Concentric Marketing

Facebook Updates Pages – Layout & Functionality

jclewell — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 15:48:48 +0000

Facebook has launched major changes to the functionality of Pages and have updated the layout to match the changes to the design of user profiles made in December. All Pages will be automatically migrated to the new design on March 1st.

Here’s a breakdown of the changes:

Smaller profile photo – The profile picture is slightly reduced in size from 200 x 600 pixels to 180 x 540 pixels. Photostrip – there will now be a photostrip above the wall that displays thelatest photos the Page has tagged itself in. No more tabs – like the profile design changes, the tabbed navigation above the wall will be no more. Navigation links will now be a list situated under the profile picture in the left column. A potential benefit of this is that names of “tabs” can now be longer and more descriptive. Pages can “Like” other Pages – you can now like other Pages. Links and profile pics of these “Likes” are made visible below the navigation panel in the left hand column. Use Facebook as Page – as and admin of a page, you can now choose to use Facebook as the page. A special version of Facebook loads where you can now post and comment around the site as the Page! Meaning you can post on other pages as your Page! Wall shows relevant posts – Page admins can choose to show posts from “everyone” or the Page posts only. A major change tot he “everyone” option is that it shows user posts that Facebook thinks will be most relevant instead of a reverse chronological stream of posts. Posts that have received a lot of “Likes” and comments will bubble to the top. iFrames for developers – Pages will finally feature iFrame tab applications. This won’t roll out till March 11 however. Something to note – once the conversion happens, page admins will have to go in and choose their default landing page. The conversion will reset it back to the wall. I’m sure there will be several other things that need to be “tweeked” to be sure your visitors are still getting the same experience. While many of these changes are beneficial for brands/businesses administering Pages, this is just another example of how Facebook can make changes at any moment and with little notice.

Understanding the Concept of “Brand”

bshaw — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 14:21:26 +0000

Here’ s the kind of CEO who really understands the concept of “brand” at the highest level. Obviously, that’s what it takes for the scrappy upstart to take on the Nike’s and Adidas’s of the world. It is possible for true believers!!! There is a terrific piece from Knowledge @ Wharton about Kevin Plank, the founder and CEO of Under Armour, which he built from a company making “the first form-fitting, moisture wicking t-shirt” to one that currently generates more than a billion dollars a year in sales selling a range of athletic gear. Plank says that the strength of his business comes from what he calls the “four pillars of greatness”: “Build a great product.” “Tell a great story.” “Service the business.” “Build a great team.” Among the notable quotes in the piece: • On building a relationship with customers… “Our object cannot be to try to convince 25-year-olds to change brands, though that is always something good. But now 8-, 9- and 10-year-olds have a relationship with Under Armour [and say] it is their brand. I tell them that their great-great grandfather [bought products from] the guys from Germany [Adidas] and their grandfather grew up with the guys from Oregon [Nike]. But you will grow up with Under Armour.” • On passion and teamwork… “My passion is to build the biggest, baddest brand on the planet. My vision is that I want to stay focused…. We want to make sure there is nothing that prevents us from doing what we want to do with our brand. Finally, we want to have the best type of people — team, team, team. I can’t underscore that need [enough].” • On protecting the brand… You do something so you can get a quick buck and that may look good on the revenue chart, but only for a little while. What you do must protect your brand or you will ultimately fail. If you slap a logo on it, it might sell right away, but the brands that will endure are the ones that respect the consumer.” • On focus… “Nothing is really God-given. You have to embrace the things you feel are important and work hard — will it to happen … What I do know is that we have not yet built our defining product at Under Armour. We are not living in the past. Our larger competitors are 20 times our size. There is running room all over.” • On the importance of narrative… “Great companies have to manage the cadence of what they do. ‘Chapter One’ [of a business's growth trajectory] has to relate right to Chapter Two and Chapter Three and Chapter Four. Every great brand is like a great story. Every commercial we run, every product we make, is like a chapter in that book. If we don’t manage the cadence, though, we will get too far ahead of ourselves.”

