts these risks.
• These aren’t the actual salaries (and that notation was missing from the email; if true, that is an issue in and of itself).
• These customers - individuals and companies - explicitly (i.e. not buried in a EULA) agreed to have this information released.
• People are much more open with their salaries in today’s business climate.
• These aren't the actual people (in spite of our strong evidence)...not every professional is on LinkedIn (although it seems like users of TheLadders would have a higher liklehood to use LinkedIn).

I am certainly not an investigative journalist...and at some level I hope I’m wrong.  

In any event, we have to recognize that our users, customers, and visitors are trusting us with their data and our multi-page privacy-policy-manifestos are no excuse for, or defense against, mismanagement or carelessness.

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Are you surveying your prospects after a sales call to find out how you did?  If not, you may be missing a valuable opportunity to collect insights into your prospects’ expectations and perceptions of your sales approach.

Earlier this week, I was on a sales call with representatives from Qualtrics - an impressive, enterprise-level survey and analysis tool.  As the conversation progressed into functional demos, there were several statements made regarding the ease and usefulness of the tool (which, based on what I saw seemed to be accurate).

That got me thinking about how Qualtrics - experts in this tool - uses their own product.  As a result, I asked the question, “does Qualtrics, using their own tool, survey prospects after a sales call.”  The answer, surprisingly, was ‘no’.  

I know that the concept of surveying prospects might be foreign and, in fact, there are plenty of rationalizations for not doing so (e.g. don’t want to be intrusive, already in our marketing nurture programs, etc.).  I thought, however, that a corporate culture - like Qualtrics - steeped in the art and science of surveying would take every opportunity to gather relevant, actionable data.  

Now, perhaps, the Qualtrics team was just being kind (as we are a prospect) but they expressed their approval of such a practice.  Assuming I wasn’t receiving the-prospect-is-always: (1) right and (2) funny treatment, I’ve outlined my concept for survey prospects.

The Post-Sales Meeting/Call Survey

Spirit
The survey must be concise, easy to navigate, and assuredly secure.  In a sales process, we have to be efficient with prospects’ time and work to make each engagement valuable (possibly necessitating an incentive for completing the survey...Starbucks cards anyone?)

Note: this concept would work in any type of relational-sales engagement; B2B or B2C.

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Arguably, we marketers are not known for our strict adherence to process standardization.  Sure, there are a handful of us fighting for change but a quick survey of our non-marketing colleagues will generally reveal us to be perceived as a collection of wild, fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants professionals.  [Insert any story from an IT professional on trying to get a marketer to understand and follow a change control process].

This perceived-reality can certainly be applied to our marketing reporting and analytics...especially in calculating return on marketing investment (ROMI).

Who can help?  Our colleagues in Finance.  

Yes, that’s right Finance, the people that keep trying to teach us the difference between accrual and cash-basis accounting and why invoices ‘found’ after the close of a month are stressful.

How? (If you’re still with me.)  I’ve taken two fundamental financial accounting documents and converted them into powerful demand management tools.

Those Tools are:

1. Lead Balance Sheet
2. Statement of Lead Flows

The Lead Balance Sheet

What It Measures
This financial-marketing tool measures the progress of specific leads - generated within a time period - through a demand management process.

What It Solves
Using this tool clears up the ambiguity we typically observe within our data and reports when looking at aggregate masses of leads and their status.  Most importantly, this tool demands that we account for and reconcile our demand generation and demand management processes.

Very simply...what leads came in over a time period and what happen to those leads.

How You Use It
It the spirit of balancing assets against liabilities/equity, this tool is used on a periodic basis to: 

1. Account for the specific outcomes of leads generated.
2. Evaluate the efficiency and strength of a demand management process (i.e. reasons for not balancing, percent of conversions, velocity, etc.)

Statement of Lead Flows

What It Measures
This financial-marketing tool measures the total impact to a prospect base over a given time period through marketing and sales activities (gains and losses).

What It Solves
Managing a prospect base - especially in relational sales - requires careful measurement and analysis of multiple activities (both sales and marketing) over multiple time periods (weeks, months, and quarters).  

