Holland-Mark Blog » Marketing and Advertising http://www.holland-mark.com/blog We tell the truth. Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:39:50 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 The Importance of Brand Clarity http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2010/07/the-importance-of-brand-clarity/ http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2010/07/the-importance-of-brand-clarity/#comments Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:45:57 +0000 Mike Troiano http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/?p=312 An actual client talks about the impact of our One Simple Thing™ approach to distilling a brand down to an idea regular human beings can hold in their heads:

The project was delivered by our partner Mark Edwards, with great skill and insight. Bravo, Mark.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
]]> http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2010/07/the-importance-of-brand-clarity/feed/ 0 It’s Time to Tackle the Unlearning Challenge http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2010/06/its-time-to-tackle-the-unlearning-challenge/ http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2010/06/its-time-to-tackle-the-unlearning-challenge/#comments Fri, 18 Jun 2010 21:17:10 +0000 Mike Troiano http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/?p=1190 Had a nice chat with my pal Edward Boches earlier today, talking about MITX’s FutureM, and why its timing couldn’t be better.

These are challenging times among marketing folk. I’m convinced most are still hoping this social stuff is going to just blow over at some point, but even those who “get it” often seem not quite sure what to do with it.

There are a set of ideas accepted as metaphysical certainties among the social branding blogerati, almost all of which are anathema to people who’ve successfully built brands through broadcast media. Among them:

  • The user is in control now
  • Great marketing is distributed, not centralized
  • Target engagement trumps message control
  • The future belongs to free content
  • Advertising is dead.

There’s truth in each of these ideas, and nonsense as well.

The struggle to get beyond the black-and-white view, highlight the nuances, and act on them in ways that make sense for a particular brand at a particular point in time are daunting, to say the least. In doing so progressive brand managers need to overcome both the inertia of entrenched old-media diehards, and the relentless castigation of social marketing jihadis. It’s a real challenge, to say the least, and a recurring theme in the day-to-day lives of camp-straddlers like Edward and myself.

Perhaps the first step toward a productive middle way is the try-and-frame-the-problem-in-a-more-nuanced-way. Reflecting on our conversation, I’ve come up with this:

Social/Content/Inbound/New Marketing is hard because adopting it requires cognitive change on 3 levels.

First we must learn what we don’t know. We have gurus for this, fortunately… Chris Brogan, David Meerman Scott, Louis Gray, and others. These people are the front line of the revolution, and although the risks are great out there, it’s a lot of fun on the days you don’t get shot.

But learning what is new is not enough. The second level is a bunch of stuff we need to re-learn… the fundamental truths of branding, communications, and media, which evolve within the speed limits of behavioral rather than digital change. There are a handful of real bloggers with the depth of experience required to advance this position. For me Tom Cunniff is in this camp, along with people like Joe Jaffe and Steve Rubell.

But even that is not enough. There’s a third leg of the New Marketing adoption stool: that which must be un-learned in order to succeed. The unlearning domain includes a whole bunch of established, structural stuff that needs to be turned on its head: organizational structures, business processes, financial incentives, competitive dynamics, and operational metrics. These may be among the most challenging things to change, and they are almost certainly among the last to be tackled by the subset of people who are serious about business results.

I hope to spend some time tackling these issues in one of the FutureM sessions, and hope you’ll join us for it. In the meantime… does this framework shed any light on things for you?

Related articles by Zemanta
]]> http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2010/06/its-time-to-tackle-the-unlearning-challenge/feed/ 0 FutureM is here. http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2010/06/future-m/ http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2010/06/future-m/#comments Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:00:48 +0000 Anita Tandon http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/?p=1182 Like you, we’ve all been to one too many marketing events … and yet, we still have the feeling we are missing out on something.  We’re constantly scanning any number of event calendars and wondering if that event last night was it.  But it always feels like there are too many people doing too many things in too many places to keep up …  and we just wish we could figure out the big picture.

It got us thinking — along with our friends and colleagues at MITX — that there had to be a way to stage a meeting of the marketing minds that would go beyond talk.  And so, between cocktails and panels and whiteboards, FutureM was born.  Slated for October 4-8th, FutureM is a week-long collaborative conference on the vision for marketing in Massachusetts through an intersection of people and ideas and inspiration.  It’s a chance to hear about the latest in marketing, technology, and design– together.  And if the thought of nonstop keynotes scares you as much as it scares us, fear not: FutureM includes panels, roundtables, summits, parties, meet-ups, and more, because the best ideas rarely get created around a podium.  We can’t wait.  Check out the rumblings of the future here.

