Category / Brands as publishers

by jcuene

Looking Ahead to 2023 (It’s Coming Fast!)

While most of us are leaf-peeping or seeking out the weirdest use of pumpkin spice, my friends in product or marketing positions are putting the finishing touches on their strategy decks for 2023. In addition to the normal choices, there are a couple external factors that will play into the planning.

Likelihood of Recession

Depending on who you ask, we’re either in a recession now or we’ll experience one before the end of 2023. The underlying economic stuff is tricky enough, but I also wonder how much the click-baity, nervous headlines will amp up enough fear that the recession becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Either way, leading marketing and product teams through a recessionary period is going to be a new challenge for a generation of middle managers who’ve gone most of their careers (since 2008) without the joy of seeing charts moving downwards.

Tight Labor Pool

The labor crunch in digital roles doesn’t seem to be getting any better and companies who want to accelerate their digital transformations are struggling to lure full time workers. More orgs are considering flexible talent solutions or outsourcing to keep up. But, managers will have to be creative to build the teams they need to win.

Culture and Changing Attitudes Towards Work

Are all our team-mates becoming Bartleby, declaring “I prefer not to” when asked to go above and beyond? I hate the concept of “quiet quitting”, but I think the phenomenon is here to stay. It’s a phrase that perfectly encapsulates some of the changing attitudes about work. It might be easy to attribute those changing perspectives to a generational difference (“You Gen Z kids get off my digital lawn!”) or somehow a residue from the pandemic, but we’re seeing a general dissatisfaction with the status quo of work across the board. Managers and leaders will have to dig deep into their bag of employee engagement tricks to address this. I expect we’ll see a new take on “great manager” and “company purpose” training as one antidote.

Creative Partner Dilemma: Algorithms vs. Brand Creative

Organic social media reach is dead. Ad blindness is real. In a social media landscape where all of us are essentially little indy influencers, how does a brand break through? More high visibility stunts? Deep collabs on cool media projects? More worrying is the rise of algorithmically driven content and ad display, where we’re essentially letting math and luck drive where the impressions show up. What happens when brands have to fit their message into the creative expressions the robots prefer? The implication for brands is that they must conform their creative expressions to the choices that the algorithms bias. Will brands need to mimic all the trends to get seen? Either way, its going to force brands to rethink the creative partners they work with. The traditional, consumer- insight driven creative teams that specialize in crafting thoughtful, controlled brand expressions will probably give way to partner who can create a high volume of quick, clicky, meme-surfing videos in the pursuit of a few that will work. (Maybe I’m being a little pessimistic here).

Digital leaders have a lot on their plates for 2023. It will be a challenging year where early choices may set the course for a successful year.

by jcuene

Data Leaks: Doc Searls, Facebook data and what’s about to come

Are you you one of the folks in the digital/ad tech world trying to answer your friends questions about the “what’s going on with Facebook and all that data” situation? It’s going to get worse when everyone understands how thoroughly widespread the data-leaking problem is. Give this article a read. It’s from OG/Cluetrain guy Doc Searls, one of the best thinkers about the open web and what advertising has done to it. It’s a little over the top, but the underlying story is one we (“we” being humans on the internet and perhaps also in the digital business) should understand.

 

by jcuene

CEO’s & CMO’s: 2017 Strategic Planning Questions for Your Digital Team

While the rest of us are enjoying the fall weather, football and the changing seasons, most CMO’s and CEO’s and their leadership teams are elbow deep in 2017 planning and budgeting. In addition to all the normal business challenges, most leadership teams are probably spending a significant amount of time talking – one away or another – about digital and/or their digital transformation. Maybe its a question of how to allocate the capital budget for digital capabilities, or it could be a culture question (“How do we get more digital talent?”). Or, more urgently, it could be an existential question (“how do we compete against X and the disruption they are causing”).

