Digital Strategy

It's Time for Online Retailers to Support Local Communities

2010-01-06T15:51:28-05:00

From the Huffington Post:

Online retail continues to grow while local communities struggle with deep economic problems. Do these two economic trajectories have anything to do with one other? While there may not be a causal link between the two trends, it's time for online-only retailers to do the right thing: Charge and pay local sales tax.

Put very simply, the convoluted online tax system works like this: If a retailer maintains physical commercial space in a state, people who buy from its online domain are required to pay sales tax on their purchases. This is why individuals pay sales tax when shopping online from websites like Walmart or Costco.

If an online retailer does not maintain a physical presence, it does not charge and don't pay sales tax. This is why individuals don't pay sales tax when you purchasing on websites like Amazon or MacMall.

In the current system, local communities subsidize online-only retailers at the expense of bricks and mortar stores - you know, the retailers that provide jobs to the people in your community. Even more distressing, these subsidies come from local tax coffers.

It's time to change the system: All online retailers must be made to pay and charge a sales tax to help local communities.

The choice is ours, really, as consumers. What do we support more? Roads, schools and police in our cities and towns? Or 4-6% off our consumer purchases?

We may think that we're saving by embracing the rapidly growing realm of e-commerce, but in reality, we end up paying in an unacknowledged capacity - either through property taxes or increased sales tax, which hits our local retailers even harder.

Here are a few things to think about:

According to Mercent, Black Friday online sales for 2009 grew by 41% since 2008. That does not even include so-called Black Monday.
Washington Post's David Ignatius perceives the Californiazation of America, where local government don't have the will to balance spending with tax revenue, as inviting another looming financial meltdown.
Seth Godin shows succinctly how online retailers have already changed the nature of the record and bookstores. Online commerce has won here and is winning in other areas as well.

Online retailers don't need our help and don't need to be subsidized. They already offer more choice, greater convenience and more competitive pricing than brick and mortar stores. Our communities need our help. The question is whether lawmakers have the guts to legislate this much-needed change. I doubt they do. Maybe concerned local citizens should band together and publicly target and shame the sites that don't support their communities through local sales tax.

The difference between one online retailer and another is pretty slim. If the choice is between supporting my local police force and supporting some unknown corporate wonk, the choice is easy, if somewhat blunt.

And if you really don't want to pay sales tax, there's always New Hampshire, where you can basically live free or die.

Come on, online retailers. It's time to do the right thing. Pay up.

One 2010 Prediction: More of the same

2010-01-04T17:29:58-05:00

There are lots of predictions out there. Tis the season to try to guess or predict trends. Some of the predictions are exciting and I hope they come true, but if they don't someone can always use them again in 2011. I only have one prediction for 2010. We'll see more of what we saw in 2009, with everyone striving for better integration.

That may not sound like news and it's not. Companies have striven for better integration for the last 20 years (at least)! What is new is that social media provides a different type of connective tissue. The question is who will harness that power across entire organizations to

Break down silos;
Provide better and richer communication internally; and
Provide real and seamless dialogue with customers.

One question in these types of discussions is what marketing groups will lead this charge. Maybe they'll end up following instead.

You'd think that the digital folks should have the upper hand here, but they haven't always shown a graceful touch when dealing with things like product packaging or customer service. Traditional agencies should be more adept at dealing with these different internal issues, but the reality is that they're best at advertising and putting together big and simple media plans.

Integration has been the holy grail of brands and agencies. Today, we're closer than ever. My one prediction is that in 2010, we're going to start seeing examples of companies doing this in ways we've only dreamed about. Then everyone else will try to emulate the leaders.

Watch for more hybrids and less combustion. I'll bet you.

Charity begins online

2009-12-16T07:56:39-05:00

With the holiday season comes the time of donating to charities. It's not surprising that we're starting to see this in different marketing guises. Two examples in the last week caught my eye. They're very different in many ways, but they both center on the idea of charity.

I received an email from Seth Godin's Triibe letting me know that Seth's had a new book out and that we had a chance to get the book three weeks ahead of the publication date. Now, I love getting (and reading) Seth Godin books. I have the milk carton from Purple Cow and the cereal box from Free Prize Inside on my shelf. My picture is one of the multitude on the inside cover of Triibes. So of course, I jumped all over this.

