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BJ Bueno

Putting Your Brand Values to Work for You: Walmart’s Promise to Hire Vets

When Walmart  promised, earlier this month, to hire any recently discharged veterans who want a job, it made headlines around the world.  Veterans have had a disproportionately difficult time finding employment after finishing their military service: the Huffington Post reports that unemployment rates among veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan was 10.8 in December, compared to a 7.8% general unemployment rate.  Homelessness has become rampant. According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, nearly 63,000 were homeless on an average night in 2012.

This crisis situation was cited by Walmart as part of their reasoning behind the pledge. CEO Bill Simon also said, “Hiring a veteran can be one of the best business decisions you make. Veterans have a record of performance under pressure. They’re quick learners and team players. They are leaders with discipline, training, and a passion for service. There is a seriousness and sense of purpose that the military instills, and we need it today more than ever.”

These are all good reasons to hire veterans. But it’s hardly a comprehensive list. Other commentators have been quick to point out that Walmart, with its 37% annual employee turnover rate, has a gigantic, ongoing need for new hires. Adding 100,000 veterans over five years to the payroll, incredible as it may seem, doesn’t even make a meaningful dent in the face of that need. At the same time, Walmart will be entitled to specific tax incentive payments for hiring veterans.

Understanding Brand Values: Why Walmart Is Doing The Right Thing

What we’re interested in is what this pledge means for the Walmart brand. Walmart is a polarizing entity. The store has ardent fans; legions of them. There’s just as many critics out there, commenting on Walmart’s problematical sourcing, international bribery scandals and labor practices. One identifiable trend that has emerged over the course of Walmart’s recent history is the values-oriented response: when the critics have gotten too loud, the company responds with a headline grabbing initiative that puts the retailer in the best possible light in the eyes of its best customers.  It hasn’t been long since we’ve heard about Walmart’s efforts to go green and promote sustainable choices. Now we’re seeing Walmart step up and offer employment to the nation’s veterans.

What’s going on here, and why is it working?

As we said in Customers First, there’s a reason that Walmart is among the world’s most successful retail businesses. They have spent a tremendous amount of time, effort, and energy developing a comprehensive understanding of who their customers are. This understanding transcends simple demographics: it is by understanding their customer’s core motivations—the psychological factors that drive all behaviors, including purchasing decisions—and presenting their organization as possessing and in alignment with those motivations that a brand gains a prominent place in a customer’s worldview.

Walmart knows, definitively, that their customers are patriotic. They want to support America, and by extension, her troops. Look at the core of Walmart’s audience. Generally Millenial-aged and older, these customers came up during or shortly after the end of the Viet Nam war. Soldiers returning at that time were not greeted with open arms: the social fallout from this resulted in the codification of a uniquely American value. No matter how ideologically reprehensible a military conflict may be, we hold the actual combatants blameless for their participation in it.

Walmart’s pledge is perfectly in alignment with the values of their best customers, who want to support the troops but heretofore have lacked a meaningful mechanism to do so. Conflating shopping at Walmart with supporting the troops allows shoppers to feel as if they’re making a positive difference while they’re doing something they’d already ordinarily be doing. The positive emotions evoked will strengthen the already strong brand between Walmart and their customer. This was a smart move that came out of understanding their customer’s psyche. Would it work for every brand? That’s an interesting question. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

 

January 22, 2013 by

Being Smart About Story Time: A Humanistic Approach To Marketing

What are your competitors going to be doing to attract their customer’s attention in 2013? Many of them are going to attempt acting less like advertisers and more like publishers, according to this Adweek article focused on the digital marketing trends to expect in 2013.

Strategic product placement within narrative text or video pieces designed primarily to offer value to the public (in the form of information or sheer entertainment) is a formula that has proven to have some traction. The lines between editorial content and advertising content are blurring across all platforms. Journalistic objectivity, a once-sacred cow, is rapidly becoming something we worried about yesterday. In the evolving ethical environment, it’s okay if your content has an agenda – provided you’re honest about what that agenda is.

It’s pretty easy to extrapolate an explosion of brand-created content in the near future. People like and respond to stories, both the informative and the entertaining. Digital content is easy to produce, and relatively low-cost. Given this information, shouldn’t every brand be telling stories?

