According to a recent article titled Three Myths about What Customers Want by Karen Freeman, Patrick Spenner and Anna Bird on the HBR Blog Network — interacting as much as possible with customers and building relationships with them actually does very little to increase customer retention. In a study involving more than 7000 consumers, HBR found that companies often have dangerously wrong ideas about how best to engage with customers and cites three common myths.

Myth #1: Most consumers want to have relationships with your brand.

Actually, only 23% of the consumers in HBR’s study said they have a relationship with a brand. In the typical consumer’s view of the world, relationships are reserved for friends, family and colleagues. (What consumers really want when they interact with brands online is to get discounts).

Myth #2: Interactions build relationships.

Shared values build relationships, not frequent interactions. A shared value is a belief that both the brand and consumer have about a brand’s higher purpose or broad philosophy. For example, Pedigree Dog Food’s shared value is a belief that every dog deserves a loving home. Southwest Airlines’ shared value revolves around the democratization of air travel. Of the consumers in HBR’s study who said they have a brand relationship, 64% cited shared values as the primary reason and only 13% cited frequent interactions with the brand as a reason for having a relationship.

Myth #3: The more interaction the better.

According to HBR, there’s no correlation between interactions with a customer and the likelihood that he or she will buy, buy again or recommend your brand. Yet, most marketers behave as if there is a continuous linear relationship between the number of interactions and share of wallet. Without realizing it, many marketers are only adding to the information bombardment consumers feel as they shop a category, and are actually reducing stickiness, not enhancing it.

Based on HBR’s findings, the authors suggest three different strategies for marketers to improve their effectiveness:

• Understand which of your consumers are in the 23% who have a relationship with your brand and which are in the 77% who don’t. Apply different expectations to each group and market differently to them. Stop bombarding consumers who don’t want a relationship with your attempts to build one through endless emails or complex loyalty programs. Those efforts will be low ROI. Chances are there are higher returns to be had elsewhere in your marketing mix.
• Communicate your brand’s philosophy or higher purpose. Patagonia’s commitment to the environment and Harley Davidson’s goal “to fulfill dreams through the experience of motorcycling” are excellent examples of brands that have a demonstrable higher purpose built into their missions. These offer a credible basis for shared values and relationship-building.
• Instead of relentlessly demanding more consumer attention, treat the attention you do win as precious. Then ask yourself a simple question of any new marketing efforts: is this campaign/email/microsite/print ad/etc. going to cut the cognitive overload consumers feel as they shop my category? If the answer is “no” or “not sure,” go back to the drawing board.

When it comes to interacting with your customers, I agree that more isn’t better. But, I would argue that the QUALITY of the customer experience is an important determining factor that should be added to this list.

Various studies by Forrester and others have shown that marketers are still falling short at customizing experiences for each of the unique media channels and technologies (e.g., websites, mobile sites and apps, and social media) being used today to engage customers with their brands. Use of best practices for optimizing the user experience and creative ways that help potential buyers discover your brand’s unique benefits provides a practical strategy to differentiate your brand and increases brand stickiness (the likelihood that consumers will buy, repurchase and recommend your brands to others).

Creative examples include:

• Providing timely digital information via smartphone apps, such as augmented reality, personalized merchandising, product store information (e.g., hours and directions), user manuals, price comparison information, in-store product availability, expert reviews, real-time coupons, in-store navigation and checkout
• Using of video, rich brand/product content and consumer-generated content (such as reviews and ratings)
• Capitalizing on cross-channel branded content opportunities that showcase your brand’s personality using technologies, such as augmented reality, image recognition, near field communications (NFC) and QR codes

Bottom line: Raising the bar on the quality of customer experiences and finding unique ways that make it easier and more enjoyable for buyers to discover, learn and buy your brand drives engagement and abiding customer loyalty.

