As I was thinking of a title for this blog I considered using the “… is King” analogy but it seems the CMS industry has beaten that term to death.

It’s clear with the major success of sites like MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn that community and social networking is big business. The marketing world is working hard to find ways to leverage this model for clients. It’s no doubt that when community and social networking tools are thought through and integrated successfully the investment can pay for itself rather quickly by connecting you directly with your customer to grow a relationship that allows you to gain amazing insights.

There are a lot of different concepts to consider when looking at social networking for brands. Instead of listing them all I’m going to borrow from (and summarize) the framework provided in Razorfish’s 2008 Digital Report using their “The six “C’s of social influence marketing” model.

• Content
  Content can come in many forms: video, wallpapers, badges, avatars, widgets and information. Authenticity and transparency is critical. Allow your content to be de-centralized (Syndication via RSS or embed).
• Customization
  Include elements where users can define themselves. Allow users to generate and customize their own content (blogs, comments, threaded discussions, etc). Empower consumers to express themselves.
• Community
  Give users a reason to interact. Provide unique content, value or engagement. Leverage relational social networking content on brand sites.
• Conversation
  Build a network of advocates. Using advocates to build new relationships = sales. Accept negative feedback and conversation. Intervene in a problem before it escalates.
• Commerce
  Must be soft sold. Consumers do not want a hard sell; any integration from your e-store must be subtle not blatant. Offer coupons, related content or links to store.
• Commitment
  It requires ongoing customer communication. Solicit feedback on products & services. Add more value to customers. Enhance brand reputation. Enable brand advocacy.

Before looking to embrace the benefits of community and social media you need to consider a solid strategy. A commitment to community requires an all or nothing approach. Provide your customer with a framework and tools that enable conversation and interaction. Don’t forget to invest in updating content that is rich and authentic and adding features that will keep your users coming back.

I am fascinated with bike messengers. They are the digital age equivalent of the Pony Express, navigating our treacherous streets with great speed and grace to deliver our stuff on time.

As designers, we can’t help but be inspired by the unique culture of bike messengers, visual and otherwise. Part athlete, part urban soldier, these riders personify the rebel zeitgeist that inspires brands and trends. Where they go, others follow, and that’s a lesson for brands. From the fixie craze to fashion trends like the messenger bag, bike messengers influence and inspire. Everything about them just screams “cool.”

In honor of these riders, I’ve assembled a few handpicked examples of mess culture from around the web: (mess = “messenger”).

The New York Bike Messenger Association website is the hub of New York’s messenger society. You’ll see that they don’t stop riding when they’re not delivering. They’re racing, playing bike polo, and riding to raise funds for fallen comrades. Don’t miss the wealth of content in their links section.

Moving a little closer to home, this article from OnMilwaukee.com honors Milwaukee’s sole bike-only messenger service, Breakaway Bicycle Couriers. When the weather shut down the post office, Breakaway riders toughed it out, delivering packages through the snow and ice – on road bikes.

And finally, the Mecca of mess, messmedia.org. What this site lacks in design, it makes up for in content. If it has anything to do with bike messengers, it’s on this site.

Sadly, I noticed much real estate on messenger sites devoted to memorials and fundraisers for messengers who have been killed or injured by motorists. Hopefully, that statement alone will inspire more people to give them the a little extra space.

I was doing some online searching the other day about passion and inspiration – key concepts of both innovation and communication – and I went to www.ted.com, a site dedicated to spreading ideas, to see what was new.

Each year, some of the world’s greatest thinkers and doers share their insights on general themes at the TED conference in Monterey, California. Each year, these speakers share both their passion and their knowledge on fascinating topics, and you can find them online.

TED stands for Technology, Education and Design and has an interesting history. The first TED conference was organized by Richard Saul Wurman in 1984, and after a six-year hiatus, it became an annual event in 1990. Wurman had already made a name for himself by developing the popular ACCESS travel guidebooks. The concept for these books was to present information the way we seek it — in this case, by location. Wurman coined the phrase “information architecture” and demonstrated the concept with this series.