In the meantime, we wanted to share the opportunity to be a part of FutureM.  If you have a topic, technology, team, or even a question that can help define what’s next for marketing, submit an event idea.  So get creative and join us at the future here.

Related articles by Zemanta
Enhanced by Zemanta
]]> http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2010/06/future-m/feed/ 1 The Shelf Life of Relevancy http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2010/05/the-shelf-life-of-relevancy/ http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2010/05/the-shelf-life-of-relevancy/#comments Tue, 04 May 2010 14:05:16 +0000 Chris Colbert http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2010/05/the-shelf-life-of-relevancy/
Woolworth's entrance
Image by toml1959 via Flickr

Twenty years ago the shelf life of relevancy was at least a good ten years. If you had a product or service offering that carried even a mildly distinct and relevant value proposition it was virtually guaranteed to produce healthy profits, loyal customers, and decent top-line growth for a decade or more. Polaroid’s shelf life was seventy years. Pan Am’s even more. Hell, Woolworth’s lasted 118 years. Now much has been written about how and why brands die so let’s not tread that well-trodden ground. My point is that the times literally have changed; the shelf life of relevancy is down to years and maybe even months. Any marketer that thinks that some combination of intellectual property, brand value, happy customers, price advantage, etc., serves as long-term competitive insulation is most probably naive and on the verge of getting their clock cleaned.

So the first order of business is to accept that ugly reality. 

The second is to look the cold, hard truth in the eyes. To candidly examine where the chinks are in your brand armor and/or where the world seems to be heading in terms of buying or not buying what you’re selling. In Clay Christiansen’s oldie but goodie book from 1996, “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” he repeatedly suggests that one cause of leading brands ultimately losing to new “disruptive” technologies is that they aren’t willing to embrace the truth and believe that their leadership position is vulnerable to anything. Some call that hubris.

The third order of business is to un-bridle corporate imagination while giving direct consideration to the equity zone. What does that mean? Visioning, envisioning, and re-visioning are the tasks of hope, of possibility, of what if. But they are tasks that must be mindful of the real equities of the brand vis à vis the trend line of social equity. Most brands forget that point, which is why most line extensions or segment expansion efforts fail. Take Oldsmobile. They tried to go younger when their equities were clearly older. And they were going up against a declining social equity trend line, e.g., their demo was dying off and the new generation wanted nothing to do with them. I hear VW wants to go mainstream, pull away from the kids. Uh oh. 

Which brings me to the fourth order:

Growth may not always be the right goal. In fact fixation on growth may be the recipe for a rapid demise. For Polaroid to have transitioned from silver halide film to digital imaging probably would have required it getting smaller in order to get bigger. Now the shareholders wouldn’t have liked that message much, but look what they ended up with… The other side of it is that perhaps all brands have a fixed shelf life (religions and nation states aside). Can Corporate America accept the concept of “Inevitable Obsolescence”?

The fifth “to do” is to invest in intellectual and analytical rigor. Because even if you’ve accepted the reality, are in eye contact with the truth, and have concocted a lovely vision of your brand’s next incarnation, the devil (or salvation) can be in the details. And again most brands, big and small, are simply not very good at examining the data and the details to validate or invalidate what they’re planning. And once they execute they tend not to be very good at measuring the results of their efforts. Make data your best friend.

These five orders of business represent somewhere between the requisite cultural mindset and a strategic planning sensibility to extend the shelf life of relevancy. Increasing shelf life, or the “time value of your brand,” demands embracing and responding to the truth of it all, in real time and real ways. It’s not hard, but it can be a wee bit uncomfortable. But so can the alternative.

Posted via web from holland-mark posterous

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
]]> http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2010/05/the-shelf-life-of-relevancy/feed/ 0 Blessed Are The Meek http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2010/03/blessed-are-the-meek/ http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2010/03/blessed-are-the-meek/#comments Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:41:46 +0000 Mike Troiano http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/?p=937 Look at this piece of utter hackery at left. It breaks every rule of good marketing communications. It’s unfocused. It’s ugly. It has giant freaking dollar signs, for chrissakes. Blecch.

And yet…

I find it interesting that humble brands – local restaurants, obscure b-to-b specialists, retailers like this one – seem able to embrace the “Content Marketing” ethos more readily than their advertising-addicted counterparts.

