Count your Clicks with Bodacious Bit.ly

Sharing links is a cornerstone of social media interaction, yet few take the time to figure out which links generate the most interest. Set yourself up on bit.ly and you’ll see how easy it is to track the response to links you share in emails, newsletters, articles, PDFs (yes, you can embed links), blogs, Web sites and of course, Twitter. You can also drop your bit.ly “API key” into Tweetdeck for easy tracking of the same link on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Plaxo. And finally, bit.ly has a Sidebar you can add to your browser to make the process of sharing/tracking links even easier.

Go Gaga over Google Analytics

This is such a ubiquitous tool that I hesitated to remind you of its potency. Then I remembered Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s quote: “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.” The obvious fact is that Google Analytics can help you monitor the performance of your Web sites quickly, easily and for FREE. For example, we recently used Google Analytics to help cut the bounce rate on one of our client’s landing pages to half the industry norm. Sure, there are a lot more robust Web site measurement tools out there, but none that are as easy to set up and or as cost effective.

Monitor the Mayhem with Tweetbeep

Even it you don’t tweet or spend time tracking “tweeple,” you may still want to know what others are saying about you, your brand, your competitors and/or your category. Tweetbeep makes this easy allowing you to track up to 10 topics being talked about on Twitter for free on an hourly or daily basis. (Note: some prefer SocialOomph, which can provide the same kind of free tracking.) You could also use addicticomatic.com or search.twitter.com (which are both free) to track the same topics on a real-time basis but these are both a bit more labor intensive.

Trend Tracking and Topical Techies

With info overload commonplace, the need for insightful editors and trustworthy aggregators is more important than ever. For daily trend watching, I recommend TrendHunter on the cultural side and recent Emmy winner Shelly Palmer on technology. SocialMediaInsider and Mashable will keep you in tune on social media. And trust the folks at Trendwatching for a monthly dose of eye-opening insight, including the just-posted 6 Trend Videos for March.

Freebie Fridays in Your Future?

Our agency had a few spare hours the other day and decided to surprise a client with a little extra service at no charge to them. We labeled it “Freebie Friday” and have elected to make this an ongoing benefit of working with us. So far, our clients have taken this in the spirit in which it was offered, and haven’t sought to add freebie Mondays and Wednesdays. In the continual battle to maintain happy clients and healthy margins, sometimes you simply have to put one ahead of the other. Is there something you could do to surprise your customers with a little free love? For inspiration, check out how Tropicana did just that by erecting a “sun” over a light-deprived town in the Arctic Circle.

This annual experience had shaped my impression of the entire insurance industry until just recently when I had the pleasure of hearing executives from Progressive and USAA address their impressively relentless focus on customer satisfaction.  These presentations were part of a two day Net Promoter conference that celebrated the power of monitoring and addressing customer satisfaction at every point of contact.

Richard Watts, General Manager at Progressive Insurance, started his talk with a family story not unlike the one I told above.  Richard, being English, told of his “mum’s” disappointment when the company’s automated system deactivated her account simply because she’d forgotten to return what proved ultimately to be an unnecessary form.  By simply eliminating this form, Progressive retained thousands more customers and fulfilled a new internal rallying cry, “Would you do that to your Mum?”

Then Watts delved into the math behind their extensive customer satisfaction activities.  With $14 billion in annual sales, extending retention one month represents $1 billion in annual premiums.  That’s big money to any company but few have integrated customer satisfaction measures to the extent of Progressive.

An employee dashboard reports real-time satisfaction by customer, by product and by region.  Customer verbatims are treated like “treasures” and bonuses are awarded based on retention figures.  Employees with the highest Net Promoter Scores are also celebrated at annual events.

This attention to customer satisfaction has also led to the development of new services and coverage areas.   Progressive’s 52 “concierge” service centers across the country allow customers to simply drop off damaged cars, select a loaner and return when the repairs are completed. Additionally, Progressive added pet insurance, and did so much to the joy of their customer base, that can now share photos with fellow dog lovers via a community site the brand hosts. And their “name your price” offering was developed in response to customer requests via c-sat surveys.

Another insurance company that goes to extraordinary lengths to please its customer base is USAA.  Focused on the needs of men and women in the armed forces, USAA has over 7 million customers, 97% of whom renew their policies each year.  This puts USAA 9 percentage points ahead of its next best competitor in the insurance arena.  As one happy customer put it “USAA is the best relationship (next to my wife / she’s sitting next to me) I’ve had my entire life.”

At the Net Promoter Conference, Wayne Peacock, Executive Vice President at USAA, noted that his company’s dedication to c-sat starts with their mission “to facilitate the financial security of its members” and in the process be “the provider of choice for the military community.”  It’s also embedded in their tagline “we know what it means to serve.”  But this dedication to extreme customer satisfaction is far more than lip service.

Mr. Peacock noted how the company stays focused on its members and integrates military life into their corporate culture. It starts with the hiring process, with almost 1 in 5 employees having served in the military or having a spouse who served.  From there, new employees go through a sort of “boot camp” that includes wearing 40-pounds worth of field gear and consuming MRE (meal ready to eat) rations.  Executives and employees are also encouraged to attend military events on a regular basis and “respond with empathy” to any customer inquiry.

The result of this dedication to service is the extraordinary loyalty I mentioned above and the highest Net Promoter Score across all industries according to Satmetrix’s 2009 study.  With this kind of customer satisfaction, it shouldn’t be a surprise that 90% of military officers who sign up with USAA remain customers for life.  Like Progressive, USAA is avoiding the “bad profits” made from poorly conceived sales efforts (like my ex-agent and brother!), insuring both short-term and long-term success.

Some time ago road signs in the Dominican Republic were scarce. In the beginning of the 1970s, Brugal voluntarily offered to improve the situation and, in accordance with the local government, began to post signs in the form of the company’s crest that would identify the cities, towns, beaches and points of interest in the entire country.

More DO, Less SAY
Guerrilla used to be about “hit and run” stunts that in the best case yielded on-message PR. Like other forms of marketing, guerrilla is evolving into more complex experiences that DO something for the consumer rather than simply saying something to them. The HSBC BankCab (yup, its still driving brand love after seven years!), the Samsung Charging stations and Charmin’s Times Square bathrooms are three examples of the DO versus SAY approach.

Expect a lot more of this in 2010 with new twists that integrate technology and/or social media. For example, Charmin added a search for Tweeters to supports its 2009 “pottie platoon” and HSBC added tweets to the BankCab program.

Meet Up meets Flash Mob
At the heart of the most effective guerrilla campaigns is a physical interaction. Social mobile technologies enable new interactions that guerrilla marketers will undoubtedly exploit. A well-connected marketer will be able to take the notion of a flash mob to new heights, gathering people of extraordinary commonalities at a moments notice. Think Meet Up meets Flash Mob. It is easy to imagine a kitchen appliance company gathering left handed vegan cooks for an “equal rights” march through Bloomingdales that turns into a party to celebrate a new “leftist” friendly product line.

Foursquare, Loopt and Google Latitude all represent interesting opportunities for marketers to connect with likeminded consumers in fresh ways. These tools all create the opportunity for customized micro-events that could make prospects feel a part of something special. For example, liquor brands should have a field day partnering with Foursquare and/or Loopt to create an entire nights worth of experiences.

Pop-up not Pooped Out
With commercial real estate still in the tank, expect guerrilla opportunists to exploit empty spaces in all sorts of new ways. Suddenly these windows could become touch screen displays that are customized ecommerce enabled eco-systems. Smart video technology would assess the people walking by (i.e. male, female, young, old, short, tall) and serve up a customized visual experience.

For example, the video window could display an avatar of the individual walking by and then transport it to sunny beach in the Bahamas for a travel company. The consumer could select their own destination and place their image into it. This image could be emailed to the consumer along with a discount for a cruise to that destination. Less tech heavy uses of storefronts will include live mannequins, video projections and printed posters that change on a daily basis for a reason (weather reports, news items, drinks of the day, etc.)

Taking Tech over the Top
Look for augmented reality to creep into guerrilla programs. For example, a girl could virtually try on a dress she’s just seen via a guerrilla encounter, share that “trial” with a friend, get instant feedback, figure out who makes that dress and then order it on Zappos. Smart phone apps could include components found via a real life scavenger hunt. The consumer would have to find the “clue” and take a picture of it which would help them reach a higher level in the app. The variations on this are endless but all involve integrating mobile technology with a physical experience.

Little Luxuries
Guerrilla marketers have long pursued random acts of kindness as a means of gaining attention for their brand. Look for these random acts to become less random and more upscale, providing little moments of luxury in 2010. Concierge service in unexpected places, free transport in unique vehicles and exotic food samples for passersby are but three examples you can expect to see this year.

Little luxuries are always welcome and can be delivered on an increasingly personal basis thanks to advancing technology. For example, GPS mash-ups can enable everything from customized messaging to personalized walking tours. This messaging could be educational—like how do you get the best shot of a landmark (that you happened to be at) to what’s the best thing to order at the restaurant across the street. This level of customization will endear brands to their prospects thus transforming them into card-carrying brand evangelists.