Well, yes. And therein lies the problem. When you have a tool that works, and it appears both easy to use and cheap, you’re going to see that tool adopted with a wide-spread enthusiasm. The result? A glut of content flooding into an already swamped marketplace. There are already millions of places for your customer to get their information and entertainment. Why are they going to choose yours?

Toward a Humanistic Approach To Marketing: Finding Content That Resonates

The great news is that your brand doesn’t have to try to create content that appeals to all of your brand’s customers and potential customers, past, present, and future. If you want to be smart about content marketing, it’s essential to identify and articulate only those stories that are going to be relevant to and resonate with your very best customers. Your very best customers are those who do lots of business with you, who ardently recommend you to their family, friends, and colleagues, and who choose your brand before any other. (These are the folks we call Brand Lovers: you can read about them in Customers First)

Your Brand Lovers are a fantastic source of stories and content about your organization that other customers (current and potential) will find very compelling. Spending time with your Brand Lovers, listening to and learning about them, is an essential way to identify the types of cultural narratives they find irresistible. These stories may be distinct from those tales that win admiration and approval from society as a whole.

For example, Pepsi Max is currently running a campaign that features three young men tricking their boss in order to get free time off to watch the Big Game. The technique they use (also known as gaslighting) is very frowned upon in socially-aware circles, but Pepsi Max is clearly confident that their customers will find it side-splittingly funny — something that they wish they could do themselves, if only circumstances permitted. Their Brand Lovers can envision themselves within the entertaining narrative, taking on the role of the clever trickster for their own. It’s a little bit of empowerment that they can tap into every time they choose a Pepsi Max.

That’s a smart use of story telling. Because it is very specifically targeted, psychologically, we think it will be an effective campaign. Other stories that are crafted without the focus on understanding who the Brand Lover is and what they enjoy are likely to fall flat.

January 7, 2013 by

Would You Like Fries With That? Examining The Value of Humanism in Employee Relations

First, it happened at Wal-Mart. Then it was employees at numerous NYC McDonald’s staging a one-day strike.

Both groups of strikers were advocating for better wages, health care benefits, and the ability to organize. The typical striker makes less than $8/hour. At approximately $1,280 a month, before taxes, if they can get full time hours, these workers will make just around $15,000 a year. This is a few hundred dollars more than the Federal Poverty Guidelines for an individual. Employees of both organizations report being encouraged to supplement their wages with governmental assistance programs.

Wal-Mart and McDonalds are among two of the richest brands in the  world. Wal-Mart, the world’s largest brand, reported an increase in global profits in 2011, while McDonald’s dominated the fast food sector with $24,074 million in revenues.

The disparity between the two group’s financial situations is readily apparent: the employers are fabulously wealthy, while the employees are perpetually teetering on the edge of destitution. Is this situation ultimately sustainable? Let’s consider the question from a humanistic perspective.

What Makes Someone Go To McDonalds?

McDonald’s may be the dominant player in the fast food industry, but they’re hardly the only game in town. Even the smallest municipalities generally offer a suite of fast food dining options: Pizza Hut, Subway, Taco Bell and KFC are nearly as ubiquitous as the Golden Arches. Given the choice, why do people decide that they want to eat at McDonald’s. What makes the chain so popular?

The principals of Brand Modeling teach us that an organization’s best customers (the Brand Lovers who loyally return to an establishment time and time again, doing a significant amount of business, while enthusiastically and spontaneously promoting the brand to their family and friends) are those who feel that the organization’s values and vision are in alignment with their own worldview. McDonald’s, which has spent decades urging customers to ‘Come as you are’ with a diverse rainbow of faces saying “I’m loving it” has done an effective job convincing the public that their restaurant is a place where they’d feel welcomed and valued just as they are.

The introduction of labor problems into the picture creates a tension in the relationship McDonalds has with its best customers. It is very easy for McDonald’s customers to identify with McDonald’s employees: many of the people who visit McDonald’s most often are suffering disproportionately from the economic downturn. The same can be said for Wal-Mart’s customers. The customer sees themselves as having more in common with the employee than the employer, and that sense of commonality can have an economic impact, if it becomes clear that the employees are being mistreated or dealt with in bad faith.

