From Mediapost:

“Claire Bennett, SVP/Advertising, Marketing and Media at American Express, threw down a gauntlet at the outset: digital, traditional, grassroots–it doesn’t matter if consumers don’t want it. Paraphrasing Einstein, she said any marketing fool can overwhelm consumers with meaningless information, but it takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

Her message, delivered through a rundown on her own company’s efforts, was that the opposite direction means moving from intrusion to invitation. “Are you making something better for your customer or intruding on an experience they are having?” she asked, rhetorically. “We want to be invited in by the consumer: from transaction to relationship; from disrupting to empowering.”

Facilitating conversations, making people’s life better. Bingo.

The one thing that kept TV vital and as the premium communication channel was the promise of live TV: People will watch live TV, such as sporting events, and they will consume commercials just to see the live action again.

This theory was always faulty: Besides the fact that people might not leave the room but focus their attention on their family and friends during commercial break, a majority of people have their laptop handy and will focus their attention on productive work before refocusing their attention on TV again. But, more importantly, people are getting sick of the time tyranny of live TV.

A Global Broadcast Consumer Survey conducted by Accenture shows that people are getting used to an on-demand lifestyle: they want to pick and choose when they consume any form of media. The numbers are astounding: 83% of of people are unhappy with the inflexibility of live TV, mostly based on their complaints about commercials (64 percent) and not being able to rewind (40%).

Media consumption habits are changing so rapidly, businesses and agencies have problems keeping up. Even worse, media consumption habits are not even studied closely enough. An impression makes no impression anymore. When you have a magazine next to you on the couch, the TV blaring and the NY Times homepage on your computer, what do you count as an impression? We all know that people can’t consume  three different medium at once, so how do you count these three impressions? And how shall publishers be reimbursed for part-attention impressions?

Add to the mix the advent of Social Networks, the move from top-down to bottom-up entertainment and you have a pretty confusing picture and even more confused brands. Agencies need to help businesses to clear up that confusion. Unless they are even more foggy.

We tend to value things by putting a price tag on it: The watch must be good because it costs $5,000. The Mercedes-Benz must be better because it’s more expensive than the VW. Applying the same method to relationships or connections seems laughable: What is the value of a friend? What is the value of a business connection?  

Unfortunately, Wall Street, many businesses and agencies try to value Social Networks just on a monetary basis. They see the overvaluation of Facebook as a reminder of the dotcom bubble and a warning sign that all this talk about Social Media and Conversational Marketing might just be that: talk. 

I agree: Facebook is not a $15 billion company. But, at the same time, I couldn’t care less. I’m not Mark Zuckerberg, I’m not an investor, shareholder, don’t really care if Facebook ever makes a profit. I don’t even care if Facebook survives the next two years, ends up to be another MySpace aka Advertising Network or thrives and prospers. But users care: Once they feel the sell-out, they’re moving on.

What I care about are changing behavior patterns: People don’t ask companies anymore to get them things, they ask their peers. People avoid advertising at any cost but they are open to valuable tools that facilitate their conversations. Facebook is one site where many of these changing behavior patterns manifest themselves. There are thousand others. And you can experience it outside of the digital space: In airplanes, at work, in pre-school, stuck in traffic.  

Debating the value of MySpace or Facebook might be an entertaining discussion. But it distracts us from the fact that people are changing. Relationships and connections are the real value of Social Networks. Not a Wall Street price tag. 

Every business has two visions: A brand vision and a daily vision.

As the foundation of the whole organization, the brand vision rarely changes, drives the overall strategy of the company and informs employees, customers and people what the businesses stands for. Daily visions are decisions that are made in the process of doing business. Circumstances tend to determine daily visions.

Vital and healthy businesses are driven by brand visions. Daily visions are just another expression of their brand vision. Every decision falls into line with the the overall vision.

Any business driven by daily visions, small emergencies and political battles is in deep trouble. Everybody forgot the brand vision, if there ever was one, and the business just tries to stay above water.

Vital businesses are like the biggest passenger ships in the world: Always moving ahead, not to be bothered by little details, minor catastrophes. Unwaivering. Determined.

These enormous ships used to be supported by a few trawlers: The Color TV, The Colorful Print, The Noise Radio.The trawlers deviate from the path once in a while to explore the world outside of the given path.  Few  trawlers turned into an armada of trawlers in the new marketing reality: Thousand trawlers following the path of the leading ship but, at the same time, exploring new frontiers, taking risks, being away from the lead ship for a while to experiment. But never out of sight, always in touch with the passenger ship. They have bizarre names: Crazy Twitter, The Dreaming Pownce, etc. We navigate these little trawlers every day, experimenting, dreaming.

