branding – Page 65 – Andrew Careaga

I’m a day too late to post the customary Friday Five, but I did want to share some key takeaways I gleaned from my recent trip to Minneapolis for The Art and Science of Social Media Marketing for Higher Education, a one-day workshop put on by The Lawlor Group.

Since I’m a day late, I’m going to make it up to you by providing an extra takeaway — a Saturday Six of bullet points. Also, if you hurry, you’ll find more about the conference via the Twitter hashtag for that event, #tlgsm. But hurry, because hashtags, like fruit flies, tend to have short life spans.

1. Brands can learn a lot from evolutionary biology. I’ve been thinking a bit about the evolution of brands and branding at least since the mid-2000s, when I read Al and Laura Ries’s book The Origin of Brands. Dan Zarrella has been thinking about this, too, and during his kickoff session at the workshop — titled “The Science of Social Media Marketing” — offered several great points to ponder about evolution, branding and marketing. Just as species evolve and thrive by their ability to adapt to the forces of nature, so brands most able to adapt to ever-changing cultural, social and economic pressures will do well. This is an important point for those of us in higher ed to keep in mind, especially these days.

You can hear much more from Dan about these and other issues by viewing his one-hour presentation on this topic. Yes, an hour is a long time to spend watching a video about social media, but you won’t be disappointed. You’ll also find that his conclusions about what works in social media is backed by research. (Thanks to Karine Joly, who first directed me to that presentation in this post a couple of months ago.)

2. Facebook: The Jersey Shore of social media. Facebook has become the most mainstream of social media. Brands wanting to connect with Facebook users should learn to “write for Snooki,” as Dan put it. But maybe without all the F-bombs. Just keep it simple and to the point.

3. It’s OK to tell (or ask) people what to do. In their presentation about listening and strategic planning, Jennifer Kane and Kary Delaria, both of Kane Consulting, made the point that people don’t mind being told what to do. It’s OK to tell (or ask) people to “like” an article on Facebook, for example. This correlates to what Dan Z. mentioned about retweeting. His research found that the phrase “please retweet” or “please RT” in a Twitter post were among the most retweetable words.

4. Size, frequency and timing matter. In the debate about quality vs. quantity, quantity wins. According to Dan Zarrella’s research, the larger the number of followers a brand has on Twitter, the more fans on Facebook, etc., the greater the chances are that the brand’s messages will be shared more broadly. Likewise, the more frequently a post is shared on Twitter, the greater the odds that it will be retweeted. But beware of over-sharing. Link fatigue could set in among your fans or followers.

In terms of timing, Dan’s research suggests that click-through rates for information posted on social media increases during the weekend, even though social media activity tends to slow down on the weekends.

5. Stay positive. Nobody likes a Debbie Downer. Not in real life. Not in social media. So if you want to build your brand in the social media sphere, avoid getting negative. Stay upbeat. Related: Don’t talk about yourself all the time, either. Just as no one likes to talk to the person at a cocktail party who only talks about himself, no one will pay much attention to your brand if you’re only talking about yourself. Dan Z. suggests finding “combined relevance” that connects your brand to the interests of others.

Here’s a real-world example of combined relevance in action: Earlier this week, a minor earthquake struck east of Rolla. I tweeted about the event and asked our followers if anyone felt it. The tweet had nothing to do with our brand, so to speak, but it was relevant on a few levels: geography, a shared experience, and the fact that we offer majors in geology, geophysics and geological engineering — disciplines that attract students interested in quakes. The result: half a dozen retweets and interactions with five followers.

6. Lougan Bishop rocked Twitter. I had the good fortune of co-presenting on a panel with Lougan and Dan Z. I talked about blogging, while Dan talked about Facebook and Lougan opined about Twitter. Lougan did a terrific job talking about Twitter and reinforcing what others had said earlier in the day. Check out his presentation (on Slideshare or below).

Twitter Channel Presentation

View more presentations from lougan

In all, I had a great time presenting, meeting new people, reconnecting with a few earlier acquaintances, and learning from my peers. I really appreciate the opportunity and thank John Lawlor of The Lawlor Group for putting on an exceptional workshop.

P.S. – I’ve also posted my presentation for your viewing pleasure.

It’s pretty common for marketers to toss around military terms when describing what we do.

I’m not sure why; maybe we think it makes us sound more important or influential. When we equate ourselves to armies, maybe we see ourselves as more powerful.

