hello! I'm kevin krossing

Recently, there has been much discussion about how our cultural experiences are being altered or controlled by our own genius and ingenuity. The computer systems we have created are now altering our interactions with each other and changing our worldviews. This was not the impact the “code” was destined to deliver to fulfill our vision about our collective future.

Now, to be transparent, I am one of the many, who are contributors to this technical and cultural turning point. Back in the 1990s, I was working with Internet start-ups on the beginnings of predictive modeling, natural language recognition, and recommendation engines. These tools, when linked, would create the ideal online experience for users with less waste and higher efficiency, revolutionizing the Internet and online shopping.

We converse and ultimately acquiesce to these learning systems daily through innocuous activities like buying books, reading the news, downloading apps, using social media, getting direction on our GPSs, or playing the stock market – we live in world built on machine-optimized speed and efficiency.

As we continued our journey of experimentation, many of us started to see that although the engines we created did generate personalized experiences, they also limited variety and choice. What we also didn’t realize when these systems were let loose into the wild, was how they would impact our cultural discourse.

As the systems limit our choices, they also limit our worldview. Where once we found the need to explore, demand variety, and challenge the status quo, we now seem to feel an odd sense of comfort and passivity based our sometimes blind-faith in algorithmic logic and mathematical calculations. Yet are these algorithms diverse enough to understand our needs, dreams, and desires?

We’ve reached a paradox of sorts. We want the ease, simplicity, and the rigor of machine efficiency – to be able to sift through impossibly large data sets to assist in our choices – yet we don’t want to be limited by those choices.

Perhaps this situation was inevitable. As humans, we remain committed to continually transforming our culture. To continue our growth, I believe exploration is the key force for us to feel a sense of satisfaction with our decisions. We all seek experiences that make us think, that make us feel, that help us grow, and that enrich our lives. The world is full of brilliant minds, creating incredible technology to propel our culture. However, human behavior is still the toughest code to crack.

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Remember the Tamagotchi, the virtual pet? It was a deceptively simple device that became a phenomenon. Launched in 1996, it went on to sell over 40 million units worldwide. While it was a commercial hit, it baffled us all at its allure – both for children and adults alike. Who would have ever thought that nurturing a virtual pet would become the basis for a wildly successful and profitable game?

The game starts with your hatchling Tamagotchi emerging from its egg. Then caregiving begins, and you become responsible for the little digital critter 24/7. It sleeps, eats, takes bio breaks, and needs exercise. It also develops little idiosyncrasies that make it feel individual and unique. You grow to care for your virtual pet, become frustrated by its demands, and mourn the loss of it if the unthinkable happens. As you talk with others – both parents and children – about their fascination with the virtual pet, it ceases to be just a collection of pixels on a display and becomes something more. Our shared culture imbues it with meaning, subtlety, nuance; it develops a story and a shared history that aligns with who we are.

I wonder if Bandai, the makers of the Tamagotchi, could have predicted its success or the lessons it continues to teach us.

In my mind, the Tamagotchi was a lightening strike. It was the melding of an emerging and powerful narrative – the birth of a new pet combined with the emotional investment and game dynamics required to keep this creature alive. This fiction kept us engaged in the unfolding story of its life.

The development of the Tamagotchi parallels another journey many of us are involved in – the creation and ongoing management of a brand. Brands are manufactured not born, they do not exist in physical form, and we must nurture and guide them as they mature in order for them to thrive. 

To take a lesson from the inner-child in us all, we still have childlike qualities of wonder, excitement, imagination, and hope. These are the attributes that allowed the Tamagotchi to touch our souls and to fill us with the possibilities of life. Maybe, the same approach can be used with our brands.

Perhaps the role of the Tamagotchi was to allow us to see an alternate future, a place where stories full of wonder, of nurturing, and of life instill us with hope. This is what successful brand narratives deliver – hope for a better tomorrow. All this from a plastic toy.