Truth In Humor: Monty Python: The People Are Revolting

In an organization that uses a humanistic approach, it is recognized that all parties to a company’s success have needs and wants that must be satisfied. Employees that are worried about food security, the ability to pay for housing, or how they’ll buy their children’s school clothes are not employees who are capable of delivering a top notch performance for the organization. Cost-containment through excessively low wages inevitably results in a situation where performance and customer satisfaction are compromised.

Organizations have the choice between deciding exactly how much quality they’re willing to sacrifice in order to keep costs low, or explore the increase in motivation and performance that would accompany a more complete meeting of their employee’s basic  needs. The humanistic approach would favor the latter. Ultimately, this is the only sustainable option over the long term. Employees who have their needs met in a satisfying fashion are not employees who strike in a highly visible fashion, endangering the strength of the customer-brand bond. Putting customers first means being willing to listen to and be responsive to your employees.

December 27, 2012 by

Is Profit the Most Important Thing?

What would you say if you learned that everything you learned in business school is wrong? Not just wrong, in fact, but fundamentally and fatally flawed, rotten to the proverbial core? How would that knowledge change how you function as a business leader?

These fascinating questions were featured during The Aspen Institute Presents, a new PBS series featuring leading entrepreneurs, politician, and thought leaders discussing philosophical questions and practical challenges. The segment that really captured our attention centered on the premise that increasing shareholder value is the most important thing to any corporation, and the accuracy of that premise.

As proponents of a more humanistic approach to business, this is the type of conversation we want to see happening in every business class, everywhere. As expert after expert reported (and you can watch the entire segment here), organizations that focus too relentlessly on shareholder value as the only meaningful metric consistently fail. They’re less profitable and enjoy a shorter organizational lifespan than organizations that consider shareholder value only one of a number of relevant factors that go into determining overall profitability.

The Proven Value of A Humanistic Approach

This is consistent with what we’ve learned through our own research into Cult Brands. Dominant organizations are those organizations that clearly and concrete demonstrate their devotion to the greater good. Shifting the company’s viewpoint from a narrow focus on the immediate bottom line to a longer range, more global perspective that takes social and environmental concerns into account yields significant results in terms of customer loyalty and ongoing organizational profitability.

Don’t get us wrong. Making money is important. But it’s not the only important thing. Even in commodities industries, today’s consumer is expecting more and more from the brands they do business with. Organizational transparency and community involvement are more important than they’ve ever been. It’s especially important that a brand’s internal values be in alignment with customer expectations.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has been a vocal proponent of this concept, and he shares some of the reasoning behind his philosophy here. The message that the mighty chain rose up in response to a need for community and a place to connect is one we’ve heard before, but it’s one we need to hear again and again. It is by understanding on a deep and fundamental level the needs and psychological hungers of the marketplace that we can best create products, services, and especially brands that succeed.

Starbucks maintains an enviable place in the market because Schultz views all of his decisions through a humanistic lens, asking himself if his employees would be proud of and happy to implement the decision he makes, and if he’s acting in terms of the greater good. We’ve seen the chain make some great moves along this line, such as sourcing all of the chain’s mugs from a domestic producer rather than a cheaper Chinese source. Sacrificing some measure of immediate profitability to do the right thing has proven to be a profitable model for Starbucks. It’s a replicable model that begins by understanding who your customers are and what they want the most from your brand.

December 18, 2012 by

The Power of Narrative: After the 2012 Election

If there’s one story that bears examination in the wake of the 2012 Presidential election, it’s why so many people were so profoundly shocked by the outcome. This is a tale about the power of narrative, and how the stories we believe shape the way we interact with the world.

Jonathan Martin provides us with a vivid illustration of the concept in his Politico article, The GOP’s Media Cocoon. There are several points in there that are vitally important for those of us who are brand managers to understand.

Prior to the election, there was a significant portion of the American electorate that was absolutely confident that Mitt Romney was going to win in a landslide. This confidence was based almost entirely on what people were hearing from the media.

As Martin points out, today people can customize their media intake. They have a range of television stations to follow. There are countless websites, blogs, and internet pundits to adhere to. Those folks who still read newspapers can choose their favorites.

What we’ve learned here is that people have an overwhelming tendency to choose those media sources that present the stories they like best; the tales they find most in alignment with their own values and beliefs. This tendency is hard-wired into us. One of the fundamental aspects of cultural formation is the sharing of a common narrative among many individuals.  It is not inherently a good thing nor a bad thing; it is a human thing.

