Manhattan Marketing Maven

Orchestrating A Brand Strategy in Social Media

An effective social media strategy is a direct extension of a brand strategy executed artfully in new channels. The brand posture, positioning and personality should guide the development and deployment of social media assets and attitudes so that the brand speaks with a single voice across media consistently engages customers, prospects, media, investors or other constituent audiences. The forums are new; the basic marketing approach is not.

Alona Elkayam says that “social media has an enormous impact on brand equity” and argues that brands should “maintain a coherent brand position that unites your website, your Twitter feeds, your Facebook presence and each campaign you run.” She cautions brand managers to “make sure that the social media component maintains and is an ambassador of the corporate position.” 

Forrester calls this idea “owned” media and argues that a skillful understanding of the properties of distinct social media orchestrated or leveraged effectively in service to brand objectives will yield customer engagement, consistent messaging, brand portability and possibly a boat load of “earned” or free and viral media pass-along. Imagine that rather than concentrating your web presence in a single web site you distribute the messaging using satellite sites and by syndicating content to present your brand in an array of venues aligned with an array of target audiences and brand objectives. This creates a much wider and deeper conversation between your brand and your customer base at modest cost increments. 

Syndication trumps destination in this model where content elements (e.g. games, videos, animations, polls, images) become media attracting, alluring and interacting with those you seek to know, engage and persuade. By orchestrating content and brand positioning through social media, marketers can maintain a level of control and initiative in the face of user-created content and uncontrollable user interactions and conversations. 

The key to mobilizing social media to achieve this result is to understand clearly what the social media properties are, who uses them and how they are commonly used.  Consider these preliminary observations: 

Brand Website. Shop window for the brand aimed at educating and engaging prospective employees and clients. A web site validates the brand’s claims offline and establishes a tone and manner for digital communication. The persuasive burdens is to quickly and easily present the value proposition, build demand and prompt lead generation or purchase. A site should be the base of operations for online marketing and include the mother lode of data, imagery and copy necessary to fully represent the brand posture. Separate landing pages should be constructed to manage campaigns and the site should be optimized for natural search. Blogs can be built-into brand sites or established (and linked to) as independent entities depending on the content and the marketing objectives. 

Facebook. This is a personal CRM tool where people of all ages manage relationships and connections. Different age groups use it differently but all are protective of their privacy and uniformly try to separate their personal lives and connections from their business lives.  Brands are welcome, but only on restricted terms. Facebook is a cheerleading and affinity building tool for brands. Some have sold merchandise and distributed coupons but no best practices have yet emerged. Fans seem to want deals but overt selling or shilling is frowned upon.  Brands are experimenting with Facebook in linking online and offline behaviors, but its too early to make generalizations. Facebook seems to be a place to illustrate or articulate your brand personality and begin to gather friends and fans around you. Linking your Facebook page to your web site adds to your search authority because it is among the most semantically optimized platforms. The same holds true for MySpace and Friendster. 

LinkedIn. Primarily a job-hunting, network-building site, LinkedIn skews older and slightly more male. They have a range of discrete targeting options that enable you to zero-in on target segments or individuals. People to turn LinkedIn to check out companies, prepare for interviews or find a way into your eco-system. Your brand profile should be consist and enticing but not enough to give away your strategy. LinkedIn  Groups are a second avenue into the database. Many offer discussions and forums which enable a marketer to float trial balloons, test arguments or offers and solicit ideas and practical advice. Conversation is fluid and almost entirely business focused.

Wikipedia. Wikipedia is the default knowledge bank on the web. A huge percentage of searches end there so you have to be present. Interaction is at a minimum since people search, find, read, print and exit.  Your entry should be thorough, well written and up to date. Illustrate it with charts, graphs, images or schematics and add links to other significant assets. Police your page regularly since the changing editorial policy may encourage unauthorized or inaccurate updates. 

Twitter. This is a short, fast action or reaction tool to pump out a brand’s POV on marketplace, customer service or merchandise issues.  It’s like having a party line and being able to watch or listen in on popular sentiment change, morph and evolve in real time. Some brands use it to talk; most use it to listen and to gauge attitudes, sentiments and customer proclivities. Like talk radio the content is a mixed bag ranging from the immediately forgettable to the sublime. Using Twitter starts with deciding how much you are willing to talk (or how much you have to say) versus how much you can learn from listening-in. 

YouTube. Video and search are the twin attractions. YouTube is the second ranked search engine; preferred heavily by younger people. Americans expect that almost anything that happens will be up on YouTube within hours and millions upload their own videos each day. A window on the collective consciousness and psyche, YouTube  can be a bully pulpit for brands seeking to influence the conversation and attract new customers. 

By understanding who uses them and what users do or expect, brands can orchestrate campaigns and parse messaging to fully leverage the platforms and the SEO benefits that accrue from linking with the most semantically effective sites on the web.  Consider these social sites as the generic baseline. In many cases vertical communities, even gated communities, will offer important access to key markets and customers. They too need to be analyzed and placed into a brand’s context and marketing strategy.