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Understanding people through better segmentation
Let’s start with the traditional approach to customer segmentation. We look at ethnography, income, attitudes, and past purchase behavior, if we have that level a data available. The goal is to develop a clear understanding of a group of people to determine what stimuli will get them to respond in a positive way toward the brand. While this approach describes a segment and is useful, it is all about history – what has already happened. The challenge with the traditional approach is that we are left to infer what actions; ideas or products will increase sales.

The reason we spend so much time, effort and money on developing accurate segmentation is so we can allocate our resources to the segments that produce the highest profits. What I’d like to argue in this post is that the traditional model needs to be enhanced. It’s not broken, but a few of the wheels are wobbly. 

Why segmentation matters
At its core as a strategic tool, segmentation should succinctly detail the types and clusters of customers and their needs of the brand. It also needs to inform our decisions about the value of future purchases from within the segmentation. Since none of us can predict the future with any degree of accuracy, one thing we can do is to change how we approach segmentation.

In other words, we need an expanded approach, one that allows you to segment your market based on their personal and cultural actions. We need a deeper knowledge of people and their values, attitudes, and behaviors that shape demand. We also need to realize the attributes and benefits that will increase that demand over time. 

Demand-driven segmentation delivers
This approach collects data and focus on distilling insights into human behavior that actually drives demand. Through this concept, you’ll be able to focus your resources on activities that generate the largest returns while giving existing customers continuous reasons to buy more.

The focus on this enhanced idea of segmentation is a better way to rank your segments based on potential profitability. So, in this new model, we assess our segments on three simple criteria:

• their current contributions to volume
• their potential to make future contributions to volume, and
• their cost of achieving the incremental volume

Now that we have the kernel of the new segmentation model, we need to unpack the key components to making the model effective in your organization. Generally, we look at the following data to ensure we are focused on the most beneficial information to inform how to best deliver value to the customer. These steps include: 

• Identify your most valuable customers
  Develop an ideal customer profile and plan ways to increase consumption.

• Segment the opportunity
  Segment consumers based on their response to specific benefits, products, services, and promotions. Look for the most effective levers to target and sell each segment.

• Segment the occasion
  Occasion-based segmentation identifies opportunities for growth based on the occasion when the product or service is used and can be viewed in two activities:
  • Purchase Occasion – where the decision to purchase is made
  • Communication Occasion – where to make the most effective communication

By looking at demand and plotting your communications based on how to increase incremental sales volume, your segmentation becomes your lead strategic tool. Demand-driven segmentation provides the insight needed to focus your marketing efforts and budgets based on achieving the largest returns, all while delivering against the needed of your customers.

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We seem to be caught in a perpetual loop around the notion of experience. Marketers, social media gurus and digital media experts talk about 'experience', and how important it is to deliver an authentic experience to drive a result (traffic, likes, sales, etc). They are right in focusing on the importance of the brand experience, since most products and services have become commodities; experience is our final and perhaps only destination. After all, isn’t that what we have created, through brands we manufacture and manage deep meaning to our consumers.

The question is, do we really know what an experience is? What are its component pieces? How do different people interpret the experience we have designed? The list of questions is quite staggering. Remember; all of us in the digital marketing space have taught our clients to demand accurate measurement to determine the value of our work.

Here, I’d like to offer a checklist to consider as you work through the quandary of experience. I have found experience fits nicely into five parts:

• Core: the physical/emotional elements integral to the experience
• Purpose: the need the person seeks to fulfill
• Interactions: the actions, communications and behaviors
• Result: the tangible impact of the experience
• Impression: the perception of the entire experience 

While this is not a measurement plan, it might help in the discussion about how to define, plan and deliver that authentic, brand experience. One last thing, and something I tell my clients - competing on the basis of experience expands your competitive frame and gives you more opportunities to deliver value and to differentiate your brand from the competition. 