It’s Been a Good Year for the Code

lculp — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 22:27:39 +0000

As we’re nearing the end of 2010, it’s time to give the little 2D QR Code a shout out as a breakout interactive tool this year. With a smart camera phone (and an installed reader, like QRReader app for iPhone), the consumer points and scans the QR Code (on anything from an ad to an in-store display to business cards) and then the code takes them to a URL (website, social media channel, video, data capture form, etc.). They’ve been around but brands have been paying more attention as more consumers are buying into the Smartphone. It’s a way to get a little more of consumers’ attention, hence the abbreviation QR for Quick Response. Bonus feature: they’re basically free to generate and totally track-able. Here’s a recap by month of what I found to be brands’ coolest applications of the QR Code. Creatively runs the gamut!

January: GMC uses QR Codes to promote the Granite
February: Best Buy uses QR Codes to directly link customers to mobile shopping
March: Facebook gives 450 million members and brands a QR Code linking to their profile
April: Iron Man uses a QR Code in movie posters promoting sequel
May: HBO uses QR Code for trailer promoting True Blood
June: City Of New York blankets Times Square with huge QR Code
July: NYC billboard with QR Code promotes Calvin Klein Jeans
August: JFK Presidential Library and Museum uses a QR Code to promote their Twitter account
September: Toys“R”Us launches mobile campaign integrating QR Codes on signage and shelf talkers
October: eBay releases new version of RedLaser iPhone app that includes QR Code with ability to populate product results with eBay Marketplaces and Half.com listings
November: Mesob Restaurant in Montclair, NJ puts QR Codes on each table and diner is taken to a video on how they make their dishes
December: Who’s going to end the year with a breakout QR Code idea?

Great inspiration for Cause Marketing

hcallahan — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 21:59:43 +0000

We were lucky enough to meet Charlie Petrizzo and hear about his unbelievable story. As a child, Charlie survived death twice from two horrible accidents—he was hit by a car when he was five and electrocuted when he was in his teens. With physical and emotional scars, Charlie had a long road back to recovery. Aside from the strength and caring of his family, Charlie found help from the healing power of his dog. No caring what he looked like, no judging any limitations, the dog provided the unconditional love and support that Charlie needed. Looking back and realizing how much that dog helped him in his healing process, Charlie has now dedicated his life to helping children with special needs heal through the love of a dog. Project 2 Heal is a non-profit organization that Charlie founded—where he breeds and trains labrador retrievers to become working service dogs for these children. As Charlie says, “I want to heal the world, one puppy at a time.” The team at Concentric wanted to get his story out, so we created a video about Charlie and his Project 2 Heal foundation. It’s a great cause and we’re very proud to help Charlie and are pleased with the results so far (over 1,000 YouTube views in the first week alone). It’s yet another example of how Concentric can help brands/causes/people breakout and become successful. Please share Charlie’s video with others. Thank you.

Undercover Boss: Break Out Already!

lculp — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 15:50:30 +0000

Calling The Workforce: Raise your hand if you’ve become formula-fatigued by CBS’s second season of Undercover Boss. I’ve got both hands raised. As a lover of reality TV, I totally find coziness in format recycling…challenge is next, tribal is coming. But Undercover Boss’s product has gone stale. Why is that? The show’s format is based on a CEO-level working “undercover” in their own company to investigate how things “really” work, identify how it can be improved, and the icing on the cake is rewarding (in a life changing way) the staff he/she meets along the way. We’ve seen Waste Management (first episode and highest rated), Hooters, 7-Eleven, GSI Commerce, Frontier Airlines, Choice Hotels, Chiquita… A good story is calculated, but now on episode 18, a better word for Undercover Boss is manipulative. The CEOs work awkwardly in the frontlines, beside people who are doing a fine job – the job that was formulated from the top. What I want to see, and you might agree, is the raw stuff: the brainstorming behind the customer feedback computer system, the strategy behind the packaging ounce change, the ideas behind the sales programs, the marketing meeting agenda! Now there’s a real peek behind the curtain and it involves the executives themselves and the decisions they make for their brand that trickles down to those who sell their brand. We’ll spend more scene time in whole picture brand ideation and feel rewarded for being part of those conversations. Undercover Boss breaks through when it takes one more step into transparency. America, you like? Now, I must ask: Which brand would you like to see go “undercover” in this “new” format? My pick is the middle market guys who are nimble enough to make real changes in the challenges they face.