Spirits Make Biggest Cuts in A&P Spending

A new report from Deutsche Bank’s Jamie Isenwater says that the spirits sector has taken a short-term approach by cutting their marketing budgets during the downturn, which almost guarantees it will be expensive to rebuild once the environment improves. In the last 6 months, Pernod Ricard (Sell), Diageo (Hold), AB Inbev (Hold) and Campari (Hold) cut A&P the furthest out of 30 European and US consumer staples companies, while Beiersdorf (Buy), Unilever (Buy), Henkel (Buy) and L’Oreal (upgraded to Buy) invested the most aggressively.

Jamie says that Pernod and Diageo cut their organic marketing spend by -24% and -18% respectively in the first half of calendar 2009. “We remain underweight Beverages with a particular caution on Spirits given the aggressive cutting of A&P spend seen on the back of the downturn,” said Jamie. “We see little earnings rebound for the Spirits sector as a result and struggle to see where earnings upgrades are likely to come from. Pernod Ricard remains a key Sell recommendation and we see little upside to Diageo at current levels.”

LOWER A&P EQUALS LOWER MARGINS. “When we analyze our entire consumer staples dataset we find a similar result – companies that cut A&P see their operating margins fall over time,” said Jamie.

The note points to a McGraw-Hill study of the early 1980s recession that says “companies that maintained or increased their advertising spend in 1980-81 grew over 50% faster in 1982 than those who cut spend and grew over three times faster by 1985. Whilst it may not be entirely surprising that increasing A&P, increases sales growth…a study of the PIMS (Profit Impact of Market Strategy) database shows that those companies who increased marketing spend also increased profits and returns post-recession.”

Deutsche Bank realizes that “in a difficult environment it can be very tempting for companies to cut marketing spend to protect profitability,” but that “the benefits of the cost savings are short-lived with profits dipping in the following year and again the year after as marketing spend needs to be rebuilt.”

Why is A&P spending so important? Deutsche believes it’s because “consumers are prepared to pay higher prices for brands they like and trust.”

Bottom line–spending cuts may help not help bottom line after all!

1. Does your target Digg your ads?

If zapping tv spots wasn’t bad enough, now Digg is allowing their readers to essentially vote ads “off the island” while promoting the ones they like to star status. For the undug, Digg is the highly popular tech-focused news site where the stories are chosen by the users—the more Diggs a story gets, the higher it ranks on the site. And now that ads can be Digged or Buried, marketers will get real time feedback on the relative appeal of their ads to this highly influential target. If you’re targeting techies, this could be the cheapest copy test you ever tried, as well as the most eye opening.

2. Is your marketing worth retweeting?

While the joys of tweeting may still escape you personally, the phenomenal reach of Twitter is undeniable. In addition to the 20 million or so global users, tweets now appear as status updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo and other social networks, extending Twitter’s influence to just about everyone marketers might want to reach. This isn’t kid stuff either. Professionals between 35–49 are the biggest tweeters of them all. So, if you create marketing worth tweeting about, the world will find out about it faster than you can say, “Wow that’s tweet.”

3. Do interns handle your social media?

This is not a trick question. We’ve been asked this a lot in the last month and it is a reflection of a naive belief that it is okay to put a brand’s social media campaign in the hands of novices. One senior marketer even told us that his company uses interns for all of their social media and then shrugs off the lost intellectual capital when the interns move on. As social media advances from the experimental phase to the front lines of customer relationship management, building and maintaining expertise is essential to optimizing results and avoiding PR nightmares. After all, would you ever put an intern on the phone with the press or your top customers?

4. How many customer “love letters” do you get a week?

It is a simple fact—beloved brands do better. Becoming beloved requires achieving customer satisfaction on the basics (product quality) and somehow exceeding expectations via service. Zappos calls this delivering “wow” and does this wherever they can. The Apple Store does this with its amazingly knowledgeable squad of orange-shirted concierges. Others use Marketing as Service to foster brand love, as HSBC does with the BankCab, whose riders send at least one love letter every week. So ask yourself, what could your marketing be doing (versus saying) to generate this kind of passion?

5. Do you have an app yet?

2009 was the year of the app rush for marketers. Everyone from Blockbuster to ZipCar, Betty Crocker to Starbucks, and Fandango to The Food Network cooked up mobile apps for their prospects and customers. In fact, well over a hundred brands joined the fun, some with pragmatic extensions of their service offering (like FedEx mobile) and others with engaging entertainment to enhance their brand perceptions (like Scion’s AV Radio). Given the low development costs of mobile apps and the millions of smart phone users, there is still time to get app happy. And while you’re at it, check out the newly launched CALL THE SHOTS iPhone app that Renegade developed for HARLEM, the new ice cold shot drink imported from Holland. It’s fun, it’s free and it’ll answer the question—how lucky are you really?

6. Did you know Renegade moved?

Back in September we said goodbye to Chelsea Market, our home for 10 years and moved to our new digs in the heart of Greenwich Village, just south of Bowlmor Lanes and north of Patsy’s Pizza. It seems that a few of you might not have our new address so here it is: 41 E 11th Street, 3F, NY, NY 10003-4602. Our phone numbers haven’t changed and we look forward to seeing you soon.

Happy New Year!

This much I know–the Tiger Woods-Accenture partnership was as good as it gets for brand campaigns. Launching in 2003 with the umbrella tagline “High Performance. Delivered.”, Tiger symbolized high performance delivered like no other man alive. In 2006, Accenture took their focus on performance one step further by offering up the wisdom they gained by studying 500 high performing companies. The results of this study were made available to clients and prospects elevating the campaign beyond mere branding to something of genuine value.

At this point they also evolved their theme line to the fateful “We know what it takes to be a Tiger.” I guarantee you that up until two weeks ago every Accenture employee around the world loved being associated with the greatest golfer on the planet. His standard of excellence, his clutch performance tournament after tournament undoubtedly inspired Accenture employees to deliver day after day. Accenture stands alone in its category thanks to Tiger. Now that they have dropped Tiger, they are unlikely to find a campaign that will score (pun intended) on so many levels.

For the most part, I’m not a fan of brand campaigns because they offer very little genuine value to the consumer. Most people tune them out because they talk at the consumer and don’t encourage a dialog. That said, a few cut through because of the massive media weight they receive and or the magnetic presence of a celebrity like Tiger. Of those types of brand campaigns, believe it or not, my favorite was Accenture’s use of Tiger Woods.

Undoubtedly the Tiger campaign hastened the demise of BearingPoint who’s sponsorship of Phil Mickelson paled in comparison. Tiger out drove Phil on and off the course. It wasn’t even competitive. Accenture is on the map. BearingPoint is out of business. And both were started within a year of each other. When BearingPoint started to go downhill, its consultants simply walked out with their clients because neither had allegiance to the brand. The Accenture brand, on the other hand, is bigger than any single consultant, thanks in large part to its association with Tiger.

Admittedly the Tiger brand is now tarnished. Can Tiger redeem himself? Of course. America loves come back stories. Look at Robert Downey, Jr. Look at Hugh Grant. Look at A-Rod. He just needs to take a page out of the Scarlet Letter, the Nathaniel Hawthorne classic in which the heroine is forced to wear an A for Adulterer on her sweater but through her good deeds transforms it into A for Able and ultimately A for Angel. I fully expect Tiger to regain the good graces of his golfing fans sometime soon. While I can’t predict how long this will take, I can say with certainty that the A on his chest will no longer stand for Accenture.

Looking ahead to 2010, marketers will be facing Olympic hurdles that will require steadfast agility just to stay in the game, much less to hit the finish line ahead of the competition. Here are 10 ideas, wrapped in Olympic glory that should deliver the gold.

1. Social Media: A Marathon, Not a Sprint
Hoping to become fast friends with their targets, a lot of brands rushed into Facebook and Twitter in the last 24 months without investing sufficient time or resources. In 2010, savvy marketers will increase their commitment to social media by first listening and then offering up a steady stream of engaging content that their fans actually want. This will be particularly true for B2B brands, only 38% of whom included social media in their 2008 marketing plans (vs. 71% for B2C brands). With one comScore study indicating that branded social media activities can have a multiplier effect on search results, there is even a quantifiable rationale for brands to up the social media ante in 2010.

2. Mash-Ups: Taking Inspiration from Biathlons
A few innovative marketers took a shot at mash-ups in 2009. E.P. Carrillo, a new cigar manufacturer, created a mesmerizing Twitter and Google Maps mash-up for its “coming soon” site that tracks cigar tweets from around the world. In 2010, these kinds of mash-ups will become smoking hot as marketers look to extend the value of their social media activities. Recognizing that tech-savvy consumers glide seamlessly between personal and business, online and offline, mobile and desktop, farsighted marketers will bring together formerly disparate elements into a cohesive and self-perpetuating social media experience.

3. App Happy: On Your Mark, Get Set, Go Crazy
Given the success a handful of marketers enjoyed with their “apps” in 2009, expect a blaze of new entries in 2010. iPhone apps that provide demonstrable utility like Kraft’s iFood Assistant recipe finder, Benjamin Moore’s color matcher and Zipcar’s GPS-based car finder will continue to gain traction. Expect more app’s that integrate with other social media like the Gap StyleMixer that allows you to mix and match clothes and share them with friends on Facebook. And don’t forget the non-iPhone universe. The steakhouse Maloney and Porcelli cooked up a humorous and somewhat deviant web-based app at Expense A Steak that extrudes faux expense reports with stunning verisimilitude.