The catch was that I didn't have to pay for the book, per se. I had to donate $30 to the Acumen fund. Since it was a donation, I actually donated more. Seth's goal was to raise $100,000 for the fund, and get the book into the hands of his biggest fans.

Within two days, he had raised $108,000. And all of us get the book first. Win-Win.

Around the same time, Paypal, working with the great EVB, launched a site "Regift the Fruitcake." The fun idea is that no one wants to get the dreaded fruitcake for a gift. The upside is that instead of the fruitcake, you pick your favorite charity and get your friends to donate. This all happens through social media, Facebook in particular.

Paypal provides the payment engine and gives away prizes each week. It looks like a great way to encourage people to donate to their favorite charities and to bring their friends and network along with them.

A week before Christmas, the Fruitcakes have collected close to $17,000. The biggest charity has raised a little over $2,000. There's probably a greater good will here, but it's not working as well as Seth's campaign. That might be for two reasons.

The first is that Seth targeted those of us who already were fans and had shone we'd plop down money for a book. But the fact that we get it first to review, instead of the journalists, was a free prize inside we couldn't resist.

With the Fruitcake, the person asking is a friend, not someone we look up to. And it's not clear what's in it for us, except that warm and fuzzy feeling.

Both are great ideas; don't get me wrong. But it's worth thinking about what makes great ideas work.

Twitter Ponzi

2009-12-14T07:30:33-05:00

I started using the site Twunfollow a few months back and since then I've seen evidence of what I call Ponzi schemes on Twitter.

Twunfollow sends you notices via e-mail any time anyone unfollows you on Twitter. I thought this would be a good listening tool to make sure I wasn't boring or driving off people I want to communicate with.

What I found instead showed that many, a majority actually, of my new followers unfollowed me in a day or two, especially if I didn't follow them back! Not that I mind that much, but these people didn't really care what I had to say at all. Their choice. What I do mind is that there seems to be some type of unspoken pact of "you follow me, I'll follow you" going on.

And to be honest, I felt that way when I started with Twitter as well, especially with people in my own field. But the people following and unfollowing have nothing to do with my field and, in many instances, already have upwards of 20,000 followers.

I've realized that the name of this game is building huge Twitter followings. And that wouldn't bother me except for the fact that in this early stage of social media, following size is one of the key measures of influence. Just try any of free measurement tools; most say the same thing.

If we use followers to identify key influencers, the whole system breaks down. What's worse, I see many brands following the same Ponzi scheme, trying to grow their Facebook fans to 1,000 or 10,000 by screaming out "Join Us and Raise Our Numbers." What they find is that many people are not really their fans at all and don't really care about the brand.

If you're using social media to talk to people who don't care about you, you should either stop or buy television advertising.

I'm not sure what to do about the Twitter Ponzis. But they make the metric of followers and fans into a complete joke.

Facebook is Not a Strategy

2009-12-11T07:37:52-05:00

I was reading SEO.com's post about the Top 10 Internet Marketing Strategies of 2009 the other day and they repeated something I see a lot of these days. They mixed up strategies and tactics. Number two on their list includes channels like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Having a Facebook page is not a strategy.

One challenge I find with clients interested in increasing their digital marketing, especially with social media, is that they, like SEO.com, equate a digital strategy with having a Facebook page. The intent is good but the thought process needs help.

Are you looking to allow people a better way to connect with your brand? Would you like to get more first hand feedback? Do you want to find ways you can help people spread word of mouth for your brand? Would you like a fairly inexpensive way to reward your customers with coupons, specials, or deals?

If so, then Facebook might be a good idea for you.

Do you have very vocal anti-brand groups? Are you afraid of negative criticism or have no internal mechanism for dealing with it? Does your company not really have that much to share, except for sales promotions? Do you have a lengthy and complicated response procedure?

If so, then Facebook might not be a good idea for you.

All of the tactics listed in the MarketingVox article could work great, if they match up well with your brand's objectives and strategies. If they don't match up and you move ahead without putting at least a little thought into what you're doing, you may spend too much time putting out internal and external fires and not enough time building the right kind of relationships.

