Web Ink Now

Authenticity vs. Authority

Mark Olson asked a bunch of marketers to write a one-paragraph riff on Authenticity vs. Authority. We did not see what the other’s had written until he posted the responses today.

Here's what I said:

I remember in college there was a professor who had tons of authority. He was tenured, had written books, and was the head of the department. Although he had authority, he was not a popular teacher and his classes were empty. I recall other teachers who were young and dynamic and had no authority. Barely older than the students, they had an authentic love of their subject and of teaching. Their classes were packed. In the always on, one-click-away world of the Web, authenticity wins every time because unlike a college class, people can immediately leave the sites that don’t capture their interest. That’s why a lone blogger can be more popular than a stuffy old trade journal both on the same subject.

Read Mark's post to find out what Seth Godin, Brian Solis, Chris Brogan, and Mike Volpe wrote for their paragraphs.

Interesting stuff. Thanks for including me, Mark.

Image: Shutterstock

Everybody is wrong

What conventional wisdom that "everybody knows" can you challenge?

I've gotten tremendous pushback from thousands of people over the past decade on these ideas. But I’ve also had thousands of people reach out to me to say that these ideas have been incredibly helpful to them.

Some of the best ideas come from contrarians.

Here are some things I’ve challenged in the past ten years.

"Everybody knows that marketing is about promoting your product."

Everybody is wrong. When you adhere to the famous "four Ps of marketing" and talk up your product (the first P) you end up with egotistical nonsense. Nobody cares about your products. They care about themselves and solving their problems. Marketing is about understanding your buyer personas and creating information that they want to consume.

"Everybody knows that PR is about pitching the media."

Everybody is wrong. These days, journalists don't passively wait to see what brilliant PR pitches are sitting in their email in-box. In fact, they increasingly see email pitches as spam. However journalists are looking for story ideas all the time by searching Google, reading blogs, and following Twitter. Are they finding you?

"Everybody knows that the press release is dead."

Everybody is wrong. The press release is an effective media to reach buyers directly. When you craft a release from your buyers’ perspective and send it through one of the press release distribution services, your news hits people’s Google Alerts, is indexed by the news search engines, and is syndicated to hundreds of news portals, vertical market sites, and via RSS feeds.

"Everybody knows that newspapers are dying."

Everybody is wrong. When television came around, people predicted the death of radio. Radio didn’t go away, but the ways people consumed radio content changed because people didn’t sit around watching the radio in their living rooms anymore. The Web will not kill newspapers. But individual newspapers like my hometown paper The Boston Globe have to change and adapt to survive.

"Everybody knows that working for a big company means you have job security."

Everybody is wrong. Just ask people who worked for Bear Stearns or Enron or Worldcom or Lehman Brothers about job security. You make your own security by being excellent at what you do. I was fired three times. Now, by working for themselves, millions of people have the greatest job security there is.

Here's a new one I am hearing more and more.

"Everybody knows that social media changes everything."

Everybody is wrong. Yes, social media is changing the ways that companies are communicating on the web. But that doesn’t mean that offline marketing and communications is changing. You still need to meet with customers. Sometimes attending or exhibiting at a trade show is a good idea. TV and magazine advertising can still be effective. And getting your company into the Wall Street Journal or seen on Oprah (or your trade publication) has tremendous value.

What conventional wisdom that “everybody knows” can you challenge?

Image by Shutterstock

Clip this coupon for $1 million dollar off Ft Myers FL home

Here's a clever marketing & PR approach that I really like.

In an economy when there is a glut of luxury homes on the market, what can a homeowner do to make his property stand out? Why, get people talking about it of course!

Homeowner Rich Ricciani created a fun and creative world wide rave by thinking up the idea of running a coupon for $1 million dollars off the price of his $7 million Ft. Myers, FL home in newspapers.

Unlike the vast majority of people who just think of ideas, Rich actually followed through.

This creative approach sure beat simply reducing the price of the home on the real estate Multiple Listing Service database.

Rich worked with Lani Belisle of VIP Realtors to list the home and book the advertising space for the coupon, which initially ran in last Sunday's Ft. Myers News-Press.

Then it was time for Tina Haisman Public Relations to get the word out.