Where the train goes right off the rails is when a widely shared narrative diverges significantly from observable reality. These situations present a crossroads for the individual. Do they trust in evidence presented by their own eyes and ears, or do they cleave to the narrative that mirrors their own personal belief system?

Cultural Stories: What Do Your Customers Believe?

This is not a quandary unique to Republicans. This conflict comes up time and time again throughout an individual’s life. Do Nike sneakers make you a faster runner? Will riding a Harley-Davidson make you a bigger badass? Does choosing Ikea furnishings for your home really make you a more stylish individual? One hopes for the best, but at the end of the day, we are who we are.

In individual situations, the stakes are relatively low. If you’re jogging a 22 minute mile before you buy your new Nikes, and you’re jogging a 22 minute mile after you buy your new Nikes, no one’s going to know this but you. Your relationship with the narrative Nike presents can continue unchanged. Or you might lose faith in Nike. Or you might become an even bigger believer and decide you need even more Nike gear to reach your personal athletic goals.

What happens when we scale the concept up? Group dynamics are complicated things. The more prominently and heavily invested someone is in continuing a particular narrative, the more vehemently they will cling to it, even in the presence of direct evidence to the contrary. This phenomenon explains Karl Rove’s now infamous meltdown when confronted with poll results that ran counter to his expectations. A narrative can be so compelling and central to one’s existence that having it disrupted or disputed creates great tension in the individual.

As Brand Managers, we need to know what narratives are central to our customers’ lives.  More importantly, we need to know how they see themselves relative to these central driving stories, and where these tales fit into the larger collective experience of reality.

Our job is to resolve, rather than create, internal tension in our customers. Brand Modeling presents the most efficient way to identify the points where the tensions can be eased. The Republicans have left their base with a significant amount of tension, and it could be that their brand suffers significantly as a result. Given a roadmap that more accurately predicts human behavior, everything could have been different. We’ll see if the party has a greater understanding of the power of narrative the next time around.

November 29, 2012 by

Should You Care If Your Customers Are Saying Goodbye To Church?

They’re called the “Nones,” and they’re one of the fastest growing demographic groups in America, according to a recent well-publicized study from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Adults who have no religious affiliation number approximately 46 million individuals, roughly 20 percent of the total population. One third of adults under the age of 30 consider themselves unaffiliated.

Delving into the Pew report reveals some critical insights about this cultural change. Respondents still overwhelmingly report having faith in God. Many consider themselves extremely spiritual. They haven’t abandoned the absolute fundamentals of their faith identity. What they’re leaving is the church, and by extension institutionalized religion.

As you might imagine, there has been a tremendous amount of discussion centering around exactly why this change has happened. The Pew team is calling the results unprecedented. In the New York Times, Pew Forum researcher Gregory A. Smith says, “We really haven’t seen anything like this before. Even when the baby boomers came of age in the early ’70s, they were half as likely to be unaffiliated as compared with young people today.”

What the “Nones” Know: Times Have Changed

Now, we’re loathe to argue with the people at Pew. They’re great researchers, and no one can match them for the focus, intensity, and professionalism that they bring to their work. But in this instance, we need to say that a vital part of the picture is being missed here.

The decline in formal religion affiliation is not a unique phenomenon. Instead, it is a larger trend where once powerful social structures no longer appeal to individual members in quite the same way. The flocks leaving the church are the same people who no longer involve themselves in local politics, belong to community organizations like the Elks or Kiwanis, or volunteer to improve circumstances in their community. There are a number of factors that have lead to this change.

Researchers including Ray Oldenburg, Barry Wellman, Anabel Quan Haase, James Witte and Keith Hampton have been tracking the factors contributing to decline of community, and identifying what structures have emerged to replace those that have been abandoned.

It’s important to understand that the abandonment of traditional social and cultural organizations does not indicate that people have given up their need to belong to groups that reinforce and support their individual identity. That need remains constant. What has changed is the way people are filling that need for themselves. Loyalties have changed.

Organizations that required a significant commitment in terms of time, behavior modification, and economic resources have been left behind for brands that want nothing more than regular sales. The barriers to entry to a relationship with a Starbucks, for example, is significantly lower than the complexities involved with joining a synagogue, yet the meaningful rewards, in terms of connecting with others and reinforcing one’s self-concept, remain the same. Absent of any pervasive social pressure to act differently, the choice to realize the greatest rewards while making the least amount of effort or sacrifice is a no-brainer.