Related articles

• Loyalty 360 Releases Top 12 Customer Loyalty Trends for 2012 (prweb.com)
• Loyalty 360 Releases “Engagement Is the Journey, Loyalty Is the Destination” (prweb.com)

Quad/Graphics’ third annual Special Interest Publishers Survey revealed many key insights about publishers’ pain points, needs and strategic priorities. While the findings were unique to magazine publishing, they were consistent with recent studies conducted with C-level executives in other industries, such as the retail trade, consumer packaged goods, insurance/financial/education/healthcare services and associations/not-for-profit. They all center on a singular strategic imperative: to drive profitable long-term growth.

At the end of the day, the ability to successfully carry out this mission is largely dependent on an organization’s performance in three critical areas referred to in my earlier posts as the “Three Pillars of Marketing”:

• Brand Development – driving profitable growth through a brand positioning that is unique from market alternatives and relevant to customer needs;
• Market Development – driving acquisition of profitable new customer targets to grow market share and expand into new markets; and
• Customer Development – retaining and maximizing the value of existing customers while reducing marketing investment and costs to serve them.

Developing a differentiated brand positioning is the first step. This is the foundation that drives everything that happens in the remaining two pillars. Without it, organizations face commoditization, and it becomes exceedingly challenging to win new customers except when competing on price.

Unfortunately, when growth stalls branding is often overlooked in favor of short-term tactics, such as price-cutting or promotions designed to boost sales. But the real issues – lack of differentiation and relevance as customers’ needs change – often fail to be acknowledged and appropriately addressed.

One reason busy executives tend to overlook branding as a strategic business tool is that the concept of brand is misunderstood. They think of a brand simply as a logo, tagline or ad campaign. They fail to understand its deeper meaning and that branding is a multistep journey: the one tool in their tool chest that can have the greatest impact on growing the long-term profitability and asset value of their business.

For many organizations, brand equity is the most valuable asset that appears on the balance sheet. And strategic branding lays the foundation for increasing the return on your overall marketing dollar investment and other closely related benefits, such as category leadership, reduced vulnerability to competition, the ability to charge premium prices and quicker acceptance of new products and services.

Related articles

• A Roadmap for Re-securing Marketing’s Leadership Seat at the Executive Table (brandmc2.com)

Reblogged from PrMC:

The 1980s witnessed a Copernican revolution in the understanding of the workings of brands. Before this, ratios of seven or eight were typical in mergers and acquisitions, meaning that the price paid for a company was seven to eight times its earnings. After 1980 these multiples increased considerably to reach their peak. For example, Groupe Danone paid $2.5 billion for Nabisco Europe, which was equivalent to a price:earnings ratio of 27.

Read more… 970 more words

Jack Welch

But the reality is, though, that too many leaders don’t understand the importance of culture like Jack and Suzy. “They think a company’s values can be relegated to a five-minute conversation between HR and a new employee. Or they think culture is about picking which words — do we ‘honor’ our customers or ‘respect’ them? — to engrave on a plaque in the lobby.”

According to Derek Irvine in his recent blog post on TLNT,  this is pure nonsense. “An organization’s culture is not about words at all. It’s about behavior — and consequences. It’s about every single individual who manages people knowing that his or her key role is that of chief values officer, with Sarbanes-Oxley-like enforcement powers to match. It’s about knowing that at every performance review, employees are evaluated for both their numbers and their values.”

Fortune points to several foundational requirements for building a winning culture of recognition that is proven to drive bottom-line business results through increased employee engagement, retention, productivity and performance including:

1. Making culture an ongoing topic of conversation, training and reinforcement instead of a one-time event
2. Taking the values off the plaque on the wall and deeply integrating them into the daily work of employees
3. Clear rewards – and consequences – for how employees reflect the values in their work.

Related articles

• Is the Importance of Brand Values Overrated? (brandmc2.com)

Reblogged from Be Branded:

by Tony Fannin, CEO/Partner, BE Branded  |

One of the common beliefs is traditional media, like TV, is more wasteful of marketing dollars than online and social media properties. The old joke of “I know half my money is wasted in advertising, but I don’t know which half.” comes from this idea. Yes, it is often hard to quantify how a TV spot affects sales since the power of TV is mostly in awareness and brand building and less about immediate sales.

Read more… 468 more words

According to Forbes, 60% of graduating college seniors today will be unable to find full-time positions in their chosen fields. And, the unemployment rate for 20-to-24 year olds is about 14%, well above the national unemployment rate of 8.2%.