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New ideas, new products and new services are the lifeblood of any business. If we as business leaders don’t continue to bring new offerings to our customers, our business withers and dies.

So, its not surprising that the latest trend emerging from advertising world is the open admission, driven by client demand, that innovation is critical. Agencies need to propel clients’ brands in a commoditized market. To differentiate or “innovate” to provide distance from competitive offers – this is done for both the sake of the brand and the agency representing the brand.

So, with this new corporate reality, innovation is the trend and the Chief Innovation Officer has become the trend maven – the visionary who beats the innovation drum. Seems logical.

So here is where it gets a bit muddled for me, an innovation by definition is something new. This “something” – a product, service, process that didn’t existed before. It’s new, therefore an innovation. This would suggest that we agency folk, steeped in scientific processes and R&D methodologies, have approached the challenges our clients face scientifically. Developing hypothesis, conducting experiments and building baselines to determine the optimal “something” to place in the market. Then, like all inventors, analyze the responses our “innovation” to understand the result and to enhance our innovation based on feedback.

Here’s the problem I have with this idea - agencies are not staffed with the right tools or resources to realize their newly stated goal to become “innovators”. In many cases, we use the word innovation, when what we have really done is develop a creative or platform extension - not an innovation.

As agencies, we all use the same media companies, production houses and media platforms to market our clients’ brands. A remarkable idea that translates into a Facebook app, mobile app or ad campaign is not an innovation – well at least not if we use the dictionary definition. It is remarkable, worth remarking about, but not innovative.

What we need desperately is innovation, wherever it comes from. We need to link people with ideas that will help us change the world. I applaud the agencies strong enough to focus their people and resources on creating the next innovative “something”. We need it now more than ever.

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We were sitting around the shop last night (yes, another late night) talking about the role of technology in creative. We the developers, and a growing number of clients and creative folk are beginning to understand, is one in the same within the digital realm. This discussion was born out of commitments made by a creative technologist (our client) and the hair-pulling, coffee-induced jitters in the shop as we once again create the “reality distortion field” she has promised her client. A promise made without understanding how the technology works or what programming (and divine intervention) is actually required to get the work done.

I understand her role, as a creative technologist she is the bridge between creative, accounts, and her digital group. Her job is to promote what is possible and how her agency can do the work. Here’s the problem, you actually need to have the background so you can paint a realistic future. If you don’t get the code and tech, you can’t envision the solution. The problem here is simple – we strive for a win-win, happy clients and great work driven by incredible technology. We all need to work toward a common goal. If part of the machine overcommits, the machine breaks down. Then nobody wins.

As I started writing this, a friend pointed me to a post from Igor Clark about why you shouldn’t hire creative technologists – I guess he feels the pain too. Read the post.

Remember when the good doctor created Frankenstein, he put pieces together to something new. This is what a creative technologist should be – part creative, part developer, part strategists, part marketer – with the depth and experience to do the job right. That would be scary good!

Enough said.

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KPCB analyst extraordinaire, Mary Meeker, recently released her latest Internet Trends prese ntation that has already been unleashed on hundreds of sites, including this one. For any of us who need to understand at a macro-level what’s happening online, and the levers that affect us all, this report delivers.

It’s a substantial document so I won’t get too far into the weeds on this, but here is a summary of some of the salient points I found that are specific to the mobile market:

• Q4 of 2010 saw mobile devices sales soar (which includes Tablets) over PCs and signs that Smartphone sales surpassed feature phone sales in US/EU.
• Android mobile devices with quarter on quarter growth – soaring from just 20 million units to 150 million units shipped
• Global mobile app/ad revenue had grown by a factor of 17 between 2008 and 2011 to a figure of $12 billion.
• Mobile commerce has grown with ebay and PayPal more than doubling their mobile sales/payments since 2010.
• The uplift in mobile e-commerce activity has been of particularly benefit to local commerce through the plethora of location aware discount offer aggregators. 