 

 

 

 

5 Sales Tips for Interactive Marketers

"Why do they buy?" is the most enduring question in business. And although its frequently studied there is no definitive answer. So we can never get our fill of insights, ideas and tactics.

The latest effort, called the BuyerSphere Project, comes from Gord Hotchkiss, President of Enquiro and begins like most others by encouraging sellers to do post-mortems on wins and the losses and to make their best efforts to see and understand the world through buyers eyes. Written up in Search Marketing Standard and based on marketplace experience validated by more than 4000 online survey responses, here are the 5 major take-aways.

Buying is Emotional. In spite of the trappings of rationality and the highfalutin' language, buyers buy because it makes them feel good and safe. The team with the best numbers, best rationale and best prices doesn't necessarily win.  This where all those cliches about people buying people and buyers defaulting to buying big boring brand names because it eliminates risk and covers their asses comes from.

To impact emotions you need to understand who you are selling to on a personal level and then scope out the institutional context and the internal food chain that directly affects how good and safe they might feel. This isn't about deck writing, it's about carefully gathering information and observations into a tactical presentation plan that anticipates anxiety and pre-emptively answers the most obvious objections. It's also about enrolling allies and advocates and arming them to support you in their internal sessions.

Selling is Risk Mitigation. Everyone is nervous when things change. Selling is pure change. Buyers seek to understand the offerings and sort out those that are too risky either because they offer new or untried ideas or people or because they will engender internal conflict over turf, methodology, pricing or control. Getting the order is about eliminating perceived risk on several simultaneous levels.

Online Doesn't Stand Alone. While many buying firms have different teams overseeing online and offline marketing, most expect the two to work together and for sellers to demonstrate how their products, solutions or services can be orchestrated across channels and integrated into a broader program. Essentially you must connect the dots and do the math ahead of time for your prospects, showing them how whatever you are selling fits into their landscape and advances their causes. The per se benefits of your thing are secondary to how you fit into their on-going machine and/or game plan. Remember you are being granted access to an on-going enterprise because you might answer an outstanding need or shortcoming. Rarely will you or your product be the "be all" or "end all" for the buyers.

Users Don't Rule. The guys who will actually use the solution you are selling often don't have the final say in buying. Bean counters and senior executives do. That's why so many dumb choices get made. This is partly a function of bureaucratic processes and partly a hedge against users falling in love with or favoring their vendors. Increasingly the bean counters have benchmarked costs, prices and ancillary considerations and force the users to find suppliers who will play ball under these rules. As a seller you have to surface these constraints and expectations at the outset if you don't want to get faked out in the home stretch.

Digital Literacy Matters. Gord uses Marc Prensky's terms "digital native" and "digital immigrant" to describe differing age cohorts and their familiarity with digital and interactive services. The older crowd want to get it but never quite do. The younger natives get it naturally and can not only understand it but can intuitively plug it into their worldview. Sellers have to frame the messages in both ways to bridge the gaps and build consensus among buyers. This often requires careful thinking about the way to to present an idea simply enough for the immigrants without boring or offending the natives.

You can get a free sample of Gord's forthcoming book on this project ... here.

Digital Hunters & Gatherers

Differences in the way men and women shop online can be explained by sexually divergent adaptations for gathering and hunting in pre-modern society. Our inner cavemen determine how we shop and how we navigate the web according to a new study published by Professor Daniel J. Kruger in the Journal of Social, Evolutionary and Cultural Psychology.

The premise of the study is that humans do not "simply develop new behaviors for every new situation we encounter but instead modify or extend existing behaviors to suit the new situation." Jakob Niesen pointed out that "the human brain today is the same as the human brain 10,000 years ago." Therefore modern shopping behaviors are a latter day adaptation of our ancestors hunting and gathering skills. "There is evidence," Kruger argues "that women's role as gatherers continues today even though the environment and the objects being gathered have changed." Similarly "even though the prey is now an expensive home theatre system, men are still applying the skills developed to obtain meat in a hunter-gatherer environment."

Assuming that behavior evolves much like DNA, women's approach to shopping -- browsing, careful examination, more attention to detail, more discerning search for bargains, socializing, shopping with girlfriends in frequent conversation are the latest incarnation of behaviors shaped in pre-history. Similarly men's solo, surgical shopping habits that focus on defining, searching, purchasing and returning home in quick succession are the behavioral legacy of hunting the great wooly mammoths. 

Add to these observations, Nielsen's argument that "the human brain is not optimized for the abstract thinking and data memorization that websites often demand" and you can derive some clear implications for web information architecture and user interfaces.

Consider these UI/design imperatives.

1. Mark out the path for male shoppers. Don't make the prey hard to find or too far deep into the flora.

2. Don't tax male memory. Build signposts to help men navigate directly to the products they want. 

3. Encode coupon offers or discounts so men don't have to find or remember complex codes.

4. Make it easy for men to score a kill, claim victory and carry their trophy home.

5. Develop features for women to see, feel and experience your product sets.

6. Find ways to allow women to compare features, functions and value.

7. Assume women will want more information on every aspect of the products so place it adjacent to the images and descriptions.