Career Search

Yet, there is a critical shortage of digital-savvy talent in today’s workforce, according to an article titled “Digital-savvy workers are in demand” that appeared April 15 on JSOnline by Marissa Evans.“The explosion in digital devices has triggered a rush by companies to hire digitally trained employees to provide and deliver the content for all those smartphones and computer tablets. The adoption of mobile devices in particular has become so widespread, so quickly, it has forced companies such as Bader Rutter to think about how to use this new medium and how to balance it with traditional media. In two years, Bader Rutter a Brookfield, Wisconsin-based  marketing services agency,  has hired more than 100 associates who focus on building digital development in all areas of the company, including public relations, social media, web design and development. The agency, with a staff of 224, has increased employment 40% since it started hiring more digitally savvy candidates.”

Milwaukee-based Big Shoes Network, an aggregator for Wisconsin and Illinois employment opportunities in digital marketing, is another example. Its online job board saw a 40% uptick in job postings on last year. And, so far in 2012, postings are up 50% from a year ago.

Recent research studies conducted by Forrester, the CMO Council and other organizations nationally also confirm that marketers are planning to make significant investments in digital over the next 12 months. Yet, many companies, especially small to midsize businesses, lack the internal expertise needed to plan and carry out digital initiatives. Areas where new skills are in high demand include: Website, mobile site, and mobile/tablet app design and programming; video production; social media strategy; online content creation; search engine marketing, data analytics; and brand strategy.

Unfortunately, most graduating seniors who are looking to pursue career opportunities in marketing, public relations or creative fields do not have these skills. Universities and colleges, in general, have been slow to react and have not adequately prepared students for today’s digital world.

If you are a college student or if you are already employed and are looking to increase your value to your employer and advance your career, here are four practical tips:

Tip #1: Demonstrate that you understand and are already engaged with digital strategically.

According to Daradirek “Gee” Ekachai, associate professor and chair of the Department of Strategic Communications at

Marquette University (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Marquette University (one of the few universities that has been proactive at putting digital in practice in the classroom), this is very important. “Employers are not looking for a student who has multiple accounts for every new social media platform,” according to Ekachai. “Rather, employers want to know if a student can use these new social media tools strategically, if they can really engage stakeholders.”

Tim Dodge, CEO and President, Hanson Dodge Creative also says that his company is “actually only hiring people who understand and are engaged with digital every day.” He adds, “On top of that, they must have ideas to share and stories to tell. We are looking for employees who can bring new ideas to the table and who can understand and keep tabs on a bit of everything from Twitter to YouTube to Web programming. Today, everyone has to be a student of where digital is going and how it’s evolving.”

So, if you aren’t already digitally active, begin following and participating in online discussions that are relevant to your industry or discipline. Try to dedicate up to a half-hour daily to the following social media engagement activities:

• Follow thought leaders/experts on important topics in your field. Read their blog posts and leave comments. Check out their LinkedIn profiles. Invite them to join your LinkedIn network. Follow them on Twitter. Retweet their posts.
• Follow leading companies in your industry and their employees on LinkedIn.
• Join relevant LinkedIn group discussions. This is great way to learn about topic industry challenges and this provides excellent opportunities for you to join in on the conversation.
• Start your own blog and begin creating your own content and aggregating relevant content from trusted sources. WordPress is a terrific resource for this. It easy to use and it doesn’t require as much time as you might think to create your blog and post industry-related articles.

These are not only effective tactics that demonstrate your strategic understanding of digital, but they distinguish you from the hundreds of job applicants that may be also applying for the same positions that you are seeking.

Sharpen your skills by picking up courses in digital communications.

FindtheBest Colleges and Universities is an excellent online application that compares and ranks those institutions that are offering curriculum in digital communications.

Tell your story using multiple channels when you apply for career positions or internships.

In addition to submitting online applications (a standard requirement for most employers today), consider setting yourself apart by creating a website with your own personal URL and including print mailings with QR-2D barcodes or other media. This was covered in one of my recent articles titled “Four Lessons to Learn from a Graduating Senior.”