This tool consolidates those activities into a manageable set of key measurements to provide an accurate picture of how a prospect base has been affected by operational activities within a given time period.

How You Use It
Operationally, this tool highlights the performance of key sales and marketing activities; especially when measured against forecasted/expected results.  Strategically, the results of this analysis provides important measurements for future forecasts and budgeting.

While this analysis can be performed by itself, it can be powerfully combined with the Lead Balance Sheet to understand operational affect of demand generation efforts toward an organization’s future, marketable prospect base.

I know, in a world of ‘big data’, complex attribution, and predictive analytic
s these solutions seem overly simple.  Even I was a little hesitant.  Could financial statement really be applied to dynamic sales/marketing environments?  Surprisingly, I have found these tools to be wildly valuable in bringing once hidden realities to the surface.  Something even complex regressive analytics processes had been missing.

Depending on your data sources and processes you will find that these tools bring valuable information to your analysis and forecasting efforts.

As a note, my examples are illustrative and would likely need some modifications based on the particulars of an organization and its demand generation/management processes.

From GAAP to GARP?

So my fellow marketers...Give Finance a Chance (I’m thinking bumper stickers or T-shirts for that one).  And maybe someday we’ll all unify our marketing measurements under a set of GARP (Generally Accepted Reporting Practices)...or maybe not.  For now, give these tools a try and see what new demand/pipeline visibility you can achieve and new dimensions you can bring to return on marketing investment.

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Marketers, I noticed of late that we are telling some very tall tales.  We are loading sales presentations with, what seems to be, a steadily increasing amount of misinformation and, most notably, misattribution regarding product/service results.

The misattribution is the most alarming trend.  From what I’ve seen recently, sales presentations are including more quantitative components and measurements (great!) but then wildly attributing quantitative results to the products/services being pitched (oooooh, no...you lost me at, “our ABC product led to an increase/decrease of XYZ!”).  

Perhaps this is a situation driven from the current economic realities of our collective businesses...and desperate times call for desperate marketing [measures].  Starting my professional career in Sales, I can’t say that I wouldn’t have used these same materials...they’ve got numbers, percentages, and beautiful visuals.  However, I believe that we are taking liberties with the increasing amount of data that we have available.  

Correlation Versus Causation

There has been plenty written, by much more learned professionals, about correlation versus causation and our frequent confusion between the two.  I will, however, put my own angle on that dynamic with my simple thought process:

In today’s dynamic and complex business environments if I think something directly and solely caused some outcome (attribution)...I should probably take another look (kind of a measure-twice-cut-once type of philosophy).

Attribution is extremely difficult to (conclusively) prove, but very easy to lay claim to...a few supporting metrics and a chart and we’re good to insert that statement into a presentation.

My ‘Square Peg Round Hole’ Example

Not to make claims without some evidence, I’m including one of my favorite examples presented to me (just this month).  To protect the identity of this organization, I have anonymized and greyscaled the slide.

My reaction to seeing this slide was immediately negative...thinking, “wow that’s a weak correlation with a brute-force slam into attribution.”  I couldn’t stop myself from interrupting the presentation to question the Rep and this slide.  For me, this one slide immediately invalidated all previous and following quantitative slides.

There are so many factors that contribute to organizational growth that this slide, even when used casually, is simply reckless.  (Let’s not even get into the ‘source’ of the data.)

Taking my point to an exaggerated extreme, let’s assume those same ‘growth’ companies all use Waxie sanitary supplies.  I could, therefore, as easily make the argument Waxie brand of toilet seat liners are ‘fueling growth’.  By choosing the superior product like Waxie those companies’ employees are happier and have consequently grown over their competitors that do not use Waxie.  Pow!  Here’s a contract, sign now!

Using flawed attribution, you can see how any brand is interchangeable on this slide...all we need are a few talking points:

See the full gallery on Posterous

So What Would I Do

Alright so it’s all too easy to cast a critical stone...and, true, it is a difficult sales environment out there, so how could you present the point differently (and accurately).  

I would address the slide for what it is: a point of interest versus a data point.  There is potential value to building content around how the solution is being used within those business as a component supporting their growth.  In this case, testimonials and examples would be far more powerful than misattribution.

