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:

1. 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.
2. 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)
3. 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.
4. 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

After years of anticipation – the shift from traditional to digital is becoming real. The UK became the first major economy to achieve this milestone – according to the Internet Advertising Bureau of Britain. Internet ad spend accounted for 23.5% of the British advertising market . Print was still in first place, with 30% of the market, but had recorded steep declines.

As the internet begins to replace print as the primary source of consumer news and information, as well as encroach upon television as a deliver vehicle for info-entertainment, this trend will only continue to be more exaggerated.

The industries recovering from the global economic downturn will demand  measurable channels in which to spend their marketing budgets. Internet has an inherent advantage around measureability – although solid practices enabling this are still in its early stages . As he internet transitions into the central medium around which overall marketing campaigns will be based, digital marketers will be tapped to deliver robust strategies to lead the marketing initiatives within their organizations.

Designers partnering in business strategy formation bring many fresh tools, techniques, and perspectives to the process. From methods for gathering information, forming insights, generating ideas, imagining concepts, validating concepts, and articulating a design vision that can make ideas real, design strategists (or strategic designers) bring unique value every step of the way.

One of the most powerful tools at the disposal of the strategy team is the collection of all of the strategic intelligence that realizes the strategy into a single visualization that quickly communicates the forces driving the strategy. From the digital business perspective visualizations often reflect strategies for single or multi-channel products, services, and experiences. The end result may be a completely new web site, a specific set of web-based services for a target market, or a multi-site strategy reflecting a diverse marketing campaign embracing social networks and other discrete touchpoints.

Visualizations can be all-encompassing, covering a full range of inputs that typically include over-arching corporate strategy, brand positioning, competitive positioning, and target consumers as well as outputs such as strategic drivers, principal ideas and concepts translated into prioritized products and services, and brand and design principles to apply when tackling implementation. On the other hand, visualizations can also focus on one contributor to the strategy information stream. A good example is the quantitative and qualitative research driving the establishment of market segmentation and creation of target customer personas.

Strategic design visualizations provide business design strategy a number of great benefits. Here are a few.
1. At a glance they provide a visual framework and a strategic context within which to house a quick view into the extensive research, insights, and findings driving the strategy. The report in word, the extensive presentation deck, the reams of research documentation are all still valid. Yet the visualization allows the viewer to quickly grasp the essence of the strategy and its principal highlights.
2. Visualizations are excellent ways to begin the socialization of strategy process across the organization.
3. Visualizations can be an excellent way to show how all departments within a company play a role in the execution of a strategy.
4. Visualizations can communicate the business logic driving design initiatives. In other words, one can draw a line through the visualization connecting the strategic dots that connect a piece of content, a new feature, a tone of voice, a certain aesthetic, to the core strategy.
5. Visualizations provide support objectivity when brainstorming ideas for new products and services.

Hey reader! If you have used great information design at your company to share your design and business strategies you may also have noticed the benefits. Why not share them here!?

When you live in the middle of the digital marketing and media revolution, it is sometimes easy to overlook the problems and changes that many industries are experiencing. Not long ago, Public Relations (PR) was considered the most cost-effective way of getting an organization’s name out to the masses. Here in Boston, there are a myriad of PR organizations, and they are fighting tooth and nail to retain business. I wonder, however, if they don’t see the change that is happening around them. Or perhaps, similar to print media, they see it, but are not quite sure what to do about it.

As I pondered this dilemma, a few possibilities occurred to me. I segmented my thinking in the three ways- short, medium and long term. I also realize that painting in broad strokes affords me liberties that are not true in business.  Oh, the beauty of blogging!

I strongly believe that the goal of public relations has a great deal of value. It is not the value proposition that needs to change, but rather the mechanism/tactics through which it is delivered. Therefore, in the short term, the tactics employed by a classic PR agency must evolve to embrace and leverage social media elements. If you consider the capabilities being offered by many PR agencies today, they still tout old school capabilities like press releases, media tours, messaging, highlighting executives, by-lines etc. These are all well and good, but how many of us read a press release? And if I wanted to learn about an executive, I expect to hear what that person has to say on YouTube or perhaps read it on their blog. A PR agency does not have to change the overall strategy, It simply has to  incorporate these social media elements and tactics.