Tina used PRWeb to send a well-written, SEO optimized press release complete with photos, an imbedded YouTube video, and links to the coupon and home web site. "I also used PR MatchPoint to compile a list of real estate writers in the south and northeastern U.S. and I also personally targeted the big news outlets, such as CNN, Fox, NBC and more," Tina says.

The story appeared front page of The Fort Myers News-Press, aired WINK-TV and WFLX-TV, and is being picked up by real estate blogs.

The coupon will run this Sunday in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe. I love the selection of the Globe, chosen because Ft. Myers, FL is the home of the Boston Red Sox Spring Training facility. The choice of running the coupon in the Boston paper an excellent example of buyer persona profiling.

Gimmick?

Some may call this a gimmick.

Well, sure. But I think its great. When people are talking about you, your product stands out in a crowded market. And guess what? This kind of marketing is fun! If you're a realtor, it sure beats pounding wooden signs into front yards.

Well done Rich, Tina, and Lani. Let me know when the home sells.

Attention GM: Here are the top 5 marketing ideas for your reinvention

UPDATE July 22, 2009

Since I wrote this original post, I have engaged with several people at GM, including Christopher Barger Director Social Media, Mary Henige Dir. of social media, and I had a tweet answered by Fritz Henderson, CEO of GM. They are improving quickly. More here.

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ORIGINAL POST

This morning when I opened my Boston Globe, I found a full-page ad from General Motors. The ad and a new television commercial both say that GM is re-inventing. (I've re-written the newspaper ad text at the bottom of this post.)

Hey GM that's great and I wish you the best.

But I wonder if, during the reinvention of the COMPANY, you are really serious about re-inventing your MARKETING?

I see some tiny glimmers of hope. The new site at GMreinvention.com is quite good. I found some interesting and valuable information to check out on the site.

However, from the marketing perspective, the whole reinvention rollout seems to be typical GM, which leaves me a bit sad and depressed.

I fear for your long term survival, GM.

Here, then, are my top five things that you can do right now to accelerate this reinvention.

1) Fire your Madison Avenue advertising agencies.

From a marketing perspective, you've become addicted to the crack cocaine of big budget advertising. Everywhere I turn I see GM this and GM that and this has got to be really freakin' expensive. The television commercials, the "sponsored by" stuff, and other high ticket Madison Avenue marketing might make you feel good, but is it effective?

These days when people are thinking of buying a car, they go to the Web first! When people go to the web they are not looking for TV commercials, they are looking for information to help them make a decision. Your Web properties can deliver that (if you let the people who work on the web do their jobs). How about taking just a tiny sliver of that money you spend on TV and football sponsorships and giving it to the people who are doing the fledgling social media work that I see on the GMreinvention.com site so they can expand their efforts?

2) Show, don't tell.

The biggest problem I have with the whole re-invention launch is that it says a lot but doesn't deliver. For example, the text of the ad talks about "GM car," "Genuine GM parts," and "GM Warranty." Hey, you're GM, right? I didn't see any GM brands listed in the ad.

So why does the URL you provide me in the ad to get to my "GM dealer" insist that I "select a GM brand" before I can find the dealers in my area? I get a big fat red error message when I want to find a GM dealer!

Sorry, GM, it's just empty words when you tout the new GM, invite me to check out the new GM, ask me to buy GM products, and then go back to your stupid old ways of requiring that I know if I want a Buick or Hummer or Chevy or GMC truck or Saab or an Oldsmobile or whatever brands to happen to sell. How about letting me search for GM dealers? Or all GM SUVs? Why obsess about your damn brands?

3) Create the products that people want to buy.

Not much I can add on this one, but one thing does come to mind. If you rely on coercion techniques to make sales, then your products suck. When people want to buy a car, they want a good one. Your reliance on coercion such as “$5,000 cash back,” “employee pricing,” “free gas,” “ten year bumper to bumper warranty” and the like send signals to people that your cars are not worth the price.

4) Earn attention from your customers and potential customers.

There are four ways to generate attention. You can BUY attention with advertising, you can BEG for attention with Public Relations, you can BUG people one at a time to get attention with salespeople or you can EARN attention online by creating valuable information and publishing it online for free: A YouTube video, blog, research report, series of photos, twitter stream, ebook, Facebook fan page and the like.