This is important knowledge to have when you’re deciding how to position and market your organization. This major cultural shift has played out in real time in the life of your consumer. They know they have an infinite number of brands they can ally themselves with, and little in terms of meaningful consequences in abandoning former associations. Starbucks has used this knowledge to become one of the most dominant brands in the world. If your organization can recognize and capitalize upon the voids created by this shifting social dynamic, you’ll be able to do the same thing. It’s a matter now of putting customers first.

November 16, 2012 by

Watching the Winds of Change: Hurricane Sandy & Apple

Hurricane Sandy has secured its place in the  history books. The mammoth hurricane came late in the season, taking an unusual track through New Jersey toward the center of the country, lasted for days, and created billions of dollars worth of damages. Much of lower New York, including Wall Street, shut down for Sandy’s arrival.

Against that backdrop, a business news story has to be a pretty big deal indeed to capture any attention. Apple delivered, choosing Monday to announce major changes to their leadership team. Long-time Jobs protege Scott Forestall, head of the iOS division, is on his way out the door, as is retail store head John Browett.

Deriving Actionable Information From An Uncertain Environment

Hurricane Sandy and the Apple management shake up have one trait in common. Both events introduce a huge amount of uncertainty into the lives of many.

For people living along the East Coast, knowing where the storm would hit, how intense it would be, and what type of winds and precipitation it would deliver, dictated their decision making.  Should they evacuate? Should they stay put? These are life and death decisions that have to be made in the absence of perfect information.

Apple’s investors and brand loyalists are watching Tim Cook and the remaining leadership with the same intensity those in Sandy’s path watched the Weather Channel.  The company’s been through a lot, and it doesn’t look like its been weathering the storms with grace. After losing Steve Jobs, Apple finds itself in an increasingly crowded and competitive gadget marketplace. Apple Maps floundered badly out of the gate, very visibly. Are the winds of change lining up to blow Apple out of its long-held dominant position?

In many ways, Hurricane Sandy was very different from the typical hurricane. It brought together combinations of meteorological factors that many weather forecasters had never seen before. Despite this, the track, intensity, and duration of the storm was predicted with a fairly high level of accuracy. This is due to the robustness of the models used in weather forecasting, where historical data is combined with scientific insight about the behavior of storms. The information generated is reliable enough to guide life-or-death decision making.

A similarly robust model can be built for any brand. Bringing together historical data, focused on identifying those factors most responsible for brand success, coupled with psychological insight about the behavior of customers, results in a Brand Model organizations can use to identify the direction most likely to result in profitable growth.  This type of information is critical to have when guiding a company through a difficult period.

Will Tim Cook’s move toward a more collaborative, unified leadership structure result in an increase in the innovative, empowering devices that allowed Apple’s most loyal customers to express themselves so well? Or is he removing a vital element to the creative process, gutting the company’s vision at exactly the time it is needed the most? Close observation of consumer response going forward will provide the answers to these inquiries, and if he’s smart, Tim Cook will be listening.  That’s the only way to steer your company through the winds of change.

 

November 6, 2012 by

A Tour de Farce: When The Hero’s Journey Goes Right Off The Rails

One cannot watch Lance Armstrong’s very public fall from grace—he has been stripped of all seven Tour de France victories, and has been barred from competitive cycling for life—without having brought to mind some words from Joyce: “They discovered to their vast discomfiture that their idol had feet of clay, after placing him upon a pedestal.”

There’s no doubt that Armstrong was on a pedestal. Prowess as a cyclist made him an idol to thousands. That number exploded as Armstrong battled and beat testicular cancer. These were the legions that supported the Livestrong Foundation, which provides support to people with cancer. Now that Armstrong has been found to be guilty of doping, many fans and supporters feel cheated. Livestrong donors have asked for their money back. Legendary cycling commentator Phil Liggett says he feels like a fool for having defended Armstrong so vigorously, for so long.

Armstrong’s sponsors have all dropped him. Nike, Trek Bicycles, Anheuser-Busch, 24 Hour Fitness, Oakley, and Honey Stinger have all severed ties with the racer, although not necessarily with the Livestrong Foundation.