Lastly, Keep your eyes on the horizon of where technology is heading.

In closing, I would add one more point to consider: Traditional media is not dead. While most companies today are rapidly moving to digital channels, they haven’t abandoned their traditional marketing strategies. In fact, our parent company, Quad/Graphics, recently conducted a study among special interest publishers in the U.S. and found that 99% of these businesses still own printed magazines. Anecdotally, we also know that the printed magazine remains the main economic driver for most publishers today.

According to Joel Quadracci, Chairman, President and CEO, Quad/Graphics, “While digital media is growing, we believe digital media complements, not replaces, print. Together, they create greater value for the reader or a more powerful call to action for consumers to shop.”

So, while you need to prove your digital skills, also show that you are strategically savvy about how to leverage legacy traditional vehicles as digital media is brought into the mix. Keep your eye especially on NFC (near field communications), augmented reality, image recognition and HTML5. Learn how early adopters are beginning to use these new emerging technologies and formats to help drive channel interactivity and create more compelling consumer experiences.

It is not just a digital world nor a traditional media world any longer. It is an all channel, all the time world and the consumer is driving when and how they want to connect and interact with people and brands. Employers are seeking new talent that can help their organizations stay relevant to their audiences and on the leading edge of what is happening technologically.

Related articles

• 1 in 2 New Graduates Are Jobless or Underemployed (abcnews.go.com)
• Why Social Media Skills Should be Taught in the Community College (carolhbates.com)
• #IOLchat Report: Gaining Practical Experience in an Online Program (onlinecollege.org)

It has been said that a company’s values offer an important way to create brand uniqueness. The functional benefits of a company’s products and services are usually temporal. But a company’s culture, when deeply anchored by strong values that guides how it conducts its day-to-day business, conveys what it stands for and creates a strong emotional bond with employees and customers over the long-term.

But in today’s distracted and overcrowded world, are brand values overrated as a tool for creating distinction and brand meaning?

Joel Quadracci, Chairman, President & CEO, Quad/Graphics

A new client of Quad/Graphics, our parent company, recently shared this insight with Joel Quadracci, Quad’s Chairman, President and CEO:

“Over thirty-five years as an analyst for five Wall Street firms, I’ve met hundreds of companies. Dozens of them claim a ‘unique corporate culture,’ say they stand for quality, are customer centric or … well, you’ve heard it all before … and so have I … so many times that I almost take it for granted that it just ain’t so. The fact is that most companies think that they are unique, but they’re really pretty much alike.”

Then this client adds:

“But when some of these platitudes turn out to be true, when it does seem that everybody in a company is singing from the same songbook, when you can see mutual respect among employees at all levels and even the physical facilities reflect a kind of corporate self-respect — rather than an overblown sense of self-importance — and you can guess how such things go together … and it all seems to work … well … it’s very refreshing, almost a tonic. It really was a pleasure to spend the day learning about your company, to watch you learn more about [us] and feeling that you regarded us not like a customer, but like a customer and a partner, too.”

From these remarks one can conclude that talking about brand values probably has low resonance when used merely as a

Quad/Graphics Values

marketing communications tactic today. But the ability to “bring to life” an organization’s brand values through its day-to-actions and infuse them consistently throughout all touch points, signifies who you are, why you are different and has staying power.

But getting there is not easy. It takes leadership, focus and continual reinforcement. For an organization’s culture to truly be fueled by its values, its employees must believe in them and embrace them as a way of life.

Related articles

• Should Companies Embrace Personal Branding? (brandmc2.com)
• A New Era of Branding (brandmc2.com)

Today, most large retailers have a predictive analytics department devoted to understanding consumers’ shopping habits and personal habits, so they can more efficiently market to them. But, according to a recent article that ran in The New York Times “How Companies Learn Your Secrets,” Target is one of the most advanced users of predictive modeling techniques.