We all want action, now. Usually, and especially when you spend marketing dollars, it's worth creating a thoughtful strategy first.

Go Ogle has Droid Rage

2009-12-10T07:18:27-05:00

Google launched Droid more than a month ago with a solid male-focused campaign including rockets blasting the earth. Maybe Google leading with machismo was a good idea for capturing some marketing share from Apple's iPhone. But now you have to wonder if Google hasn't gone over the line and is just plain homophobic.

The latest Droid TV spot takes clear aim at the iPhone, labeling it a "princess" phone. See below.

Google and Droid might be taking aim at another product, but they're certainly questioning everyone who uses an iPhone. According to Google, iPhones are for "girly men" (or girly girls for that matter) while real men use Droid. It's interesting to watch them break down the brand attributes as male or female

Google/Droid/Male
Fast
Tough
Can Do

Apple/iPhone/Female
Clueless
Pretty
Useless

Hmm. Actually these ads feel a lot like the ads for pickup trucks. When one of the truck brands added an extra step on the back, another brand labeled it the "man step." Only sissies use man steps, apparently. That is, when they're not using iPhones.

As Google tries to paint all of us iPhone users as pansies, you wonder if that stretches to iPod users as well. Why wouldn't it? The question is: How many Google engineers have iPods or even iPhones for that matter? It used to be that the challenge was to show that tech people weren't nerds but were kind of cool. Now, cool is for wimps. Now techies eat raw meat!

You kind of wonder what's coming next? Maybe Google/Droid will use Dick Cheney as its macho spokesman. Not only does he shoot old men in the face but also without technology, his heart would stop beating. In some way, he is a droid.

If Dick won't do it, maybe Droid could poach the iMac ads and use Patrick Warburton who played Puddy on Seinfeld. I'm thinking of the episode "The Face Painter" where the guys paint themselves to go to a hockey game. Puddy scares a priest to death by screaming "The Devils! Haaaa!!" Just change it to "Droid! Haaa!" and you may have a winner.

And once Google has manhandled Apple, you know what's coming next, right? Microsoft's Bing. Bing! You can already imagine the hockey metaphor. The LADY Bing Award for sportsmanship in hockey is like the search engine Bing. Tame and soft. But real hockey, like real search, is about tripping, slashing and elbowing. Real hockey, like Google, is about fighting and losing your teeth! Hockey without violence is, well, it sounds almost European. Ah the possibilities.

Actually, I don't think the TV ads do enough for Droid. After all they're still only TV ads. No, what Droid needs are some real hardware extensions for real men, to really distinguish them from the iPhone girly men. Here are some suggestions.

Bottle Opener - To save Real Men's teeth or eye sockets, Droid should build in a bottle opener into every phone. Then they could do co-promotions with Budweiser. Oops, I meant an American beer.

Weaponize Droid - The Droid is pretty harmless actually. It needs some type of weapon in it. Maybe Google could create the Droid Shiv, with a little stiletto that pops out. A derringer would be another cool idea. Somehow, both of those ideas seem a little wimpy. Both stiletto and derringer sound too foreign. Google should bring in the NRA into one of the vaunted Google Labs to figure that one out fast.

Inflatable Droid - How about a Droid that inflates to one of those sex dolls? Apparently they now have motors at all of the orifices. If Google could figure out a way to do Droid voice control it would give Droid Men amazing power and control. Things they don't have in real life. It wouldn't do a Droid vibrator though, since there's already an app for that. (Of course!)

With those three things, the Droid becomes more than a phone. It becomes a real man's survival tool! Wimps, sissies and princesses need not apply thank you very much. You can wuss out with your iPhones.

Maybe Google really does have Droid Rage.

Foursquare, local business, and Twitter

2009-12-04T03:48:00-05:00

A funny thing happened a few weeks ago. I was at my new favorite bakery and café August First where I usually go to do some work or to meet with my business colleagues. August First opened in, well, August and since then has actively participated in social media via Facebook and Twitter. Burlington Tweeps have held two Tweetups there and the place is rocking.