In the medium term, there may be opportunities for intersection of PR and digital marketing. To this point, digital marketing has been focused around traditional marketing through digital media. The skills and approach that PR experts bring to the table might be key to understand what drives people to organically and virally consume content. Communication strategy has not been the strong suit of digital agencies, but by virtue of being a rapidly evolving space, it may be time for the digital team to drive this strategy. In other words, leverage the experience, approach and thinking that is the corner stone of PR , but apply it to the digital medium and realize that the sum of these parts will be greater than the whole (i.e. PR + digital agency = future)

The long term approach is far more radical. It is anyone’s guess as to where the quickly changing environment will settle. The good people in the print media are having one summit after another to morph their operational and profit models to return to viable businesses. These media outlets have been the main stay of PR – not to mention the bane of their existence. My belief is that the trade of PR relations will begin to focus on experts and consumers. The middle ground of journalists and print publications as we know it will seize to exist. They will be replaced by centers of interest (i.e., think communities or groups), who create and maintain their own ecosystem content creation, commerce, reviews, communities – specific to that interest. This would not only impacts PR, but digital marketing and business in general.

There is a future for PR, but it is irrevocably coupled with the digital medium and digital marketing. The scary consideration is that these PR agencies must act now so that they do not face the same predicament as the print industry.

Following up on my recent post about Facebook pages, AdAge has an interesting article about TGI Friday’s efforts. TGI Friday’s set a public goal – to get 500,000 people to fan their spokesperson, Woody, on the site. Supported by a freebie (free hamburgers for Facebook fans), television and online advertising campaign, the campaign was locked and loaded. It’s just that before they even really went out and started spending their media, they had 80,000 fans. It’s just that instead of taking a month, it took them 13 days to reach the target. Half a million free burgers leave a dent on any company’s budget ($2.5 million retail value, assuming the $5 burger price). Now the TV and banners ads are running, increasing exposure.

According to the article frantic calls and discussions ensued on how to handle the explosive success. TGI Friday’s did the right thing, though. Until the end of the month, apparently, they are going to honor their promise and give away free burgers to fans of Woody (who apparently, by proxy, seem to like red and white with articles of flair). What can we learn from this: overall – TGI Friday’s set out right. Getting fans by giving away stuff is the right thing to gain traction quickly. Maybe dipping the toes and seeing if fans need the extra media boost would have made sense. At the very least, it would help to plan for a good outcome, and apparently budget for it. At least they avoided the scorn of what are now tens of thousands of fans who would have been left out in the cold, burgerlss. I am keen to see what they are going to do with Woody and how they are going to sustain interest in absence of freebies. In the meantime, I am going to get my coupon.

I had been an active user of account aggregation services for years before switching to Mint.com several months ago. I could not have been happier with the services, ease of use and functionality provided by Mint. From my first login, I knew it would not be long before Mint.com was acquired. Their business model, the value of its customer information and the level of customer loyalty they have generated could not go unnoticed.  My only hope was that it was not acquired by a bank that would turn its services into its own marketing platform (you know there were several suitors).  My wish was granted when Intuit announced it would purchase Mint this week.  But what does this mean for how banks manage and measure customer relationships going forward?

The level of engagement banks have with their customers has been continuously decreasing. As in-branch transactions continue to diminish, banks try to engage customers through other channels such as online banking and mobile. Unfortunately, these channels are primarily transactional, which makes it difficult for banks to engage customers in higher value interactions (cross-selling, etc.). 

Mint.com and Quicken were already negatively impacting the banking industry’s level of customer engagement. With the merger, that impact will only grow. Once Mint utilizes Quicken’s technology and implements bill pay and transfer functionality, banks will begin to lose ALL direct contact with their customers.  Customers will no longer have to log into their institution’s online banking system. As customers get tired of paying for ATM fees, high interest rates, etc. they will use Mint’s “Ways to Save” feature to find a better solution or product. Banking products will become completely commoditized and banks will compete only on price.

Unfortunately, most banks won’t realize the extent of this impact until it is too late. “Engagement” is not a primary measurement for most banks.  They calculate success of a customer relationship based on the number of products owned, average balances, net interest income, tenure, satisfaction and cost to serve.  In some cases, Mint will actually increase the value of customer to a bank. As a customer reduces their use of their bank’s channels, the bank’s cost of service will decrease. Although that customer is more profitable, their propensity to attrite and switch banks increases because they longer have a relationship with their bank beyond fees, interest rates, etc.