8. Facilitate sharing, comparison and conversation among women shoppers. 

9. Make the experience fun since women understand shopping as recreation.

10. Place customer service interaction features right next to the merchandise for easy access and use.

9 Ad Tactics for Internal Communications

Internal communications has a huge task but is usually heavily undervalued in large organizations. Staffed mostly by PR people, these guys are the house propagandists, touting everything from new benefits to major changes in strategy. But like other PR people, they often don’t look across the hall to use tactics from advertising to make their messages more effective and their media more efficient.

 

If you are charged with internal communications and genuinely expect to impact an organization’s culture or operational practice, you cannot ignore the “best practices” developed in political and consumer advertising.

 

Getting an organization to act differently internally and externally – requires a nuanced set of communications skills that leverage employees real life experiences and account for corporate schizophrenia – a common condition under which employees want to believe and are supremely skeptical at the same time. Face it; nobody comes to work wanting to hate it. Instead an awful lot of people work with really smart and nice people who are caught up in mind numbing bureaucracies doing repetitive and sometimes stupid things.

 

Organizational change is hard to do and even harder to frame up and communicate. You must account for inertia, habit and anxiety and make your case in a very tough employee marketplace of ideas and opinions. Consider adapting these nine ad tactics in shaping corporate communications programs.

  

Create a Party Line. Articulate a clear, concise policy line and demand active adherence from all levels in the organization. The existence of a clear point of view – well articulated short and long term goals will direct and orient the organization. The slogan should be a double entendre and should be able to stand up to frequent use and frequent snickering.

 

Focus on Frequency. Communicating big concepts to large, often skeptical employee audiences requires a shorthand that is universally and instantly understood and frequently repeated. Bombard the rank and file with short punchy slogans until they are unavoidable, unforgettable and firmly drilled into everyone’s consciousness. You will tire of it long before employees will. Plan for extensions and alternate uses to keep the ideas fresh and forward.

 

Segment Your Audience.  One size never fits all. The lifer thinks and feels differently from the newly hired. The professional or executive employee filters messages differently than the newbies or the admins. The sales guys are always a wild card.   Headquarters workers feel and process information differently than employees in remote locations. Think about segmentation by age, gender, location, tenure, education, function or customer responsibility. Craft distinct messages for each segment and orchestrate them through channels credible to each segment in order to be genuinely heard.

 

Use Informal Channels. The jungle drums trump the official word in every situation. Enroll informal influence networks to generate buzz and add credibility and persuasion to your messages. Embrace the tools that can help identify early adopters, key influencers and change leaders at each level. You’ll need them to mobilize and motivate a large scale organization.  Employees want to believe and want to contribute, but you need to create a cadre of people they know to help, encourage and validate that instinct. Only by connecting with people they know, trust and believe will your agenda really penetrate into the guts of the organization.  Peer acceptance and advocacy is the critical success variable for message credibility and acceptance. Finding the right peers and internal advocates is worthy of significant investment.

 

Create UGC Buzz. Seed the clouds with advocates and use both formal and informal channels to get the word out. People do what others are doing and often comply with widely held common expectations. Many firms have a well accepted way of doing things or a general sensibility that most employees understand and share. Reinforced by the use of tangible experiences and common symbols to consistently reinforce the message, peer recommendations are critical since change is a viral process that builds on itself. Allow for early adopters to express their support in their own words. Encourage employee-generated content as part of your campaign.

 

Model Behavior. People need to understand what is expected of them. By catching employees doing things right and calling out this model behavior or celebrating these model workers, you hold up the desired behavior. By showing the end result, you drive behavioral change by showing the path forward and illuminating the desired end result. By continually pointing out the desired results, you encourage greater understanding and greater performance. Just make sure you focus carefully and don’t make overblown claims.

 

Celebrate Every Victory. The corollary to modeling behavior is celebrating every win. Change is an incremental process where success builds upon itself and small victories can be compounded, packaged and merchandized to yield increasingly bigger victories. People want to join a winning team and perceived momentum is an effective recruiting device. Without stretching the truth, find little wins and disseminate them widely. Point out and publicize the contributing factors that brought about the win. But don’t overdo it. Employees have a keen filter for hype.

 

Provide a Feedback Loop.  Genuine attitudinal change is incremental and evolutionary. By creating ways to solicit ideas, participation and express dissent or frustration, you keep the effort on track, adapt the plan to changing circumstances, account for anomalies and absorb the best ideas for moving forward.  You also acknowledge that nothing is perfect and that everyone can contribute to making things better.

B2B Social Media Schizophrenia

B2B marketers are schizophrenic about social media. On one hand they've been doing social media, offline and using older technology for years. On the other hand they are standing on the sidelines watching the action and trying to decide if or when to join the fray.

The fundamentals of social media -- networking, user generated content, content sharing and real-time interaction -- has been going on in Listservs, user groups, chat rooms and branded and industry publication and association sites for years. Some of the earliest users of the web, were B2B marketers eager to use the new technology to automate and accelerate conversations and discussions among experts and specialists. so its surprising that they have been reluctant to embrace the new players. 

