The Brainzooming Group

Following strong reception to the Brainzooming recap of January’s Kansas City American Marketing Association luncheon on Southwest Airlines social media strategy, I was compelled to attend the February panel on “Social Media for Marketing Communications Professionals.” The guest speakers were three well-known faces (and avatars) in the Kansas City social media community:

• Chris Kovac – Managing Director of the digital/social influence practice at Nicholson Kovac.
• Joe Cox – District Marketing Manager for Coca-Cola’s Vitaminwater, Powerade, Fuze & Smartwater brands in MO, KS, IA, and NE.
• Ramsey Mohsen- Web consultant and Social Media Strategist Lead at Digital Evolution Group.

Five content areas stood out particularly for me, with one of them warranting a rant!

Social Media Coming and Going

Chris and Ramsey talked about the steps before and after your audience interacts with your social media sites. Chris discussed the importance of your offline marketing clearly (as in spell out your Twitter and Facebook ids) driving audience members to check out your social media presences. Ramsey reminded everyone that even super fans of your brand won’t hang around your website for kicks. They’re there for utility, then moving on to social networking sites to interact with people. His comments were a great reminder that you need to also be present online where your audiences are already spending time.

Influencer Marketing – Where Events and Social Media Intersect

The combination of social media and live event marketing Joe shared is really compelling (you can see his first-hand account in a video from the lunch). He discussed how both at Red Bull and now at the brands he represents, his field marketing strategy focuses on finding young, hip influencers targeted by beverage marketers. After identifying them, Joe asks about what their dream events are and then provides the connections, resources, and promotion to make them happen. His strategy creates the emotional impact which makes great events and compelling social media content. That’s why the approach is so much more successful and exciting for all concerned than conducting boring “blogger outreach” programs.

How Does All This Help Business?

Ramsey hit the “big question” in social media: How does your social media activity ladder up to overall business objectives? While the link doesn’t necessarily have to be one-step away, you have to be able to credibly connect how social media contributes to what your company actually does to serve customers and generate revenue. Since multiple steps are typically involved, The Brainzooming Group recommends a multi-level metrics strategy for social media to account for a variety of metrics.

What’s Next?

The panelists were asked, “What’s next in social media?” Here are the trends and platforms they mentioned:

• Mobile
• Local and Location-Based
• Quora
• Hashable
• Path
• Instagram

Social Media Ain’t a Focus Group Folks

For the second consecutive month at the Kansas City AMA luncheon, a presenter said social media is “like a real-time focus group.” WRONG! Despite what people unfamiliar with research think, focus groups aren’t simply a bunch of people coming together and talking free form. Even though a focus group’s results are qualitative, a properly-done focus group has structure, carefully selected participants, and a scripted discussion guide behind it. Tweets and status messages don’t have any of those. Social media provides qualitative input, but unless you’ve created a much more structured environment, all you have is a bunch of comments.

Speaking of comments, what do you think about these highlights? Please share your thoughts about these points in the comment below! Mike Brown

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at brainzooming@gmail.com or call 816-509-5320 to learn how we’ve developed  integrated social media strategy for other brands and can do the same for yours.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Randomness

Building on Theresa Antell’s very well-received post from yesterday about the challenges of Twitter engagement, I view Twitter as a place to experiment, see how people react (or don’t) to a variety of content, and look for creativity-inducing connections among the array of random tweets. Saturday morning I was tweeting a few things, including items from the web (about an interesting Twitter analogy) and TV (a snarky video-related tweet):

The Connection

Shortly afterward, Michael Weber tweeted his reaction, prompting me to respond, referencing the Edie Brickell tweet (with typo included below).

Michael later answered he’d been referring to the Twitter/water analogy tweet, not the one about Edie Brickell. I found it interesting, though, his comment applied to both tweets (or at least when Edie Brickell first recorded). Michael’s reply pointed to our need to always place ideas in some context.

The point is well taken and relates to something I’d been thinking about writing about this week: always asking how any random input we’re presented with could spur a connection to a situation we’re currently facing.

This came up earlier last week talking about why I wear orange socks. It became a daily activity for me in the corporate world based on how people reacted to a chance reference in a Fast Company article which mentioned I wore orange socks. Making the transition to my own business, it was a relatively random connection between orange and creativity that allowed me to continue doing it (and save the money of repurchasing not only my clothes, but all the other orange stuff in my life).