To borrow from the fine print of advertising disclaimers:

We need to enjoy our access to data responsibly.

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Let me preface this quick post with the acknowledgment that I may letting my ego get the better of me.  Okay? Okay.

I found this week (thanks to some observant people in my network) that MGM Studios had announced in February its plans to remake the classic 1983 film Mr. Mom.  Firstly, as a long-time fan of the original, I applaud the decision.  

Interestingly (and here’s where we introduce the egocentricity), I had written about the need to remake Mr. Mom three weeks prior to that announcement.  I built my argument on the basis that Mr. Mom needed to be remade due to indicators found in the US unemployment rate.  I’ll give you that it’s a statistical coincidence, but the socio-economic factors surrounding such a high rate of unemployment parallel the challenges of the early-80s America family.

Are Studios Crowdsourcing?

Putting aside my clear contribution to the success of MGM, it is quite possible that studios are quietly crowdsourcing ideas for films from the vast amount of consumer opinion shared throughout the Internet.  Sure there are direct campaigns that actively solicit ideas from the move-going public.  However, the unsolicited sentiment, discussions, and opinions of audiences might offer a tremendous wealth of direct and foundational film ideas.

MGM, you’re welcome (appeasing my ego)...please give the film the critical attention it deserves.  “220, 221, whatever it takes.”

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In just two days, the announced change to Netflix’s pricing plans has generated a considerable amount of consumer backlash.  Anger spewed from fingers, through our keyboards, and onto a wide selection of Internet properties.  In the majority of the cases, consumers were not only angered by the price increases but enraged by the method in which consumers were informed.

In my case, I received a sterile, cold email that, seemingly, told me - in a very P. Diddy style - to “take that, take that, take that” regarding their new pricing model.  Like others, my consumer reaction was, “wait...I’m getting nothing (perceptually) more out of the service but my costs are increasing 33%.”

My Theory

After a couple of days of scowling every time I pass the red envelopes sitting on my counter, I’ve come to a different conclusion.

This wasn’t a wildly mismanaged communication but a purposeful attempt by Netflix to thin their customer base...a type of consumer-natural-selection...only the most profitable will survive.

The Great Netflix Breakup

From what I’ve read (and witnessed as a consumer), Netflix is full of talented business professionals with clever ideas and innovative strategies.  This message and delivery was so poorly handled that it seems implausible that the communication was simply an organizational failure versus a purposeful, strategic move.

Just as Netflix is experiencing explosive growth, I believe Netflix is facing the threatening realities of exponential operational costs.  Operational costs that may be directly tied to the number of subscribers.

As a result, Netflix is faced with the reality of price increases along with a parallel activity of eliminating unprofitable customers.

So this email may have been a very purposeful and, dare I say it, graceful way of breaking up with many of us.  This could have been a carefully worded break up - “it’s not you, it’s me and I think we should see other people [you: Redbox, me: profitable customers]” - versus what could have been a very harsh Trump-dump - “you’re fired.”

We have the choice to take control and end the relationship (cancel) versus an eventual hard break up (i.e. you're still not profitable and we're cancelling your service).

Other Thoughts

This is just one theory, but it would be interesting to know:

• Did all customers get this message?
  • Did all customers get the same message?
• Is/was there a profitability study within Netflix?  What were the results?
  • Does each customer have a ‘profitability score’ (revenue minus costs)?
  • Ex: Are customers that actually convert new Netflix customers through their referral program tracked?  Do they have a higher score and did that effect the first question?

My decision?  I’m not sure yet...but I’m not one to be in a relationship where the other person doesn’t want me as much as I want them.

Related Post

Red Mondays - Does the Post-Weekend Mail Drop Present A Competitive Opportunity to Attack Netflix?

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Continuing in our social media comparisons of Lady Gaga, Rihanna, and Britney Spears we turn our attention to audience engagement.  The self-actualizing nirvana in social media is organizing a base of fans/followers to follow an intended path or take a positive action.  

Imagine the engagement and responsiveness mega rock stars Gaga, Rihanna, and Britney must command.  Oh what we [marketers] could do with those type of audiences!