Eventually, those boardroom conversations and plans will make their way down to strategic planning discussions with the VP’s of Digital Marketing, the Chief Digital Officer, Head of Digital, or Directors of Digital. Here’s what we hope those lucky leaders are getting asked in those strategic conversations:

  • What’s our strategy to use data to develop a competitive advantage? We see a lot of C-level leaders who are missing the strategic opportunity to plan for, collect and analyze data in unique ways (not just the obvious stuff) to give themselves a competitive advantage. We know of one company that bought a couple large Instagram handles from their owners, just so they could get the day to day data on likes and use the comments section to gain unique consumer insights that their competitors wouldn’t have
  • How are we using digital to create a unified experience over the whole  customer journey? Smart companies are moving on from digitizing their functions (Sales, Service, PR, brand Management)  to looking for ways to integrate and unify the whole consumer experience. They are going from good/great execution at the functional level to managing the whole customer journey in a holistic, integrated way even though there’s not an immediate ROI and dramatic changes in short term results are rare. Not only is it better for consumers, it positions companies to collect unique, potentially proprietary data along the way. It’s an easy concept to grasp, but it’s incredibly hard to execute internally unless there is a multi-year commitment from the top to keep investing ahead of results.
  • What capital investments and resource allocations do we need to make to get better data across the customer journey? See above. A dramatically improved customer experience will generate incredibly valuable data
  • What must we do to invest enough in both incremental and transformation innovation? No good leader says “no” to opportunities to invest in innovation, but few leadership teams are disciplined enough to balance short-term, functional innovation (i.e. incremental) with the willingness to pursue transformational opportunities.or instance, we know of one company that is generating a surprising amount of revenue from advertising on their digital platform; enough revenue to pay for a larger, more advanced digital team. It’s almost guaranteed that the directors and managers and coordinators on the digital team have ideas for both, but they may not be getting the support to pursue both due to a heavy prioritization of short term results.
  • How do we need to evolve our brand position and actions to be even more relevant to our customers? All leaders should by now understand how digital is transforming consumer expectations of brands. But even after years of watching brands like Dove drive great results by moving the brand to a higher, more aspirational space (and creating amazing digital content that’s getting shared all over the place), too many leaders are still(!) focused on the result (“get me something that goes viral”) instead of the characteristics of a soap brand that millions and millions want to connect with. In other words, you have to do the work to elevate your brand and your company in order to be relatable, digitally.
  • What do we need to do culturally to create the conditions for more agility and innovation in our marketing? Most good business leaders have read up on Agile, Lean Startup, and “working like a startup”. It’s thrilling to see courageous leaders try to change their companies actions. But, smart C-level folks will listen to the digital teams about what needs to change culturally to create the conditions for more flexibility, agility and innovation in their marketing model (or their business, overall). The behaviors are one thing, but the attitudes and beliefs and values and incentives are another. Most importantly, CMO’s and CEO’s should be asking: Have I created the right incentives to unlock true innovation (or  will my team still get penalized for taking risks)?
  • Are we being aggressive in looking at business model or product innovation opportunities? This is something that any sufficiently paranoid organization should be asking itself every six months: “what would a potential disruptor do to come take our business away?” Or, put another way, “how do we not get Blockbustered?” And, as part of the same exercise, CEO’s should be asking their digital team “what opportunities are we missing to use digital for  new revenue, new products, or serving our customers more effectively”? It’s easy to get a false sense of security that “we’re on it!”.
  • What do we need to do to help our employees work at the pace and speed of our customers? As the proliferation of tools and technology accelerates, it’s imperative for customer-focused companies to enable their front line people – the sales folks, the community managers, customer service – to work with the same tools and platforms that their customers are using. So, whether it’s instagram or Snapchat messaging, chatbots or Kik, CMO/CEO’s will make the hard policy changes to stay connected with their consumers

If you’re the VP or Sr Director of Digital, the Head of Digital or the Digital Transformation leader and these questions aren’t coming up in the annual operating plan discussions, you should set up time with your CMO and CEO and push these issues forward. It’s your chance to lead “up” and push the thinking of your organization and, ultimately, position your team to drive even greater impact in the organization. And, to make life a little better for your customers in 2017.