The TED conference grew from Wurman’s observations of a convergence trend among three disciplines: technology, education and design. He saw potential in bringing together the greatest minds in each, to share ideas and explore new concepts. At the time, he was also an ongoing host and participant of the International Design Conference in Aspen, which was the leading multi-disciplinary business and design conference. TED took the concept further, as an invitation-only event. Additionally, each speaker is challenged to “give the talk of their lives” in 18 minutes.

Now, you can watch and listen to these presentations online. The content is presented in video and audio formats. You can search the content by theme, speaker, popularity or volume of online discussion. Once you discover TED, It won’t take long to find your favorite presentations or speakers. Here are a few of mine: Majora Carter: Greening the ghetto; William McDonough: The wisdom of designing Cradle to Cradle; and Malcolm Gladwell: What we can learn from spaghetti sauce.

Best of all, the videos are released under a Creative Commons license, which means you can redistribute them freely and legally. To me, this proves that the TED people are truly more interested in spreading ideas than trying to sell something or promote a hidden agenda.

The convergence concept couldn’t be more relevant today. Branding, like everything else, is increasingly social and technological. TED is a valuable resource for our work, but it’s also a source of inspiration and information about the increasingly complex and connected world-at-large. And for many of us, those small moments of inspiration and connection are what make us passionate about our work, and our lives.

I recently did a presentation to the Milwaukee Internet Marketing Association on how brands need to leverage the web to help build loyal consumers and convert them into what we call “Brand Champions.”

It was interesting pulling this presentation together because the thoughts I captured are at the heart and soul of what we as a firm work to deliver for every brand we work with when we create any program. Creating Brand Champions requires a discipline and focus that extends far beyond the marketing department. From product development, to service, to sales, to dealer relations there isn’t an area of an organization that doesn’t impact a brand’s ability to create lasting, meaningful relationships with their consumers. Steve Rubel wrote a post on Micro Persuasion “Preaching to the Converted” almost three years ago that I believe extends to how brands should approach all their work online.

1. FIND where your target consumers and brand champions are interacting online
2. LISTEN to what they are saying to better understand what they want and need from your brand
3. ENGAGE your users in a dialogue and create new ways for your consumers to interact with your brand
4. EMPOWER your Brand Champions to create stories and lead conversations about your brand to actively influence others

I cover these in my presentation with examples of how LISTENING, ENGAGING and EMPOWERING your users within a Brand’s site can help create Brand Champions. Check out my presentation and I would love to hear your point of view on the topics covered.

If you answered yes, and your list only includes the brands which are in your immediate competitive space (the ones you see year after year at that Vegas trade show) – this is your wakeup call. It’s true, you ultimately will be competing for a sale against like brands, but what happens before a consumer decides to purchase a specific item; let’s say a fishing pole for example. Prior to that decision, a consumer is likely shopping for a form of recreation or entertainment, rather than a brand or product. This effectively increases your brands competitive landscape. You’re now fighting other forms of recreation/entertainment AND their respective brands.

With that said, it’s crucial that you begin looking inside and outside your industries to gain knowledge and insight when establishing your benchmarks. Whether they’re brand, product or service related – the perspective to be gained is invaluable. This will help in developing smarter products/services and ultimately a more compelling brand experience. Unless of course you’re content being the “smart follower” in your industry.

If the notion of more competition is making your stomach turn, rest easy. Here are some tips to help you navigate an ever-evolving brand landscape:

• Look around you and learn from others
• Treat “emotion” as a benchmark
• Know your competition (inside/outside your industry)
• Benchmark all facets of your business (product, brand, service, etc)
• Create great products as well as great brand experiences
• Identify key consumer trends/habits/preferences

You’ll be competing with anyone and everyone, which means you need to keep an eye on anyone and everyone…

If we were to analyze the current presidential race more like a product with a marketing goal versus a politician with an agenda – who has the most compelling brand? Which one of these “Brandidates” is doing the best job at delivering their message to the marketplace? Effectively creating a point of difference, cutting through the clutter and converting consumers?