Marketing Funnel Math and Rock Stars

 Original Photo: Tawny Rockerazzi

Marketing metrics within the social media space have created a dizzying lexicon with ‘metrics’ termed: followers, fans, lists, likes, plus 1s, tweets, retweets, references, scores, social sentiment...and on and on.  These metrics can be haphazardly and dangerously thrown around in business contexts (e.g. the more ‘likes’ we get the more we sell...let’s get more likes so we’ll generate more sales!

 

Apart from wild claims of attribution, why are we so concerned with these numbers?  The reason (generally): funnel math.  We’re very concerned with our top-line numbers (i.e. followers) because it serves as the foundational element in our conversion funnel math.  The more followers, the more conversions...the wider we go top-of-funnel the greater our returns (views, clicks, leads, customers, etc.).

We, as marketers, aspire to ‘rock star’ like engagement among our audiences.  The belief is that that fans (a term, thanks to Facebook, now also has a semantic marketing meaning) are such a strong, organic base which will be highly receptive to a message and proportionately more likely to take an action.

Let’s look at the numbers...sampling click-through rates on Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, and Rihanna tweeted links March 2011 through May 2011.

Poor Britney...Your Twitter Followers Don’t Have Rock Star Engagement.

From the infographic above, it certainly seems that Lady Gaga and Rihanna have strong click-through rates (okay...maybe it’s not what we thought rock stars would generate...but they are relatively strong rates) and Britney Spears is dramatically under-engaged with her audiences.  

But wait...let’s look at the relative momentum of click-throughs independent of the funnel math...

Dry Those Tears Britney...Maybe No One Has Rock Star Engagement

From the above, we may be adding another layer to the story of our rock stars’ engagement with audiences.  Britney Spears may have the lowest click-through rate (sampling March - May 2011), but she has a much higher initial engagement.  Britney's followers seem to respond much faster to links posted in her tweets, 

Equally curious, Lady Gaga and Rihanna share an interestingly similar distribution of engagement.  What may this pattern illustrate?  

• Highly viral posts (retweets, shares, etc.) that extend click-through engagement beyond three days?
• Or perhaps it sheds some light on the posting ‘strategy’ of their respective PR, communications, and marketing teams (e.g. re-posting messages to capture more click-throughs).

Apply These Concepts - Final Thoughts

Is this wholly representative of audience engagement?  Certainly not, it is merely a single observation in a complex, multi-channel engagement model (as well documented by Brian Anthony Hernandez in a recent Mashable article that presented pictorial examples of Lady Gaga’s marketing mix).  

We marketers fantasize about having an all-powerful brand that commands such brand affinity that audience engagement is a certainty.  The reality is however that we are competing for attention...attention that is severely fragmented...even among rock star brands.

That reality supports a renewed focus on marketing fundamentals:

• Multi-channel, multi-threaded communications are needed to cut through the noise.
• Relevant, personalized, and emotive messages still are the key to audience engagement; even in the rock star world, where self-centered attention is expected and cultivated, those messages don’t draw as well in the single dimension of social spaces.
• Total Competitive Awareness - Britney, Rihanna and Gaga are not in direct competition, their products are not mutually exclusive...I can purchase and download Britney's, Rihanna’s and Gaga’s new albums (provided I have the purchasing power)...but it’s likely that all three artists are competing for the finite attention of overlapping audiences.
  • Segmentation and targeting are key - a broad message, even one cast from the pulpit of a rock star, can fall victim to the over-saturated attention of audiences.

 

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As those us who majored in marketing can attest (all you accounting, finance, engineering majors can stop pointing and snickering, that’s rude...marketing is a real degree.) , we were routinely subjected to the case studies of products and business ventures that failed due to naming choice.  

Most famous of all was the Chevy Nova failure in Latin American markets due to the translation of Nova (‘no va’) essentially meaning ‘no go’.  Not a good start for a consumer-car relationship. 

So I’m constantly fascinated by examples where the product name is directly contrary to its intended purpose or, even worse in this case, the entire customer-value proposition.

The S.O.L. Survival Kit

S.O.L. Definition (just in case context is needed)

I’ll leave it to the fine community at Urban Dictionary to fully define the acronym S.O.L.