The near-universal repudiation of Armstrong is interesting from a psychological perspective. What’s going on here? Why did people—many of whom have no intention of ever purchasing a bike, much less riding one—identify so strongly with Armstrong? Why are they so hurt by this  news now?

Understanding Your Customers: Archetypal Images

Lance Armstrong was an appealing figure to many because he embodied one of the most powerful archetypal images: the Hero. He is now reviled, and represents a new, equally powerful archetype: the Traitor.

When we talk about archetypal images, we’re referring to a type of persona or character that comes up time and time again through history. As we cycle through the ages, humanity repeats itself. Some people do majestic, awe-inspiring things – great feats that are remembered and celebrated. These people become the heroes. Other people do pretty terrible things, lying and deceiving to achieve their own ends. These people become traitors.

We talk about our heroes.  We talk about our traitors.  We talk about them so much, given time, that the stories we tell are more important than any objective facts may be. The symbolism of the story transcends the substance of it. So many different stories of heroism and achievement get woven together, resulting in one collective image almost everyone can identify with.

These tales are used to educate and guide us: if a person is held up as heroic, we believe they’re admirable, and that we should try to emulate the qualities or characteristics of that individual. If another person is held up as traitorous, we believe they’re a bad guide to making positive life choices. We try to avoid doing what traitors do. Even today, you won’t find lots of young mothers naming their babies Benedict Arnold.

Lance Armstrong very visibly, and abruptly, shifted from being a Hero to being a Traitor. This created a tremendous amount of internal conflict within those individuals who identified with him, trying to emulate his behavior, attitude, and near magical ability to survive cancer.

People who used Armstrong as inspiration to hang in there and keep fighting, no matter what, actually expended energy, effort, and resources to hang in there and keep fighting. They paid a personal cost for their commitments. When they learn that they’ve paid this cost under a fraudulent pretense, the internal conflict created becomes very intense. No one likes feeling duped or betrayed.

Being able to shift Armstrong from the Hero category to the Traitor category resolves some of that internal tension for the consumer. The greater the feeling of betrayal, the more vehement and profound the distancing behavior will be.

Smart brands, including Nike, have acknowledged this tension in issuing their statements about Armstrong.  It’s a way to demonstrate that the brand’s feelings and values are in alignment with those their best customers are experiencing. Lance may have crashed his career, but with smart, strategic understanding of who their customers are on a humanistic level, brands like Nike and Oakley will move on from this incident with no damage done.

October 22, 2012 by

Is Social Media History? The Story of Us, In 140 Characters or Less

“Quickly getting addicted to her Blackberry! Help!”

That brief blast from the past was featured in the Huffington Post’s article, Oldtweets Shows You Twitter Posts From 2006 That You’d NEVER See Today. It’s joined by 19 other tiny tales, each remarkably dated, discussing everything from what a great movie Snakes on a Plane was to pondering how anyone named Barack Hussein Obama could become President of the United States of America.

While the article’s good for a few laughs (some of which, it must be admitted, you’ll have to explain to the younger interns) there’s more value to be found in the questions it raises. Social media’s fast pace and global reach have a tendency to obscure the very real role platforms like Facebook and Twitter have in both recording our collective history and shaping our future.

The Exchange of Ideas

Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist, discusses how humanity is unique in one critical way.  Unlike any other species on the planet, we become more prosperous as we become more populous.  This is just not true for the rest of the animal world.  Too many individuals tends to lead to catastrophic events, like over-consumption of resources that results in massive die offs.  Humanity, however, seems to have sidestepped at least some of these consequences. That’s not to say we live in a perfect world, where no one suffers. However, the rates of suffering are significantly less than one would expect, minus one critical factor.

According to Ridley, the reason humanity thrives is because we’re adept at exchanging ideas. Individuals talk with each other, and through this conversation, each benefits, adapting what they’ve learned to best suit their own circumstances.  The ability to exchange information allows people to specialize and work collaboratively with others who have different specializations to perform feats of creation no one individual could do alone.

What we’re seeing happen now, on social media platforms, is the escalation of the exchange of ideas to a speed never before possible in human history.  We’re also seeing unprecedented feats of creative collaboration being used for everything from simple entertainment to social commentary to sweeping cultural change.

