Behind the Scenes

During my perusing of YouTube and the internet I have run into an interesting trend on YouTube – behind the scenes footage of commercials. Many higher education institutions may find this as another tactic that will help them stretch their marketing budget and still represent their brand.

Awhile ago, I blogged on London’s T-Mobile commercial. What I didn’t mention was that T-Mobile also posted a behind the scenes making of the choreographed dance routine in the train station.

Here is the original commercial again

And here is the behind the scenes making of the commercial

Here is a great new Air New Zealand (ANZ) commercial showing how their airline staff have nothing to hide (Warning: There is some slight nudity in this commercial, nothing vulgar)

Here is a behind the scenes of the ANZ commercial (Warning: Some slight nudity here too, nothing vulgar here either)

So why post them. There are multiple reasons:

1. A lot of money went into the making of the commercials, why not get a little extra “play” with the commercial. As seen in the behind the scenes video for the T-Mobile commercial, there was 8 weeks of planning, auditions, equipment, dance training, and hundreds of people. Also the price of the media buy. They put a bit of extra production and editing into the extra video and posted it on YouTube. More bang for their buck.
2. Gives those in the actual commercial a little more buy-in. As seen in the ANZ behind the scenes, the ANZ staff in the commercial had a sense of pride for the commercial and the company itself. This kind of pride I am sure will probably also spread to most of the other staff at ANZ as well.
3. More brand tie in. ANZ’s new message is that they have “nothing to hide” and T-Mobile’s message of “Life’s for Sharing” is again repeated in a more subtle approach in the making-of videos. The ANZ staff in the extra video explained or illustrated how they have nothing to hide by participating in the commercial. While T-Mobile went into more detail of sharing life moments by showing off their life behind the scenes.
4. Shows a bit of a lighter side. While the two commercials above are already light. There is always a lighter side still on the opposite side of the camera.
5. Gives a sense of “over the top”-ness. While everyone sees the final product, showing all that goes into an elaborate commercial can reveal some other brand messages like being the premier company in their industry (why wouldn’t they be if these companies didn’t go to all the trouble do these great commercials), detail oriented (T-Mobile would have to be to get 400 dancers choreographed), going all out for their customers (time and resources to make a 30 second or 1 minute commercial), and having fun (see 4 above).

Just like a commercial though, these behind the scenes videos are produced and edited before their final release or YouTube posting. It would not be a good idea to throw a bunch of scrapped footage together, post, and go TA-DA! While you are showing your extra footage and interviews of the commercials making, it is still a visual representation of your brand. Imagine the “play” some higher education commercials could get by posting their “making of” videos.

Read all about it. Our school rocks!

This week’s poll was “What does your college/university do a majority of the time on its primary social network site? It was also touched on during the last Online KnowledgeBuilder.

Exactly half of our readers felt their school posted mostly news stories about your school, while posting images and chatting with community members/followers followed in at distant second and third priorities. Posting random images, posting random news or blogs that didn’t relate to your school, or other priorities tied at an even more distant fourth. A couple of responses didn’t even get a nod and they include: finding/connecting with new follower and posting “sell messages” about your institution. The breakdown is below.

The nature of social networking is just that, it is people coming together over a single purpose to discuss, chat, and post images about things they relate to.

It is often hard to find a common balance of things to post for such a diverse audience especially when you can’t relate to some followers. And when you can’t find something in common, followers ultimately end up blocking you or ignoring your posts.

Every institution has something good going on and as marketers, it is our job to spread the word about it. Posting news stories about your school can often be just considered the same as posting “sell messages” about your school. It is ok to post the greatest of the great news stories, but don’t overdo it. Remember that these people chose to follow your social site for a reason and most likely already think your institution is great, so they don’t need it spoon fed to them every hour.

There is no magic number as to how many posts of a specific nature should be posted, but if you find you are losing your social site audience, back off the news posts and sell messages.

Next and as mentioned in the Online KnowledgeBuilder last week, the biggest thing that can engage your audience is to be real. One of my favorite points from the KnowledgeBuilder was “Be brand conscious, not a brand evangelist”. Be a real person and talk to the people, don’t sell them, talk down to them, or belittle them. Talk to them as you would a friend or someone you just met.