 

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C8 and Ad-Dispatch are holding an exclusive, invitation-only event at the Drake Hotel on May 11, 2011 from 3pm to 5pm.

Mobile Reinvents Retail
Mobile and location-based activities have become a critical part of the retail experience. Almost half – 48 percent – of consumers now use their mobile devices to research or browse products and services. To address this fundamental change in shopping behavior, retailers need to develop mobile strategies to address all stages of the consumer purchase funnel – awareness, engagement, consideration, conversion and loyalty.

Add augmented reality, allowing consumers to integrate 3D objects and video into the shopping experience through their mobile device, and create a personal, brand engagement that drives product differentiation and increases sales.

At a Glance
This exclusive monthly seminar series will focus on how new technologies in mobile marketing are changing the way we live and interact with brands. The first session in our series focuses on:

• The impact of mobile on retail
• How mobile drives retail behavior, suggestive selling, and post-shopping communications
• How augmented reality creates product preference through experience
• Strategies to employ to develop successful mobile marketing programs
• How to integrate mobile and AR into your marketing campaigns

The presentation will include demonstrations and hands-on prototypes of how augmented reality and mobile can be used in retail environments.

Limited Seating
This is an invitation-only event with limited availability. To reserve your space for the event, please emai your full contact information to: info@cylinder8.com.

 

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Cylinder 8 and  Ad-Dispatch  enter into a non-exclusive Strategic Partnership driven by custom demand to develop immersive branded mobile-marketing experiences.

 

Toronto (March 1, 2011) – Cylinder8 (C8), a leader in mobile marketing and application development, and Ad-Dispatch, the Canadian leader in Augmented Reality-based experiences, today announce a strategic partnership that will enable brand marketers to exploit the best of both companies core strengths in the development of their digital marketing programs.

 

“This partnership brings together two emerging digital marketing companies that will unite their strengths in delivering augmented reality experiences through mobile platforms to deliver new and engaging, location-based branded marketing excellence,” said Kevin Krossing, CEO of C8. Through this highly collaborative partnership, both organizations will be able to provide new digital marketing opportunities to clients and help them achieve a tighter link between their customers and their brands.

 

With Internet access on mobile devices projected to surpass desktop access by 2014, this partnership will also enable brand marketer to plot the best methods to engage the mobile-centric marketplace globally.

 

“Augmented reality has become a must-have in digital marketing programs and will be a driving force in the linkage between people and brands through mobile. This non-exclusive partnership delivers strong, strategic digital marketing thinking and technical excellence to ensure success for our clients”, said Nathan Kroll, President & CEO of Ad-Dispatch.

 

About C8
Cylinder 8 is a digital-marketing ideas factory. We make authentic brand connections, propelled by incredible technology, for the “Screen Age.” Through these connections, people exchange ideas, share culture, and influence social change, making the world a better place. C8 is a diverse band of creative leaders, technology pioneers, and cultural curators who believe “ideas inspire people to change the world.” We create the digital tools, platforms and marketing campaigns that unite ideas, people, and brands. C8 has offices in Toronto, New Jersey, Pakistan and Dubai. Learn more about C8. 

 

About Ad-Dispatch
Ad-Dispatch is Canada’s leading Augmented Reality production company. A world-class team of content development teams (3D animators, 2D compositors, recording engineers and video editors) work side by side with our augmented reality, object oriented coders and developers to deliver turnkey augmented reality solutions. Ad-Dispatch has twice been named to the list of Profit Magazine's 100 Fastest Growing Companies in Canada (2009 & 2010) as well Progress Magazine's Top 25 Fastest Growing in Atlantic Canada (2009 & 2010). President Nathan Kroll has been honored with the BDC Nova Scotia Young Entrepreneur of the Year and Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (Technology). Learn more about Ad-Dispatch.

 

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Toronto - (January 24, 2011) Cylinder 8 (C8) has been awarded the contract to develop a news-driven mobile application for World Vision Canada. The application will be available across all three major handset operating systems; iPhone, Android, and Blackberry and focus on providing the latest information on World Vision activities globally.