4. Measure Up: Track Every Second
With more dollars earmarked for social media, marketers will undoubtedly use new tools to monitor the conversations that are happening with or without them. Radian6 and Scout Labs emerged in 2009 as two of the leading social media monitoring tools. MolsonCoors uses Radian6 to stay on top of all the banter about its major brands, allowing them to respond with remarkable speed to one of my blog posts about a Coors Light Twitter account that turned out to be unofficial. And while these tools are great, each requires a sizeable commitment by the marketer in time of staff, a commitment that can and does pay off. Just ask JetBlue who manages to enhance customer loyalty daily by responding to any and every customer Tweet within minutes, following 117,000 on Twitter, and in the process generating over 1.3 million followers.

5. POV Power: Don’t Just Talk the Talk
While lots of brands raced into social media in 2009, few established true connections with their targets. The reality is that consumers engage with brands that they like on a visceral level and that provide a distinct perspective on the world. Aflac’s Duck quacks up a gaggle of quirky content, including charitable requests that appeal to over 161,000 fans on Facebook and 3,000+ followers on Twitter. Meanwhile, Geico’s Gecko has been left in the social media dust due to its surprisingly dry (twitter.com/geico) and unresponsive (facebook.com/geico) online voice. Ironically, a brand by definition is a point-of-view that once clearly defined should guide all communications, social or otherwise.

6. Expose Yourself: Win the Crowd With Honesty
The emergence of several “tell all” consumer-created sites signals the arrival of a new era of honesty and transparency – especially for brands targeting those under 35. Sites like fmylife.com, textsfromlastnight.com and MyParentsJoinedFacebook.com reflect a generation willing to bare and share all without the least trepidation. Even the emergence of “Untag Mondays” speaks to the socially acceptable norm of posting embarrassing content that one might not want a parent or employer to see. Marketers that share this sense of honesty, that admit mistakes and address shortcomings in real-time will find a youthful army of comrades willing to do their bidding. As Comcast discovered, this kind of honesty can even transform a PR nightmare (comcastmustdie.com) into an industry-leading customer service (http://twitter.com/comcastcares.)

7. Hold the Presses: Major Comebacks are Possible
Though a 50% decline in ad pages certifies 2009 as the worst year in its history, don’t write off print as a viable media channel just yet. Over 80% of US consumers still subscribe to at least one magazine and 83% believe newspapers are still relevant. Experimenting with video in print pubs like Entertainment Weekly is but one of the ways certain magazine segments will hold onto their targets and satisfy their advertisers. Fashion magazines and enthusiast pubs continue to offer a visual showcase that is far superior to what most e-pubs can serve up. Models, both human and auto, simply look prettier in print. And while P&G shut down its 72-year-old TV soap opera Guiding Light in 2009, they are cranking up the presses with the custom published glossy, Rouge, which expects to reach a whopping 11 million North American households in 2010.

8. Go to the Video: Separate from the Pack
The emergence of viral video rankings in 2009 reflected the mainstreaming of this approach to audience engagement. While everyone and their branded brother aspired to cut through with a viral hit, surprisingly few found an audience. In 2010, marketers will undoubtedly crank out more of the same while a savvy few will worry less about mass reach and focus more on grass roots appeal, providing content that their core target really wants. B2B marketers in particular will find that using informative videos that transform the complicated into the comprehensible, like Commoncraft’s Plain English videos, will generate quality leads from grateful prospects.

9. Mobile Media: Catching Up at Last
Despite all the hype by this author and others, less than a third of marketers had a budget for mobile in 2009. In 2010, smart phone penetration should rise to at least 25% (from 17% in Q2 ‘09) making it a lot easier to deliver a rich mobile experience worthy of consumer attention. The blending of mobile and social apps like Facebook, Loop’d and Twitter has also created a new openness towards this medium.
Given the desirable demographics (18-34, HH income $75k+) of smartphone owners, at minimum, marketers should give strong consideration to creating a mobile friendly website, thus allowing prospects to engage whenever and wherever they happen to be.

10. Be Positive: Attitude is Everything
While honesty is a worthy friend to marketers, don’t forget that almost no one wants to date a Debbie Downer. A recent poll by Adweek/Harris found “relative little enthusiasm and lots of indifference for ads that refer to the downturn.” Even if the economy is slow to recover in 2010, find the silver lining for your customers and prospects with both words and actions. Like the athletes whose positive outlooks and superior skills propel them to victory, so, too, can marketers find success with an upbeat message and an unimpeachable value proposition.

May 2010 Serve You Well
While 2009 hasn’t been much fun for most marketers, there are many reasons to be optimistic about the approaching year. There are more ways than ever to engage with consumers and a new willingness from consumers to engage with brands. Marketers are showing a renewed desire to listen to their customers and offer “marketing as service” that favors the dissemination of meaningful value over disruptive messaging. So here’s to serving your customers but serving up some great marketing in 2010!

DonQ, a rum brand, recently launched a clever web campaign that answers some of the “tougher” questions men face today like how often to call their mothers and how quickly after the break-up can you ask a buddy’s ex out. The answers are provided by a large panel of ladies who’s responses can be segmented by age, relationship status, region, education, personal style and even “socialization.” According to a report by MediaPost, the campaign is designed to “engage men where they live these days — online and on their mobile phones.”

Word-of-mouth for the service — and further engagement with the brand — is being built via social media, including Facebook and Twitter and newer comers such as Foursquare, Tumblr, BuzzFeed, Nerve, Mixologist, HappyHoured and The Deck Network.

Given that the liquor category tends to be heavily reliant on on-site promotions and sampling and “one-way” advertising, there was “a clear space” for DonQ to enter with a service-oriented marketing perspective, adds Clay Parker Jones of New York-based digital strategy firm Undercurrent, who is the lead strategist on the project.

I’m also a fan of The Glenlivet Whisky Season Open and its smart sponsorship of the World Golf Tour program. Transporting me to the virtual dunes of St. Andrews, The Glenlivet introduced me to a highly engaging online golf game that is both challenging and addictive. Though I didn’t take the time to perfect my virtual swing, you can tell by the Leader Board that thousands have, no doubt many of them ending their round with a proper toast to their host, The Glenlivet.

Jack Daniel’s created an interesting “toast” application in celebration of the founders September birthday. Over 6,000 toasts were sent and this effort helped the brand attract over 370,000 fans on Facebook! Here’s a brief overview from MediaPost:

The “Give A Toast” application analyzes a user’s Facebook friend list, uses their profiles to automatically screen out any friends under 21, and identifies friends to toast based on their profile information or activities on the network. The user’s friends are ranked into seven categories based on their data: social friend, photogenic friend, musical friend, mysterious friend, all-around friend, active friend or interesting friend.

The app does all of the work for the user: No need to answer questions or manually select friends to send toasts to. The toast and the Jack Daniel’s cocktail selected by the user are posted on friends’ Facebook walls. The app also identifies those friends who have September birthdays, and encourages users to toast them.

I have lots more examples but will have to save them a later post.  In the meantime, cheers to the brands who DO something for their target versus those who just SAY something.  As the old sage advised, “actions speak louder than words.”

Really helping your customers pays off
Marcy Shinder, VP-brand management at American Express OPEN describes their Marketing as Service activities as “earned media,” noting that “we put something out there that is so valuable, people share it on their own.” Establishing a revamped OpenForum.com as a resource to help small businesses, AmEx added Connectodex, an online tool that 1,000 small businesses have already used to connect with customers and partners. Shinder also makes sure that “anything that you see from AmEx is news that you can use.” Now that’s a commitment worth getting charged up about!

Do well by doing good
David Bills, CMO of DuPont, spread the word about the brand’s sustainability products like Tyvek by helping to rebuild the town of Greensburg, Kansas. Devastated by a tornado in 2007, Greensburg became “an environmental showcase” with DuPont pouring in $750,000 worth of construction materials and countless employee hours working through Habitat for Humanity. The reward for DuPont came via a Discovery Channel documentary on the rebuilding of Greensburg and a 6-minute feature on ESPN that ensured their good deeds were well known.

Get out and touch your target
Judith Sim, CMO of Oracle Corp., rose above the down economy by staying “very focused on the high-touch.” Executing 7,000 events around the globe, Oracle hosted lunches, road shows, and roundtable discussions that enabled “conversation with customers face to face and at many different levels.” Featuring “high-level content” delivered by top tier Oracle execs (including the CEO), attendance at the 2009 events increased 22% versus 2008 and customer deals that could be linked to these marketing activities hit an all-time high of 72%.

Think global, act social
Paul Dunay, Global Managing Director at Avaya, directed marketing away from interruptive messaging and into “packaging great, innovative ideas.” To do this, Avaya created “social content and social objects that can be shared,” including high-level events and premium research papers that customers and prospects found useful. A major proponent of social media, Paul noted that just by monitoring the buzz about Avaya on Twitter they were able to engage a hot prospect and “closed that deal within 13 days.”