We were also asked a great question: How do we keep the audience engaged?  Engage them with silly yet relevant questions, contests, mysteries, and challenges. For example, I listened in on local radio contest called Photo Scavenger.  They asked people to take pictures next to a building or an item or wearing something specific or doing something and send it into the radio station’s social networking site.

The social network should be thought of as an extension of the brand experience, not strictly as another publication or advertising.

Be sure to take this weeks poll on icon navigation on the right of this page.

Competitive Positioning in a Volatile Market

There’s great truth in the marketing adage: If you’re not a leader in your category…create a new category.

A leadership position imparts a host of advantages: market leaders have more secure market share, especially in volatile economic times. They are able to drive awareness and attitude. They are first to benefit from upswings and last to feel downturns.

But the real secret is this: Through strategic positioning, you can identify and express a leadership position that sets you apart from your competitors!

Positioning simply refers to how you’re perceived by audiences relative to competitors in the same category. As Al Ries and Jack Trout defined in their bestseller Positioning – The Battle for Your Mind, which is generally considered the authoritative description of the subject, positioning is all about differentiating yourself in the minds of your prospects.  Differentiation, in fact, is arguably the most critical component of a strong brand – if you can’t find a way to differentiate yourself, you’d better be prepared to compete on price alone.

So what is your differentiating strategy? How do you express your leadership? How do you bring it to life and deliver it to audiences? Should it change to respond to today’s economic realities?

Here are the four major considerations in positioning:

Assessing Your Market: Positioning needs to start with an assessment of your competition and trends in your competitive marketplace. How are competitors positioned? What motivates your audiences? What is changing?

Differentiating Yourself: What differentiating idea distinguishes you from your competitors? What unique benefit do you provide for your audiences? Do your internal stakeholders believe and own this singular idea? Has it been expressed clearly in a brand platform?

Delivering Your Promise: Is your position honest and real? You can’t simply claim to be different, you actually have to deliver what you promise. If you can’t, there is no real point of differentiation. Every individual and unit in your organization should be working to deliver the promise.

Communicating Your Difference:Your marketing and communications should define your differentiating idea in an attention-grabbing and compelling way. But this is where the art of positioning truly comes into play: Your messaging can pivot from a niche leadership position in many different ways, depending upon competitors, consumers’ changing motivators, and trends in the marketplace.

In a volatile market such as we face today, it can be necessary – even urgent – to examine your messaging and assess whether it needs fine-tuning. How you employ your differentiated position in today’s unpredictable marketplace can make all the difference!

Our next KnowledgeBuilder on June 4 will examine positioning strategies in the context of the four components above and in light of today’s unstable competitive marketplace. We’ll have in-depth discussion how to pivot your brand messaging to strengthen your leadership differentiation while responding to consumers’ economic and quality concerns.

Join us on June 4, because strategic positioning can literally make the difference between thriving in today’s economy, or merely scraping by.

Making Facebook a Real Marketing Tool

Today’s Online KnowledgeBuilder, presented by EMG Senior Brand Strategist Ineke Caycedo, ran through the five steps for turning Facebook into a real marketing tool. Marketing pros across the country took part in the 90 minute interactive seminar.

Ineke’s online tutorial used Facebook as the model for social networking (SN) because, in terms of networks that build connections, it sits at the top of the leader board:

• 68.5m users / 57% are 18-24 (U.S.)
• 1.91m monthly visits
• “cleaner” image compared to others
• X-er’s are fastest growing segment
• Size = best return on investment

Although the tips were demonstrated on FB, the nuts-and-bolts secrets she shared are applicable to most SN sites.

Social networking is a new tactic, so even the big boys with loads of resources are feeling their way through, but there are some who are striking the right notes, including:

1. Coca-Cola
2. Social Media for Small Business – Powered by Dell
3. Victoria’s Secret PINK
4. Sears
5. Mini USA
6. Gary Vaynerchuk
7. Fernthai Volunteer Foundation
8. Target

Most higher ed sites are not fully developed, either, but a few have implemented some unique features and interesting approaches that are worth mentioning:

1. The Ohio State University – O-H-I-O photos from the military
2. Dalhousie University – Extended information tab
3. UCLA – Where in the world is your Bruin; General use of all quadrants of the page; Comments Policy
4. University of Michigan – cross connecting to other UM pages using favorites
5. University of Southern Maine – use of photos and videos

So what are Ineke’s five secrets?