It’s Just Too Obvious Right?!?!

Sure, I see the ‘Survive Outside Longer’ wording.  However, I believe that the cultural connotation of S.O.L. carries a much stronger and familiar association.  So much so, that I thought the naming was so dramatically contrary (and seemingly obvious) that it must be some clever play-on-words that, not being an avid outdoors person (and consequently not a target audience), I was missing.

As a result, I checked the company’s website but found nothing about a play-on-words or explanation for the choice. So...

When I’m In Desperate Need of Help, I Turn To S.O.L.

By colloquial definition, S.O.L. means that you have no options, you are resigned to the fate that you’re facing.  

The general usage context of an outdoor survival kit is not a casual, pedestrian situation...if you’re reaching for your kit, the situation might be quite dire.  

So while making a purchase decision, and subsequently contemplating being in such a situation, being ‘s!#t out of luck’ is not the association you want with an outdoor survival kit.  Not to mention an association tied to a premium $50 price point (Dick’s Sporting Goods).

Perhaps I’m still missing an ‘insider’ joke but I seriously have to wonder about the retail implications of this naming choice.  Would you pack the S.O.L.?

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We’ve all read about/witnessed the growth of smartphones and the maturation of the mobile marketplace.  Pick up your favorite smartphone to browse the Internet and it’s quite likely that the websites you visit will have a mobile-optimized version automatically displayed.  These websites with mobile-optimized UI/UX experiences are growing in popularity and will likely become a ‘must have’ in the very near future.

As organizations race to keep up with the consumption habits of Internet users - phones, tablets, cars, and even the return of TVs - the pace of technological adoption creates friction within our operational units...sometimes leading to less-than-desirable user experiences.

The following examples from Costco and Northern Tool perfectly illustrate the negative user experience than can result from a lack of integration between mobile and marketing campaigns.

The Problem

 An email marketing campaign is designed to drive audiences from an open, to a click, and, ultimately, to a direct conversion.  This process fails in these examples however, penalizing mobile users by taking them from a specific click in an email to a general, mobile version of the website.

• What the User Expects
  • To click on a specific link - a product in this case - and be taken directly to information regarding that product.
• What the Experience Returns
  • Clicking on a specific link takes a visitor to the mobile version of the company’s website...the user is left to find their way on the mobile website from that point.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Business Realities

 We can all agree this this is not a good experience...and is most certainly hurting conversion opportunities.  However, condemning such an experience without considering the operational, tactical realities of all businesses would be arrogant.  

There may be a wide-range of reasons why this situation exists...not every organization is Amazon.com (which handles this scenario exactly as a user expects).

Adjusting for those Realities 

Let’s assume, the integration between the mobile and other marketing vehicles cannot be done for whatever reason.  At the very least (and easily executed), an organization must do one of the following: 

1. Create logic to disable the routing/rendering of a mobile version of the website when a visitor is being sourced through an email campaign (or PPC, advertisement, etc.).  
2. Identify email sourced visitors and promenently display a link to a website version of the email...while visitors would have to backtrack a little, they would not be abandoned without any point of reference.

The simple inclusion of this logic could possibly provide a significant lift in email conversion rates.

Note: this would be an excellent exercise in using the segmentation features of a website analytics program to look at the specific behavior of email-sourced visitors on a mobile platform.

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‘Rock Star’.  We love that phrase.  It’s one that can be tangibly manifested in today’s stars like Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, and Rihanna.  More broadly, it’s universally illustrative and applicable, resonating with our deepest desires for fame and fortune.  The ‘rock star’ spirit has a special meaning for marketers.  Many of us dream of taking our concepts to ‘rock star’ brands and leveraging the energy of their highly engaged audiences into best-selling-book-success.

The reality is, however, that our ‘mobile, check-in-to-get-a-free-koozie campaign’ may simply not be compelling for any audience...rock star brand or not.  Success is a complex, and often times random, formula.

We can illustrate this point with the brands of real-life ‘rock stars’ Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, and Rihanna (for you music purists, ‘rock star’ in terms of their powerful brand currency rather than specific musical genre).  These three artists are dominating charts, media attention (traditional and social), and single/album/concert sales...they are quite literally ‘rock stars’...with mega brands.