Our experiences and adventures don’t change the current course of the ship. But they inform future decisions, new adventures, new innovations. And make the journey so much more enjoyable. And exciting.

Did you hear the song that started to become a hit last year and turned into a monster hit in 2008? That song is played at every conference, Web 2.0 summit and social media meeting of the minds. Nobody knows the exact title but it goes like “Businesses have to stop talking and start doing”. I’m sure you’ve heard that song many, many times.

Most businesses interested in Social Media and Conversational Marketing remind me of people ordering fitness equipment through infomercials: They know they need to do something about their fitness and health. And they order stuff to start talking about really doing it. Yes, they open up the package, are so confused by the instructions that they stop doing anything. Just to continue watching infomercial, still talking about doing something.

People are opening up to the public more and more each and every day. They describe in detail their desires, needs, fears,  anxieties, hopes, etc., etc. Opportunity is growing each and every day for businesses to help these people, build more useful products that tap into these feelings. Have you bothered listening? People tell businesses what they want. Sometimes very clearly. Sometimes not that overt. But they are always telling you what they are feeling.

Business that listen will survive and prosper in this new marketing reality. They won’t see themselves as the hero anymore. Instead, they see people as the heroes and will do everything to expand their superpowers by giving them what they want.

It’ s not enough to think about doing anymore. It’s time to listen and start doing.

Everybody is talking about listening: Listen to your customers, listen to employees, listen to your intuition. Listening has become the new buzzword in the marketing world. The whole idea of Conversational Marketing/Social Media is based on the concept of listening. And listening can make or break your business. But if you don’t know how to listen, you might do more harm to your business than you ever imagined.

Remember the Simpsons Episode, ‘Oh Brother, Where Art Thou’? Homer meets his half-brother, Herb Powell, head honcho of the Powell Motors car company, who decides that Homer is the perfect match to design a car for the average American. Homer comes up with a concept that he markets as ‘powerful like a gorilla, yet soft and yielding like a Nerf ball’, featuring three horns that play ‘La Cucaracha’ and a sound-proof bubble dome for his kids. Powell Motors goes out of business shortly after.

Yes, Herb Powell, listened. But he didn’t listen actively.

No matter in what business you’re in, customers expect from brands to solve their problems. Allergy medicine solves the annoying hay fever problem. Cottonelle for Kids solves a potty training problem. Mac’s solve the virus problem. (At least, reducing it.) Cottonelle for Kids solved a common parenting problem because they asked the right questions. Asking people ‘What do you want?’ will get you nowhere. Asking people ‘Tell me about yourself and the common issues you’re facing on a daily basis.’ will get your creative juices going.

Suggestions by people should not be treated as requirements for the next phase of your product development. Instead, suggestions need to be regarded as problem reflections that you’re tasked to resolve. Does a parent really want a soundproof bubble for their kids while driving long distances? Or do they want ways to entertain their kids safely while they can focus on the drive and listen to radio at the same time?

Businesses need to structure their listening initiatives to ensure they suspend their own frame of reference and judgement while leaning forward and attentively engaging in a conversation. The advent of UGC, Social Networks and consumer participation clearly show that people are growing out of the passive consumption phase. Brands need to catch up quickly. Or they end up with below monstrosity.

Most marketing theory is based on the idea that people are logical creatures. At one point in the purchase decision process, people will take careful account of all available information before making the final decision. There is growing evidence that this is not the case. (to get more in-depth look at Herd behavior and how you should adjust our marketing, read Mark Earls’ ‘How to Change Mass Behavior by Harnessing our True Nature’. A must for marketers.)

One of the most quoted theories is called ‘Information Cascades’ that can lead people to serious miscalculations and errors. Here’s how Robert J. Shiller from the NY Times explains the theory:

“Suppose that a group of individuals must make an important decision, based on useful but incomplete information. Each one of them has received some information relevant to the decision, but the information is incomplete and “noisy” and does not always point to the right conclusion.

Let’s update the example to apply it to the recent bubble: The individuals in the group must each decide whether real estate is a terrific investment and whether to buy some property. Suppose that there is a 60 percent probability that any one person’s information will lead to the right decision.