1. Brand Mapping: Create a map of all officially sponsored SN pages, develop nomenclature/outline for how they are named and presented, and link them to the primary site in your Favorites section – using ‘Pages’ rather than “Groups”; make sure that individuals in charge of each page are updating on a regular schedule (weekly or biweekly, at least)
2. Micro-Targeting: Identify the primary audience segments you want to engage in SN, and match existing sites and new pages to serve those micro-segments, making certain that you limit pages to only those that can be regularly updated/maintained, and eliminating those you can’t support. Content should target groups with narrowly defined interests.
3. Use all page quadrants: Customize your FB presence with consistent institutional signatures; tailor the tabs to reflect your priorities, ensure that you use the left hand column to draw attention to important features like your news and events feed; a favorites box that cross connects to other pages within the university, etc.
4. Features to motivate audience engagement: Here’s where marketing creativity shines! Motivate audiences to submit their photos to the page from different locations around the world, or create a contest, or establish a mystery with prizes for those who figure out the solution. Pre-packaged applications motivate involvement, too. Brainstorm out-of-the-box possibilities!
5. Manage your SN presence: Your SN brand presence will need regular guidance, supervision, and resources. It’s critical not to over-extend your capacity. While the individuals in sponsoring units should be responsible for providing updates and content, all of the sponsored sites should be centrally supervised and coordinated. If possible, ensure that departments put someone in your office as an administrator on their site. This allows you to give them content valuable to their constituents and also remove/correct incorrect content from their pages.

Make sure to look at the upcoming KnowledgeBuilder topics. These interactive, skills-based online seminars are a great way to keep you and your staff members at the top of your game:

• June 4: Positioning Your Brand in a Competitive Marketplace
• June 25: Advertising is Dead! Long Live Advertising!
• Look for future KnowledgeBuilders focusing on Twitter & YouTube
• Missed the Facebook session? Let us know if you’re interested, and we’ll put a reprise in the schedule or schedule a Custom KnowledgeBuilder for your team!

We look forward to seeing you!

This Is the Future: Web-Centric Marketing Tactics

We’ve outlined the rewards of developing a Web-Centric approach to marketing in this space in the past. Here’s another outstanding tactic to unleash the power and potential of the web-centric strategy (which we also highlighted in our last newsletter).

The idea is simple: Build and promote a linked, but independent, interactive website focusing on your brand position or tagline as the centerpiece of an awareness-building campaign. Use a variety of viral, online, and traditional techniques to drive audiences to the site, and employ interactive Web 2.0 features to motivate visitor engagement with the brand in ways that aren’t possible on your institutional website.

A good example is Virginia Tech’s This is the future site. This is a .com site rather than .edu, and it was created specifically as the call to action for a targeted awareness campaign.

VT’s brand campaign—now in its fourth year—was built around the “Invent the Future” tagline—the strategic, creative, and motivational version of the brand promise that EMG created in 2006 to launch the VT brand identity. The Tech messaging platform outlines a brand promise and brand drivers that define their leadership position as the leading university where research and innovation provide solutions to real-world challenges.

The VT brand is all about results and impact, and the “this is the future” campaign site hits the sweet spot of that strategy.

The objective is to expand and deepen the brand campaign among influencers, opinion leaders, funding agencies, alumni, and the public by creating a strongly branded website focusing on the real-world impact of VT’s groundbreaking research.

The site is strongly interactive, encouraging alumni, faculty, and others to engage by asking them to “Submit your story:”

Tell us what you’re doing to make Virginia a better place to live or how research at Virginia Tech has impacted you. Think big or think small. Be as creative or straightforward as you like.

But the linked site would generate little traffic on its own. It is supported by a campaign combining traditional and viral tactics to drive site traffic, including print, direct mail, e-mail, tree wraps, yard flags, plane flyovers, online banners, public radio, TV, and out-of-home signage to direct traffic to the interactive website. The site links to a number of additional background materials and research collateral on the institutional pages.

The campaign has created a “buzz” about VT research impacting different regions of Virginia and has demonstrated that the university is a leader in research and outreach. Several hundred alumni, faculty, and other individuals have responded with input, recounting everything from their carpooling efforts to multimillion dollar research programs. More importantly, VT’s message has been imprinted upon thousands of opinion leaders, influencers, and alumni in Virginia and beyond.