When all else fails, save the planet
John Kennedy, VP-Corporate Marketing at IBM, served up a “hopeful message for the world” with Big Blue’s “Smarter Planet” global initiative. More than mere messaging, this campaign set an agenda for governments and businesses to seek more efficient systems and followed it up with SmarterCities summits around the world. IBM also matched its “Big Green” POV with a new division, Business Analytics and Optimization, that helps businesses deal with all their data. Enlisting the support of the blogging community, IBM found actively engaged accomplices to spread the word.

In fairness to Bacardi, their new “Island” spot is featured on their website, on their Facebook fan page and on Twitter. But ironically, here you have an ad that shows “hip and spirited” young adults creating their very own party island which looks like a ton of fun and all the viewer can do is watch. There is no way for the target to actually participate, no way for them to engage with the brand on any meaningful level.

If you visit their YouTube, Facebook or Twitter pages, you’ll begin to understand what I mean. All of these Bacardi pages talk at the consumer rather than inviting conversation. There seems no intent on listening or engagement. A consumer question on YouTube about the music in the TV spot is left unanswered. Each of their recent posts promotes the new “Island” TV spot or a review of said spot. These posts are dry and factual without any of the spirit showcased in the ad, without a point-of-view that could attract future interest.

Beyond the apparently slapped on social media effort, the campaign screams for promotional components that extend the idea of a perfect party island. Maybe these are in the works, maybe not. Will there be a chance to win your own party island, in the Caribbean or at a local bar? Can we anticipate a “mobile social” mash-up with Loop’d that gathers friends for a spontaneous island party? MediaPost reports that we can expect an iPhone app but will this be more than the wallpaper downloads offered on their website? Should we look forward to on-premise and off-premise islands of activity? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Bacardi is not a client of ours but boy do I think they could benefit from a little Renegade thinking. Their “hip and spirited” target is merciless with their time and brand evaluations. They can smell an insincere social media commitment a mile away. But they do love a party. Turn the Island campaign into a archipelago of adventure and they’ll drink in all you’ve got to offer at every point of contact.

The teacher of this class was a high-energy whiz, emphasizing the science over the politics. This class was clearly not a walk in the park but rather one to rival the challenges of biology and chemistry. As she described the curriculum, she noted that the first semester was reasonably upbeat as they learned about earth science, eco-systems, weather and population dynamics. Then she moved to the 2nd half of the year, that often provoked the reaction from her students, “isn’t there anything we do as humans that doesn’t wreck the planet?”

I left the room thinking, well at least my son and his buddies will have a thorough understanding of the challenges and maybe just maybe they’ll take the time to do something about it. I also left the room thinking maybe being one day late for a blog post on climate change wasn’t all that terrible since 32,000 other bloggers reached 18 million readers yesterday. Good for them, good for us.

And just case you want to know a bit more about blogactionday here are some highlights from the organizers:

We count at least three major world governments as active participants in this year’s event. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown posted the first Blog Action Day entry in Britain at the stroke of midnight this morning, which was followed by Foreign Minister David Milliband and many others from the UK stationed around the world. The PSOE governing party of Spain hosted a bloggers event focused on climate change and transformed their website for the day to promote Blog Action Day. And late in the day, President Barack Obama’s White House blog joined in become part of the global movement of bloggers shaking the web.

Of course, well-known bloggers were a big presence today as well. Check out the Featured Posts on the blogactionday.org homepage for an extensive list, which includes The Official Google Blog’s green tour of the company’s campus, Mashable’s post asking what you’re doing to reverse climate change, and The Unofficial Apple Weblog’s suggestions for “Five apps to help save the world.”

Have a climatically friendly weekend.

Great experiential marketing programs

Experiential marketing comes in a lot of flavors which makes it tough to generalize what makes a program great. For some clients, it is enough to have created an engaging trial-focused experience during which the consumer consumes the product or service in a reasonably memorable fashion. For others, the ultimate goal is buzz, as measured by PR coverage, word of mouth or on occasion trade reactions. Still others seek to establish a continuing relationship with the target, so online registration becomes the ultimate measure of effectiveness. A truly great program, in my opinion, does all of the above and then some.

A truly great experiential program first and foremost is so appealing the consumer wants to engage with the brand. It is the opposite of disruptive advertising which like an unwanted door-to-door salesman intrudes into the home. Great experiential marketing is not shoving a donut in someone’s face on the street and then saying “try our bank.” To be appealing, marketers need to offer a reasonable exchange of value, during which the consumer gives up his/her time while the brand provides the experience and usually some free stuff!

Done correctly these experiences can have exponential impact which is important since 1:1 experiences can be pricey. If an experience is targeted at the right influencers, then these influencers will undoubtedly share their experiences. If the physical experience has an online component, then there is an opportunity for both WOM and a deeper relationship with that consumer. If an experience is sufficiently newsworthy, millions of other interested parties can be influenced by the event(s).

Renegade’s rules of thumb for a great experience are as follows:

• the experience is fresh enough that the press wants to write about it;
• the experience is relevant to the story you want to tell about the brand;
• the experience has legs well beyond one single event and/or one single communication channel;
• the experience is entertaining and enlightening;
• the experience is so engaging that the consumer wants tell his/her friends about it.

This is not about just getting attention. There is an old adage in our business, “If you want attention, put a gorilla in a jockstrap and stand him on a street corner.” This is about engagement. Mutually beneficial engagement.

Lots of industries are turning to experiential marketing

Food and beverage companies are old hands at this since sampling is essential to growing their businesses. Brands like Pepsi AMP go to extreme lengths to sample their product to the right target–they handed out as many as 5 million samples this summer. Alcohol brands are creating mini-experiences in bars, clubs and restaurants with extraordinary frequency across the US. Entertainment companies like to include experiential programs in the mix often with the hope of creating a “must see” buzz prior to launch. B2B brands are also crafting experiences with greater frequency (examples available if you need them).

Lately, we’ve been noticing a lot of brands pulling from the Experiential 101 Playbook:

• The World Record—Wise potato chips set the world record for most chips crunched at the same time at a Mets game this summer. Not exactly New York Times material but surely some pub out there besides the Guinness Book was interested.

• The Pop-Up Store–Southwest Airline is the latest airlines to set up a pop-up in Manhattan theirs being a café-like setting in Bryant Park. Now defunct Song tried a pop-up store in 2004—unfortunately the store experience was better than the airline itself.

• User Generated Content—a lot of experiential programs start by asking the consumer to create some kind of content. HSBC’s Soap Box and JetBlue’s Story Booth (both by JWT) ask the man on the street to provide their points-of-view. This “content” was then turned into ads and online communications. A smaller scale example comes from a small Canadian Beer Company called Okanagan Beer that challenged consumers to tell them why the brand should sponsor their events/parties. This content was then repurposed into a 360° campaign and sales jumped 30% — this is definitely on my list of “wish we’d done that.”

There are lots of ways to measure experiential marketing

As for research, there are so many different kinds of experiences and a corresponding amount of measurement tools depending on the objectives. We like to use Net Promoter Score on a pre/post basis as a measure of the experience itself. We have seen 30-40 point swings in likeliness to recommend a brand to a friend after exceptional experiences. In theory, every brand can measure the value per customer gained and/or the value of increased loyalty per customer. For example, if a brand experience makes you twice as likely to buy and/or recommend a brand, then one can compute the increase in lifetime value of that customer. That said, the math can get fuzzy pretty quickly. That’s why PR coverage is so important. Great press coverage can extend the reach of a program, making it more comparable to measuring the effectiveness of a media or PR program.

Latest trends in experiential marketing

First, mobile devices are becoming integral parts of brand experiences. An iPhone app can start an experience. An in-bar trivia contest answered via text messages can start an engagement. Mobile is part of a bigger trend to integrate technology into the experience and extend beyond the physical into the virtual world. Event experiences are often extended via Facebook and Twitter programs. Event experiences can be used to introduce on online extension, like Frito/NFL’s hunt for the most “fanatical football family.” And of course, social media is playing an ever increasing role in starting and extending brand experiences. An experiential program Renegade created for Toasted Head wine has evolved into an on-going Facebook program that keeps the faithful engaged.

Second, microevents are starting to get big. Royal Caribbean held 1000+ “Cruisitude” parties at homes of former cruisers. As I mentioned earlier, alcohol brands are hosting small events at bars almost nightly to engage their targets.

Where to start

Marketers are best to start with “the why,” not “the how.” If they know why they want to create experiences then it is much easier to figure out the how. If trial is key, then the experience can be built around that. If they are doing it to stretch marketing dollars, then getting buzz & PR should probably be the top priority. From there, we recommend marketers focus on “the do,” not “the say.” What is it that you can do for your target that will make them want to engage with you? Sometimes “the do” is just free stuff but often “the do” can be more substantial. Sports car owners like to drive fast but rarely get to do it legally. “The do” for BMW was a Performance Driving School for its customers. Road warriors scamper about airports looking for places to charge their gear. “The do” for Samsung was charging stations in airport terminals.

