Tag Archives: story

The Google Ad

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Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

I have not read any of the commentary about the Google ad yet, and for a reason. I wanted to get down my opinions of it untainted by anyone else’s opinions because I’ve rarely seen something that so defied my expectations.

Everyone talks about Google taking over every business that they move in to. Most of the conversation is about their dominance, their size, their goal to get all the world’s information. We speculate about their moves and their motives. Lately, we’ve even begun to take their search engine to task saying that keywords have run their course.

They know all of this, of course. But they did not address it. Not directly anyway.

What they chose to do is put themselves right in the middle of life. Not everyone’s life either – just their little part of one particular drama. They just showed how the simple thing that they do – help you find information on the web – helps in so many important moments in life.

This is brilliant advertising.

And it is by a company that did not need to build awareness or grow share. They have all of those that they need.

No, this was meant to show how something as simple as a search engine can help facilitate something elusive and tender and human as a budding romance come about. It is a brilliant piece of film. Fully branded, perfectly scored. Spot on emotionally.

For all the talk about the capital “c” Conversation in marketing, and all the hyperbole about the ruination of the :30 spot. This reinforced the power of the medium of film to deliver what no conversation ever could. It moves you emotionally. It conjured up a story – completely in our heads – that we all wanted to be a part of (even football guys in some small way).

It opened up the heart to emotions we’d never associated with Google.

And it didn’t need a baby or a monkey or a Clydesdale to do it.

Communication (?) Architecture, Pt. 2

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This model is a tool, but it is not a perfect one. For starters, I don’t like the name of it. And not just because it is too long and sounds a bit self-important (guilty on both accounts). No, what really bothers me is that it seems to be about communication, and so much of the world has shifted to content and conversation. Here’s the distinctions:

1. Communication tends to be static for the speaker-listener roles. Yes, it is a very broad sweeping topic, but in the world of marketing communications it has forever been a one-way communication. And now there are some tools around that allow a two-way street, but that does not mean that everything is going to be two-way. Takes movies for example. For all the hype about interactivity on Blue-ray, and the eternal promises of choose-your-own-endings, the movies that do best are created by people who know the craft and are talented at doing it. Same with television, books and plays. These one-way mediums are not going away. We’ll always have salesmen pitching, advertisers telling brand stories (of various lengths), and customer feedback. It’s that n:n category that has everyone talking (literally I suppose)…

2. Conversation has to be dynamically shifting the speaker-listener roles. Otherwise it is not a conversation, it is a monologue. And while the sales pitch needs some pitch time, it sure better have a Q&A at the end if anyone intends on actually selling something. Likewise on customer feedback. If there is no response, then the problem (and the customer) will just go away and a new problem will replace it – finding new customers and repairing a damaged reputation after they tell everyone online that you don’t listen. The good news is that the listening tools we have today are dynamic and robust. Which means we don’t have an excuse.

3. Content needs to be available on-demand. I think of this category as heavily in the Inform and Entertain modes. Information needs to be structured correctly so it can be navigated by an audience. Their experience of your content will form the brand impression. Not your delivery of it per se. Can I find out what I need to know, in the form I need it, and whenever I need it? You should be answering yes to all three of these questions. This is pull marketing. The kind that allows the user to direct the when and where. You just make sure you’ve anticipated all the questions, all the right media, and all the…oh, just put everything everywhere just to be safe. No, that wasn’t a joke. Don’t make me browse, unless it’s a catalog I love.

So, it will stay communication architecture. With the caveat that it covers the conversation and content paradigms that are pervasive in the halls of marketing departments and agencies today. Halls that are undergoing some tremendous changes right now.

Communication Architecture

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This whole communication thing has gotten really complicated. I’m speaking now about the profession of communications, which I’ve worked in for nearly two decades now. We all know about the proliferation of media, and we know that communication shops (i.e. agencies and consultancies of all shapes and sizes) face challenges left and right. Now we have the web, mobile, and tablets (Kindle & iPad). But communication has not really changed.

I’ve been working on a simple model to help a brand, an individual or an organization think at a high level about their communication architecture (overly fancy word, I’m open to alternatives). This will be the first of several posts laying out this idea, and it’s my intention to offer up a thesis that will get some feedback – this should be a dialog not a story.

1. Communication is about talking and listening. Period. It always has been and always will be. You can have one person talking to another one in conversation, or you can have an event full of people all mingling and talking to one another. Yes, this is a bit obvious, but it’s important to realize that the many-to-many (n:n) communications that are all the rage online right now – aka. social media – are as old as the marketplace.

2. We communication to inform, to persuade or to entertain. Yes, this is from freshman communications class. But again, it’s important to remember in these days of adjective marketing: primal branding, entertainment marketing, branded information and energizing the groundswell. All of these are just basic communication objectives. What we often forget is that the people listening have an objective as well.