Anyway, for decades (if not centuries), the marketing business has borrowed heavily from military jargon. Like the military, we have “campaigns” and “targets.” We use “collateral,” too, and we have been known to wage an advertising “blitz” or two. More recently, we’ve been adapting guerrilla warfare tactics to wage “guerrilla marketing,” a term coined by Jay Conrad Levinson.

But only recently have I heard about the concept of counterinsurgent marketing. It should come as no surprise marketing has come to this point, given our infatuation with military buzzwords. “Counterinsurgency” really came into fashion in the post-9/11 world as a method for the military to deal with terrorist groups.

As our military has learned from recent adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, war is no longer a contest between nation-states. More frequently, war pits military might against small groups unaffiliated with any government. Insurgents may be small bands of individuals empowered by technology and a common cause to wreak havoc on larger, less agile organizations.

Conventional warfare is out. Insurgency and counterinsurgency are all the rage these days.

Likewise, for brands, the enemy is not the big competitor. No longer is it Coke vs. Pepsi. Or I should say, no longer is it only Coke vs. Pepsi. Today, brands must guard themselves from attacks by small bands of insurgents. These may be activists, smaller niche brands (craft beers chipping away at the big beer companies, for example), bloggers, WikiLeaks and its growing number of clones (including UniLeaks for higher education) — even, occasionally, friendly fire from employees or fans who may inadvertently subvert a brand’s reputation by their antics. (Remember the Domino’s Pizza employees video from a couple of years ago?)

In his new book Brand Resilience: Managing Risk and Recovery in a High-Speed World (which I’m now reading), Jonathan R. Copulsky of Deloitte Consulting LLP talks about the need for brands to adopt counterinsurgent marketing strategies. Drawing on the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, which today’s soldiers use for counterinsurgency efforts abroad, Copulsky finds parallels for marketing and, on pages 38 and 39 of Brand Resilience, offers “five big takeaways for brand stewards” from the military manual. Here is my paraphrased list of Copulsky’s takeaways, with a bit of my own commentary thrown in.

1. Learn to play defense. The insurgents strike first — and often out of nowhere. Counterinsurgents have to figure out how to respond in an appropriate way. Case in point: the Gap logo fiasco of last year is a prime example of how insurgents — in this case, fans of the Gap, graphic designers, marketers and other critics of the logo redesign — used technology (Twitter and Facebook) to attack a brand and put the Gap on the defensive. The Gap learned the hard way that a “brand insurgency” can play havoc with a even the strongest brands.

2. Reconsider conventional responses. When brands come under attack, Copulsky writes, brand stewards’ “natural tendencies to respond in a conventional manner … may be misguided.” The false assumption armies often make — “that armies trained to win large conventional wars are automatically prepared to win small, unconventional ones” — is one brand managers may also make. But massive firepower and overwhelming ad blitzes may be counterproductive for COIN (counterinsurgency) operations.

3. Learn quickly and adapt. The Counterinsurgency Field Manual “identifies ‘Learn and Adapt’ as a modern COIN imperative for U.S. forces,” and Copulsky suggests the same for brands.

4. Conventional victory doesn’t always mean lasting victory. “Killing the insurgents” doesn’t guarantee a true win. As The Counterinsurgency Field Manual suggests, “Lasting victory [for military operations] comes from a vibrant economy, political participation, and restored hope.” Moreover, the troops on the ground are empowered to exercise judgment. Likewise, in a modern brand, the chief marketing officer and brand managers may set direction, but other staff members deliver the brand experience to customers.

5. Change happens. The old saying in the military is that armies prepare for the next war by training for the last one. But what worked then may not work now. Copulsky writes, “If a tactic works this week, it might not work next week; if it works in this market, it might not work in the next.”

Reading this section of Copulsky’s book has helped me to think about the counterinsurgency approaches needed for marketing and brand stewardship in higher education. After all, our organizations, like many nation-states, are not very nimble. We are bound by hierarchy and arcane governance and reporting structures that can slow us down when our brands are under threat of attack. I think I need to read that field manual. How about you?

P.S. – I plan to give Brand Resilience a full review sometime soon.

Photo: Marines speak to Afghans about their needs, from the U.S. Marine Corps’ Flickr page.

Category: branding

Friday Five: Counterinsurgent marketing