CFOs face flood of flawless faux receipts http://pic.gd/7ab1a9; ExpenseASteak.com vies for guerrilla site of 2009 http://bit.ly/IsLY3

Today’s AdAge article on ExpenseASteak.com by Bob Garfield reminded me of both the brilliance and limitations of Twitter. While Tweets are timely treats, they simply can’t deliver the whole meal. My tweet tried to call attention to both the ethical issues and the sublime cleverness of Expense A Steak.com and did neither very well. And since I don’t have a lot of time at the moment, I’m going to borrow a few of the highlights from Garfield’s review.

Just in case you haven’t visited the site for yourself, here’s how Garfield described it:

Go to expenseasteak.com and fill in the obscenely large amount of your Maloney & Porcelli meal. Out will come a PDF of receipts for exactly that amount — innocuous (and extremely realistic) proof of purchases for taxis, panini lunches, office supplies, business books and so on. Accounting doesn’t ask why you’ve bought $700 worth of anti-static floor mats and toner? That’s their problem

And here’s Garfield’s appraisal of the stunt:

We LOVE this thing. It is brilliant. It is charming. It is hilarious. In short, it is brothermucking genius.

And here’s Garfield’s acknowledgment of the potential ethical dilemma of putting highly realistic looking phony expense reports into the hands of meat lovers and vegetarians alike:

All right, granted, the 61,000 phony receipts downloaded over the first four days might suggest the stunt is actually being slightly “abused” for a touch of “fraud” by a few tens of thousands of bad-apple “thieves.” But, c’mon. Expense-a-Steak apps don’t defraud corporations. People defraud corporations. In the meantime, Maloney & Porcelli is suddenly on the lips of those who hitherto could remember only Smith & Wollensky, preempting its major competitor into a corner. Because how to top expenseasteak.com?

From my perspective, ExpenseASteak.com is a rather clever and potentially degenerate example of Marketing as Service. It is unquestionably relevant both to the economic times and the restaurant brand it supports. It is remarkably entertaining–be sure to print out your own receipt and read some of the clever details baked into them. It also delivers the basic service of creating fake expense reports which is humorous until people actually turn them in at which time it becomes a nightmare for CFOs–proving once again that “everything is funny until it happens to you.”

Which begs the question: will companies send Maloney & Porcelli the bill when false expense reports are actually filed using their cute little app? Or will consumers sue Maloney & Porcelli when they lose their jobs after submitting false expense reports? Hopefully none of this will happen but stunts like this can go bad–just ask Toyota who is getting sued because of a Matrix prank campaign that according to AdAge terrified one consumer. Evidently, she missed the joke. Just in case someone misses the expense joke, I hope that Walrus, the NYC-based agency that created the site, carries as much liability insurance as we do!

American Express, one of the true believers in this approach, is at it again, this time providing exclusive experiences during New York’s Fashion Week, including a fashion show by Phillip Lim.  This is a text book case on how to do Marketing as Service as reported by MediaPost:

The exclusive cardmember-only consumer show by Lim will be hosted by André Leon Talley, editor at large for Vogue magazine, and Linda Fargo, senior vice president, fashion office and store presentation for Bergdorf Goodman.

The event will provide cardmembers with access to the coveted floor seats. Along with Lim, the evening’s hosts will open the event by offering expert insights from their respective designer, editorial and retail perspectives on a selection of 3.1 phillip lim looks currently available at retail

In addition to this one-time event, AmEx is extending exclusive access to fashion experts:

…including Project Runway’s Tim Gunn — to speak directly with cardmembers. Throughout this week, Platinum Card and Gold Card members will be given an up-close view of the runway shows from the Jonathan Adler-designed American Express Skybox under the Tents at Bryant Park, where they will meet with designers and industry experts who will help translate the looks they are seeing on the runway into their personal style.

By Invitation Only experiences provide an even deeper look into the world of fashion via coordinated meet-and-greets with elite insiders, a behind-the-scenes tour of the Tents at Bryant Park and hair and makeup touch-ups done by industry professionals who work backstage with the designers and models throughout the week.

Wisely, AmEx is also showing its commitment to the fashion industry:

American Express will donate proceeds from the sale of event invitations as part of its $250,000 donation to the Council of Fashion Designers of America/Vogue Fashion Fund, a program (of the council) to help emerging American designers succeed in the business of fashion by providing ongoing support.

Reinforcing their commitment to personalized VIP service, cardmembers can also avail themselves to American Express concierge who will be in the lobby throughout Fashion Week:

The concierge can provide cardmembers with access to highly coveted reservations at a selection of New York’s restaurants across all five boroughs, as well as transportation and additional hospitality needs.

And for customers who simply can’t make it to NYC, AmEx is posting videos of the show online exclusively for cardmembers.  This will also significantly extend the life of this service.

Frankly my dear readers, it would be hard to design an example of Marketing as Service any better than this.

RadioShack to launch rebranding effort as The Shack

RadioShack is trying to turn up the volume on its image by turning off the “Radio” and calling itself “The Shack.” Not to be confused with the Shaq who’s famous in basketball circles, The Shack apparently is a nickname that employees, customers and investors have used for RadioShack.

The Fort Worth-based consumer electronics chain’s rebranding effort begins Thursday with a national television, print and digital campaign and the start of a three-day launch event in New York’s Times Square and San Francisco’s Justin Herman Plaza.

The bicoastal hoopla will include 14-foot laptops hooked up to webcams for live video and audio exchanges. The company isn’t changing the name of its stores. Chief marketing officer Lee Applbaum said the nickname is an attempt at “contemporizing the way we want people to think about our brand.”

“The Shack speaks to consumers in a fresh, new voice and distinctive creative look that reinforces RadioShack’s authority in innovative products, leading brands and knowledgeable, helpful associates,” he said. The company believes it has “tremendous equity in consumers’ minds around cables, parts and batteries,” Applbaum said. Now it needs to get consumers thinking about its ability to keep them “connected in this highly mobile world.”

Ads in the campaign will focus on mobility and wireless products from AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Apple, BlackBerry and Samsung. “Radio Shack is in a desperate battle to remain relevant,” said Drew Neisser, chief executive of Renegade, a New York-based brand marketing agency.

“The name RadioShack is a quaint artifact in a rapidly evolving marketplace in which mobile devices have become the CE [consumer electronics] portal. Using The Shack as a nickname is a bid to update its image and represent the passion loyalists have for the brand,” he said.

However, company leaders may be “hedging their bets,” he said.

When Federal Express decided to become FedEx, consumers had already been calling the company that, and using the shortened name was a no-brainer, Neisser said.

“If consumers are really already using The Shack, then why not commit fully?” he said. “The only reason I can think of is that they are worried about abandoning the awareness and any positive equity remaining with their old name.” Using The Shack in ads only, “the whole thing could come across as forced at best and confusing at worst,” Neisser said.

The creative campaign was developed by Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners of Sausalito, Calif., which was named RadioShack’s creative agency of record in April.

The limits of Twitter for brands are as vast as the opportunities. Public companies have to be extremely sensitive to not violating SEC guidelines since every Tweet could sway investor opinion one way or the other. Big brands also face the challenge of finding a voice that is both worth following and true to the brand. Most brands that Twitter offer up banal and self-serving content that is devoid of personality. These kind of adver-tweets simply add to the clutter and do nothing to involve the consumer. They do not create an opportunity for dialogue. They do not entertain, enlighten or engage. Compare that to the VW Twitter tool that prescribes a VW model after analyzing your tweets. This is both entertaining and engaging. Another issue brands need to acknowledge with Twitter is that most Tweets go unread and are lost to the universe. This is simply the price of entry in this ethereal nexus of monologue, dialogue and epilogue.

Another limitation of Twitter is that it might not reach your intended target. If you are an alcohol brand targeting 21-29-year-olds, you may be surprised how slowly this demo has been to adopt Twitter relative to older generations. That said, if you are a mutual fund targeting boomer males between 48-55, you might find your bulls-eye here since this group indexes quite high on Twitter.

Dive in Anyway

All that said, every brand should have some presence on Twitter for any one of the following reasons:
-customer service (Comcast, JetBlue, Starbucks, H&R Block, BestBuy)
-crises management (Domino’s)
-news & promotions feed (Dell, Molson)
-customer engagement (Zappos, Whole Foods)
-to drive web traffic (Samsung, Marvel)
-dissuade impostors (lots of consumers are pretending to be brands Capt’nMorgan, CoorsLight)

Tweet From Your Point of View

To be effective on Twitter, brands like people need to have a distinct point-of-view. This point of view needs to be rooted in a brand truth and enable the brand to speak with clarity for and against certain topics. Once they can define their point of view, finding something worthwhile to tweet about is relatively easy. Keep in mind that the brand does not need to generate all original content, but rather it can add its own particular flavor to existing news items. Sharing this content with brand-appropriate commentary via Twitter can be a genuine service to prospects and customers alike.

Tide Detergent might take the point of view that no matter how much dirt gets thrown, they’ll be there to clean it up and provide links from literal messes (Twitpic links to muddy disasters) to figurative messes (like the situation in Albany). Bud Light could take the point of view that every one accomplishment big or small is worth celebrating and then call attention to minor accomplishments with text/photo links (here’s to you Mr. Dressed Like You’re Ready to Take Center Court Guy).