The Creativity

A big part of creativity is making connections others don’t, won’t, or can’t. Part of that ability is having creativity exercises you can readily use. Another important part though, is being open to how random connections can lead you to creativity and new possibilities you would never have even considered otherwise.

It all starts with asking, “How could this fit?” to make a creativity-instigating connection when something surprising, unexpected, or random comes your way! – Mike Brown

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at brainzooming@gmail.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can deliver these benefits for you.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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This Super Bowl ad guest post is from author and advertising guru, Jim Joseph. In his book, The Experience Effect, Jim hits solidly on the need for brands to provide consistent, distinct experiences which resonate with customers. I had the opportunity to meet Jim at the 2010 AMA Marketing Research Conference, thanks to mutual good friend Sherrie Binke, who seemed to introduce all of us to each other at the conference! Jim presented an outstanding keynote address at the AMAMRC event, and it was so exciting to have him participate in #BZBowl and share his perspective on the Super Bowl ads in this guest post:

110 million viewers. 68 Super Bowl ads. 50 minutes of advertising time. $3 million a whack. This was by far the most hyped-up Super Bowl in history – at least for the advertising. The game didn’t necessarily disappoint, but quite honestly for this marketer you could have told me that I was watching lacrosse. It was all about the advertising.

How do we possibly sort through all those spots to pick out the best ones? Thanks to social media, I had my early favorites but I have to say that I still enjoyed watching them all in real time. The magic of advertising has not gone away.

Despite all the over the top creativity (CarMax “Metaphors”), cleverly written lines (cars.com “Reviews”), CGI (Kia’s “Poseidon), and celebrities (Kim Kardashian for Sketchers), the winners for me were the ones that either hit on a real consumer insight and/or built a brand experience. At the end of the day (game), that’s what marketing and advertising is all about.

Take a look at many people’s favorite, VW “The Force.” Over 14.5 million hits on YouTube (talk about extending the advertising spend!). Aside from making us all smile or LOL, I believe the reason this one hit home was the core insight. Who doesn’t want to give a kid a thrill? There’s Dad, behind the scenes, making his kid feel like he is supernatural. The nostalgia of Star Wars didn’t hurt either.

CareerBuilder. I know that some people are tired of the monkeys.  For me it’s a branding device that hits on the insight of feeling like you work with a bunch of inconsiderate people that “don’t get it.” So getting stuck in a place where you are frustrated that you can’t get out hits the nail on the head.

And who can’t relate to the horror of hitting “reply all” by mistake.  Bridgestone, coming out of nowhere in my opinion, caught one of the best insights of the night with their Super Bowl campaign. And while many did not see the tie to the brand, for me it is as simple as those tires giving you the ability to race around and get to everything you need to.

I still like the Snickers insight of not quite feeling like yourself when you’re hungry. And while it wasn’t a new campaign by any means, I liked seeing Roseanne Barr pop out of nowhere.

Did these advertisements build the brand? Yes, certainly. But not to the degree that my two absolute favorites did: the NFL and Chrysler.

I was really impressed by the NFL advertising, although it perhaps didn’t deliver on the hype and glamor of many of the others. The NFL had a few spots thrown in the mix, and every one of them quite simply delivered on the NFL brand experience. I loved the one where the tv screen turned into a tablet turned into a hand held device turned into a tv. You can watch the NFL where ever you go. And then the retro montage of tv-inspired Super Bowl party moments was brilliant. Really going far in turning the NFL into more than just a football organization but into a brand and a brand experience. Best Fans Ever.

And finally there was Chrysler Imported from Detroit.

Best in show, at least for me. First of all it took me by surprise because I hadn’t seen it ahead of time. And while I am impressed by all the activity on social media leading up to the game, I do have to say that the experience of watching a great piece of film in the moment was priceless. The storytelling was the best of the lot for sure. The music, use of celebrity, and cinematography made for an attention-getting moment in advertising history. But the pride in America and what we all do for a living and what we can all do to improve our lot is what hit it out of the park for me (sorry that’s a baseball analogy I think). It was insightful, creative, emotional, engaging, entertaining, brand building, and memorable. It changed the way I think about the brand, about Detroit, and about our future together. What more can you ask for in a piece of advertising?