Like any brand tactic, this idea needs good execution to be effective. Here are seven keys to making a campaign website work:

1. You need to have clear, measurable site objectives
2. Site must reflect your brand leadership position
3. It must be strongly branded, with visual/messaging links to homepage
4. It must have intrinsic value/interest for target audiences
5. It should have interactive, multimedia features to engage visitors
6. It must be supported by a campaign to drive traffic
7. Analytics should be in place to monitor effectiveness

Favorite Brands in Social Media

Which large corporation do you feel does the best job at using social media to communicate its brand? That was last week’s question. Some of our readers picked the businesses in the predetermined list of choices and some wrote in their own responses.

Overall, it was fairly evenly split between 7 companies. Twenty two percent felt Blendtec and Starbucks does the best job, while the rest were evenly split between Burger King, Michelob, Twitter, Zappos, and Ford at eleven percent each. See the chart below for the visualization.

I will go through the social media tactics of the two top choices mentioned above so you can get some ideas that you may able to use for your institution.

Some of you may be going, who the heck is BlendTec and why is this on the list. To increase brand awareness, the blender manufacturer company in Utah that sells both commercially and to the home consumer, it went with some of the best online video commercials and asked the big question Will it Blend?. They put the CEO of Blendtec’s parent company (K-TEC Inc.) in front of the camera wearing a lab coat and safety goggles standing in front of a blender. He then proceeds to blend iPhones, golf balls, unopened cans of Coca-Cola, lawn rakes, CDs, iPods, and so on.

The campaign is inexpensive to produce and went viral almost instantly. As of now, it has 26 videos on its YouTube page with more than a million viewers. They are now known for making the blenders that blend pretty much anything. George Wright, Director of Marketing at Blendtec said it best in a Wall Street Journal forum “To build a brand, you need to leverage all messaging so that it is concise, consistent and clearly understood by your own employees.” And “this [Will it Blend?] campaign has produced record sales for every month since the campaign launch.” Here are a few of the videos

Starbucks, the well known king of coffee, is known for having a down to earth, community driven brand that focuses on the experience of coffee drinking. To draw on that brand, Starbucks has used social media in two big ways.

The first is MystarbucksIdea.com where you can “help shape the future of Starbucks – with your ideas”. People can share, vote, and discuss all registered user’s ideas. Everyone can then see how the more popular ideas were ultimately utilized. So the customer can help to create their own coffee experience.

The second is the Starbucks V2V where people can sign in to a community of volunteers (a partnering community of V2V [Volunteer-to-Volunteer]). The community users can locate where volunteers are needed and who is looking to volunteer. The site claims to have brought volunteers together to complete 94,548 hours of community service between October 1, 2008 and April 15, 2009. Again, allowing customers to create their own experience in a larger sense of the word.

Please feel free to chime in on your favorite company social media examples too.

Also be sure to take this weeks poll on the right side of the page that deals with what your college or university spends a majority of its time doing on its primary social network.

Know Thy Audience

Do you know your target audience as well as you think you do? I recently took part in the local breast cancer walk to support breast cancer research. Each participating group was to design their own t-shirts in support of the cause and wear them during the walk. This brought back memories of an article I read last year about a high school breast cancer awareness t-shirt sale to support the fight against breast cancer. The high school group created shirts that had “Save the Melons” with suggestively placed images of watermelons on the front of the shirt. I can hear the collective “oh no they didn’t!” in everyone’s minds. While I am not saying this is the right way to go, I am saying, the message on the shirt reached its audience. Why the difference in opinion? Those of reading this blog are most likely not the audience the “Save the Melons” shirts were intended for. The high school club created it to reach their own audience – high schoolers. Also, many in the article that mentioned they did not like the shirts were parents. Many shirts at the breast cancer walk I attended had supportive comments or messages of hope written on their shirts as the audience was older and many were cancer survivors.

According to a Tokyo Times article from 2005, toymakers in Japan have been facing a difficult time. The number of young kids to sell toys to has decreased dramatically. So they decided to start selling the Yumel doll, they coined as the “healing doll” to reach a different audience. The toy is designed to keep the aging Japanese population company as they get older. The toy can talk and is equipped with sensors so it can monitor its owners sleeping patterns. If the toy feels ignored it will ask you “aren’t you pushing yourself too hard?” or if it is “happy” it is claimed to sing songs or please with you to buy it more toys. Personally, I find it a bit creepy, but again, I am not the target audience. It is the aging generation in Japan that is the audience.