1. Deliver news

Presumably, if someone bothers to follow a brand, first and foremost that individual wants to have the inside track on news about brand related activities. Depending on your category, the news could be related to product development, distribution changes, customer successes, promotions, stock price or what have you. This is the very essence of PR, you either have news or you create it. Twitter is a great channel to deliver that news as @DellOutlet with 760,000 followers demonstrates daily.

2. Manage Crises

You never know when a wacky employee might stick a piece of cheese up his nose, drop it on a pizza and then serve the sizzling video up on YouTube. While this particular example presented a challenge for Domino’s, every mass brand is vulnerable and needs to have a crises management plan in place. These days, Twitter should be part of that plan as it provides one of the fastest ways to mount a counter-attack to your core audience. Domino’s set up the Twitter account, @dpzinfo, after the fact but was still able to use it as part of its effort to successfully defuse the crisis.

3. Enhance Customer Service

Ever since Bob Garfield set up his Comcast Must Die blog, at least one company has come to see customer service via social media as a “must have” versus “nice to have” component of their on-going marketing activities. Comcast, which went from laggard to leader in this area, created a digital customer service director, Frank Eliason, who as the voice of @ComcastCares now has over 24,000 followers. JetBlue, another brand that faced a PR crises after an extraordinary service gaff, has become a huge voice on Twitter, engaging over 780,000 loyalists with a steady stream of helpful twavel tweets.

4. Build Loyalty

While cynics might say “get a life,” a lot of people enjoy engaging with their favorite brands on Twitter. In fact, one study found that 97% of Twitterers think brands should Twitter and 80% feel comfortably recommending a brand based on its presence on Twitter. Twitter can give a real voice to a brand and provide a level of engagement that goes well beyond the initial purchase. @WholeFoods cooks up healthy tips for its ravenous followers (907,000+) faster than an Emeril “bam!”

5. Drive web traffic

Twitter need not be an end in and of itself. In fact, it is a great way to start a conversation with your customers and prospects, a conversation that can be continued elsewhere. If the tweet is tantalizing enough, the consumer will thirst for more and follow you just about anywhere you suggest. @Marvel directs its 28,000+ fans to a variety of other Marvel sites including its official home on Flickr pages, “free Monday” comics posts and online polls on Marvel News. I have also since this work on a microlevel as my Twitter posts dramatically increase my blog traffic.

Keep in mind that the costs of keeping up a Twitter account are quite small compared to brand advertising. Of course, the reach is too unless you can achieve the kind of followings that Zappos and JetBlue enjoy. And that begs the question “how brands should Twitter” which I’ll just have to leave for another day or cocktail party, whichever comes first.

• @BaconVodka: Living up to its porcine name, Bakon Vodka provides tasty drink recipes while keeping their 2,055 followers informed on where and when they can buy this product.
• @MR1X supports a relatively new line extension from Belvedere Vodka that is imbued with the lifestyle of Parisian graffiti artist Andre. With over 880 followers, the tweets track Andre’s world travels and endless nightlife. MR1X aggressive use of Twitter, Flickr and YouTube may make it the first generation of truly social media-driven spirits.
• @Belvedere_Vodka keeps their 539 followers buzzed with a steady stream of summer drink recipes and other self-promotions.
• @DonCenobio: This tequila brand has about 500 followers and focuses on brand-related event activity.
• @Blackbottle: This whisky brand enthusiastically covered their appearance at the Taste of London for its 353 followers which may be just enough for them.
• @CieloTequila: This Mexican based tequila has 300+followers and claims to be “the smoothest tequila on the market” but with no events listed it would be hard for anyone to know since it hasn’t updated its page in over a month.
• @NudeVodka09: This scantily veiled brand keeps its 300+ followers updated on events and new concoctions. They seemed to be more engaged than most as many of their posts are fan offered thank you’s.
• @RepublicTequila: By Texans for Texans, this brand seem to focus solely on The Lone Star state reporting on local promotions for its 230+ long horned followers.
• @SoloranzoTkila: …..Tkila…..get it? The text-friendly name is about all this tequila twitter page has to offer its 178 followers unless they’re into historical facts about tequila, such as one of its most recent posts “For many years it was known as “mezcal wine” or “mezcal tequila,” since mezcal or mexcal is another Nahuatl term for agave.”
• @PinkyVodka: Despite this vodka’s small following (only 91), their enthusiastic self-promotion of the “world’s most beautiful vodka” and constant reminders of Pinky-drink ideas lets one know how to get and what to do with this product.
• @Mragave: After reading this site’s post you will know how strong this tequila is- but not much else. With a mere 37 followers, this brand claims to be more popular in “Agave Friendliest States” like CA, TX,NY, IL,FL,AZ, and CO.

Noticeably absent from this list are any Diageo mega-brands like Smirnoff, J&B, Captain Morgan and Johnnie Walker. Since there is no way currently to “age gate” your Twitter followers, perhaps they are simply electing to “keep on walking” rather than risk the potential wrath of watchdog groups. Given the relatively small size of the followings of other spirit brands, at the moment being “ready to Tangueray” need not include tweets.

Top Wine Brands that Twitter

• @EaglesNestWine: With over 2800 followers, the owners of this Ramona, CA winery provide a steady stream of wine-related news without too much self-promotion.
• @LynFredWinery: The largest winery in Illinois (who knew?) has about 1700 followers whom they update almost too frequently with drops of relevance.
• @SokolBlosser: This Oregon winery actually engages its 1500 or so fans with an occasional provocation like “if Pinor Noir were a celebrity, who would it be?”
• @Veuve_Clicquot: True to its upscale nature, this classic bubbly indulges its 1200 or so followers with tales from VIP parties and polo matches.
• @ChalkHillEstate: This Sonoma winery offers a clear window into their wine making world complete with updates to their 900+ followers on currently blooming vegetation.
• @KimCrawford: This New Zealand-based winery, now owned by Constellation, is famous for its crisp Sauvignon Blanc, has close to 800 followers that it updates constantly with fun facts from festivals like SXSW.
• @ManoSinistra: This French wine is aggressively tracking the wine world, following about 2000 yet only gaining about a 1/3 as many followers. Since most of the posts are in French, I can’t offer much insight as to why its tweets aren’t gaining traction.

Please note that this list is by no means comprehensive and is based on the wine brands that show up in the top 250 when searching “wine” on WeFollow.com. With few exceptions, most of these wines have built up their followers by aggressively following wine people who Twitter. While there is nothing wrong with this approach, it certainly suggests that none of the wine brands themselves have cultivated an “organic” following. Clearly, the seeds of successful Twittering have just been planted and a bountiful harvest awaits the wine brands that find the recipe for enlightened engagement.

Beers that Twitter:

• @EpicBeer: this chatty New Zealand brewery has over 2200 followers and provides a steady stream of information-rich updates from the brewery (over 2200 tweets to-date)
• @GooseIsland: with over 1200 followers, this Chicago microbrewery pushes out offers on a regular basis to its fans
• @EdisonBeer: a Boston brewery with 1150+ fans that it mainly ignores tweeting only 11 times in the last 6 months
• @CrispinCider: a Minnesota beer alternative with 1100+ followers that it updates frequently with news about events and product development
• @Michelob: trying to remake itself into a craft beer, Michelob is the only national brand with over 1000 followers to whom it pushes rapid fire reminder tweets to buy, buy, buy
• @BreckBrew supports Breckenridge Brewery, a Colorado maker of craft ale with about 680 followers that are treated to tweets by a real person with whom you’d actually want to share a beer!
• @Corona_Beer has 586 followers that it hasn’t updated once
• @heinekenBeers has about 350 followers and appears just to aggregate other tweets that mention Heineken or Heiny.
• @heineken_beer calls itself a “global forum for beer” and provides a steady diet of updates from Heineken related activities around the globe to its 250 or so followers.
• @budweiser: the king of beers snubs its 214 followers with nary an update. Whassup with this?
• @summerbration: Corona’s promotional site has attracted nearly 200 followers in under a month as it offers a daily tip on how to celebrate the summer with Corona of course!

It probably shouldn’t be a surprise that the craft beers tend to lead the way having the most loyal and engaged fan base. These seem to be manned by real people who like talking about beer and the craft of beer making. The big brands either don’t bother to have a voice or it’s so forced like Michelob’s that it is actually off-putting. Given that Twitter hasn’t taken off among 21-29 year old males yet, these bigger brands aren’t necessarily missing out…yet. Also, many of these brands like Bud and Coors have done an admirable job building up and engaging their fan bases on other social media like Facebook and MySpace.

Before I wrap up, I wanted to raise the issue of brands following people. Personally, I’m still a little startled when a brand and not a person elects to follow me on Twitter. Some of the beer brands listed above have been aggressive in this area. For example, Epic follows 2109, Edison follows 1997 and Michelob follows 1097. This activity has driven up their follower numbers but in doing so also diminishes the power of their fan base. More impressive are the brands like Goose Island and Breckenridge Brewery who only follow 5 and 53 respectively yet have hundreds of followers.

