Molecular Voices » Digital Strategy

Posts from Digital Strategy

What’s next?

April 1

Content matters; where it lives does not.

Social media is upon us.
It is a fact of life and consumers have made it part of their daily lives.
In other news, brands are still investing small and not so small fortunes creating amazing content for their websites and nobody cares to visit them. On paper, one great solution for this problem is search marketing. You buy keywords, optimize the content on your site for organic search placement, things get better.

Social media can boost a brand even further. And here’s the kicker: it has little to do with the brand website.

The root of the issue is in the following fact: The brand has a website; search marketing looks to drive traffic to that website. If the brand places content in social media, it takes content from brand site and actually puts it, well, away from your website. While you can still link to the brand site, isn’t social media harmful in actually reducing the need to visit that site? If you can get the content on Facebook, where you hang out with your near, far but always dear friends – is it really necessary to go to the brand’s site to get what you are looking for? While intriguing, the answer lies in thinking about what really matters. Skittles, for example, gave up on its website altogether. But three years later, can anyone point out measurable sales increases as a result? What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) a brand would care about? While I personally want the website to be stellar, is it as relevant or important as it was, say, four years ago?

Branding is about searing the name, message or logo of a product or manufacturer deep into your head. Whether the brand achieves consumer impressions on its owned web property or not is immaterial. It is even more important to be able to measure if the brand placement, and the consumer impression it caused, increased the likelihood of a transaction or a purchase. While a brand site can help inform about and portray products really well, social media trumps it on this account. Consumers today trust each other more than they trust their brands. Reviews matter, ratings influence, and if a brand does not track them, it may lose the initiative in controlling its message (Toyota, anyone?). I can probably think up a variety of KPIs but overall the bottom line is this: if you can get the brand online, anywhere, it’s a good thing – and if you get it anywhere other than your own brand website, it’s a very good thing.

So where does search marketing figure out into this? Search marketing at its finest does not just drive traffic to a website, it increases brand impressions. It also reinforces positive brand messages and matches the terms a brand looks to associate itself with, to search keywords. Search engines do not care about your brand website if it has no redeeming quality; it must have content to be interesting and useful to the search engine’s users. Social media has value and content, both searchable and private. Search engines want in and try to extract as much as possible out of social media. If your brand is engaged, search engines will find your content. And by connecting users to the relevant content coming from your brand, marketers get the impressions they so desire.

By now you should be sold. Social media is great. Search marketing helps no matter where your brand is. But how do you measure performance for assets distributed far and wide across social media? One big strength of a brand site comes from the control a marketer has on obtaining performance data about it. Social media sites have no interest in letting you shove Omniture tags into their code. You’re a guest. And in reality, the jury is still deliberating. Snake oil merchants and real scientists claim to have the answer for this need for proof and measurement (eMarketer proves this point). We are getting close to definitive solutions. Due to the resources necessary to successfully measure and track vast amounts of traffic and content, marketers may have to patiently wait or accept less definitive conclusions and research. Until then, there’s always the brand website.

posted to: Digital Marketing, Digital Strategy, Industry Trends, Web 2.0 & Social Media | No Comments »

March 30

Microblogging inside the Firewall

by Craig Andrews

Little strings of text are big business – both publicly and inside the corporate firewall. As we all know, Twitter is pretty big – TV and radio ads for major companies mention their Twitter sites and even business cards reference Twitter URLs nowadays. But Twitter cannot be used with internal information, so there’s a lot of collaborative power waiting to be unleashed by microblogging inside the corporate firewall. Consider how much more productive everyday workers could be if they shared a few quick bits of knowledge.

For example, consider this timeline:

Alice: Client loved the sales pitch - we won! #sales
Brion: Vending machine has been re-stocked
Charles: #CSS reminds me of aspect oriented programming #aop
Darleen: Project is progressing according to schedule #project3
Evan: Fellow #project3 members: Is this front end policy useful for us? http://ur1.ca/shyu
Fred: @evan Possibly - let's discuss this with @brion over lunch
Zach: @fred @evan we used those guidelines on #project5 and it worked out well
ITBot: Email server test failed. IT has been contacted.