Every time I go there I check in via Foursquare to let people know I'm there. I'm currently battling it out with Lou McKenna over mayorship. I also rave about their breads, especially the Kalamata Olive bread that my daughter and I now are addicted to.

Well, a while back I started getting tweets from friends that looked like this:

What August First did was pay attention to the Twitter chatter and then reward me for it. But they didn't tell me, they put the message out and let others Tweet about it. Talk about tapping into the power of the community!

I think this is a great, smart use of social media and shows the potential of what location based services like Foursquare could mean for local businesses. August First used classic steps in social media:

They listened to what was happening on social media
They were generous in that they gave back instead of continually asking for something
They let the community do their work for them
It was fun

Of course, part of the fun was that everyone who saw this little picture below first thought I was passing bad checks ;-) And this was only a little example. Wait until some leverages this location based technology in a big way.

Are You a Responsible Marketer?

2009-12-01T13:08:38-05:00

I read an article this weekend by Paco Underhill, author of "Why We Buy" and "Call of the Mall" in which he wrote about our (U.S.) changing retail culture. I'm a big fan of Paco's and I used to buy his "Why We Buy" book for all of my colleagues. I think it's one of the very best books aimed at understanding consumers.

In his article Underhill points out two somewhat distressing trends. The first is that our past culture of vehement consumer spending is over and that our addiction to retail is going through a painful withdrawal and treatment phase. That habit will not come back soon. The second is that the decline in spending combined with the bonanza of online information means that stores need fewer and fewer sales people. Why talk to someone when you can look up 3rd party reviews in an instant on your phone? Of course fewer jobs mean even less spending power, etc., etc.

All this got me thinking: What responsibilities do we marketers have in all of this? You'd think that with fewer goods sold, we'd have fewer marketers but the opposite seems to be true. There seems to be more marketers than ever right now, thanks to the digital revolution. Do more marketers actually make the system more efficient, rather than relying on fewer more expensive options?

The bigger question, though, is if people spend less, and there are fewer of them who even have money to spend, does that impact what we marketers do, which is in essence try to increase sales? One way to answer this is that the plethora of marketers now aims to make sales costs more efficient through targeted digital media. I don't know if that's completely true, but it could be.

Do we ever accept the fact that people will buy less and encourage them to do so? The only time I remember doing this was when I did work for the utility Green Mountain Power. We built some very good interactive tools to help people lower their electric bills. You'd think that would mean less money for the utility, but the reality was that if they could keep peak energy use down, they'd be more profitable, not less.

I'm sure not many of us are having this conversation with our clients, though. And if we did, what would we say? If we say, "You have to market to lower profits," our clients might simply show us the door.

Efficiency, especially around digital, is a great place to start. It will hurt the marketing big guys and help the marketing people taking risks. But it doesn't answer the question of how what we do digitally may, in and of itself, be part of the job-loss problem.

Digital Leadership

2009-11-20T07:49:34-05:00

On my trip to Boston this week I had the pleasure listening to an amazing group of digital pros talk about using labs and experimentation to change culture within an agency. The underlying message was that clients demanded digital expertise and solutions but that agencies still scrambled to show that they could deliver this. Traditional agencies, those weaned on the 30-second spot and the dynamic duo model of copywriter/art director, face the biggest challenge to change, as opposed to the pure digital players.

I also took the opportunity to talk briefly with Edward Boches, Chief Creative Officer of Mullen. I've been following and interacting with Edward on Twitter and in the blogosphere, which is always fun. But in person is better. And I finally got to ask him the question I find most relevant:

"What did you do to shift the focus at Mullen from traditional to digital?" Now Mullen has always had a large interactive group but so do a lot of places. But if you compare what they're doing this year, and the attention they're receiving as a digital/social media agency, something's happening. And they're starting to leapfrog the other agency giants in Boston.

Edward's answer was consistent with other successful digital leaders. He discovered digital with a passion and became, at least mildly, obsessed with it. He thought it was a blast. It wasn't that he became the best technologist or the hottest coder. It was that as he dug in and played with it, it filled him with ideas and excitement and spoke to his creative muse.

That, in essence, is what every digital leader has to have. An excitement, if not passion, for the possibilities of technology. You can't fake that excitement. I don't think you can delegate that excitement. Many of today's leaders think hiring some one or some two will solve that problem, while the leaders sit back and see what happens. This can only work if the leader cedes much of his or her control to the new people. Which almost never happens.