Bottom line: Twitter is an opportunity for brands to engage with people as if they were people. To do this well requires the brands to behave like real friends not aggressive pitch men. If a brand elects to follow someone, it should have a good reason, a basis for introduction and not drop in out of nowhere like an uninvited guest. Just like people who tweet, brands should avoid becoming a Twitcher or Twitter Whore by maintaining a healthy following to followers ratio. Cheers.

UPDATE 6/15: @coors_light is not run by the folks at Coors so I took it off the list. See comment from the company below. Also, Molson is taking a multi-tweet approach with the following major brand tweeters:

• @MolsonFerg: Molson’s VP of Public Affairs has 2100+ follower.
• @toniahammer: Community relations, PR and social media girl for Molson has 1700+ followers.
• @MolsonMoffat: Manager of Brand & Marketing PR at Molson and member of Molson’s social media team has 800+ followers.

UPDATE 7/13: Got some leads on microbrewers that tweet – and boy, do they ever!

• @magichat: 8,301 followers
• @StoneBrewingCo: 6,401 followers
• @FlyingDog: 7,529 followers
• @lakefront: 1,052 followers
• @HornyGoatBrewCo: 827 followers
• @RogueAles: 2,751 followers
• @Tyranena: 188 followers
• @newbelgium: 6,720 followers

The CMO has evolved from Chief Miracle Officer to Chief Minutia Officer. The CMO used to be charged with creating a marketing miracle, finding that magical ad campaign that would have a multiplier effect on awareness, excite the trades and ultimately drive sales. If the CMO couldn’t deliver such a campaign either he/she or the agency lost their jobs and replacements were found. Just about every CMO wanted a mass media brand-building campaign like the Aflac Duck or the Geico Gecko.

Then along came Google complete with truly measurable results and tectonic plates of marketing started to shift. Suddenly CMO’s were emboldened to say “I only want to do what produces measurable results” and the super savvy ones had a dashboard with real time information from search clicks to web traffic to online buzz to 800# calls to retail sales. Jim Garrity, the former CMO of Wachovia was on the forefront of this trend, studying all the data points with unrelenting passion. Business Week profiled Garrity back in 2006 and noted he “sounds like a man who never met a data point he didn’t like” and “Garrity and those like him are quietly reworking the advertising mix of the American corporation.”

This new kind of CMO is less interested in the monumental and more in the incremental, seeking a steady diet of singles and doubles over the infrequent but more showy grand slam. This is not necessarily a bad thing either. The more metrics that a client has in place the more likely that an agency can prove that what it does for the client actually works. It also means that the CMO has a better chance of keeping his/her job for more than 24 months. CFO’s are far more likely to increase the budget if the business case is there to justify such an increase. This methodical approach also dovetails nicely with the current “make more out of less” economy.

For the record, I applaud this new kind of CMO since they make sure marketing aligns with sales and the metrics for success are clear from the beginning.  Without these two factors in place, it will take more than a miracle for even the best of agencies to build a successful partnership.

Parents who are having trouble understanding what their teens are saying to each other via text messages have a new resource for translation. LG Mobile Phones has set up a new Web site, www.LGDTXTR.com, that gives the meaning of more than 2,000 popular text abbreviations, such as MOS (mom over shoulder), PRW (parents are watching) and RUSOS (are you in trouble).

“Teens are constantly creating new ways to communicate, and while texting is not a new phenomenon, the unique shorthand phrases that have been created as a result are growing daily,” stated Ehtisham Rabbani, vice president of product strategy and marketing for LG Mobile Phones, in a statement. “LG DTXTR (detexter) is a tool to keep everyone — young and old — current with the language, and as it grows, it enhances our understanding of what’s important to teenagers.”

Seriously, this is a fun example of Marketing as Service demonstrating that LG both sympathizes with the challenges of parenting and wants to help parents keep up with latest texting lingo. This kind of empathy and support certainly creates an opportunity for engagement that goes well beyond a :30 TV spot.

TRANSLATION OF INTRO: Without a doubt texting is about to become a process too complicated to explain. Before you know it, you will be a foreigner or a completely obsessive really nutty person.

In a sense, we’ve all been depriving ourselves of the sunshine that comes with optimism, talking about the recession as if it was an inexorable force, a cloud that simply couldn’t be blown away. We’ve bathed in recession-strategies, cynical proclaiming that a “crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” Enough already. As far as I’m concerned this recession is over.

That’s right, you heard it here first: The recession is over. Now go tell someone else. And encourage them to do the same. Think of this as a logarithmic round of “pay it forward.” The more we tell each other that the recession is over, the more we will start to believe it and the more we believe it the more real it will be.

Of course, I have no rational evidence to support this proclamation. In fact, rationality has nothing to do it. What we need now is seismic emotionality. What we need now is a tremor of mini-indulgences and perhaps an earthquake of irrational exuberance. Meet a friend at Starbuck’s and splurge on Venti Caramel Frapuccino with whipped cream just because. It’ll do you both good.

No, I did not suddenly take some happy pills. Consumer sentiment is the fuel that drives our economic engine. When we feel better, we spend. And up until recently, we’ve been reveling in our collective misery, and turning penuriousness into an oh-so-chic art form. Enough is enough. Everything is on sale. Buy something already. Nothing like a little retail therapy to shed this malaise.

Earlier I mentioned that I had no rational evidence that the recession is over. And that is true but there is plenty of evidence that our worst days are behind us. In April, consumer confidence actually “soared past forecasts” according to this Yahoo News article. Investor confidence is also growing as the Dow spends a couple of months over 8,000 and the world markets show significant gains. Add it all together and its time to shave those recession beards and let the sun shine in.

GENERAL SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING TOOLS

Social Mention aggregates user generated content from the web into a single stream of information. It drills down into these individual category levels: blogs, microblogs, bookmarks, comments, events, images, news, videos, audio, Q&A, and all.

Addict-o-matic instantly creates a custom page with the latest buzz on any social media topic on channels such as Twitter, Friendfeed, YouTube, Google Blog, Wordpress, Digg, and Flickr.

BackType is a conversational search engine. It indexes and connects conversations from blogs, social networks, and other social media so people can find, follow, and share comments.

IceRocket provides real-time blog, Twitter, MySpace, news, and images search engine with trends tracking.

BLOG MONITORING TOOLS

Google Blog Search is Google’s index of blog posts. The advanced search tab allows you to search based on additional criteria.

Trendpedia searches blogs to find out who’s discussing what, where, when and how and displays it via a blog trend chart.

BlogPulse.com is a blog search engine that also analyzes and reports on daily activity in the blogosphere. BlogPulse.com is owned by Nielsen BuzzMetrics.

TWITTER MONITORING TOOLS

Twist shows aggregated data about what people are saying about your brand on Twitter.

TweetGrid creates a Twitter search dashboard that updates in real time.

Summize, a very popular Twitter search tool, was purchased by Twitter last summer so now it’s Twitter’s official search engine.

Twithority lists Twitter search term results by rank and time.

Twitrratr categorizes searched terms into positive, neutral, and negative buckets and assigns percentages to each bucket.

Tweetbeep is like Google Alerts for Twitter. It also has an email service.

Feel free to let me know what we missed or if you think any of these don’t merit further investigation.

ADDENDUM 5/22/09

Eric von Coelln (@evcinnyc) recommends Vitrue Social Media Index and Facebook Lexicon .

Define Guerrilla PR
For Renegade, Guerrilla pr is an attitude not a tactic. It is the belief that you can make up for a lack of resources with ingenuity. As such, the possibilities are limitless even if your budgets aren’t. Like all marketing, guerrilla PR needs to be grounded in strategy with a keen understanding of your target. Once you know thy target, then ask yourself, what can you DO for them NOT what can you say to them. We call this approach Marketing as Service. Samsung figured out they could help road warriors by putting charging stations into airports. This service spoke volumes about Samsung and offered proof positive of their commitment to helping the mobile professional. KFC recently started filling potholes as a service to its customers who had to drive to their stores over bumpy roads. A Colonel Sanders look-alike did the repair work and spray painted KFC logos on the fixed potholes ensuring that the brand got lots of exposure for their efforts. Every company big or small can do something for its customers—the trick is to find something to do that is also newsworthy.

Some Emerging Categories to Consider in Non-Traditional PR Programs
There is definitely a rush by marketers to capitalize on the iPhone app craze. Zippo has enjoyed tremendous success with its virtual lighter (that you can blow on to affect the flame) and is currently the #1 downloaded app in the lifestyle segment. Kraft created the iFood Assistant which for $.99 puts 7,000 recipes at your fingertips. Consumers don’t mind paying the cost of one song if the app delivers real value. But this is definitely a category in which the early bird catches the worm. With over 25,000 apps already out for iPhones, you better make sure you have a fresh, fun and simple idea for another one.