These examples show that:

The barrier to entry is incredibly low (Alice posted immediately after a sales pitch, probably from a plane)
Useful business information is exchanged, as well as team-building (Brion provided non-business information about the vending machine that others will likely appreciate)
Because discussion is open to a broader audience than email, others participate in unexpected and beneficial ways (see how Zach, who isn’t even on project 3, helped the project 3 team)
Bots can publicize information gathered automatically. For example, IT could set up a bot to monitor servers and automatically publish status updates. Bots can also subscribe to RSS feeds bridging wiki and blogs with the microblogging world.

There are many other benefits once metadata is considered.

People choose who to follow. If Alice isn’t interested in the state of IT systems, she doesn’t subscribe to the ITBot.
Users can mark a message as a favorite. Messages that are favorited many times show up in a “favorites” list, which is a great source of useful information.
By clicking on a #project3, Brion can find all posts about his project, providing a powerful search option.
Messages may have optionally location data attached. Users can tell if the person they’re talking to is in the same office as they are, on vacation, working from home, at a client office, or at another branch of their company. This data allows users to make fast decisions about how to further communicate (phone, email, or walk).

At Molecular, we wanted to take advantage of what “firewalled” microblogging has to offer, so we evaluated a few private microblogging tools, looking for software that provides a familiar interface, allows customization of the look and feel, and has clients for different devices (like Twitter has). In the end, we chose StatusNet. (In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a contributing developer to the StatusNet project.)

StatusNet Logo The StatusNet software (which also runs the ~200k user identi.ca site) is Free and Open Source so anyone can feel free to install, evaluate, and use it without worrying about contracts or licensing fees. However, StatusNet, Inc (the company that supports the StatusNet software) offers professional services if you chose to run the software on site, or hosting if you prefer it to be hosted elsewhere. If the “go it yourself” route is selected, installation is pretty straightforward as it runs on the popular LAMP stack and has a vibrant community willing to answer questions.

StatusNet can integrate with LDAP/Active Directory and even some Single Sign On solutions. No worrying about managing accounts as employees come and go, so private information stays private.

The software also supports a variety of clients on a number of platforms, from Windows, Mac, and Linux to iPhones and Androids.

After developing a custom skin, selecting which plugins to enable, and testing with a small group, we officially launched “IsoBuzz” to the entire organization last week. We’re already seeing some interesting conversations. Over time, we hope to see IsoBuzz became a powerful tool for knowledge sharing and collaboration, especially among distant offices and between departments.

posted to: Digital Strategy, Technology, Web 2.0 & Social Media | No Comments »

December 1

Brand as a Service, circa 1900: The Michelin Guide

by Bryan Maleszyk

michelin_2010_nyc_restaurant_guide

It’s been a busy summer, which transitioned into a busy fall. The Thanksgiving break gave me an opportunity to chip away at the stack of New Yorker magazines that have accumulated on my nightstand. John Colapinto’s “Lunch with M,” from the November 23, 2009 edition, in which he tags along with a reviewer for the New York edition of the Michelin Guide, got me thinking about how brands should be thinking of themselves as as service:

Automobiles were still a rarity on roads in France. The brothers had the idea that a guidebook to hotels in the French countryside would encourage people to climb into a car (equipped with Michelin tires) and hit the open road. The first edition, published in 1900, was a five-hundred-and-seventy-five-page alphabetical listing of towns throughout France and the distances between them, with recommendations for hotels and places to refuel, and instructions on how to change a flat.

At Molecular we are passionate about helping brands provide real, valuable, sustainable service to their consumers. As the Michelin Guide proves, this isn’t a new concept at all. And it seems to have worked out pretty well for them:

Michelin has grown into one of the most successful multinational corporations in the world, a company more than three times the size of Goodyear.

