Today’s post marks the first of an occasional series of “interviews” (via email) with authors and bloggers who are saying some interesting and important things about marketing, PR, higher ed, technology and related topics. I’m pleased to kick off this series by sharing a five-question email exchange with Lois Kelly, the author of Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word-of-Mouth Marketing (book review coming soon). She’s also co-founder of Foghound, a strategic communications firm, and her blog, Bloghound, is one of my regular reads.
1. How has so-called buzz marketing fallen short of marketers’ expectations?
[Lois Kelly] Buzz creates short-term awareness, and it usually only works for cool, unusual consumer products. For organizations marketing an expensive, high-cost or high-risk organization or product, the secret is to make meaning not buzz. Meaning gets people involved with your ideas and messages, and involvement is the prerequisite to action, whether that action is changing an opinion or perception or taking the next step in a decision making process.
2. In Beyond Buzz, you cite former Harvard President Lawrence Summers as an example of the “contrarian” who got people talking about controversial ideas. Yet, in the end, his contrarian style is what forced him out of Harvard. How can university leaders create these thought-provoking types of conversation without risking their livelihoods?
[Lois Kelly] Summers’ ideas were fascinating, highly cogent and thought provoking. It was his style that got him in trouble. University leaders need to have fresh, provocative (or at least evocative) ideas that get people thinking and talking about new possibilities, change, and how to achieve big goals. They need to balance these provocative ideas with a style that is genuinely interested in what people have to say. Great university leaders listen in ways that acknowledge and recognize others’ views and they make people feel heard. Summers, while brilliant, did a terrible job at making people feel heard and respected. As an aside, I think there are more and more women leaders of universities (and countries) because women tend to have bigger ears than mouths. Great listeners are highly influential.
3. How do you think the ideas in this book translate into the arena of marketing for colleges and universities?
[Lois Kelly] Universities need more distinctive points of view and to stand for something more than more of the same. Views that set the university apart and help people understand -– and talk about — the university on both a rational and emotional level. (Emotion is the superhighway to understanding and decision making, but too much marketing is all rational.) Without these points of view it becomes difficult for high school students to choose colleges. Difficult for alumni to understand why they should donate more money. Harder for foundations to see why a university is especially deserving of certain grants. More challenging to attract great teaching and researching talent. Give people interesting, fresh ideas and you can turn them into amazing word-of-mouth advocates for the university. But no one wants to talk about the same old bland things.
4. What one piece of advice would you give to a higher ed marketer who wanted to get started in conversational marketing? (Besides reading your book.)
[Lois Kelly] Have the courage to identify one to three points of view that you believe in, that set the organization apart, and that are meaningful to your external audiences. Views that evoke the reaction, “That’s interesting. Tell me more.†For at least a year, build marketing and communications programs around those views — website content, presentations, conversations with alumni, talks with students and parents during the admissions process, conversations during recruiting and hiring interviews. By having everyone in the organization talking about the same few interesting ideas that distinguish the university you will help those you’re appealing to make decisions more quickly — and the overall perception of the university will get much stronger, much more quickly.
5. I love your term “alpha fraidy cat.” Where did the idea for that term come from?
[Lois Kelly] Two places, one of them a university president. The first was from a former boss who was smart, articulate, persuasive, domineering like all “alpha†animals. But so insecure that creativity and new ideas always got watered down and made so “safe†that they were, in the end, bland and not all that effective. The alpha fraidy cat idea really clicked while I was working on a search committee with an Ivy League university president to find a new creative director of a regional theater. Here we were helping a theater, what you would think of as a very creative environment. But the leadership at the theater was very risk averse. At one meeting I turned to the university president and commented, “For a creative organization, these people aren’t very creative. They’re like alpha fraidy cats.†The president laughed and said, “Yes, just like universities. We hire people because they’ve been so creative and then they get into the organization and stop taking risks.â€
Want a taste of Beyond Buzz? Download the executive summary e-book (PDF).
Andrew Careaga 