GM has a corporate culture around buying attention. That's probably because your executives came up through the advertising side of the business. The problem is that you over invest in advertising and under-invest in your Web and social media efforts.

5) Humanize your company.

Sorry to have to tell you this: You are a nameless, faceless, corporation.

Your ad in the newspaper today was signed by the CEO, but why no photo of him? Did he even see the letter that some marketer wrote on his behalf? The new TV commercial you launched today is an inane collection of stock photos together with a few cars. It is generic. With a few different cars, the ad could have been made by Chrysler.

What about the people behind the reinvention? I want to meet the car designers. I want to know who the person is in your company who chose that weird color of purple of my latest GM rental car. People want to do business with people. Hey GM! Knock knock! Is anyone home? Who the hell are you???

I really want you to succeed. But you've got to re-think your marketing. You've got to unlearn what you've learned about marketing. Now. Today.

OK, those are my five. Anyone got any to add?

Here is the text of the full page ad from today's Boston Globe.

To Our Customers,

While a lot is changing at our company today, one thing is not: our commitment to you, our customers.

We want to assure you that your GM warranty will continue, whether you already own a GM car or intend to buy a new one. Genuine GM parts will be supplied. GM-trained Goodwrench technicians will perform service. Simply bring your vehicle to your GM dealer and you will receive service.

If the dealership you usually visit will be closing, we sincerely apologize and regret that it has affected you. We stand ready to serve with one of the largest dealer networks in America. Please visit GM.com/vehicles/dealer for information on dealers in your area. We pledge to make your next GM experience a remarkable one.

At this critical point on our history, we cannot afford to lose your business. Or your trust. You have our word.

If you are in the market for a new car, I urge you to shop GM. We are open for business, with some of the best vehicles and financing rates available. When you come in, I encourage you to be a critical judge of everything – from your experience in our dealership, to the quality of our cars. We owe you nothing but the best. And we will deliver.

General Motors may look different down the road, but we are here to stay. By accelerating work that is already underway and making fundamental changes from top to bottom, GM will be leaner, greener, faster, and stronger. We’re not just rebuilding our company. We’re reinventing it.

Over the coming days, months and years, we will prove ourselves by being more transparent, more accountable and, above all, more focused on you, our customer.

I invite you to track our progress at GMreinvention.com. And on behalf of all the men and women doing the hard work of changing our company for the better, we look forward to showing you the New GM.

Sincerely,
Frederick A. Henderson
President & Chief Executive Officer
General Motors.

Positioning magic at the top end of the market

On Saturday I enjoyed an evening of very intimate magic—a showcase of modern conjuring—by Steve Cohen, the "Millionaire’s Magician".

Steve's story is a fascinating example of personal branding success with exclusivity as a market position.

Steve doesn't advertise his Chamber Magic shows. He doesn't sell his services. It's his positioning plus word of mouth (and word of mouse) that gets him attention and selling out his shows many months in advance.

He performs on weekends in a beautiful, private suite in The Waldorf Towers. His guests arrive in cocktail attire making the performance feel like a trip back in time. (See the video below for a taste of the show).

To create the show and his market positioning, Steve worked with positioning expert Mark Levy (Disclosure: I have worked with Mark on several projects).

Mark was perfect because he not only is a positioning guru, but also a magician (he has co-written Magic for Dummies and the positioning and communications book How to Persuade People who don’t want to be Persuaded). Mark and Steve talked over the course of a month about how to develop a unique position in the crowded market for magicians.

Amazingly, no magic performer was in the exclusive space. Other performers were billing themselves as the funniest, or the edgiest, or the flashiest, or the coolest. Or adept at performing at trade shows, or at parties, or for children, or at functions, or they were the best at a specific kind of magic. But no one was focusing on the ultra high end.

With the new positioning, Steve Cohen was able to raise his private fees by 2,000% (yes, you read that right - he raised his fees two thousand percent) and he has been hired to perform at events for people such as Martha Stewart, Michael Bloomberg, the Saudi royal family, and Warren Buffet.

Of course, not everyone can be exclusive. The vast majority of magicians perform at children's birthday parties and county fairs.

How about you? Does the top end of the market appeal to you? Is it a position you can own?

More about Chamber Magic and Steve Cohen
Direct link to the video of Steve performing