by jcuene

CMO’s, Brands and Innovation: The Factory, The Lab & the Studio

It’s great to see smart brands investing in “Labs” as outlined in this recent Adweek article about pushing the frontiers of retail. You could also look at Kraft, Nike, Mondelez and even good old General Mills (but, their Marketing Lab is now defunct based on what i’ve heard recently). It’s easy to see why a big company would want to create a “Lab”:

  • Try out new technology (without committing to long term support and integration)
  • Try new approaches, methods and processes (without committing to roll them out across the rest of the company)
  • Try new partners (without having to form long term relationships)
  • Try new business models (without committing to long term capital)

And a bunch of other benefits.

I’ve been thinking about what a modern marketing team really needs, going forward. The forward thinking CMO’s will recognize that the “Lab” is a critical piece of a larger transformation effort. But, it’s not the only one. The CMO office will need to drive change through three pieces working together:

  • The Lab – The place to, literally, experiment. Try new things, new tools, new skills, etc. This is where real innovation is found and validated.
  • The Factory – This is where the content/marketing gets made at scale, efficiently with a core focus on delivering immediate impact, now. In general, this will be delivered by the current roster of agencies and other partners who are on the hook for content and brand building materials. CMO’s will need a way to inject the innovations created in the “Lab” into the Factory. Smart agencies will be actively looking for ways to translate what works in the lab into their everyday work.
  • The Studio – The Studio is about craft, art and excellence. Generally, this is the content that is small, well crafted, and focused on making more of a statement. If brand content has the possibility of being art, the studio will craft it. Where the Lab is all about the “new” and “better” and the Factory is all about the “Scale” and “Efficiency” and results, the “Studio” is about delivering the highest quality possible.

The job of the Chief Digital Officer (or the CMO herself) would be to integrate the three really effectively to deliver the results any good marketer needs:

  • In Market results, now – The traditional results that marketers and business builders really need: Reach, frequency, depth, conversions, loyalty, advocacy.
  • Better consumer knowledge – Data about the consumer and their interaction with the brand and the insights that come from the combination of data analysis and good old fashioned intuition
  • Better operations – New ways of working, new techniques & tools to do the job better
  • A clearer sense of what’s coming next – Stronger intuition about how the marketer can better serve the consumer AND build a longer term advantage for her brand or her company

This is pretty much thinking out loud. I hope to come back and work on these ideas.

by jcuene

(Updated) Um, Facebook, This isn’t Great

Engagement with brand content is evidently dropping  pretty dramatically. As a guy that went all in on Facebook when i was in a seat to influence a lot of media spend, this is concerning. For brands, it’s obviously bad. For consumers, it’s probably a win of sorts.

These numbers are even more striking when you consider engagement is significantly down even though brands are almost certainly spending more money to promote their posts to combat plummeting organic reach. Facebook’s ad revenue reached $2.27 billion in Q1 2014, up 82 percent from Q1 2013.For brands on Facebook, these are dark days. They can choose to spend more money to reach fans they had already accumulated in the past, but Facebook will likely decrease branded reach even further.

But, this also speaks to challenges in the FB ad model from the brand perspective. It seems like Facebook is  resorting to limiting organic impression supply (by tweaking the algorythm to lessen brand reach), making it more important for brands to pay to get the exposure.  The main reason i believed Facebook was a great platform was the  combination of organic and efficient paid reach. With the constant tweaks to the organic reach black box, that mix (of organic and paid) gets less attractive and FB becomes just another paid ad platform.