Best in show.

Thanks to everyone who participated with me in the live posts and tweets, particularly the #bzbowl bunch. Experiencing the “game” via Facebook and Twitter, while exhausting, was so much fun.   Big thanks to Mike!

Lesson learned?  Find a great consumer insight to lead your creative development, and then tell a compelling story. That’s what will deliver great advertising, for the Super Bowl or not.

Let’s continue to ponder these great advertising moments and improve our craft. It gives me great pride. - Jim Joseph, President of Lippe Taylor Brand Communications and author of “The Experience Effect”

Guest Author

The Brainzooming blog has a wonderful group of guest authors who regularly contribute their perspectives on strategy, creativity, and innovation. You can view guest author posts by clicking on the link below.

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Business innovation and strategy were central topics when the Brainzooming blog’s precursor started in 2007. Since then, the content covered in the blog has grown and changed, but there’s a concerted effort to stay true to its initial strategic theme.

Following up the recent summary article with links on social media strategy, this list covers new business innovation articles from 2010. Most appeared on Brainzooming initially, but some were published exclusively as guest Brainzooming blogs on other websites.

Beyond this comprehensive list, another key business innovation reference on Brainzooming is the post “Taking the NO Out of Business InNOvation,” an overview of ten common situations blocking business innovation across companies.

INNOVATION STRATEGY

• Before Wild Creativity, Get Grounded in Strategy First – Don’t get creative until you understand what really matters in your organization.
• Strategic Connections – 3 Tips for Identifying More Opportunities – Ensure your strategic decisions are infused with more and richer possibilities to lead to success.
• Innovation Metrics – A Whole-Brain Strategy – A model for examining 6 fundamental metrics to track your efforts.
• Collaborative Innovation Efforts (guest post on Blogging Innovation) – 6 fundamental strategies for driving collaborative approaches.
• 30 Ideas for Using Social Networks to Help You Be More Innovative and Catalyzing Innovation Strategy with Social Networking – 10 More Ideas – Two articles (the first a guest post on Blogging Innovation) on how social media can shape a vibrant innovation strategy.
• The Strategy of Fear – Who Are Your Competitors? – Are you afraid of competitors or are you using information about them to improve what you do?
• Making Your Competitor’s Strategy Decisions for Them – Beat competitors to great innovative opportunities by forcing their hands and wresting control of their own strategic decisions.
• Business Strategy – Creating Plan B – Does your strategy include alternative approaches if something goes wrong? How compelling is your plan B? Really?

WHOLE BRAIN THINKING

• Strategic Business Success – 3 Critical Perspectives – It takes more than one kind of thinking for innovative success. It takes three!
• Not Even One of These Things Is Not Like Another – Ensure you have the diversity you need for innovative thinking. If you don’t, stop the show!
• Strategy Challenges? Share Them with a Great Strategy Team – A handy checklist for the left- and right-brain mindsets you want on your strategic team.
• Strategic Thinking, Implementation, and Master Doers – The important roles and interplay between strategic thinkers and doers.

INNOVATION TECHNIQUES

• Finding Creativity Amid Change – Stretch Yourself – Push your organization into decidedly new and different territory to build new capabilities.
• The Value of Brainstorming for Innovative Business Ideas – Why brainstorming is productive, if you go into it with accurate expectations.
• Everything’s Open for Discussion? How’s that Work? – How to handle someone trying to derail an “any idea is up for discussion policy” through a personal agenda. A guest post on author Gary Unger’s blog.
• Innovation in Your Plans? Capture Bunches of Ideas – Work on generating ideas all the time. When you do, don’t let any get away.
• Strategies for Capturing Ideas – Guest Post by Franis Engel – A guest author offers specific techniques for capturing ideas so you won’t lose them.
• 1 Simple Strategy for Improving Time Management – Using time limitations to make sure you’re making progress on innovation.
• Don’t Overthink It? 5 Key Questions for Quick Decisions – Questions that balance being strategic with the need to make a quick decision and keep moving.
• New Year’s Resolution for the “Over-Thinker” - Guest post on TalentCulture highlighting how entrepreneurs can move ahead quickly and decisively with innovative efforts.
• The Constraint of Completeness – You can undercut the impact of communicating a new effort by sharing too much detail.
• Social Media Strategic Planning with a LARGE Group – A video showing The Brainzooming Group planning method in action with a very large group.
• Prioritizing with Pain – Building downsides into a prioritization exercise yields more realistic results.
• Strategic Opportunities – How to Effectively Prioritize Them – At some point, you have to select the best opportunities and move forward. This video covers a prioritization strategy we use frequently.
• Innovation Strategy with a New Audience – Start your efforts with a new audience by first observing and listening.