If you look back over the past 10+ years, that's how agencies tried to manage the digital space. They started interactive groups, hired online specialists and then put their focus back on the traditional side. They were always surprised to find that their agencies weren't further ahead.

I had the pleasure of meeting Scott McCormick of VML several times. To me, Scott is great example of digital leadership. He took a medium sized, midwestern agency and helped turn them into one of the world's digital powerhouses. When I talked to Scott, his love of technology and gadgets always came out. He thought the digital space was so much fun that he surrounded himself with incredibly smart people who felt the same way. Scott always played down his own knowledge but it was clear to me that his passion drove the success of VML. The incredibly smart people around him aren't enough without that leadership.

Digital leadership, like any other leadership, doesn't flow from logic it flows from passion. The problem for many agency leaders is that they don't have that digital passion. But few are willing to leave or cede control so that their agencies can change.

If the traditional agency model dies, you can chalk it up to the lack of digital leadership.

Watch Out for Agencies Acting Like Jilted Girlfriends

2009-11-13T08:18:09-05:00

The client-agency relationship has never been a life long love affair. It's like a short, intense period of romance followed by a short, sometime rocky, sometimes sublime marriage that ultimately ends in divorce. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just the nature of the business. People come and go and they realize the relationship is stale and that they each want to see new people.

Usually, that break up takes place behind closed doors. And everyone plays the game of acting nicely since you may get back together at some point. You certainly don't want other potential partners to see you acting badly or saying nasty things at the breakup because that might possible scare them off.

So I was surprised to see, on my blog of all places, a bad breakup happening. What's most odd is that I have absolutely nothing to do with the divorce; I'm like Paul Weston in HBO's "In Treatment" watching from the leather chair.

A while back, I wrote about how local ski resort Jay Peak had a hiccup in their social media program. They're doing a lot of things right, but they missed something. Everyone involved jumped in, solved the problem, and moved on.

Everyone, that is, except the agency of record Almighty Boston. The last post in the discussion was from Christopher Smith who stated that one of Jay's social media initiatives "is not an approach that we would encourage, nor endorse." This from the people who "helped design/build Jay Peak's social media platform and strategy."

It sound to me like the agency just called the client "stupid" in public. Now, clients and agencies call each other all sorts of names, but everyone usually does this behind closed doors. It's not often you see public disagreements like this, for good reason. And that reason is that once things like this become public, it's difficult, if not impossible, to find common ground.

It didn't stop there. On October 19th, Almighty Boston resigned the Jay account. When agencies resign clients they usually site "creative differences" like when Shine Advertising resigned the Go Daddy account. We all understand what that means: the agency developed what they thought were killer ideas, but the client didn't like any of them.

Almighty Boston said this instead:
"We're not comfortable moving forward without them having a cohesive plan," said agency partner Christopher Smith. "We wish them luck." Hmm, creative difference might simply be a matter of taste, and who can really argue with that. Not having a plan speaks plainly to intelligence. See above.

I thought it would stop there, but it didn't. Steve Wright from Jay Peak joined me for a social media roundtable in Burlington with some other local social media people. He talked about how Jay used social media to get feedback. And guess what? Almighty Boston just couldn't give up another chance to get in another jab. Christopher Smith was back with this comment:

"There must be some mistake/misunderstanding. Jay Peak has never used crowdsourcing in this manner."

Did he just call his former client a liar?

It's sad to see this happening in public, forever (it's the Web, remember). I've always heard good things about both Almighty Boston and Jay Peak. They had a good five-year run together. I'm not sure what this public spat does (and it seems to be mainly one-sided).

Maybe Almighty Boston feels it's fighting to protect its integrity. Instead, it seems to point out the dangers in leaving an Almighty Boston agency relationship. If I were a prospective client, I'd think twice about the potential of one of my partners going out to trash my brand publicly over internal disagreements. This might one of those new business angles I just don't get.

Call me naïve; I think you can have your integrity and still break up well. No one wants to hire the Jilted Girlfriend, except perhaps out of pity.