A presidential campaign is no different than classic brand marketing strategy:

• Create awareness
• Develop understanding
• Gain preference and establish advocates

I’m sure all the heavy-weight campaign strategists understand this simple structure…???

They all have value propositions and taglines, integrated communication strategies, target markets and even logos. So, when all things are equal in the brand asset bank, what really positions a “Brandidate” for success? I think it’s the classic attribute – emotion. All great brands connect emotionally with their consumer. There is authenticity, delivered consistently in a compelling manner. If you were to think about it like this, which “Brandidate” has the best chance to be number with market share, retention rates, unaided awareness, and brand advocacy – the holy grail of marketing?

The New York Times is even comparing Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s websites in terms of Mac versus PC branding. Which is which? Find out here.

How far would you go to protect the integrity of your brand? Would you be willing to walk away from millions of dollars of potential sales? Would you turn your back on a channel that would get your product in nearly 4,000 stores across the country? Would you go to unprecedented lengths to ensure the tradition, product quality and personal service your customers associate with your brand remain at the very highest levels? Jim Wier did.

Wier is a former VP with lawn equipment maker Simplicity, owners of the Snapper brand. When faced with the prospect of helping Wal-Mart build their outdoor power equipment business around Snapper, Wier instead decided to pull his mowers from Wal-Mart’s shelves.

Pretty gutsy move. But Wier understood the history and tradition of the Snapper brand, the company’s ruthless commitment to product quality and its dedication to unparalleled customer service which was entrusted to a network of more than 10,000 independent dealers. He also understood that those people who were passionate about mowing their lawns and who took great pride in its appearance wanted, needed, the very best brand experience.

Charles Fishman’s January, 2006 Fast Company article, “The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart”, is a classic. It is a must-read for anyone who is entrusted with caring for and nurturing a brand and the customers who are passionate about it. Read it here.

I just read this quote in a new book with the world’s longest title, called “Join the Conversation: How to Engage Marketing-Weary Consumers with the Power of Community, Dialogue and Partnership” by Joseph Jaffe, John Wiley & Sons press, 2007:

In the “age of engagement,” there are four fundamentals to keep in mind:

1. The Internet is the center of the universe.
2. The experience is the brand differentiator.
3. The database is the primary marketplace.
4. The technology is the explosive ingredient.

I found it to be a very helpful way of thinking about the collision of marketing and technology that we continue to explore and exploit.

I feel that Hanson Dodge Creative is in a very nice position to exploit three of the four fundamentals in this age of engagement. With the database being our next frontier to conquer. One that we are determined to take on.

Our friends at Two West have a great podcast called the Brand Show. Every week, they explore the brands people love, hate, and love to hate. Their guest list includes some of the best minds in the biz, including some familiar names from Hanson Dodge Creative. This week, our own Dawn Finnegan and Marty Ellery discuss our Active Insights research initiative. You can check it out here.

(Their segment starts about three quarters of the way through.)

Ever wonder about the origins of a product you’re about to purchase? Things like: who made it, where it was produced, environmental or community impact, carbon footprint info, etc.? Wait no more. Those of you who crave info and want to make more eco-informed buying decisions could soon benefit from the output of a emerging consumer trend “(Still) Made Here,” as reported by Trendwatching.com – a favorite haunt of mine.

“(STILL) MADE HERE encompasses new and enduring manufacturers and purveyors of the local. In a world that is seemingly ruled by globalization, mass production and ‘cheapest of the cheapest’, a growing number of consumers are seeking out the local, and thereby the authentic, the storied, the eco-friendly and the obscure.”

It’s early but some well known brands have already experimented with attaching “Life Story Labels” to their products. The information included on these labels range from freshness dates to child labor percentages (let’s assume that manufacturers that employ child labor won’t be adopting Life Story Labels in the near future). Others are taking the opportunity to create new brands/companies around the consumers desire to purchase whatever does the least harm.

Timberland had capitalized on the opportunity in early 2007 by adding a “nutritional label” to each shoebox, educating consumers on where it was made, how it was produced and what effect it had on the environment. They also pose a question to would be consumers by asking “what kind of footprint will you leave?” (more…)