Banks need to quickly realize the impact of the merger between Intuit and Mint and develop new and innovative ways to engage their customers (online and offline) or risk becoming a faceless institution that competes only on price.

To demonstrate social network success, savvy brand marketers must identify what success means, and then understand how it can be tracked.

To justify spending and ensure budget for future projects, it is crucial that marketers can demonstrably prove the success of a given campaign. As the economy sputters, and the struggle for budget becomes increasingly more challenging, it becomes even more important. While the majority of digital marketing can provide highly quantifiable results, social media can prove challenging. These networks are nebulous webs of people friending one another and sharing select information, and they frequently can’t be measured in clickthroughs or conversions. This article will explore how to create a metrics program to track the success of a campaign, using examples from major brands to illustrate different approaches.

1. Determine what to measure
The first step is determining what to measure. Start by considering why social media is being used in a particular campaign, and then look for ways to measure the results. It is important to set the campaign up for success. Don’t track data that is hard to gather, but do set your sights on the low-hanging fruit that will yield meaningful results. For example, many sites offer a tool enabling users to post content to their Facebook or MySpace pages. By using a tool such as Omniture, it is possible to track the frequency with which users are posting, and which networks they are using. By tracking this information, meaningful insights into the resonance and value of material on the site can be gauged.

2. Take advantage of existing tools
Social networking sites recognize that they live or die by their user base, and they understand that advertisers on these sites want specific insights into who they are talking to and how the message is being received. By using Facebook’s sophisticated tool kit, it is possible to track specifically who is engaging, and what they are doing there.

Even if the numbers aren’t hard, it is still possible to use social networking to track brand perception and better service the consumer. Twitter is a platform where users post 140 character updates on what they are doing, either through a mobile interface or via the web. Unlike Facebook or MySpace, it’s not a forum for emailing or playing games and, as such, provides fewer hooks to a brand marketer seeking to promote a message unless they have a decent amount of followers. Yet, there are ways to integrate the platform onto the site (take a look at the Betty Crocker clip below, as an example). Using tools like TweetScan, it is possible to see how frequently the brand name is being referenced on the site, and to react to any kind of coverage.

3. Track how social networking impacts other channels
Tracking the number of daily users is a no-brainer, but mapping in-network interaction to external behaviors becomes much harder. There are, however, a few ways to skin the cat, given creativity and tenacity. If a brand creates its own social network, using a pre-existing platform such as Ning, in conjunction with metrics tools, it’s possible to track entry and exit points on the site. If a clear destination has been identified as a project goal, it’s possible to drive the user there and track the volume. If a social networking campaign launches, look outside the web to see if there is a correlation between sales and the viral growth on the networks. Bacon Salt, a purveyor of foods, launched on Facebook and MySpace. Within a few days, it had sold out of product.

Conclusion
Social networking is more than just a profile page on Facebook. The power of the consumer’s voice can be harnessed in multiple ways, to serve many goals. The information can be incredibly valuable to judge the value of content, track user opinion, and propagate a brand message.

But in order to demonstrate success, the savvy brand marketer will create a thorough metrics campaign to measure the effort. The first key step is to identify what success means, and then understand how it can be tracked successfully.

Take advantage of the tools provided by the networks that are out there, see how the brand is fairing, and what can be done to get involved with the conversation. Try to track how the social networking campaign impacts other channels. Even if the numbers are not rock solid, there can be definite trends.

Molecular was one of the first agencies to develop a branded application on Facebook. A lot has changed since that first iteration of the Facebook Platform API. I doubt many initially thought Facebook would remain as successful for this long, let alone keep growing at its torrid pace. While the Application Platform matures and evolves, the new darlings, especially among brands, are Facebook brand/fan pages and Facebook Connect. In this first of two posts, I will discuss Facebook fan pages and what you should know before setting your brand up with one. A following post will provide a look at what Facebook Connect can do for you.

Advantages
1. Access to the Facebook Social Graph
Looking to tap into Facebook millions of users is a no brainer. Facebook’s user mass visits the site for hours every day and many look for more reasons to stick around. A fan page gives users opportunities to congregate, talk, and react. It is up to you to make your page relevant to users so they not only become your fans on Facebook, they tell their friends about it. Starbucks made itself relevant by leveraging Facebook fan pages early on. The coffee house chain that is so much more, created a page to help it connect with and stoke its devoted following. Fans get the inside scoop about promotions and events, and a place where they can hold a conversation with the brand they care for a love so much.