MARKET-DRIVEN INNOVATION

• 6 Strategies for Staying Ahead of Customer Needs with Innovative Business Ideas – Insight-driven ways to innovate ahead of customers.
• A Strategy for Predicting the Future More Accurately – Incorporate input from customers who are already “living the future” into your innovation strategy.
• Identifying Early Stage Innovation – A Blogging Innovation guest article addressing 8 strategies to better identify and forecast early stage innovation.
• Win New Business from Competitors with a Nuisance Strategy – Taking an outrageously focused, outrageously nasty view of a competitor can lead to outrageous success.
• Zero Moment of Truth – The Google Perspective on a Strategic Customer Engagement Concept – Customers interacting with brands in new ways at different times provides challenges and opportunities to be more anticipatory with innovation strategies.
• Innovative Strategy for Online Social Communities – Five Takeaways – Online communities can contribute customer insights to help shape innovation strategies.

INNOVATION CHALLENGES

• Don’t Let Fear of Change Block Innovative Business Ideas – Incorporating emotional appeals to counteract fears about changes arising from innovation.
• Is Your Brand Headed for Trouble? 5 Strategic Warning Signs – Five business situations which can spell trouble for current and future plans.
• Marketing Budget Yoga – A Strategy for Succeeding with Less – There are ways to work around limited marketing funds and still be innovative.
• Stealth Innovation Strategy – Hiding Innovative Business Ideas – There are times it makes sense to take your development efforts underground to innovate in a protected environment.

INNOVATION IN PRACTICE

• What the World Needs Now – Innovative Ideas from TEDxKC – Part II – Full presentation videos and written highlights from the presenters at the August 2010 TEDxKC event.
• Customize a Customer Brand Experience Very Simply – An example from the Milwaukee Museum of innovating with what you already have to customize a consumer’s experience.
• Innovation Strategy Successes – 3 of Kansas City’s Business Winners – Highlights from a panel discussion among Kansas City entrepreneurs on what they’re doing to create innovation in their organizations.
• 7 Extreme Creativity Lessons from “Cake Boss” – The reality TV show “Cake Boss” yields a number of lessons to push for more radical creativity.
• Untangling Your Brand Attributes for Greater Value – How an industrial company can stop cutting itself off from product developments by changing how it views its brand attributes.
• Domino’s, Conan, and 3 Fundamentals for Communicating Big Brand Change – When you innovate, it’s always tempting to market against what you used to be. It’s not a good idea, and isn’t necessary if you’re smart strategically.
• Strategy and Prioritizing Crowdsourced Oil Cleanup Ideas – Challenging the solution prioritization approach BP used to address the Gulf Oil Spill.
• Turnaround Innovation – Another Blogging Innovation guest post about how even a string of successes can turn sour if an organization’s culture doesn’t really change.
• Creative Ideas and a Destination for Them – A very simple, subtle way to send a creative message to customers. – Mike Brown

For an additional innovative boost, download the free Brainzooming ebook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” to enhance your creative perspective! For an organizational boost, contact The Brainzooming Group to help your team be more successful by rapidly expanding strategic options and creating innovative plans to efficiently implement. Email us at brainzooming@gmail.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can deliver these benefits for you.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Monday’s post was about the importance of paying enough attention to customers that you talk to them when they’re already thinking about your brand. That very day, I had a first-time airline-related customer service situation which highlighted another basic and important service concept: thinking about service delivery in a strategic way from the customer’s point of view.

On a Continental Express plane (the jets so small there’s only one flight attendant), pre-flight instructions are recorded. This allows the flight attendant to demonstrate the various instructions without having to bounce back and forth between the intercom and the demonstration. Since I actually do try and pay attention, I noticed the flight attendant was mouthing the pre-recorded instructions’ words. Given how gregarious she had been on an earlier announcement, I laughed, thinking she had to be a former Southwest employee who was mocking the pre-recorded voice.