UPDATE 6/18/14: I think i buried the lede here. The point i was REALLY trying to make is that it looks like Facebook is losing one of the aspects that made it so attractive in the first place: It enable brands to build deeper relationships (that’s good) while also building a more modern media mix, one that delivered a beneficial combination of owned and earned media and paid. The less organic reach a brand can generate, the more they have to pay to get the reach, the less attractive the original value proposition is.

via New Report Reveals Just How Drastically Brand Engagement is Plummeting on Facebook | The Content Strategist, by Contently.

by jcuene

A little glimpse into the Future of Brand Building

I was part of an interview that AdFed did w/GoKart Labs for their year end wrap up. I’m really excited about where this GoKart team can take brands. We’ve got the talent, the ideas, and the capability to make a real difference for brands. Should be a great 2014!

 

We are excited about modern brands that are moving beyond simple “messaging” (i.e. ads) to actually making apps, services, platforms and utilities that create deeper connections with their current fans in more useful, relevant and participatory ways. New users, new buyers, will become aware of brands and business through the things their friends do *with* these platforms and the content. These investments in useful content and services create organic growth for brands, whether its deeper loyalty, sharing or even offline word of mouth.

via AdFed – Made for those who make.

by jcuene

Where I’m Going Next: Unlocking Innovation for Modern Brands

Though the digital revolution really began in the early 90’s, we’re just beginning to get our arms around what’s possible for brands and marketers. Meanwhile, the future of brands, of brand building, of marketing is being invented, right now, every day.

For instance, as I write this post, the digital marketing headlines center around the founders of Snapchat turning down an acquisition offer from Facebook, holding out for a better offer.

It should be noted, they have no revenue.

Snapchat didn’t exist three years ago (and, if you are reading this in 2017, Snapchat may not exist anymore). Yet, some observers agree they may be worth more than  the rumored $3 billion dollar Facebook  offer.

Has the business world gone crazy, or is it truly possible to invent, design and grow disruptive, innovative businesses that fast?

For those of you not living in the digital space, the pace of change may seem disorienting. But trust me, it will never be slower than it is right now.

Unlocking Innovation: The Next Phase of the Digital Transformation

I’ve been involved in the digital business in one way or another since 1995 when I was teaching classes on “What is the Internet” or “Understanding the World Wide Web”. I’ve done a lot of the jobs required to bring web and mobile experiences to life, from coding and designing to advertising and promoting. I’ve lived through a couple boom and bust cycles.

I’ve seen Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and whatever Web 3.0 was supposed to be. But, based on my experiences, I believe we’re in the early stages of the most important cycle for most businesses: Accelerated innovation through new products and services.

In today’s landscape, smart business leaders see the massive opportunity for innovative products and services that weren’t possible even 5 years ago.  Bold, modern marketers are recognizing that there’s never been a better time to build brands through useful, helpful services and content.

So, they are looking for ways to reinvent, to unlock new ways to grow.

In almost every category, I’m seeing examples that should appeal to the soul of modern marketers who recognize growth can come by re-examining all aspects of their business in light of the digital transformation hitting them: their business model, their go-to-market strategy, their consumer communication model, the products, services and content they offer and their brand, overall. Just a few examples of bold innovation I’m seeing.

  • GoPro has built an incredible business and brand in a space that should have been owned by Sony, without much paid advertising (marketing model innovation)

  • RedBull has become one of the largest providers of action sports programming (media model innovation)

  • SpecialK has built and delivered a diet plan around their cereal brand (brand building innovation)

  • DollarShaveClub.com is working on disrupting the men’s grooming accessories business through price, brand and distribution (business model innovation)

Brands Need a Different Kind of Partner to Spark Innovation

To unlock real transformational growth and innovation, smart marketers need partners that aren’t satisfied merely to work on this year’s campaign materials. As a matter of fact, I’m seeing some of the most exciting ideas happening when companies work with smaller, more experimental firms at the front of the change.

Fortunately for marketing leaders, there is a growing number of great firms out there. The marketing service companies that support the brands (i.e. the ad agencies, PR shops, design shops, management consultancies) are going through their own, difficult transformations, too.