 

“We selected C8 based on their depth of experience developing mobile applications and their ability to integrate these applications into our current systems”. “This application will be a critical piece in our emergency response efforts and allow us to communicate rapidly about our relief efforts”, said James Carroll, Director, Digital Marketing & Communications at World Vision Canada.

 

The mobile project involves creating an application with full content management capabilities that spans all major smartphone operating systems. The application will provide news, photo of the day, photo galleries, mobile donations and emergency alerts. The World Vision Canada mobile app will launch on the iTunes App Store, Google Android Market and Blackberry App World in Q2 - 2011.

 

“Once again, we are privileged to be working with World Vision Canada on this mobile initiative. C8 has deep experience in developing mobile applications and SMS solutions for global companies. We bring this depth of expertise and systems integration knowledge to create these apps in collaboration with our partner World Vision”, said Kevin Krossing, CEO, Cylinder 8.

 

About C8
Cylinder 8 is a digital-marketing ideas factory. We make authentic brand connections, propelled by incredible technology, for the “Screen Age.” Through these connections, people exchange ideas, share culture, and influence social change, making the world a better place. C8 creates the digital tools, platforms and marketing campaigns that unite ideas, people, and brands. C8 has offices in New Jersey, Pakistan, Dubai and Toronto.

 

About WorldVision Canada
World Vision is a leading Christian relief, development and advocacy organization dedicated to working with children, families and communities to overcome poverty and injustice. Inspired by our Christian values, we are dedicated to working with the world’s most vulnerable people. We serve all people regardless of religion, race, ethnicity or gender. Learn more about World Vision Canada.

 

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Toronto – (December 23, 2010) - Cylinder 8 has been selected as the Digital marketing partner to lead the development of the new Childview bilingual web site in partnership with World Vision Canada.

“We were impressed by the Cylinder 8 team and their vision for enhancing our communications through a dynamic new web site. The new site will allow us to more effectively communicate about the work we are doing globally through our programs”, said Kathryn Dorrell, Managing Editor, Childview.

The multi-faceted project encompasses a comprehensive digital strategy focusing on the creation of a new bilingual website, engaging interface design, content management, enhanced search optimization capabilities and integration of social media channels into the site. The bilingual web site is scheduled to launch in Q2 2011.

“We’re honoured to be selected as World Vision’s partner on this project. We see an opportunity to help World Vision better communicate through a new approach to their web properties. Our goal is with every interaction, to deepen the members’ connection to the World Vision Canada brand. The sites will celebrate the fantastic work being done by World Vision and their members and volunteers helping less fortunate children globally”, said Kevin Krossing, CEO, Cylinder 8. 

About C8
Cylinder 8 is a digital-marketing ideas factory. We make authentic brand connections, propelled by incredible technology, for the “Screen Age.” Through these connections, people exchange ideas, share culture, and influence social change, making the world a better place. C8 creates the digital tools, platforms and marketing campaigns that unite ideas, people, and brands. C8 has offices in New Jersey, Pakistan, Dubai and Toronto. Learn more about C8.

 

About WorldVision
World Vision is a leading Christian relief, development and advocacy organization dedicated to working with children, families and communities to overcome poverty and injustice. Inspired by our Christian values, we are dedicated to working with the world’s most vulnerable people. We serve all people regardless of religion, race, ethnicity or gender. Learn more about World Vision Canada.

 

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Toronto (October 18, 2010) - Kevin Krossing, CEO of Cylinder 8 joins the Kyp Canada Advisory board to assist in developing their market strategy and to provide digital marketing leadership and marketing integration expertise.

“We are excited to have Mr. Krossing on the advisory board” stated Dr. John Reeves, Managing Partner of Kyp Canada. “Kevin has built a rock solid reputation as a digital marketing thought leader in Canada. He brings a wealth of knowledge to our organization that will help guide us on issues facing the company.”