Google Analytics Offers Holiday Analytics

jclewell — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 03:08:41 +0000

If you get as geeked up over analytics as we do, then you’ll be interested to know that Google has a project called “Think Holiday.” http://www.google.com/thinkholiday/ It’s a pretty interesting portal that uses Google’s trending topics to present you a look into what consumers are thinking. For example this chart shows the growing interest in “Black Friday” over time: Or this table displaying the top trending searches for consumer electronics: With a little creative thinking you can use these trending topics to your advantage. For example, are you planning a holiday promotion? Find out what is the hot new thing this season to maximize the effectiveness. How else could you use this information to your advantage?

Market-share vs. Profit Strategies

kylieghughes — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 10:52:56 +0000

The joys of dating…

We all know a friend who, at some stage in their single life, has dated anything with a heartbeat. (Let’s be totally honest, some of us are those friends). Dating anything with a heartbeat is essentially a market-share strategy—getting your brand out there any way you can, learning from experience, polishing your image while honing your products and services. The strategy serves a purpose—you discover what you do want by exploring what you don’t want, you work out who you are and what matters. And eventually, for most us, we outgrow it. It serves its purpose and we move on. Why? Because a marketshare strategy is exhausting. It demands a lot of resources—it requires us to spend time with people who we aren’t really compatible with, to invest money in programs and events that aren’t always our cup of tea, and to constantly make exceptions in our system to accommodate an endless array of idiosyncrasies. Most of us only endure this because we intend for it to lead to that one special account where, having found it, we can invest all of our energy and resources while enjoying the mutual benefits of genuine compatibility. (Wistful sigh).

Business is very much like dating, especially so in the B2B service sector. A market-share strategy will serve its purpose as long as you have a clearly defined notion of what that purpose is and for how long you plan to sustain the effort and investment. And it does take effort. Your marketing team can get wrapped in their own riddles trying to be everything to everybody, your sales team can be demoralized by high maintenance and underperforming accounts, and your administration team can be run ragged building systems for an eccentric collection of clients. If you have a good reason for recruiting any customer that has a pulse, be certain to communicate to your team why this is so, and for how long you intend to play the dating game. (It keeps people from feeling cheap and nasty).

At some point, even pathological daters acknowledge that real reward comes from quality relationships. When you transition to a profit strategy you shift your attention from the quantity of accounts to the quality of accounts. Are you compatible? Is there mutual benefit? What level of maintenance is required for this relationship to work? Is the relationship profitable? If not right now, when and how will it become profitable?

As painful as breakups are, at some point you may need to call it quits with some of your low profit accounts. Your marketing and sales teams will be more motivated because of it—finally they can focus their attention on the existing accounts that matter, and prospect for new clients with discretion and integrity. Your admin team will be equally ecstatic because they can develop systems that serve a specific and constant set of requirements.

Go on, burn your little black book.

How Leading Brands Grow Their Industry Category

kylieghughes — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 11:25:22 +0000

For a start, they’re large for my height. I’m 5’6” tall and my feet are size ten. I can never predict what a shoe will look like on my foot until it’s been shod onto my clod-hopper. The daintiest slipper can transform me into Ronald McDonald. As a consequence, I don’t shop for shoes, I hunt. Like a special operative. I try on shoes quickly and furtively. It can be an emotionally trying experience.

But apparently thousands and thousands of consumers take a different approach to shoe shopping. Last year Zappos.com, the online shoe retailer, reached a $1 billion milestone in annual revenues. This is the same Zappos.com that Amazon announced recently that it would be purchasing for $900 million.

The announcement got me thinking: 1) about buying my shoes online, and 2) that Amazon didn’t buy a shoe company, they bought a loyal customer base that are willing to buy shoes online.

A shoe is not a book. If someone’s willing to buy shoes online, they’re probably willing to buy anything online.

Zappos.com’s vision is that one day 30 percent of all retail transactions will be done over the Internet. They’d rather that you bought a pair of shoes online from one of their competitors, than from a traditional store. Amazon enthusiastically shares the same vision. Zappos.com doesn’t just remove the barriers that would stop you from buying a pair of shoes from them. They create such a positive buying experience (including free shipping and a 365 day return policy) that you feel less resistant about shopping online, period.

Leading brands don’t stop at their own pocket book. Do you have a vision that encompasses not only your company, but your entire industry category?

Consumer Packaged Goods, Meet Alice…QUICK!