As a result, new kinds of firms are emerging, focused on dreaming up new businesses, inventing whole new products or services, or planning out alternative marketing models; Firms that are purpose-built, designed from the ground up to be agile, fast, data driven and iterative.

The agency disruption is leading to the kind of collaborators who help marketers answer that age old strategic question, “what business are you really in?” and then bring those new ideas to life, in market, to drive growth.

These new model, smaller firms are alternatives to legacy agencies which are trying to compete on strengths (scale, global network, heavy investments in “creative”) that aren’t as valuable anymore. And, in many cases, the operating models and cost structures of legacy firms make it almost impossible to move quickly and to work with the best collaborators available across the globe.

An Amazing Time to Build Brands and Businesses

Disruptive innovation is hitting just about every industry. New collaborators arising to help marketers win in a changing landscape. Has there ever been a better time to be in business?

So, marketers, we have a choice: are we going to wait and watch and react when it hits your category? Or are we going to drive the change. I don’t know about you, but I want to be a driver.

My Next Phase: GoKart Labs

I’ve recently left one of America’s great brand building companies (General Mills) to join a company not many know yet. GoKart Labs (gokartlabs.com) is a small, stealthy company that builds real businesses and drives remarkable innovation. We build our own businesses (Sophia, Kinly, a couple in the pipeline). We build them with our partners (BringMeThenews.com). And, we will use our business building chops to grow yours.

Your ad agency can’t do what GoKart does.

We’re built to invent new products and services, help you find and grow your customer base or help you generate whole new business models. We’re designed for market acceleration, not conference room creative conversations. Then, we’ll help you design, develop and deliver the digital experiences that build your brands. And, finally, our growth hackers can help you find customers through the truly agile marketing we use to grow our businesses.

Now, as I buckle up for this next phase — both mine and the web’s — I couldn’t be more excited. I’m excited to bring what I’ve learned working with some of the best marketers and brands in the world.

I’m excited to learn from the many entrepreneurs and business leaders in and around GoKart Labs. And finally, I’m excited to be part of a crew of collaborators inventing new businesses, products and innovations. I’ve got my foot on the gas and I’m ready to drive.

by jcuene

Clients Take the Reins on Programmatic | Digiday

As more and more clients like Kimberly-Clark become more savvy about the ad tech world, they are demanding transparency about what, exactly, they’re paying their agencies for – and how their data is being used.

via Clients Take the Reins on Programmatic | Digiday.

In my experience, agencies and brands are learning at the same pace as each other, and often times, brands and internal digital teams know as much as the agency folks. Plus, the media landscape is so complex, that the smartest brands are working on how to get in *front* of all the change, and start driving their *own* change. If they do, there is very real, very large upside for companies to take their programmatic buying in-house. Financially, for sure. But the most strategic value will come from the data and insights they gain from direct oversight of their trading. Insights about the performance, but also about their brands, their consumers. And, brands will need this info to help them understand the industry evolution.

Smart agencies will stop stressing about lost media planning fees, embrace their future as media strategists and analysts, and figure out how to help brands bring stuff in house. There will still be plenty of work for agencies to do as brands bring it in house, including analysis, larger scale efforts, and media operations. And, in some cases, an experimental, innovation focused “media lab” of sorts.

by jcuene

Contently: Not Content Marketing, but Brand Publishing

Really like this write up from Contently’s Sam Slaughter (@samslaughter215) at Adweek. Focused on the distinction between content marketing and brand publishing. 

When brands make the decision to use content (and really, social media’s already made that decision for them), they need to forget about being marketers and worry about being publishers.

But this is harder than it should be for brands because of this: 

Like publishers, brands need to make sure that each piece of content—Facebook update, tweet, sponsored story, Pinterest board and microsite—is valuable to their customers, and maps back to a greater narrative.

Ads and ad messages aren’t all that valuable in the day to day life of anyone. And, most brands have no clue what a “greater narrative” means when they’re just focused on selling soap or widgets right now.