3. Listening Objectives are important (and they always have been). We can call it the important of context or of engagement; we can say that the brand belongs to the consumer; we can talk about review sites and bloggers; but however you are going to label it, what it gets down to are Listener Objectives. The classic “what’s in it for me” question that public speakers are always taught to ask, but brands never think to consider.

There are four quadrants for any brand to consider:

1:1 — Dialog. This is what it sounds like. Good old fashioned conversation. It can be someone wanting persuade someone to buy a product or a CEO doing and interview with a trade journal, but whether it is PR, sales or word-of-mouth marketing there are principles to good dialog. We’ll look at some of the best thinkers and ideas.

1:n — Story. I’ve gone back-and-forth on this one wanting to call it monologue or some other permutation, but I decided that it really is storytelling. There are some wonderful books and ideas about story. Unfortunately, it has become the whipping boy in the advertising community with the demise of the 30-second spot. Everyone wants to talk about social media, but story isn’t going anywhere – it just migrated to another screen.

n:1 — Feedback. Another word choice that I wrestled with, but I think it’s the right word (again, always open to better ones). People have been giving feedback since we started having leaders (and shoddy products). Today technology allows this feedback to be harvested, analyzed and reconciled in a more efficient and effective manner – not that we get any better service. We’ll see that technology is up-ending decades old practices in all four quadrants, but none more significantly than the next.

n:n — Social. Let me start by saying that this is not social media (i.e. social networking sites) as is en vogue right now. This is any collective group talking amongst themselves without the “1″ present. See people have been talking about our products and services (and us for that matter) without us present since we could talk and had Social Objects to talk about. What is new is that we now have the ability (as the “1″) to listen in on these conversations without speaking. This ability to comprehensively listen is remarkable, powerful and useful to anyone wanting to inform, persuade or entertain someone (other than themself).


Office culture as social media (aka. how-to become part of a culture)

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I’m working on site for a new client this week. We are thinking about online and social media strategies (officially), but I am thinking (actually) about working in an office environment versus working in my own office. I’ve worked on-site for clients from time-to-time and it’s very disorienting initially, then it becomes very comfortable – just about the time to leave.

Interesting that this week we are working on social media strategies. Because the culture of an office is definitely a social structure – i.e. a media – and it offers some lessons about how to think about a social (or any other) media strategy. Here are 5 ways that you can become a part of a culture (online or otherwise):

1. Learn the language. Every culture has a language all its own. Duh, I know this is a bit obvious. But it’s not the English vs. Spanish kind of language that makes a difference. It’s the knowing that on a movie set a clothespin is called a C-47 kind of language that matters. This goes way beyond just knowing the text messaging shortcuts that your kids are using, and into the nomenclature of an industry and the secret handshake language of particular departments in large corporations. It’s how we spot newbies. And if you are new, you will say the wrong thing. Humility says to ask first. And humility works in almost all cultures (any culture you’d want to be a part of anyway).

2. Ask questions and really listen to the answers. Going with learning the language is asking people about themselves or about topics you know they love or are knowledgeable about. How will you know? By listening. This is the most powerful technology is the social media ecosystem – listening tools. From Google Alerts to radian6 to Motive Quest, these tools help you listen to the conversations going on. It is de facto understood online that people are listening. It’s a public space. If you are invited to the party, then you are welcome to mingle and listen in. The web gives you tools to listen to all the conversations. And you should. If you care what people are saying about you.

3. Get to know people. But just listening without engaging is a bit creepy if you do it for a long time. We call them stalkers in the real world. People who hover around just watching you, but never introducing themselves. The online space has some Orwellian possibilities to be sure, but smart companies, brands and people (was that redundant?) are now listening and finding the relevant conversations to join. Then they are coming in graciously and finding out what is going on, learning the language, and seeing who is leading the conversation (because it’s not them).

4. Learn the stories of the place. Language and literature (i.e. the stories) are the foundations of all cultures. It’s how identity, values, beliefs, etc. are passed from generation to generation. Every culture has its stories – especially the web. Urban legends are almost exclusively born on the web these days and now pass H1N1 like through social media connections. Origin stories, war stories, failures, successes – these are the classics of any office culture. Bloggers all have posts that are all time favorites of readers. Knowing what stories are being told in a culture – especially if that culture is about your brand/company – is critical.

5. Then introduce yourself (in more detail). Only after you have an understanding of the people, the language, and the stories in a culture will people want to really know who you are. People want to know you get them before they will want to hear anything you have to say. People want to be listened to, to be understood. This is universal and not unique to any medium. It’s the human medium. It’s relationship 101. And it’s important if you are introducing yourself that you are a person vs. a brand. People can like a brand, but no matter what marketing gurus tell us, they cannot have a relationship with a brand or an organization. They may relate to it, but that does not make it a relationship.