Brands need to deliver value

Coming from a cold country, I’ve experienced extended waiting periods in bus stops during harsh winters. Not something I would recommend to anyone. But many people will endure this situation throughout the upcoming winter and Kraft found an innovative way to combine a marketing campaign with a service that communicates the key benefits of their Stove Top brand stuffing: 

“In the latest example of a trend that is becoming increasingly popular on Madison Avenue, heated air will descend from the roofs of 10 bus shelters in Chicago, courtesy of the Stove Top brand of stuffing sold byKraft Foods.

From Tuesday through the end of this month, Kraft is arranging for the company that builds and maintains the bus shelters, JCDecaux North America, to heat them, trying to bring to life the warm feeling that consumers get when they eat stuffing, according to Kraft.”

That’s a great step in the right direction. But Kraft could go further: Why not extending this program to many more cities, not limiting it to a month, extending the program till the spring? As Drew pointed out in his post, Samsung didn’t offer the airport charge stations for a limited time or to only one terminal, they showed a real commitment. And, that’s the difference between an advertising stunt and a real social marketing strategy in order to deliver value: You have to be in it for the long run. The current, very limited campaign is more of a stunt, something that will be forgotten quickly. But, a real commitment to bringing warmth to people will put that warm spot for the brand in people’s heart. Kraft, it’s not too late.

It’s about doing the right thing. Not the new thing.

7 years after the dot-com boom and bust, we’ve seen an avalanche of new ways to connect with people: viral videos, social networks, mini-blogs, billboards, gazillion cable channels, IPTV, Skype, yada yada yada.

Businesses look at agencies to guide them through the jungle we call new marketing reality. Some agencies pledge for the Status Quo, adding a few Bright Shiny Objects to the mix. Others apply the Silicon Valley 70-20-10 rule: Spend 70% of your core communication channels, 20% focused on innovating the core communication channels and 10% on pure experimentation.

Frankly, scattershot apporaches rarely work. All these new tools make a promise to people: A promise to engage them in a meaningful way. A promise to humanize the relationship between people and businesses. A promise to be authentic. More often than not, those promises are broken the moment people dial the call center, try to communicate with the brand and can’t find the email address on the corporate site.

As Seth Godin says:

“New Marketing-whipped cream and a cherry on top-isn’t magical. What’s magical is what happens when an organization uses the New Marketing to become something it didn’t used to be-it’s not just the marketing that’s transformed, but the entire organization. Just as technology propelled certain organizations through the Industrial Revolution, this new kind of marketing is driving the right organizations through the digital revolution.

You can become the right organization. You can align your organization from the bottom up to sync with New Marketing, and you can transform your organization into one that thrives on the new rules. “

Our job is not to sell businesses cool, new thing. Our job is doing the right thing:

Conversational Marketing is not about one-off campaigns.

Conversational Marketing is about researching, dissecting and analyzing organizations. And then move the whole organization into the new marketing reality. It might be changing the call center success metrics from ‘How many people did I process?’ to ‘How many people did I help today and offered a positive brand experience?’ It might be a full-blown conversational marketing campaign. It might be a change from email form letters to real email conversations.

Whatever it is, conversational marketing is a long journey. A life-changing journey. For people. And businesses.

New Marketing-whipped cream and a cherry on top-isn’t magical. What’s magical is what happens when an organization uses the New Marketing to become something it didn’t used to be-it’s not just the marketing that’s transformed, but the entire organization. Just as technology propelled certain organizations through the Industrial Revolution, this new kind of marketing is driving the right organizations through the digital revolution.