This is a two part post, over the course of which we will explore social media engagement through these rock star brands by looking at:

• Part I - The dynamics behind the follower metric
• Part II - Rock star engagement funnels

With simple numbers and Excel chart, it certainly seems as if Lady Gaga and Britney Spears have far greater ‘success’ on Twitter than Rihanna.  I have witnessed many marketers end their ‘analysis’ at the rawest of numbers, “they/we/I have more followers...therefore they/we/I am more successful.”  But let’s put some context to those numbers...

Taking a different look at the numbers certainly provides an interesting view beyond what we simply see in the number of followers.  While, again, we have to caution ourselves on making broad, definitive statements, we do have a measured observation of social velocity.  

We can see that Rihanna is currently growing followers at a significantly faster rate than her peers.  

This is the measured observation, what should we generate from this chart?  Questions.  Questions are the most responsible thing we can do...trying to make any attributions would, likely, be inaccurate.  Gross attributions include statements like:

• Rihanna’s popularity is growing faster than Lady Gaga or Britney Spears’.
• Rihanna can overtake the number of Lady Gaga’s followers in X months and Britney Spears’ followers in Y months.
• Rihanna’s music has greater resonance among Twitter users.

I know the above statements seem silly, but I’m sure you’ve sat through at least one presentation (pick a subject) where someone was using a similar type of analysis and driving to eerily similar types of conclusions.

Stick with questions.  For example:

• Do ‘rock star’ Twitter accounts follow a growth pattern?
• Does ‘rock star’ growth on Twitter eventually reach a critical mass where rate of growth hits a point of increases at decreasing rates?
• What can my ‘rock star’ brand learn from these patterns?  Are our goals for growth realistic?

We all want answers but this first look at rock star brands supports the opposite.  The best analysis often generates more questions - the right questions - than it provides answers...even for rock stars.

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It is quite common in today’s business environment, to talk about marketing activities in two, mutually exclusive categories of ‘offline’ and ‘online’...often times without any discussion of their integration or beneficial relationships.

In our worlds of massed projects and responsibilities, it is understandable that we tend to treat the two as wholly separate entities and take passive roles in connecting the two.

This past weekend, I found a great example of that offline/online dilemna in ‘coming soon’ signs posted on the buildings of new restaurants and stores that are under construction.

The ‘Coming Soon’ Notification

These signs usually do connect offline-to-online by driving the curiousness of local audiences to one of the business’ Internet properties (website, Facebook, etc.).  Another excellent idea...take that zero-cost interest and convert it into further engagement with, what could be, your new customer base.

Good to go...total marketing execution, right?  Almost.

Maximizing Offline to Online Relationships

This signage is a great step but we have the opportunity to further the offline-to-online marketing envelope through our analytics (particularly when driving to business websites with analytics installed).  I spoke to a few managers and owners of ‘coming soon’ business and the signage is like an advanced ‘check-the-box’ activity.

My thought is that these ‘coming soon’ signs generate a tremendous amount of unmined information from our website analytics.  Most notably, it would be of importance to identify the geographic area of visitors within our analytics programs and associate that to our ‘coming soon’ locations.  We could further segment those visitors and specifically track their engagement within our websites: pages and content, time on site, exits, etc.

This information would provide valuable insight on how to further engage new audiences...especially leading up to a ‘grand opening’ campaign.

Marketing Even More Relevantly

Could we take the concept even further and market to these prospective customers even more relevantly?  Absolutely.

We could use landing page marketing to drive these audiences to specially targeted content.  Specially identified audiences (see below) would receive highly targeted content about the business, products/services, targeted opening, and maybe even an option to sign up for updates/coupons.

Targeting ‘coming soon’ visitors:

• Using our above Habit Burger example, we would create location-specific signage that directed audiences to a special URL: [location].habitburger.com (in this specific case chandler.habitburger.com).
• On the more technically complex side, we could use location detection to determine where a visitor is, generally, coming from and dynamically serve up special content on our website.

All of this can be done in concert with, and comparatively tracked, with other local promotions; flyers, print, media, mobile, Local/Places/check-in, etc.