For decades, Target has collected vast amounts of data on every person who regularly walks into one of its stores. Whenever possible, Target assigns each shopper a unique code — known internally as the Guest ID number — that keeps tabs on everything they buy. If you use a credit card or a coupon, or fill out a survey, or mail in a refund, or call the customer help line, or open an e-mail or visit its Website, Target records it and links it to your Guest ID.

Also linked to your Guest ID is demographic information like your age, whether you are married and have kids, which part of town you live in, how long it takes you to drive to the store, your estimated salary, whether you’ve moved recently, what credit cards you carry in your wallet and what Web sites you visit. Target can buy data about your ethnicity, job history, the magazines you read, if you’ve ever declared bankruptcy or got divorced, the year you bought (or lost) your house, where you went to college, what kinds of topics you talk about online, whether you prefer certain brands of coffee, paper towels, cereal or applesauce, your political leanings, reading habits, charitable giving, the number of cars you own and so on. However, all this information is meaningless without someone to analyze and make sense of it.

This is where Target’s Guest Marketing Analytics department comes in. This group is expert at using predictive analytics to learn when customers are going through a major life event, like graduating from college, getting a new job, getting married, having a baby or getting a divorce. These life changing events are when customers are most likely to also change their buying habits.

For example, by crawling through all the data, “Target has been able to identity about 25 products that, when analyzed together, enable the company to assign each female shopper a pregnancy prediction score,” according to The New York Times. “Target can even estimate her due date within a small window, so it can send her coupons timed to very specific stages of her pregnancy. Target’s database now includes tens of thousands of women who are most likely pregnant, so it can target those women and their husbands to visit its stores and buy baby-related products. As a result, in recent years Target’s mom and baby sales have exploded.”

It is clear that sophisticated data analytics has the power to drive higher sales and profitability for retailers by allowing narrower customer segmentation and, therefore, more precisely tailored products. A study by the McKinsey Global institute similarly estimated that a retailer using “big data” can increase operating margins by as much as 60%. (IDC defines big data as “a new generation of technologies and architectures designed to economically extract value from very large volumes of a wide variety of data by enabling high speed capture, discover and/or analysis.”)

But, what about smaller retailers who may not have the internal expertise and resources to do predictive modeling like Target? The sheer volume of online and offline data continues to proliferate and this creates monumental challenges for retailers of all sizes to harness this information. According to a recent report by IDC, a plethora of input sources now exist, including transactional data, warehoused data, metadata, video surveillance, geo-location data, shopping cart information, site visits, video views, demographic profiles, and social media postings on Facebook and Twitter to name a few.

Reporting discrepancies across these disparate channels often requires time-consuming manual integration. The evolution of new channels also exacerbates marketers’ ability to extract customer insights needed to effectively integrate new campaigns into the marketing mix, according to a 2010 Online Analytics Benchmark Survey conducted by Adobe. For example:

• 71% of marketers are using social media, but 52% cannot measure conversions
• 46% are using video, but only 19% use analytics-based performance to make promotional decisions
• 27% are using mobile, but only 33% can segment visitors to optimize their experience

The Power of Data Analytics

So, back to my earlier question, what can you do if you are a small retailer or other marketer to address these challenges and leverage the power of data analytics? Certainly, firms that specialize in data analytics, such as Merkle, Horizon Set and ANSIRA – NSI Razor may be a possibility. But, I was curious to learn after reading the “State of the Online Marketing Services Industry” study conducted by HubSpot in the summer-fall 2011, that data analytics wasn’t even mentioned as a service option that agencies now offer or are planning to add in the future. Is this because they lack competencies in these areas and/or feel they are disadvantaged due to lack of ownership/access to their clients’ customer data?

If you are a retailer, what services are you outsourcing and/or technologies are you using to address your data analytics needs? How are these solutions working? Are they economically feasible for most retailers? If you are on the supply side, what recommendations do you have that can help small retailers enhance their data analytics capabilities?

Related articles

• The rise of analytics (ibm.com)
• Big Data Analytics Defines Top Performers (bi24.co.uk)

Cover via Amazon

Sally Hogshead argues in her latest book – Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation - that fascination is the most powerful tool we have at our disposal for influencing decision-making. According to Seth Godin, “This is a transformative work, a beautifully written book that will forever change the way you see the world.” It is a riveting journey through the forces of fascination – how it shapes our ideas, opinions and relationships – and how we can wield its power to build strong brands.