I’ve come up with the following four components that I believe are necessary for a brand to execute a successful service:

Deep value: Automobile owners needed a way to find out where to go and how to get there. Michelin provided this for free (initially). The few motorists at the time were given a valuable asset to plan trips, and to maintain their vehicle, and to find reliably good food on the road. As more motorists took to the road, Michelin added the three-star system to denote exceptional cooking. Taking to the road seemed safer with the Guide.
Sustainable value: In the preface to the first edition of the guide, André Michelin wrote: ”This work comes out with the century; it will last as long.” There are now other guides, including the survey-based Zagat guide and the crowdsourced Yelp, but chefs in Europe still live by – and die by - the Michelin Guide. A few years ago, the Guide launched in the United States (in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco)
Edge Business: Michelin’s core competency is in producing high quality tires. The Michelin Guide complemented that business by providing its consumers a reason to drive – it lives at the edge of Michelin’s brand proposition, as opposed to the center.
Openness: You don’t need to drive around on Michelin tires to use the guide.

I’m curious to hear what you think – what else makes a brand service-oriented?

posted to: Digital Marketing, Digital Strategy | 1 Comment »

October 29

adidas embodies brand as a service with miCoach

by Dirk Reckerman

On Friday, October 23rd 2009, adidas launched the next generation of miCoach – the interactive coaching system that delivers audible coaching while you run. At its conception miCoach was a means by which to allow users to experience the adidas brand in their daily life.

Home

An innovative blend of hardware, software, and web experience – the system empowers users to set and achieve goals – being coached by adidas every step of the way. The system allows a user to manage their active life, and be motivated by seeing their workout results on a highly immersive web experience.

Workout

For adidas, the interactions that users have with miCoach reinforces the users relationship with the adidas. In other words, it creates time with the brand. This approach is a more effective investment of marketing money because of the depth and longevity of the interaction with the target audience. Moreover, the interaction creates valuable insights into customer behavior and allows adidas to market to the user in a more relevant way – in the context of the users life.

The service itself has been extended to allow users to take miCoach into the users social realm – namely Facebook. Users are now able to share their latest workout with their personal friends via Facebook or email. The benefit for the user is that they can share an important aspect of their life with friends. For adidas, this is an invaluable manner in which to get trusted referrals for their service (and brand) to a broader populous.

Molecular has been a key part of the realization of this adidas service from its conception. By partnering with Molecular, adidas has a partner capable of pairing insightful user experience design, stellar creative and deep technical expertise to bring miCoach to life. As the nascent marketing initiative transforms into an exemplary digital and business marketing stalwart, Molecular is enabling adidas to push the boundaries of interactions with its key audiences.

miCoach has successfully bridged the gap between the users analog and digital daily lives. By providing hardware to coach you while you run and then parlaying that information to the web where the users transformation is illuminated, adidas is establishing its brand in the users life. miCoach is the future of marketing and branding.

posted to: Digital Marketing, Digital Strategy, Technology, Web 2.0 & Social Media | No Comments »

October 14

Facebook pages want to know: Are you for real?

by Yuval Zukerman

Following up on my post on Facebook fan pages, InsideFacebook’s Eric Eldon broke the news that Facebook is working harder to verify the authenticity of the people behind fan pages on its site. If you are fan of say, Lenovo laptops, there was nothing preventing you from setting up a fan page for the company. If Lenovo decided to launch their own fan page at a later date, they would wake up to the fact that it was already occupied or taken. Brands are left with little options other than join forces with people who do not necessarily behoove to their marketing message, or try and launch a page in parallel, to varying degrees of success. Contacting Facebook for help does not guarantee you action or relief.

We feel fan pages hold great promise. A story on PRI radio show Marketplace tells the story of The Coca-Cola company successfully teaming up with individuals who set up its fan page before its own marketing team got to it. The brand’s strength and its passionate following helped it garner a following that is almost 4 million users strong.

Hopefully the new verification measures will reduce the chances of such brand name squatting on Facebook.

posted to: Digital Marketing, Digital Strategy, Web 2.0 & Social Media | 3 Comments »