But I suspect there will be an explosion of private and gated online communities in the B2B space soon. Pioneers like Sermo and VuMedi are gathering doctors, vetting them and offering platforms for robust, specialized conversations away from public eyes and ears. This pattern will be repeated over and over again in the next few years augmented by bandwidth to support video, animations, limitless numbers of real-time interactions and enhanced security. 

This will continue the migration of offline B2B communications from conventions and trade magazines or journals to webinars, podcasts and specialized community sites. The first wave of this transformational shift is documented in Business.com's 2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Survey. Sixty-nine percent of those responding participated in webinars. 62 percent read user-generated reviews or ratings and checked out prospective partners, vendors and competitors' web sites or company blogs. More than half searched for company information on social media sites, participated in an online B2B forum or read or downloaded content on a 3rd party content site.

This survey of 2948 business-to-business executives discovered that 65 percent of respondents use social  media as part of their normal work routine, even though 54 percent of the companies surveyed block Twitter and Facebook in the workplace. The usage of social media runs up and down the corporate food chain from line managers to C-levels and spans virtually every department, not just the marketing and external facing guys in organizations of every size from micro start-ups to global MNCs. The average respondent used six different social media resources in the course of doing business.

So why are these guys so antsy about using social media to marketer their goods or services?

Three reasons: 1) Its new and its not worth fighting over. Its not in the budget, it's hard to compare with either conventional best practices or existing programs and there's no percentage in risking your neck for social media.

2) There's little evidence that social media buzz yields sales. In a B2B environment where lead generation and nurturing shepherd groups of prospects through an extended buying cycle, there's little reason to believe that social media help close. The value, or so it seems, lies on the front end of building awareness or preference or maybe validating an initial shirt list. So this makes social media a "nice-to-have: but not a necessity.

3) Lack of Control. Anyone can comment, add ,edit or pipe up. This takes a tailored sales process and turns it into a free-for-all where marketers can no longer control the ball, the pace of play or the sequence of activities. Social media is way outside the comfort zone of B2B sales and marketing people.

But the good news is that B2B players are experimenting with these emerging media. Seventy percent maintain accounts or profiles in social media spaces. and sixty percent maintain blogs or monitor their firms online reputation. More than half, of the respondents, use Twitter, monitor reviews, advertise on social media sites, comment on social media sites or answer questions in online forums. 

As a rule the smaller companies are the early adapters, but everyone is pretty much making it up as they go along. The dominant expectation is that social media will produce web site traffic; prospects who are open to engaging with business-to-business brands. The B2B arena is a rich landscape for social media. In the New Year look for several breakout efforts to harness and use these channels which will be copied extensively.  

Valuing & Validating Video Online

If video online is any indicator; on the web, seeing is believing. The number of videos viewed on YouTube -- 10.3 billion -- in September 2009 exceeded the number of core Google searches by a full billion. That's billion with a "b". 

Then consider the scale of use. More than 168 million US internet surfers watched nearly 26 billion videos online in September -- an average of 154 videos per viewer. Where did they find the time? That's roughly 84 percent of the total US internet audience (comScore says 81 percent) watching an average of 9.8 hours of video during the month where the average length was 3.8 minutes. Imagine how many of others tasks, demands, attractions and people vie for 10 active hours a month of your time! 

The number of people watching video online is up year-over-year by 46 percent. And the use of video on mobile devices is up 70 percent to 15 million Americans watching 3 hours and 15 minutes of mobile video each according to The Nielsen Company. And all this is going on while TV usage hits an all time high of 141 hours per month. We are more addicted to the tube than ever before but now the tube is following us around, available 24/7 and luring us with more memes every day.

The implications of this data suggest that every marketer better grab a video camera and get cracking. Consider these realities.

Video is the expectation. People expect to see it and hear it. They use YouTube heavily for search and younger people default to YouTube as their first point of web entry. 

Video is ubiquitous. Facebook, MySpace, Hulu and hundreds or thousands of sites feature all kinds of video. Production is cheap as is distribution. Anyone can shoot, produce or edit and grab 15 minutes of fame and many achieve different levels of virility.

Video validates. If you aren't producing video you aren't serious, real or as big as you claim to be. Video is becoming table stakes for online marketers. Presence trumps production values. Marketers are re-purposing all kinds of video assets in service to a growing appetite for online viewing. 

Video varies. Production quality ranges from childish to expert. Angles, animation, narration and new forms of story telling are emerging all the time. Reality can be dissected or distorted in service to abstract points of view or commercial messaging. 

Capitalizing on Social Commerce

The exponential growth of social media sets huge expectations for social commerce. Marketers, reluctant to crash the karma of evolving social networks, have long thought that the channels facilitating conversations, interactions and personal CRM could easily facilitate and probably accelerate eCommerce. 

Most brands have taken a wait-and-see approach. The conventional wisdom, till now, has been that social media is for branding and a tool to to monitor the conversation rather than an active sales channel. Most marketers have silently done the math on social networks hoping that connected networks of friends could be cost-efficient viral media channels for merchandizing products and services. 