I look at this primitive execution – unfocused, horribly designed, e-mail based, etc. – and can’t help but admire the way it’s rooted in the belief that the best way to sell is to inform and empower.

And you know what? This stuff works. It’s arguably the best of two worlds, combining pull-worthy content with push-enabled reach. That would certainly explain Constant Contact’s lofty growth and impressive market cap.

While I of course believe that a dose of “professional marketing” could make something like this a lot more effective, I think there’s much to be learned from it by me and my fellow Big-Time Brand Folk.

Look again. What do you see?

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
]]> http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2010/03/blessed-are-the-meek/feed/ 2 Domino’s Steps Toward the Truth http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2010/01/dominos-steps-toward-the-truth/ http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2010/01/dominos-steps-toward-the-truth/#comments Tue, 05 Jan 2010 02:31:14 +0000 Mike Troiano http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/?p=637 When users are empowered to drown out your marketing messages, the nature of marketing changes. It needs to become “Marketing,” with a capital “M,” and bring more to the table than a tagline. As I said in my last post, where once you could focus on driving the product reality by shaping market perception, now you must also gather market perception to shape the product reality.

As if on cue, I came across a brand embracing this ethos in a very visible way.

If you want to understand why Holland-Mark is so committed to having a real impact on what our clients sell, and not just how they sell it, look no further than the changes underway at Domino’s Pizza…

Good for you, Domino’s.

So have you tried the new ‘za? What’s your take?

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
]]> http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2010/01/dominos-steps-toward-the-truth/feed/ 9 The Future of Print Media http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2009/12/the-future-of-print-media/ http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2009/12/the-future-of-print-media/#comments Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:36:24 +0000 Mike Troiano http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/?p=452 Curious what print media will look like in the future? Here’s what Time Inc. thinks…

We think they’re right. What do you think?

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
]]> http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2009/12/the-future-of-print-media/feed/ 2 AOL Un-Brands with Un-Logo http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2009/11/aol-un-brands-with-un-logo/ http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2009/11/aol-un-brands-with-un-logo/#comments Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:04:43 +0000 Mike Troiano http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/?p=416 So AOL is going through a re-branding effort as it’s spun out of Time Warner, and a video of the CEO announcing the effort to employees has surfaced:

First … due respect … this is not “the brand,” it is “the logo.” Pet peeve of mine.

Second, while I’m not in the habit of criticizing other agencies’ work, I really think the mark itself is a mistake. On a practical level, a negative-space logo like this – particularly one that only functions on top of other content – is an Art Director’s nightmare.

On a conceptual level, it strikes me as too-clever-by-half. A great logo should add value to what it represents, not call attention to itself, as this does.

Finally, on a strategic level, I just don’t see how this non-idea could ever replace the swirly-A logo we’ve all known for so long. And it needs to.

How to Make a Logo

If you need a logo, take a piece of paper, and write down what you want it to make people think.

Got it? Great. Throw that away.

Now think of what you want your logo to make people feel. Write that down, not as a paragraph, but as a word or two. Then get someone with talent to design something that does that.

That’s what I think, anyway. How about you?

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
]]> http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2009/11/aol-un-brands-with-un-logo/feed/ 1 Social Marketing Is Rooted In The Brand http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2009/10/social-marketing-is-rooted-in-the-brand/ http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2009/10/social-marketing-is-rooted-in-the-brand/#comments Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:30:04 +0000 Mike Troiano http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/?p=111 Your brand is not your logo, or your product. It’s not your trademark or your spokesperson, not your equity capital or your advertising. Your brand is something that lives in the hearts and minds of people out there, and in that sense social marketing is the purest expression of branding.

Here’s a 5-minute talk to that effect I gave at the recent O’Reilly’s Ignite event in Boston, and I welcome your thoughts on it:

You can download the higher res quicktime here, but it takes a while.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
]]> http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2009/10/social-marketing-is-rooted-in-the-brand/feed/ 1 Content Hubs and Programs http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2009/10/content-hubs-and-programs/ http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2009/10/content-hubs-and-programs/#comments Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:59:28 +0000 Mike Troiano http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/?p=226 What we call “Content Hubs” and “Programs,” R/GA calls “Platforms” and “Campaigns.”

Whatever you call them, I think this is the future of marketing…

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
]]> http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2009/10/content-hubs-and-programs/feed/ 0