Kyp products and the iKyp webkey allow advertisers to connect the physical and digital worlds. The interactive iKyp format engages recipients with brand messages offline then drives them seamlessly online to learn more via the webkey. The iKyp webkey is the only technology that offers a unique ID fingerprint, allowing marketers to create personalized and progressive web experiences for their audiences, whilst tracking campaign efficacy and individual user behaviour.

Krossing said “Kyp plays a valuable role in allowing brands to provide personalized and unique branded experiences with a direct connect to the digital world. I was impressed by their creative solutions and the well developed campaign measurement platform they have established.”

About Kyp
Kyp Canada is a marketing company that specializes in the development of unique consumer engagement solutions. The company has created technologies that have enabled its customers to realize a nearly 30 percent level of consumer engagement across its different campaigns. The company works with major brands in the pharmaceutical, media, financial services, consumer packaged goods and video game industries.

About Cylinder 8
Cylinder 8 is full-service, digital-marketing ideas factory built to create authentic branded experiences. C8 provides strategy, design and implementation of digital marketing programs designed to ignite emotional bonds between people and their client’s brands. C8 believes “the consumer is the medium” and uses this unique view to help their clients businesses do business better.

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The Captain Morgan Rum Brand wanted to expand the successful “Legendary Nights” campaign by allowing fans of the “Captain” to get access to branded content through their mobile phones.

We developed an iPhone App that provided Captain Morgan fans the ability to carry the Captain with them and find geo-located Hot Spots where Captain Morgan Rum is served, participate in Expeditions, locate your Friends, share your “Legendary Moments” with your friends on FaceBook, collect Captain Morgan badges for completing tasks. We even put a “Call a Cab” function in the app to ensure all those “land lubbers” could get home safely after a night of partying – Captain style.

And for all you who don’t support Apple, we’ll be rolling out versions of the app on both the BlackBerry and Android platforms over the next few months. You can download the iPhone app in the App store.

We have created a support page where you can access all the apps at: EBR Interactive. Or if your an iPhone user, in the iTunes store.

So, maties, u ready for a good time? Ay, ay Captain!

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Toronto (August 9, 2010) – Cylinder8 (C8), a new digital marketing company has launched in Toronto, Canada. Headed by CEO Kevin Krossing (kevin.krossing@cylinder8.com), C8 will focus on creating authentic brand connections, propelled by incredible technology, for the “Screen Age.”

Krossing founded C8 after a two-year stint as Managing Director of Digital Marketing at Saatchi & Saatchi, part of the Publicis Network, a leading global advertising network. “I had a great run at Saatchi, working globally across their client base with partners Digitas and Razorfish to bring best practices to our clients. However, I saw an opportunity to fill a gap in the market to move beyond the web to create new ideas – driven by new technologies that focuses on my belief that – the consumer is the medium.”

Krossing starts his new digital shop C8 in partnership with EBR Interactive, a mobile technology innovator with combined offices in Toronto, New Jersey, Dubai, and Pakistan.

Prior to Saatchi & Saatchi, Krossing spent 17 years as a digital marketing innovator and though-leader working with numerous North America digital agencies including: Leo Burnett, Proximity, MacLaren MRM, Wunderman, Publicis, Nurun, and Blast Radius.

Cylinder 8 launches with 2 undisclosed clients and Krossing is currently staffing the new company he calls “a digital marketing ideas factory”. 

About C8
Cylinder 8 is a digital-marketing ideas factory. We make authentic brand connections, propelled by incredible technology, for the “Screen Age.” Through these connections, people exchange ideas, share culture, and influence social change, making the world a better place. C8 is a diverse band of creative leaders, technology pioneers, and cultural curators who believe “ideas inspire people to change the world.”

We create the digital tools, platforms and marketing campaigns that unite ideas, people, and brands.

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Hey, where have all the advertising people gone?