With an average of two social media accounts per person, an individual with with 50 or more friends, depending on their willingness to tout a favorite brand, product or service, could potentially message as many as 100,000 other people. This potential media multiplier makes marketers salivate. 

But most have restrained themselves fearful of alienating potential customers or of provoking a negative backlash. Notable exceptions are the Dell Outlet who reports sales of $3 million in computers and Whole Foods who hawk weekly specials on Twitter and 1-800-Flowers who set up a store or Chick-A-Fil who gave away 25,000 coupons for a free chicken sandwich over five days on Facebook.

New survey research by Performics and ROI Research and by Razorfish suggest that social media users not only interact with brands and talk up brands, but they are actively looking for deals, promotions and coupons on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and others. 

The Performics and ROI team surveyed 3011 social network users and found that 4 in 10 talked about brands on social networks and that 1 in 4 have gone directly to an eCommerce site after learning about a new product or brand in social media. With slight variations, the data holds true across the platforms, though Facebook seems to have twice as many users as MySpace, YouTube or Twitter and six times more than LinkedIn, MeetUp or Flickr and others, which have more of a specialized use pattern or niche focus. 

The leading messages that resonate with consumers seem to be coupon downloads, alerts on special deals, offers to participate in sweepstakes or win redeemable points or online currency. Scott Haiges of ROI Research drew the summary conclusion. "Consumers are open to receiving promotions and offers from brands that they're connected with through social networks."

This understanding was validated or confirmed by Razorfish's 2009 FEED Report, a survey of 1000 consumers; each of whom has a social media account, has spent $150 online in the last six months, has visited a community site and consumed or created some form of digital media. 

Between 3 and 4 of every ten respondents said special or exclusive deals is the main reason they follow brands in social media networks. Sixty-four percent said they made their first purchase from a company as a result of a digital interaction and virtually everybody (97%) said a digital interaction influenced brand affinity. Forty percent had "friended" a brand and 70 percent participated in brand sponsored contests or sweepstakes.

Garrick Schmitt, the editor of the study, figured out "people want deals." So the key to engagement on social properties comes down to old-fashioned direct marketing techniques. And these new platforms appear to work like their older counterparts with a couple of exceptions.

These exceptions are, according to David Armano of the Dachis Group writing in the Harvard Business Daily Alert, faster uptake and greater mobility which creates the possibility of dayparting. He argues that adoption will increase and deepen but be mitigated by a growing trend among enterprises and organizations to ban social network use at work. This could create distinct daytime and nighttime usage patterns, not unlike broadcast TV, that attracts different audiences of prospects and customers and prompts different creative and messaging strategies during different time periods

Similarly the increasing penetration of smart phones and the lower cost of bandwidth will spark greater mobile access to and use of social networks and video content. This will also have implications for message development and propagation as well as audience segmentation. And as these phenomenon spread around the world and get translated into multiple languages, more and more people will buy stuff realizing the dream of social commerce.

Serving Searchers & Surfers

Psychological research conducted by Kevin Wise, Assistant Professor of Strategic Communication at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and published in the Journal of Media Psychology, suggests that how you find information online affects your reaction to that information. The implication for marketers and publishers is that you have to anticipate how people find you and address audiences differently on the basis of their glide path.

This notion is significant because on any given day about 1/3 of all Internet users either search for something specific or come across content by random surfing, according to the Pew study on the Internet and American Life. People invest different types of energy and emotion into finding content online. Surfers undertake what academics call "ritualized" use of media. They flit from thing to thing, sorting one against the other until something catches their eye or captures their imagination. This is a random process that requires less intention, investment and brain processing.

Searchers are "instrumental" users of media determined to seek out and find a specific content and evaluating search engine results against each other to figure out which is most relevant, on-point and worth reading first. Evidently this requires more attention, brain power and more functions from each searcher's CPU. 

To prove this Kevin and his team wired up 92 freshmen in an introductory advertising class to measure heart rate, skin conductance (sweat to us) and electro-magnetic activity (a surrogate for brain processing power). They set up a site filled with awful photos and descriptions of a shooting rampage at an elementary school in Utah. Apparently disturbing images prompt more distinct responses and can be better mined for content, recall and reactions.

Having run earlier research studies to understand the inter-play of getting there versus being there or in regularspeak --finding stuff versus reacting to stuff -- Kevin wondered if how you got there influenced what you found, remembered and how you reacted. Here's what he found:

Heart rates for searchers accelerated more than those of surfers. Purposely looking for content cranks up your ticker faster than stumbling across things. Maybe this suggests a greater investment in the process which leads to an eagerness to find and consume the content.

Searchers remembered more details than surfers. You expect the directed searcher to pay more attention and care more than the casual surfer.

Searchers had more skin response. Searching and finding gets you more hot and bothered than coming across something worth checking out.  There's probably a lesson for keywords in here. Though the result isn't shocking; it's the directed dude versus the laid back dude. DItto for EMG activity.

Searchers were more disturbed  by what they found than surfers. They rated the content as more unpleasant. People looking for something specific add a dose of intensity to their reading or understanding of the searched object? Could this be a self-fulfilling prophecy because we invest ourselves more in the stuff we've invested time and energy to find?