When she came by later for the beverage service, I mentioned noticing she was having fun with the recording. She surprised me by saying the reason she mouthed the words was for hearing-impaired passengers. By her reckoning, maybe if they couldn’t hear the recording, they might at least be able to read her lips to get the safety instructions.

I’ve been on a lot of other Continental Express flights (including one the day before) and have never seen this happen. I can only credit the great insight and modification to the standard process to her strategic thinking ability and mentally observing service delivery from the customer’s perspective to modify it for a minority audience segment’s benefit.

We should all be that perceptive and adept at strategic thinking! -  Mike Brown

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategy options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at brainzooming@gmail.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your brand strategy and implementation efforts.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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I’ll admit to being a very pre-meditated traveler. The night before a trip where I’m speaking to a conference or facilitating a Brainzooming strategy session, I spend time visualizing key events during the trip, thinking through what needs to be packed and what unusual situations to prepare for, just in case. Part of the pre-trip strategy involves identifying what absolutely has to be addressed before leaving and what can be handled while traveling.

As a result, it was a welcome surprise the night before my recent trip to speak to the Milwaukee Business Marketing Association when the following email arrived from Southwest Airlines.

Just as I was trying to anticipate what emails could get sent prior to leaving, the Southwest notification provided an alert that the next day’s flight would have Wi-Fi. How great to be able to incorporate this foreknowledge into planning for what could get accomplished while on the early flight the next morning.

Southwest Airlines successfully nailed what’s typically a big challenge for brands: knowing its customers well enough to understand when they’ll already be thinking about its brand. By anticipating this situation, Southwest increased receptiveness to its message since I already had its brand on my mind.

The challenge? While this is an ideal situation for a brand (talking to customers when they’re already focused on you), there’s no easy formula for doing it well. It really does take intense understanding of your marketplace, perhaps through ethnographic research where you have an opportunity to observe how your customers function and interact with your brand even when your brand isn’t formally present.  – Mike Brown

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategy options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at brainzooming@gmail.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your brand strategy and implementation efforts.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Last Monday, I spoke on social media strategy for long-time reader Becky Johnston’s graduate level marketing class at UMKC. There were approximately 25 smart, early-career students in her marketing class.

We were talking about social media’s pervasiveness across customer service touchpoints in a business. I shared Chris Brogan’s opinion on providing front line customer contact employees some mini-version of media relations to better prepare them to deal with customers using social media to broadcast the customer experience. I asked, as I frequently do, who had heard of Chris Brogan. And as frequently happens, not one student raised a hand.

Yes, nobody knew who Chris Brogan was.

For many of us heavily into social media, and Twitter especially, we could better tell you Chris Brogan’s strategic perspective on the topics of the day than we could those of a relatively close relative. I rarely interact with most of my cousins, but I’m checking in multiple times weekly, if not daily, to see what Chris is tweeting and writing about on social media, marketing, strategy, and any other topic he decides to cover.

But kids, we aren’t normal.

So beyond Chris Brogan, who is legitimately a social media rock star, there are lots of other lesser-known great thinkers whose strategic ideas may not be seeing the light of day among important business contacts you have.

There are a lot of people we do business with (peers, bosses, employees, clients) who never see the great strategic insights being shared online in what are common social media channels to some, but not common at all for many very intelligent, active, successful business people.

Which brings us to the question: Are you retweeting IRL?

By that I mean, beyond simply RTing great content you’re seeing via social media, are you:

• Referring to it in business conversations?
• Sharing it in staff meetings?
• Printing articles and posting them on bulletin boards or sending them to others?
• Emailing links to business associates?
• Incorporating these perspectives into presentations you’re doing?

Because while a retweet (or a Digg or a Like) is easy and provides the sense you’ve shared what you think is relevant with the world, there are many people who’d benefit from the content that are never seeing it.

So do them a favor, after you RT it online, RT it IRL too! 

BTW, in case you’re interested, you can take a look at the Prezi of the social media strategy overview below. – Mike Brown

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at brainzooming@gmail.com or call 816-509-5320 to learn how we can develop an integrated social media strategy for your brand.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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