Guidelines When Planning Guerrilla PR
Obviously knowing your target is critical to any successful marketing effort, guerrilla or otherwise. For guerrilla, it is particular helpful to understand the pain points of the target on both a general (lifestyle) and a specific (product category) basis. Knowing this will help identify things you can do for the target rather than just what to say to them. For example, we knew that New Yorkers have a love hate relationship with taxis, they love the convenience but hate to pay for them. So for HSBC customers, we created the HSBC BankCab which gives free rides all over Manhattan. HSBC customers simply can’t believe its free and feel like they’ve won the lottery and end up telling at least five friends about it after every ride.

Guerrilla PR Makes News When You Don’t Have It
Ideally, if you have some real news about your product or service, then it will be a lot easier to spread the word. If you product is better, faster, cheaper or ideally, a combination of the three, then the press will want to talk to you. If not, then you need to use marketing to create the news. And if what you are planning to do isn’t newsworthy, I would reconsider. If its not newsworthy, don’t’ bother. To make sure the press noticed the HSBC BankCab, we launched with a “search for the most knowledgeable cab driver in NY” that generated over 20 million PR impressions.

Low-Cost PR Tactics

Facebook can be very low cost and very effective for the right brands. Renegade recently created a social media program for Toasted Head Wine. Since no wine brand had gained more than 1000 friends there was a lot of question about this being the right place. But our research suggested that TH had a passionate yet down to earth following that just might enjoy engaging with the brand and other fans. Positioned as brand that can “fire things up,” our goal was to fire up Facebook providing provocative conversation starters like “its 60 minutes before the bachelor party and the stripper just canceled, now what?” The answers were hilarious and a real stripper chimed in defending the professionalism of her peers. We also used applications like Social Calendar to encourage Toasted Head fans to share their love which they did. In the first four weeks of the program, Toasted Head has picked up 3300 fans. Better yet, these fan are highly engaged, joining the conversation with “Barry the Wine guy” and leaving a steady stream of comments about their favorite variety of Toasted Head.

Twitter is another low cost option. Despite all the hype about Twitter, there is one really profound reason to use this channel and that is the role role Twitter can play in crisis management. Domino’s used Twitter and other social media to fight back when a couple of employees filmed themselves sticking cheese up there nose and then putting it on a pizza.

Real-World Tips for Incorporating Guerrilla Tactics and Techniques into Traditional Programs

As I mentioned earlier, it really helps to have a deep understanding of your target. When we developed the “Hell Cuts” program (see video) for Ubisoft’s Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway game, we were fairly confident that our hard core gamer target would do just about anything to get a free copy of this game. Sure enough, it took no persuading at all to get 157 “recruits” to have the head’s shaved and the word Hell spray painted on top. Seven of the recruits were reporters and the resulting PR coverage was extraordinary. And while this was a stunt, it related directly back to the product, a highly realistic WWII action game which required players to recruit a squadron to take on the Germans. And of course, no soldier entered the service without getting a buzz cut first.

Common Traps When Venturing into Non-Traditional Outreach
• Don’t bother with the Protest thing. Its been done a zillion times and its fake.
• Don’t bother with stunts that have nothing to do with the brand or the story your trying to tell. You can always get attention by putting a gorilla in a jock strap but unless your selling jock straps, monkey suits or bananas, find another idea to get attention you so crave.

Measurement and ROI Tips: How to Track and Show Value for Non-Traditional PR Efforts
Net Promoter Score—one simple yet instructive measure to consider is Net Promoter Score or NPS. Developed by Bain consultant Fred Reicheld who determined that customer likelihood to recommend a product/service to a friend is the single biggest factor in determining a brands success. To measure your NPS, ask your customers “on a scale of 0 to 10, how likely they would be to recommend your product to a friend.” You then add up the 9-10s and subtract them from the 0-6’s and you have a net promoter score. We use this on pre/post basis for all our programs.

Pre/Post Surveys are Mandatory

Because event marketing is “live theater,” you need to monitor impact from get the go and adjust accordingly. For 95% of the events we execute, we run pre/post experience surveys with typically under 10 questions and always including Net Promoter Score. We use Net Promoter Score to provide benchmarks from event to event and also because it is the simplest measure of potential word-of-mouth. For Panasonic which was a four-year sponsor of the AST Dew Tour, our pre/post surveys were particularly helpful. We were able to make subtle adjustments to the experience after each stop (it ran in 5 markets each year) based on the input we received from the consumer. We also made adjustments from year-to-year based on the feedback and reactions to various program elements.

For example, 2 years ago, we signed skateboarding phenom Ryan Sheckler to do appearances for Panasonic headphones at their booth and retailers. Unfortunately, the number of fans that wanted Ryan’s autograph were far greater than we could accommodate and some expressed their disappointment. We made a couple of adjustments at the next event that helped. First, we began to offer 50 VIP guarantees to anyone who purchased Panasonic headphones. Second, we added a brand ambassador to take photos for the fans to speed up the process allowing us to accommodate another 25-50 people per signing. Third, we created a couple of life-size cut-outs of Ryan that everyone could stand next too and thus get a photo with Ryan! Since we had digital cameras and printers handy, we were also able to give the consumer a positive experience even if they didn’t mean the phenom himself.

We have found that the most important thing when surveying is the speed from start to finish. As such, we have found that asking no more than 10 questions and filling out the forms with the consumers, increases both the accuracy and the timeliness of the responses. Ironically, after trying self-administered computer surveys, we went back to old fashioned clipboards. The consumer experience is better and faster and arguably the results are more accurate since the consumer tends to blow through the PC tests like they’re a joke. We are typically looking to gather 100 pre-event surveys and 100 post-event surveys per location which is sufficient to be statistically significant but not so many to make hand tabulation overwhelming.

Track Online Comments From the Beginning

It is also imperative to track blog comments. This was very much the case for the Ubisoft Brothers in Arms: Hells Highway “Hell Cuts” promotion which received comments on over 30 gaming blogs. Since all the feedback was extraordinarily positive from the opening minutes of the show, we didn’t have to make any program adjustments.

Make Adjustments to Your Experience Based on Experience

Another important aspect of measurement is less quantitative but no less important and that is having a feel for the pulse of the crowd at live events. If your experience is fun but the consumer is not getting into it, then adjustments need to be made then and there. Sometimes this means upping the volume on the music, getting your MC to spice things up with competitive giveaways or changing the way the crowd winds around the exhibit. In some cases, it can even mean replacing brand ambassadors who simply don’t have the spunk needed to create a memorable experience. It is amazing what consumers will do just for a free t-shirt so there is always something you can do to crank up the crowd.

We always budget for a senior partner at Renegade to attend the first stop on a mobile tour or a traveling trade show experience. If you have been doing this a while, then you know how to get valuable qualitative feedback from the consumer right away and make any needed adjustments within the first 24 hours. Sometimes this means working with the sales force to help them sort out the tire kickers from the real prospects. Sometimes this mean increasing the frequency of the “live show.” Sometimes this means removing a component that is bogging things down. The key thing is to make sure that everyone on the team knows that continuous improvement is not only possible but also mandatory for a successful tour.

One could argue that it is more important than ever for companies and brands to show their good side. With Wall St. crumbling, Main Street welcomes every act of kindness regardless of the source. That said, like everything in marketing, some acts work better than others. In 2007, there was spurt of Random Acts including random visits from 76ers in Philly to “Pass the Cheer” ecards from Starbucks to “Be Hospitable” acts from Hilton. Arguably, none of these provided any lasting value for the brands. And there’s the rub. If they are truly random and just a brief moment in time, the consumer quickly forgets. For random acts to work, they need to be consistently delivered and of course, quickly become the opposite of random.

Marketers who embrace “random acts” do so at their own risk. The fundamental premise of “random acts of kindness” is to do something to make another feel good while expecting absolutely nothing in return, not even gratitude. Marketing by definition is about ROI, building brand preference, sales and repeat purchase. Thus random acts that are truly random and unbranded have limited impact on the brand and those acts of kindness that are well branded are simply not considered random. So the key here is not to worry about the random and focus on the kindness. That is the very notion behind Marketing as Service. I would argue that Samsung’s charging stations in airports are as a welcome act of kindness as any offered by any marketer.

The bottom line is that consistency carries the day. Random acts might generate a quick PR hit but everyday acts of service in one form or another will actually attract and maintain paying customers.

Thank you for visiting the Miller Lite Free Rides™ web site. The Miller Lite Free Rides program is a collaborative effort between transit systems, community organizations, law enforcement agencies, civic organizations and others to help keep our streets safe and prevent drunk driving on major holidays and throughout the year.

Take advantage of a safe transportation alternative during your Derby Eve celebration on May 1st. Miller Lite Free Rides will provide evening service to many popular destinations, including the Derby Eve Jam concert on the waterfront, restaurants, bars, local family events and neighborhood celebrations.

So why then am I writing about it? Well, simply as a reminder that Marketing as Service requires just as much consistency, commitment and creativity as other marketing approaches in order to cut through.  A one-day free ride program is hardly a sincere commitment to public safety.  Because free rides have been done so often they can’t really expect much PR or points for creativity.  I’m not saying Miller is wrong for doing this just that they should be careful not to offer it up as a meaningful pro-social activity.  Now if this is the beginning of year-long program to offer free rides at major sporting events then let me know and I’ll buy a couple of six packs and toast to their health (at home, safe, far from a car!)