The exchange of ideas shapes everyone involved. Participants in the exchange, the audience to the exchange, and a tertiary level of people who may never even know the initial exchange happened, but find themselves facing a social or cultural environment suddenly different as new ideas become part of the collective understanding of what it means to be a human being on this planet right now.

Social Media and the Role of Branding

As brand managers, we need to be  aware of the fact that these conversations are happening, and what role we take within them. Some brands are the equivalent of thought leaders, steering and shaping the conversations that surround them. Other brands are more passive, reacting to conversations they witness. That’s bad, frankly, but even worse are those organizations that remain almost willfully oblivious to the fact that these exchanges and resulting cultural changes are even happening. When these brands proceed as if the world they’ve always known has remained unchanged, they inevitably find themselves in the middle of social media firestorms.

It takes a certain amount of courage and faith in one’s leadership ability to look at your brand and assess, with objective eyes, how well you’re functioning in the current social media environment. Will your brand be tomorrow’s throwaway “ha-ha, remember when?” joke, or will you be central to the current conversation, participating in and benefiting from the exchange of ideas?

October 11, 2012 by

Putting the Social in Social Media: Focus on What’s Fun

Over 60% of the world’s population is active on one or more forms of social media.  You’ve got to wonder what that’s about.  Why are people so focused on Facebook, so tethered to Twitter?

On one level, this is an easy question to answer. We can talk about the fundamental imperative that drives human beings to communicate with each other. Talking is what people do: communicating with each other allows us to make smarter decisions, enjoy a higher quality of life, and attain goals more efficiently and effectively. The propensity to engage in conversation is one of the defining characteristics of humanity. Social media provides a vehicle where we can talk with more people, at greater distances, at a speed never before imaginable in all of human existence.Given the serious benefits that communication offers, it’s no wonder that social media has become such a phenomenon.

Yet while communication offers serious benefits, not all communication is serious.  In fact, some of the most powerful conversations — those that offer real rewards in terms of establishing and strengthening relationships — are pretty funny.

There’s a reason for this. According to Karyn Buxman, author and former president of the American Association for Therapeutic Humor, humor is a social lubricant. People enjoy laughing (for both social and biomechanical reasons) and seek out opportunities where they can enjoy humor. We’re a savvy species, and have long ago figured this out. From the class clown who cuts up to get attention from his peers to the landscape full of funny billboards, humanity has a history of leveraging laughter to fill social and entrepreneurial needs.

This can work really well on social media. Take, for example, this Twitter exchange between Oreo and AMC Movie Theaters.

It began with a simple musing from the Oreo team, about the time honored tradition of sneaking food into the movie theater. AMC responded, and before you know it, thousands of people were watching the two brands swapping comments. It’s important to consider is the humorous, pseudo-combative framing of the exchange. A bantering exchange between two brands presents both in a good light. The Twitter stream with its air of  friendly competitiveness and obvious awareness of current pop-culture tropes imbues both Oreo and AMC with a sense of identifiable humanity.

Focusing on the fun is a smart move on social media. People are retweeting the exchange and following along in part because they want to see who can be funnier. Who will win the witty exchange? It is a mini-event, the type of moment that makes social media enjoyable for the end user.

Remember too that social media users can gain some measure of social standing by being the first to discover or share a funny post, video, or exchange with their peers. Every person who forwarded these Tweets was feeding the essential human hunger for gossip.

If we think about gossip as the act of gathering together in intimate groups to enjoy the same stories in common with other, it’s easy to see how social media’s ability to filter audiences into select small groups is so appealing. The person who can, with a few quick clicks, determine who gets to see the funny material and who is left out of the laughs is fulfilling, albeit likely unconsciously, the need to dominate, to be in charge, to decide. There can be deep water under even the most shallow boat.

It’ll be interesting to see where the exchange grows.  Perhaps it will grow to an epic size, becoming part of both brand’s legacy. Perhaps a Pro-Oreo group will grow up behind the sneak cookies into the theater idea, while fans of AMC can unite to defend the tradition of stereotypically high priced movie snacks. Perhaps it will all just fade away, destined to be nothing more than a Tweet memory.

No matter what, both brands won by becoming more humanistic and approachable in the eyes of their customers. That’s the secret to relevance on social media.

October 1, 2012 by