Kara Schwab — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 11:28:23 +0000

The name Alice reminds me of the housekeeper on “The Brady Bunch.” I cannot hear that name without thinking of a female embodiment of a real-life Mr. Clean powerhouse. She was always there when needed—and even before the family knew they needed her. She cleaned up messes around the Brady house and in the family’s personal lives as well. She had a solution for just about everything.

I’m guessing the branders of the new e-commerce site, Alice, were also TV-watching kids from the 70s. With the tagline “Everybody needs an Alice,” the site promises to revolutionize the way people shop for household goods, and gives them an opportunity to get products straight from manufacturers. By eliminating the middleman and any retail margin, Alice is able to offer prices that are 20 to 30 percent lower than other online stores. In Alice’s own words from the site, “Our mission is to give people a better way to buy the goods that keep their homes running. We have big plans to disrupt the traditional retail market. Everything we do is focused on empowering our customer.”

The site allows users to create a free account where they can manage all of their home essentials, receive alerts when they are likely to be running low on a product, find the best prices, eliminate emergency store trips, get automatic coupons on 1000s of products and have products shipped directly to their door for FREE.

While the idea of never running out of toilet paper sounds heavenly, will shoppers ever be motivated to purchase things like shampoo and deodorant online? Well, I checked out the beta site (the full site is expected to launch in September of this year) and five minutes after creating my personal account, I am a believer. I looked up toothpaste, and there were 160 options to choose from, including an organic brand I love! I was amazed at how fun—and addicting—it was.

Currently, there are around 6,000 unique products from hundreds of different manufacturers available for purchase on the site. A consumer truly cannot beat the price, choice and convenience. The online component adds additional benefits to consumers that include budgeting worksheets, consumer-created profile pages (where shoppers can connect with family, friends and meet like-minded shoppers), and different ways to shop: by room, brand, organic preference, etc.

What’s most exciting to me as a marketing professional (and what consumer packaged goods need to know) is Alice allows brands to form a direct relationship with consumers, enabling personalized coupons, sampling and loyalty programs. No household product will want to miss out on the opportunity to take advantage of this new, more level playing field—especially if you’re a middle-market, emerging brand.

On TV, Alice has always been a force to be reckoned with. Online, she’s going to have even more of an influence.

Use a Technographics Profile to Optimize Your Interactive Marketing

jclewell — Mon, 03 May 2010 11:54:44 +0000

Interactive spending continues to rise and with all that money moving online it can be difficult to know where it is best spent. Many companies approach social media focused on deploying technologies -– blogs, podcasts, forums, etc. But have you considered what technology your target audience is most willing to embrace? Enter the Technographics Profile.

You’ve likely targeted your advertising campaigns using demographics and perhaps psychographics. Forrester Research has surveyed the way people use “social computing” technologies and has developed the technographics profile. The profile classifies people into six overlapping levels of participation: creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators and inactives. The “social technographics ladder:”

Creators – consumers who at least once a month publish a blog or article online, maintain a web page, or upload videos or audio to sites like YouTube
Critics – react to content online, posting comments on blogs or online forums, posting ratings or reviews, or editing wikis.
Collectors – save URLs and tags on social bookmarking sites like Delicious, vote for sites on services like Digg and subscribe to RSS feeds. Collectors are vital to the organization of the tremendous amounts of content being produced by Creators and Critics.
Joiners – participate in or maintain profiles on social networks like MySpace and Facebook.
Spectators – consume what the rest produce – blogs, videos, podcasts, forums, and reviews. This is the largest group because it requires the least effort.
Inactives – non-participants still remain – an astonishing 41% of Americans.

Here’s an example:

In this chart, the white line represents the whole of the US surveyed. So from this profile of women, age 35-44 in the US, we can see that they are most likely to be critics and spectators. In fact they over index on being critics. So what does that mean? By looking at the social technographics ladder we can make an educated decision on which technologies to implement. Our over indexing critics are likely to support a customer review section and comment on blogs. Perfect, since we have a large percentage of spectators consuming that information. But since we have a low percentage of creators, we will need to provide the content for our critics to respond to and our spectators to consume. So a blog and customer reviews would be a better choice over forums or a wiki as those rely more on contributions from the community.

You can learn more about the technographics profile and build your own profiles by going to http://www.forrester.com/Groundswell/profile_tool.html.

Also, if you are in charge of or are hiring someone to implement social media marketing, you should pick up a copy of the book Goundswell by Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff. The book goes into great detail about the technographics profile and has some very eye opening case studies.