The data suggests that different ways of getting there drive how people react and respond online. The implications are that marketers have to weigh the intensity of searching versus the serendipity of surfing as they design and display information and/or craft keywords and phrases. Assuming intense and invested searching behavior puts the impetus on copywriters and designers (not to mention SEO jockeys to hyper-serve searchers while spreading around enough bait to reel in the random surfer.

Five Personalities Populating Ad Agencies

Everyone thinks that working in advertising is like being in a fun factory. The reality is that its much more factory than fun, these days. The outsized personalities and outsized profits of my early days in the business have been homogenized, sanitized, processed and  downsized over the years and even more so by the current recession. 

The day-to-day practice of advertising involves two under-staffed and under siege bureaucracies slamming into each other as they create and produce mountains of marketing communications materials in a myriad of formats to satisfy the needs of regional, national or global brands Agencies and clients are risk averse organizations focused on running high volume production processes that are fast, cheap and efficient. Young, eager, smart talent fuels this game where 85 percent of the time and effort is dedicated to cranking out stuff and just 15 percent is spent on strategic, thinking, big ideas and occasionally snappy, memorable or effective ads.

Driving the ad game are a set of personality types that vaguely resemble those on Mad Men; characters who can be counted to think, act and talk in predictable ways under almost any situation. Agencies have traditionally attracted people with broad interests, short attention spans and little ability or tolerance for corporate life. Iconoclasts, wise guys, alternative thinkers, smart alecks, frat boys, hippies, geeks, neurotics and hot women have traditionally populated agencies. The cast remains mostly the same though the intensity, texture and range of behaviors have changed dramatically over the years. 

Here are 5 ad types you are sure to encounter whether you are working in an agency or hiring one. 

The Rainmaker

Rainmakers drive the ad business. They have or make the contacts, instantly understand the clients’ business and are master salespeople. Frequently their names are on the agency door. In the old days they were white-shoe WASPs who hobnobbed with corporate titans at exclusive clubs. They were members of a social class united by religion, education, fraternities and often neighborhoods. 

The democratization of the business changed a lot of that but didn’t change the need for high-energy hustlers who were smart enough and presentable enough to interact with and sell both squirrelly and conservative corporate executives. Rainmakers innately understand that people buy people first; then goods or services get transacted. They have big personalities and know how to deftly wield them in almost any circumstance. 

They have keen instincts and can carefully read and dissect client personalities and organizational politics. Even in complex agency searches, where intermediary consultants try their best to mask the decision-making process, Rainmakers know who matters and whose vote counts most and they know how to romance those individuals. Often this skill set comes with experience, but sometimes it’s comes naturally to a younger entrepreneur.   

As a type, Rainmakers are extroverts interested in a wide range of things. They know a little something about everything, listen closely but not too closely and have the ability to zero in on the key variable quickly. They focus just enough to grasp the winning idea or the winning angle and then cue their players accordingly. They are usually great at creating a name, a theme, a catchy phrase or a slogan to concretize an idea. Many can wickedly nickname somebody in ways that capture them precisely and stick. Some appear to be distracted, aloof or merely glad-handers, but the best use that stereotype to mask their wiles. 

You know a Rainmaker because you sense that they know you instantly and you trust them instantly. You can’t choose to become one; they just are who they are. And they come in all stripes usually motivated by the intense desire not to work for others or the equally intense desire to express a unique point of view and demonstrate success on their own terms. 

The Empty Suit

The Empty Suit is a rainmaker wannabe with moxie, flash and presence but no substance. These guys fill out the ranks of agencies warming chairs, attending endless meetings, wining and dining clients and generally taking up time and space. Frequently relatives, frat brothers or long time friends of agency leaders or client executives, these guys used to dominate the ranks of Account departments but now can be found throughout the agency. 

Empty Suits live in fantasyland. They imagine that they are glamorous and effective executives when in fact they are filler; the hamburger helper of agency life taking up time and space to meet client expectations or adding a measure of style, grooming and/or good looks to round out the agency’s offerings. Empty suits are usually the best looking people in agency. Well coiffed, better dressed and much more presentable than the folks who actually know something or do something. 

Some Empty Suits are conscious of their posture and kind of go through life shrugging their shoulders. Others (think of Pete Campbell on Mad Men) are malevolent weasels. As a type, they are affable, polite to a fault, up on the latest gossip, news, trivia or sports and eager to engage almost anyone in meaningless chit-chat. 

They can make terrific recommendations for dining, entertainment, leisure and personal services and will frequently make the arrangements or accompany a client to a restaurant, a golf outing, a ball game or a salon. They look great in clothes and never refuse an opportunity to fill out the agency or the client tables at charity affairs. 

As co-workers, Empty Suits carefully guard their perceived prerogatives and hoard their perks. They are prissy about their space. Many have a sense of noblesse oblige; that they contribute to the agency’s image and positioning by contributing good looks, breeding, legacies or a sense of decorum. They can be counted on to dump their work off on others, ignore deadlines and timetables, never know any important details or data, but they often claim credit for others’ work. They rarely stay late or put themselves out and never praise colleagues in front of bosses or clients. They are the co-workers you love to hate. 