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TLC’s appearance on last week’s American Idol finale was not only a great musical performance but a tremendous (and rare) opportunity to follow that high-profile appearance through to measurable impact on the brand awareness of the group and its members.
 
From a marketing perspective, the 20-million-viewers performance represents a dramatic top-of-funnel widening in the group’s audience engagement model.  Furthermore, the appearance is greatly strengthened by a powerful association to a strong brand - American Idol.  

So how might that appearance and its associations translate into engagement and action?

Why TLC?
This year’s American Idol finale was a showcase of the hottest names in the music industry.  Why TLC?  You got me.  Being a long-time fan of TLC I have, admittedly, a bias toward the group.

However, in my defense, TLC provides us with the unique opportunity to filter out any of the ‘awareness noise’ that might accompany some of the other finale artists like Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, or Tim McGraw and their current (mega) media/PR campaigns.  

 
Search
Not surprisingly, we see an immediate spike in search traffic for the group, its members, and songs.  However, looking at these selected keywords, only the group and song keyword searches persisted beyond the initial spike.  

With deeper analysis there may be some interesting theories on brand associations for the group versus its individuals.

Twitter
Looking specifically at Chilli’s Twitter profile (T-Boz’s account is not ‘officially’ recognized or active), we can observe a significant jump in followers after the American Idol appearance. The jump following TLC's American Idol appearance seemed to have the following impacts:

1. Large Spike in Followers Per Day - Average followers added per day was more than four times higher than Chilli’s average during the month of May 2011.
2. Significant Growth in Follower Base - In just the five days surrounding the American Idol appearance Chilli's follower base grew by 1.4% (on average five days would yield a 0.4% growth)

Amazon.com (Digital Downloads)
Beyond the intrinsic joy of reaching audiences with music, our business minds turn to the monetary effects of the event.  Did the performance reactivate existing/generate new interest in TLC’s music?

With our outsider view we can look to some anecdotal data sources like Amazon.com for answers.  Check out the following screenshots for the song ‘No Scrubs’ (performed during the American Idol appearance), the first highlights the selling popularity of the song the day of the American Idol appearance the second highlights the popularity almost a week later (June 1st).

• May 25th - #5,888
• June 1st - #1,863

See the full gallery on Posterous

Data Sources We’re Missing
With access to the right data, it would be interesting to take this analysis further and look at stronger points of action/engagement.  Expanding on the Amazon.com example, what if we could look at the numbers behind the sales on albums and downloads.  Similarly, a look at the traffic, search inquiries, and sales on iTunes.

We could use this information to build a comprehensive analysis of audience engagement, answering questions like:

• Which songs experienced the most lift?  And the most sustained lift?
• What is the breakdown between previous and first-time TLC purchasers?
  • What are the demographic patterns among those purchasers?
• Could there be a song preference found in the patterns that could guide a 'greatest hits' collection, concert tour, etc.?

 
Point in Time or Forecasting Analysis?
We, marketers, are often subject to fantasy in the face of success.  We, from time to time, believe that the success of an event is completely within our control...and, more frighteningly, we have been know to believe in our unwavering ability to duplicate success.

This was a unique event and has to be carefully analyzed as such.  Certainly no other event will be exactly like the 2011 American Idol Finale appearance (surrounding events, collective contexts, etc.), but the opportunity to collect and analyze results cannot go by without thoughtful exploration.  

For me this analysis would create a ‘possibility model’ (vs. a predictability model) that could be use to determine the impact of large-scale, high profile events on audiences.  The model could then be used to rationalize different theories and strategies on segmentation, marketing mix, messaging, etc.

When used correctly, this event would be a foundational element in a 'marketing journal' that collected experiences, analysis, and insight to draw upon later. Let your competition toil in the alchemic pursuit of 'success duplication' while you continually analyze and refine.

 

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The concept of branding is very much an art...an art that the best organizations support with empirical thoughtfulness and diligence.  While much of the 'case' material on branding focuses on the exciting components of creation, insight, and anecdotes...one of the most important components is the execution of that brand strategy.  To me, there is a lot to be learned from the macro and micro execution of a branding strategy.

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