When consumers have control of the media they consume “participation” becomes critical. If your agency hasn’t fully embraced digital media, what is your future? Watch and see the future!

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Now, it seems measurement has taken center stage with clients placing increasing emphasis on how creative execution and measurement aligns to create the best campaigns, campaigns with the most impact to the bottom line. There argument is simple – they have a limited budget to invest on a large set of fragmented media choices and need to make informed decisions on selecting the most effective media vehicles to meet their revenue targets. This seems clear, so back to our challenge – “justify the cost of ongoing social media campaigns where there is not a direct connection to a sale?”

This is the question we have, or are starting to field, as many of our clients have made attempts at using social media but either can’t measure its value in concrete terms or don’t understand the process on how to link multi-channel campaign elements over time.

At Saatchi, we are using Attribution models to understand interactions online and their value to sales, lead generation and how to more effectively manage our media mix through Attribution modeling – see my previous posts “Engagement is the new click-through” and “ROI…Not So Much” for measurement challenges.

Attribution seeks to assign value to each “touch” in the user interaction with our media selections where that media ultimately drives to the web. The common mistake many marketers make is assigning the entire value of the conversion (sale, referral, lead) to the last interaction. When your client has multiple campaigns and communications in-market at the same time, Attributing the total value of marketing to the last “touch” is inaccurate and misleading to brand managers and agencies, as they determine the “last touch” is the most effective media and should get the lion-share of the budget.

Saatchi has seen success using this approach and mapping specific return on marketing investment (ROMI) through retail sales, online sales, as well as interaction within social networks that we have linked to sales where a direct call-to-action was not present.

These are some thoughts and approaches I wanted to share. If you have similar approaches or have created a framework that better surfaces results, please share your thoughts – we’re all in this together, let’s collaborate.

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How these worlds collide is becoming a large challenge that is starting to feel similar in many respects to what was happening in the late nineties with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and companies retooling their entire organizations to the new CRM drum beat.

The Altimeter Group has just published a research paper “Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management”. Both Ray Wang and Jeremiah Owyang have done a fantastic job at framing the complex situation as well as provided some interesting models at how to approach the CRM/Social relationship management issues we all face.

In particular, I am impressed with their approach to the issue through their 18 Use Cases – great start guys. Looking forward to hearing more details on this work. BTW, if you want to join the thread, you can get involved through Google Groups.

Happy Reading!

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So let’s be clear about why measurement matters. Our clients don’t hire us to fulfill objectives of building awareness, changing perceptions of a brand, gaining followers, or building communities in and of themselves, unless it leads to increases sales. The relationship marketers and clients have is clear and direct, we are hired to sell their stuff. What could be more direct.

When we don’t meet our clients’ targets or our clients believe other agencies can deliver better results – we’re fired. It’s that simple. You may question the way I have presented this relationship but my goal is to put aside the debate and establish a common understand of the responsibility we have as marketers (which for this post we’ll constrain for brevity).  If you take issue with this approach, then let me ask a different question – When any of the companies you invest with don’t provide you a dividend, what is your response? Does it comfort you that the CEO of company X has spent money to achieve great product awareness? That they have built a community of influencers? That they are spending your investment money on expensive marketing programs that can’t be measured? If you’re like me, when you invest money, you expect a return. This is a universal concept, a common truth, and an immutable law.

This is our challenge and singular focus as communication professionals. To succeed, many pieces of the communication puzzle need to be united – consumer insight, human truth, creative inspiration, and media innovation – but at the end of the day, we maintain or lose our clients based on their success. Their success is confirmed by shareholders, and shareholders – that’s you and me – determine success by the value of our investments – yes, that means how much money that companies we invest in make. See, its simple.  Now, that we are all on the same page, I have been reading on many blogs how we should abandon measurement in the social media space. This is likely because understanding how social media contributes to revenue is a daunting to measure, but not impossible. Even from a colleague Mitch Joel’s blog – Six Pixels of Separation where he suggests Dell’s Richard Binhammer is on to something with his comment “Thinking about business objectives instead of ROI makes the whole strategy that much workable and doable”.