The Magician 

Magicians are the idea people who make the magic that agencies sell. While over-represented among the ranks of art directors or copywriters, Magicians work in every department often distinguishing themselves as strategic planners, media negotiators or digital wonks. They provide the spark behind every idea and campaign. 

Some have native intuition. Others grind it out. But all Magicians have an inherent and mysterious understanding of people and the uncanny ability to find the right connection between goods, services or concepts and their natural audiences. They understand the psychology, the levers and the channels of communication and can magically marry them together in ways mere mortals can’t. They don’t need speeches, threats or chemicals to stimulate or accelerate productivity. They express themselves naturally in creative concepts, in media plans, in web designs or UI schematics or even in dense data tables. 

Like crude oil, diamonds or truffles, Magicians have to be found. They cannot be made. The trick, for agencies, is to find and keep enough of them to achieve critical mass necessary to power or sustain critical departments and then have the management legerdemain to leave them alone and nurture their gifts. Many are good at rallying co-workers to the cause because frequently everyone instantly gets their brilliant ideas and naturally grasps why they are so brilliant.   

Motivating and managing Magicians is especially difficult since the majority of their great insights and ideas are shot down or modified beyond recognition by clods or cowards. Theirs is a world of highest highs and lowest lows often presented or obscured by oversized or persnickety personality traits. Some are famously insecure or shy. Others never quite get the credit they deserve. And a notable few are over-the-top prima donnas and divas. Many agencies, formally or informally, assign senior account people to be their advocates or protectors because they are the critical resource for agency success. 

The Expert 

Experts are the tortoise to the Magician’s hare. Experts have intense and deep knowledge of functional areas linked to carefully crafted tool sets and processes to help them do their jobs. In many instances, they are their tools. They assign the highest value and esteem to those who know what they know and those who can manifest expertise on-demand. 

Experts exist in media, direct, relationship, CRM and database marketing, interactive, project management, traffic, production and support departments. Experts demand that you follow their lead and follow their process to enjoy the fruits of their labor. They jealously defend their turf and under stress or tight timelines frequently require colleagues to kow-tow to them.  

Nerdy and temperamental by nature, Experts are defined by what they know and what they’ve done. Few are bashful. An Expert will gladly tell you his or her greatest hits and will regale you with tales of how they saved the day. They take themselves very seriously and genuinely believe that no one else can do what they do. 

They seek and hoard access to information and parse it out gingerly to those around them. They keep score. They remember every slight. And they hold grudges. They are all about the details but can get distracted by nuances or spun off course by their intrinsic interest in data and new information. 

Intense and sometimes anti-social, they require careful handling and frequent stroking. Quick to find fault with others and quick to bemoan their lack of credit, they see themselves as prophets without honor in their own land. Many have specialized degrees and are wannabe or has been consultants. It’s a conceit that sets them apart and, in a weird way, motivates them. They live to be underestimated.    

Too often overlooked or undervalued as “below-the-line” functionaries, experts usually understand much more about the client’s business, organization, structure, procedures, IT architecture, digital landscape, data channels and internal politics than the clients themselves. They are natural spies and always develop expert allies buried deep in client organizations. 

They usually know what’s really going on before anyone else. This enables them to develop useful intelligence and practical work-arounds to satisfy demanding clients or impossible schedules. Experts insure that an agency can get smart fast, trouble shoot problems on-demand, find critical inflection points to add value to client relationships, smooth over ruffled feathers or gain competitive advantage. 

The Pleaser 

Pleasers reflect the pre-feminist culturally-conditioned behavior of women, who make up the vast majority of professionals in every advertising agency. Nobody really knows why they have an insatiable need to be “good” girls by earning the praise and approval of any nearby authority figure. But they do. By manically internalizing the notion of customer satisfaction, Pleasers provide the daily energy, attitude and lubrication that make ad agencies work. 

Everyone loves pleasers. They are always friendly, polite and on-call. They will drop everything and fly across the country in the middle of the night to attend a frivolous meeting. They will put aside their own plans to listen to a client talk endlessly about every real or imagined relationship in their life. They will re-do copy or art nine times and make their team mates nuts to satisfy a client’s whim. They will write decks, formulate reports, format spreadsheets, predict internal politics and tell clients what to think as they laugh at your jokes. They have your back. And they never say “no.” Pleasers are the imaginary best friend you dreamt about and hoped for brought to life. 

Pleasers live to please. The take orders easily. They rarely push back. They believe in the system; no questions asked. They find security and validation in the routine of agency life and with every moment of pleasing delivered. 

Many also live to complain. The “ying” of their never-say-die attitude is offset by the “yang” of their whining. It’s a unique pathology with its own origins, history and psychological benefits. Pleasers inherited the mantle of Sisyphus. And yet without Pleasers, there is only chaos and conflict. 

Pleasers provide the “give” in client-agency relationships. They deliver on the fiction that clients know their own business and have clearly defined marketing needs that can be distinctly communicated to agency partners. Pleasers finesse prickly personalities, tense situations, business crises and tactical conundrums with the hope that a friendly face and sweet temperament can sort it all it. Ironically much of the day-to-day ad business rests on this sexist premise.   