A May 5th Brandweek article “Moms Say Marketers Ignore Their Needs” sites data saying that “60 percent of moms feel that marketers are ignoring their needs, and 73 percent feel that advertisers don’t really understand what it’s like to be a mom. The Brandweek article also sites the controversial Motrin Moms YouTube ad about baby wearing that was posted last year. A recent ReadWriteWeb article mentions “many mothers considered [the Motrin ads] to be condescending, quickly changed how consumers decscribed the brand. After the ads appeared, Motrin was suddenly closely related with Twitter, blogging, and moms, but also with negative terms like ‘backlash’ and ‘offensive’”.

Here is a YouTube post from an outraged mother explaining her dislike of the ad.

The Brandweek article above also talks a lot of about a solution in order to connect with the audience more efficiently. It goes through a lot of data about how influential moms of different ages with different size families can be online. All the marketer has to do is observe the insights provided online.

Recently there has been a large increase in admissions, recruiting, and marketing higher education online. But how many of you actually go out to your institutions target audience’s online hangouts and observe what they are feeling, doing, saying, and buying? There is a wealth of free information on the internet to view and to better understand your target audiences likes and dislikes. For example, search Facebooks groups for “Going to College” or search Twitter for higher education – occasionally I come across a Tweet that says “trying to figure out my student loans. UGH! gotta love the outrageous price of higher education…” and “why isn’t university free.. higher education comes at a cost i can’t afford right now. and no to loans” and “I’m starting to hate higher education. This is what UofT has done to me.” All three of those comments were tweeted by real people on May 4th or May 5th.

This is an exercise in observation and not an exercise in trying to respond to negative comments as mentioned in a couple of last blogs (read blog one and blog two on responding to negative comments. Be sure to observe your target audiences thoughts in general, their generational culture, and their thoughts about your institution. Then think about what you can do to meet their needs or figure out how to connect. Social media can become your worldwide focus group.

Take Me to Your (Brand) Leader!

What is the biggest challenge in brand development? In last week’s poll question and blog post, we asked readers to identify the biggest challenges they faced in launching branding projects.

A third of poll respondents said the biggest challenge they had faced was the lack of a strong brand leader. Spot on. The critical role that a brand champion plays in brand development rings true in our experience with organizations across the country.

The rest of poll respondents were equally split among the following challenges:

• Stakeholders not understanding what branding means
• The long lead time in brand development
• Belief that resources would be better spent on other projects
• Lack of campus consensus on what the brand should be

These all represent important challenges, to be sure, but they are most often the symptoms of a lack of strong brand leadership.

Dr. V. Lane Rawlins, former president of Washington State University and a visionary brand leader, said it best during WSU’s brand development process:

“It’s all about getting people to believe in something that’s bigger than they are, a vision of what they can become. If they believe, they will act.  If they believe, they will change their behavior.”

It’s an essential part of brand development to have that kind of committed brand champion. The brand leader is someone who expresses your brand vision in a way (and from a pulpit) that inspires and motivates others.

It’s best by far if your brand champion is the president or chancellor, but we’ve done it successfully with the provost leading the charge. In several cases, it was the chief recruitment/advancement officer, and the process has been successful even when a small team of 3 or 4 influential faculty/administrators acted as the brand champions.

On the other hand, it doesn’t work well when the chief marketing or communications officer tries to fill the role, since he or she is the person responsible for on-the-ground implementation. And certainly external consultants cannot fulfill the role, either. Whoever acts as a brand champion must be credible, trusted, influential, and authoritative.

And in looking back at the challenges identified above, all of them really flow from the strength and effectiveness of your brand champion. The brand champions must express the vision that sparks broad consensus; they must educate and inspire others on why branding is so important, what it means to embody a brand, and why it’s worth the input of time and resources.

They must become your brand Ghandi, William Wallace, Martin Luther King, Gandolf – defining and exemplifying the vision. Your brand evangelist.

Without such a power champion, brand managers can quickly find themselves in a precarious situation – we’ve seen this too often. It can be career limiting, since there is no one who will stand and defend the marketing director against the inevitable opposition driven by internal politics and personal agendas.

Make sure to give us your take this week’s poll question about which company you think uses social media the best. We’ll take a deeper look into your responses next week.