In the world of marketing, where we live and die by the results we deliver, and we are measured by how we achieve our clients business objectives, and where all business objectives ladder-up to increasing revenue, is this statement be true? If we believe social media is an effective way to build a clients business and sell their products and services, then we all need to prove that social media has a role and should be at the table with the C-suite when marketing and sales strategies are being developed.

Please chime in.  What do you think social media should deliver to our clients? How do you measure effectiveness and report success back to your clients?

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A brand is a story never fully told. That’s how we continue to add dimension and meaning to brands and why well-managed brands endure. So, what does “inside out” mean in the context of brand building. At Saatchi we move beyond simple branding and brand management, our unified focus is to create LoveMarks – a product or service that commands loyalty beyond reason. To achieve the LoveMark status, the brand must be fully understood and adopted across the company and all interactions with people must be aligned to the brand – it must be “inside out”.

The thought “inside out” really talks to the entire organization and how it demonstrates the brands philosophy and relevance to customers. In other words, the way your brand fits into your customers’ lives and how it meets their needs and desires. It’s how important your brand becomes to your customers – and this is dependent on their interactions with the entire organization – media messages, retail store design, sales people, customer service, shipping, installation, and so on.

We are all consumers and we have all experienced disconnects between brand promise and actual sales or service interactions. The issue is alignment – management has not clearly communicated their vision of the brand and how employees can support the brand in their actions. So internal marketing is a key element in allowing any brand to deliver an exceptional experience to its customers.

Clearly communicating your brand and optimal service experience to your employees makes a powerful emotional connection to the products and services you sell. When people care about and believe in your brand, they’re motivated to work harder and their loyalty to the company increases. Employees become unified and inspired by a common sense of purpose and identity. When the entire company grasps the core of a brand, there is less friction and delay between idea and action. Inspiration is unleashed and the individual creative process is intelligently used to go beyond mere customer satisfaction to create a LoveMark.

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We talk a lot about acquisition in our culture. In fact, most of us marketing types make a living off of acquisition – gaining new customers, new insight, new channels and tactics to distribute our messages. As purveyors of need generation, we don’t often talk about generating demand within our current customer base. Our clients, also fixated on acquiring, spend up to 80% of their advertising budgets on acquisition and the remaining on current customer initiatives to drive retention and increased spending. A quick review of your clients’ budgets will clearly demonstrate their focus.

So, this post is dedicated to discussing what I like to call Demand-based Segmentation. The concept is simple enough; demand-based segmentation is about giving existing customers more reasons to buy more. While it is a simple concept, many of us forget about increasing retention, which we ultimately hope will become loyalty. In Saatchi & Saatchi’s view, we strive for “Loyalty beyond reason” or making our clients brands into a LoveMark.

So, here is my view on this simple concept and how it works:

1.     Identify your most valuable customers
Create a consistent customer profile and start thinking about ways to increase consumption.

 

2.     Segment the opportunity
Segment consumers based on their response to specific benefits, products, services, and promotions. Look for the most effective levers to target and sell each segment. Importantly, the segments you form will be based on usage frequency and perceptions of the benefits your brand offers.
 

3.     Segment the occasion
This area can be separated into two distinct actions:

a.     Purchase occasion – where the decision to purchase is made

b.     Communication occasion – which channel to lever to make the most effective communication

We need a completely different approach, one that allows us to segment our market based on the values, attitudes, and behaviors that shape demand. If our target is profitable growth, we need to rank segments in terms of their potential profitability. We do this by looking at a few key measures:

• their current contributions to volume
• their potential to make future contributions to volume, and 
• the attributes and benefits that the brand needs to increase that demand
  

So, what do you think? How have you tackled segmentation in your organization and what’s been the result?

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