5 Facebook Brand Success Factors

Facebook is becoming a marketer's fad and fantasy. Its growth in members, daily use and search frequency make it the place to target discrete customer groups or desirable segments and earn "early adopter" social media bragging rights. But Facebook isn't a cakewalk. 

In fact, very few brands can or will report measurable results in awareness, preference or sales as result of Facebook campaigns. Most of us are in a test-and-learn mode experimenting with the nuances of the Facebook platform and trying to fit this channel into an integrated brand messaging or marketing strategy. 

The first critical understanding is that Facebook is an empty pipeline not an on-going party. And while zillions are joining and using Facebook, they aren't interacting with you or your brand ... yet. Marketers have an affirmative burden to create connections and traffic to energize brand interactions. Just like print, radio or TV, on Facebook you have to find, engage and develop a unique audience for your brand. 

There is no plug-and-play community. It's not a silver bullet. Setting up a page or buying an ad flight merely gives you access to the masses. How you get them connected, opted-in and feeling good about your brand is your problem. 

To help leverage this channel for optimum impact, here are 5 key considerations to improve your Facebook campaign culled from a wide range of sources.

Develop a Posture and Voice. Social media is about interacting with customers and prospects. If each brand has a distinct personality, that personality needs to be present on Facebook. Before you do anything you have to figure out how your brand personality will be be presented and what kind of posture and voice you will take in this channel. 

To figure this out ask yourself -- If your brand went to cocktail party how would it act? Is your brand an extrovert madly working the room or an introverted wall flower coyly batting her baby blues at selected hotties? What would it say? How would it dress? What opening lines would it use or not use? Who would it schmooze with? Who would it avoid? The answers to these anthropomorphic questions should be your best creative guide.

Pick a Page Type. Brands can have "group" pages or "fan" pages. Each has distinct properties and technical capabilities. Facebook set it up so neither is ideal. So putting your brand on Facebook means making an initial critical choice of page type. 

Groups have friends which means your access is limited and messages are delivered to friend's "home" pages. Businesses have "fans" which means anyone can see your page but messages are delivered to the Updates page, which people check less frequently. 

Each type of page connects to other applications, notably traffic-building apps like "Causes" or "Events," with specific limitations. The current thinking is that Fan pages offer more flexibility and options for marketers, but that could change as Facebook refines or changes its infrastructure and gets savvier about marketing through more daily interactions with brands and agencies. This is a fluid situation worthy of careful investigation and consideration.

Create Strategic & Media Context. A Facebook page doesn't exist alone or in a vacuum. To be effective it has to be part of your brand's online ecosystem; the web of distributed messaging that is strategically placed online to intercept and interact with your most likely prospects and customers. Before you create a presence you have to determine what will the page link to and what is the overlap of information, messaging and outreach between or among your web assets.

Figure out what job your branded website will play. Where will e-mail, text, mobile or banner campaigns direct or deliver the responders? What will content you place on YouTube or Flickr? How will it relate or not relate to the Facebook audience?  Will you use Wikipedia, MySpace, Friendster, Baidu or LinkedIn to reinforce or extend the message to specific segments or target subsets or will it be used as a straight frequency extender or as an exclusive platform for a specific message or offer? Also how will you drive traffic and get your message to the intended audience? Will you use Facebook ads or other ad vehicles to build your following?

Once that is determined, you can assign unique objectives and content to Facebook as part of a larger marketing effort. This should be geared directly to brand goals and targeted by psycho-demographics.

Craft Content. Social media is about entertainment, information and interaction. What do you want to say and how do you want to get it across. Remember that huge numbers of users come to Facebook to fill time gaps, relieve boredom or catch up on friends and family. Your content has to fit into that mindset to be successful. 

Will you create unique content or functionality or link viewers from your Facebook page to somewhere else? How long will the content be live? What is the editorial calendar or refreshment cycle? What is the experience you want customers to have and what feelings do you want prospects to walk away with? This is not about crafting an ad; its about putting yourself in the users place and shaping the experience to direct a call to action or to prompt an emotional take-away. 

The most effective and impactful tactics we've seen so far include contests, requests for user-generated content (photos, stories, opinions), games, widget/badge downloads, polls and surveys, special offers and coupon downloads and early or exclusive access to information or special pricing. Some brands have used spokespeople or brand iconography to link Facebook marketing to the master brands. Others have created stand-alone, unique content exclusively for this channel and this audience.

Watch, React & Count. In order to determine if Facebook "worked" you need to have clear expectations and objectives for a campaign or a branding effort. Are you counting fan sign-ups, coupons downloaded, comments collected, games played, survey responses or what? 

The Facebook community is active, vocal and can react strongly, either positively or negatively, to commercial activity on the platform. So prepare yourself. Be prepared to answer questions, follow-up on complaints or customer service issues and to respond to random unscripted comments about your brand. By watching, listening and reacting you'll be prepared to tweak the approach, the offer or the content to better engage and mobilize the Facebook faithful.