Sally reveals seven universal triggers to persuasion and captivation – Passion, Mystique, Prestige, Power, Rebellion, Alarm, and Trust. The secret is using the right triggers, in the right way, to get your desired result. She shares countless examples and provides a roadmap with pragmatic advice and actionable ideas to help you unlock your own brand’s “chemistry set” and make even unfascinating brands fascinating. These deeply rooted patterns for why and how we become more fascinating are backed by a national study of thousands of consumers.

This book is both entertaining and thought-provoking.  I urge you to buy and read it soon.

Also, check out Sally’s latest blog post titled “The World is Not Changed by People Who Sort of Care.”

Related articles

• Persuasion by Fascination – Sally Hogshead Discusses the Art of Communication Presentations (TrendHunter.com) (trendhunter.com)
• Marketing Smarts Podcast: Sally Hogshead and the $500 Cup of Coffee (mpdailyfix.com)
• The Power of Fascination and Content Marketing (contentmarketinginstitute.com)

Brittany Noel Olson

Well, one enterprising young lady, Brittany Noel Olson, is using a novel approach that has sparked keen interest by some high-profile potential employers, including the likes of Virgin America, Sambazon and Terracycle.

Yes, it is not a coincidence that Brittany and I share the same last name. Indeed, she is my daughter. But, the concept for her career search campaign was conceived entirely by Brittany and I can’t accept credit for any of her ideas. I confess that I am probably not impartial since I am her father, however I do feel there is a worthy story to tell here and am looking forward to sharing it with you.

As marketing professionals, we sometimes get too close to what we’re doing. Then someone comes along with a fresh perspective that helps us rethink our approach. So, here is one of those ah hah moments.

There are four take-always I think we can learn from Brittany’s approach:

The Possibilities are Endless

1. Do your homework –Brittany carefully researched those companies she was interested in targeting. She concentrated on their goals and cultural values that mesh up closely with her own personal values and aspirations. Brittany’s short list of about 35 companies included organizations that are entrepreneurial, innovative, environmentally focused and employee centric. Although most were small-to-midsize companies, demographics played an insignificant role. With the help of Jigsaw and other online tools, she also identified key people within these organizations.
2. Dare to be different – In keeping with her entrepreneurial spirit, Brittany is interested in landing an entry-level position where she can learn the business from the ground floor up. This goal has been her singular focus. In some instances, this strategy may have hurt her because she is not applying for traditionally defined job functions. Instead, she is seeking opportunities that may need to be created uniquely for Brittany based on her goals and skill set.
3. Let your creativity shine – “The Possibilities are Endless” is the adopted theme for her campaign and is consistently carried out through all of her communications. The tone and manner of her message is simple and authentic.
4. Tell your story using multiple channels –Integrating digital and real-world communications is a critical need in many organizations today. Although Brittany is a dual Business Administration and Business Management major at Salve Regina University and is not majoring in marketing, demonstrating that she is multichannel savvy helps her stand out from other job seekers and showcases her competency in this important area.

The elements of her campaign include (but are not limited to):

• initial highly personalized mailings with a QR-2D barcode that was sent out in late January
• a website with a personalized URL www.discoverandinnovate.net and linkage to her LinkedIn profile
• a reminder postcard that was mailed out three weeks following her first mailings
• online applications (a standard requirement by most employers today)
• telephone and email correspondence once interested companies have responded

After taking a quick two-to-three-minute tour of Brittany’s website, I’m sure you’ll agree that the experience gives prospective employers a clear picture of Brittany’s values, aspirations and differentiating attributes where she can add value.

So far, all looks good! Approximately a dozen interested companies have already responded and some promising interviews are on the horizon. She has also received some highly complementary comments about her creativity. Brittany is beginning to network with key people with some of these companies via LinkedIn. She is also calling other companies that haven’t yet responded and is optimistic that some live opportunities are still waiting to materialize.

Hope you enjoyed reading this article and found it inspiring!