2. Low Cost of Entry
Getting a Facebook page up and running takes a matter of minutes. Just go to Facebook’s new page application (login required) and set up a page for your brand. That’s it. But before diving in, you would be smart to look to see if a brand fan page already exists. Despite some warnings in place, nothing prevents users from creating a fan (or hate) page for your brand. An existing page can spare you the user recruitment effort as you can try to embrace its owners and give them your official umbrella. Regardless creation date, all pages come with familiar features – a wall, discussion boards, video and photo galleries, as well as others. All of these features at your fingertips, at no cost. Now get the excitement going.

3. Traction
So how are your ads, Google keywords and affiliates faring? Research from ViTrue appears to point to another strength of Facebook pages: brand messages on the fan page wall get a much higher click-through rates than ads. That’s so not surprising given that the people who visit your fan page are normally actively interested in what your brand has to say. And if you post your message, do it on Tuesday, ok?

Disadvantages

If you are drooling and dialing your agency to just make sure you have a killer fan page, let’s review what lies between you and a great fan page.

1. Fans remain strangers
For all the joys of tapping into Facebook’s vast social graph, Facebook keeps information about your fans well under its control. Keep in mind that this information is at the heart of Facebook’s business model and you are really playing in their world. All you essentially get to know about an individual is his/her Facebook ID and if they are a fan or not. Facebook does give you rudimentary analytics, such as age, gender, country, city and language, but any attempt to customize your content or improve its aim will remain a guess. And unless you employ applications, you don’t get to view even the minimal data you get from Facebook about your users. One thing should be clear: Facebook is not a CRM data acquisition play.

2. It gets complicated quickly
So what can you do to make your page stand out and give it some pop? Like profile pages, your page can have a Facebook platform application installed on it. Applications can do amazing things and developers can even gear their apps for installation on fan pages. The problem is, most app developers don’t care much for companies and a great many applications break or just don’t work on fan pages. Part of the issue is that pages confuse the Facebook platform. Whenever an application runs on a Facebook profile page, it gets to ‘see’ the user who installed it. On a fan page, that ‘user’ is the fan page; there is no individual behind it, and that is a big problem. To make matters worse, the mere installation of applications on a fan page is a slightly convoluted process, and setting up application properties is more puzzling still.

So what can you do? Beverage maker VitaminWater follows the best practice on its fan page. You ‘install’ an application into the brand page, where the application is really a link that will send the user to the installation page for a real application that will run on a user’s profile. In this way, your brand will get to interact with an actual user and not with a stranger.

VitaminWater's Facebook Fan Page - Install our application

Needless to say, application development costs money and adoption rates vary wildly. VitaminWater made its application more interesting by giving fans a say on the future flavors it will produce, something that helped to fuel installations. Beyond costs, brands also need to make sure that the applications work; a buggy or slow application can hurt brand image and perception with the very people who love it most.

3. Bribes cost money
So how do you get people to join your page? Clicking the ‘Become a fan’ link takes a lot of motivation. Beyond the hard core folks who actually love what you have to sell, others need some convincing. Coupons can definitely help: clothing and house wares chain Kohl’s promised users discount coupons if they became fans. Just make sure you can live up to a promise. Starbucks ice cream, produced by Unilever, caught flack for promising coupons for free pints but then ran out of the number allotted for daily disbursement. TGI Friday’s is recruiting fans on TV, promising free $5 burgers to those who become fans. Others, like WholeFoods, invest in content that showcases the unique variety of products sold at the chain’s stores. Links also helped drive traffic to the company’s web site where more content was available. In conclusion, attracting users takes an investment, so get the budget ready.

Fan Woody, have meat: TGI Friday wants to be friends and puts its beef in the game

Facebook Pages: Take the plunge.
Fan pages’ potential is enormous. We all know about brand ambassadors and their ability to positively influence their peers on a brand’s behalf. Fan pages offer you access to individuals who want to know more about your brand and are willingly associating with it. As such, the fan page not only spare you research hours looking for such ambassadors; it can also give you a chance to make new ones out of the already converted. Furthermore, fan pages offer a low cost of entry into this world as well as the ability to dabble for a short time before you commit to supporting the medium wholeheartedly. Just remember – leave the sales-speak to ads.