In other words, that person’s information is useful but not definitive — and not clear enough to make a firm judgment about something as momentous as a market bubble. Perhaps that is how Mr. Greenspan assessed the probability that he could make an accurate judgment about the stock market bubble.

The theory helps explain why he — or anyone trying to verify the existence of a market bubble — may have squelched his own judgment.

The fundamental problem is that the information obtained by any individual — even one as well-placed as the chairman of the Federal Reserve — is bound to be incomplete. If people could somehow hold a national town meeting and share their independent information, they would have the opportunity to see the full weight of the evidence. Any individual errors would be averaged out, and the participants would collectively reach the correct decision.”

Let’s look a typical purchase decision: You are in the market for a laptop. You’ve always had a PC but you are delighted by your iPhone and iPod experience. You have trepidations switching from PC to Mac - the learning curve worries you. But you hear Vista is not the best operating system ever. What to do? You scan the CNET’s, PC World’s of the world. The information gets more confusing. So you start to ask around: The Mac cultists, the PC nerds, friends using Vista on a new laptop, friends that switched from PC to Mac. And you scan message boards, social networks and other independent point of views. That’s how you form your opinion: through personal opinions, half-truths and emotionally charged point of views.

In general, herd behavior happens for two reasons: Social pressure of conformity and the perception that large groups can’t be wrong. Businesses need to focus on the latter. Interjecting reason and facts into a conversation can change the discussion considerably. Individuals might have that nagging feeling that the large group is wrong but they still follow the herd: Humans often fall into the trap that large groups know something they don’t. And that’s the opportunity most businesses miss out on:

Does Vista really suck? Is it really slow? The majority says so. I haven’t tried it yet. All I know is from people that told me that they would rather have XP back. Instead of hiring new agencies to sell the public on Vista, Microsoft should invest their money on social media outreach and Conversational Marketing efforts to listen, learn, respond and change.

Companies who learn how to have a conversations and empower their fans to spread the word will be able to fight the ‘Information Cascades Effect’. When people engage other people in conversations about products, they know that they’re dealing with subjective opinions. They will be open and ready to listen and respond to companies who engage them with facts, not marketing blubber. Consider Conversational Marketing as a daily town meeting about your product and business.

The NY Times reports about the sale of the Magna Carta:

What is Magna Carta worth? Exactly $21,321,000. We know because that’s what it fetched in a fair public auction at Sotheby’s in New York just before Christmas. Twenty-one million is, by far, the most ever paid for a page of text, and therein lies a paradox: Information is now cheaper than ever and also more expensive.

Mostly, of course, information is practically free, easier to store and faster to spread than our parents imagined possible. In one way, Magna Carta is already yours for the asking: you can read it any time, at the touch of a button. It has been preserved, photographically and digitally, in countless copies with no evident physical reality, which will nonetheless last as long as our civilization. In another way, Magna Carta is a 15-by-17-inch piece of parchment, fragile and scarce and practically unreadable. Why should that version be so valuable?

(…)

“The value of the particular item sold at Sotheby’s eight centuries later is entirely different. It’s a kind of illusion. We can call it magical value as opposed to meaningful value. It’s like the value acquired by one baseball when Bobby Thomson batted it out of the Polo Grounds. A physical object becomes desirable, precious, almost holy, by common consensus, on account of a history — a story — that is attached to it. (If it turns out you’ve got the wrong baseball, the value vanishes just as magically.)”

And the conclusion:

“Just when digital reproduction makes it possible to create a “Rembrandt” good enough to fool the eye, the “real” Rembrandt becomes more expensive than ever. Why? Because the same free flow that makes information cheap and reproducible helps us treasure the sight of information that is not. A story gains power from its attachment, however tenuous, to a physical object. The object gains power from the story. The abstract version may flash by on a screen, but the worn parchment and the fading ink make us pause. The extreme of scarcity is intensified by the extreme of ubiquity.”

Good marketers were always storytellers. Stories help build emotional connections with people, make the brand appear human, draw us in. These stories have to be supported by experiences. Compare a good brand experience with dating: The guy you meet might have the greatest story ever told but nothing is founded in reality. Result: You’ll run for the hills. When your brand overpromises through storytelling and underdelivers in the experience department, you have nowhere to go. And your customers will go somewhere else.

In the new marketing reality, experience specialists and storytellers have to work together. The goal: To create a scarce story that’s supported by a ubiquitous consumer experience. And that goes much deeper than advertising and marketing. That goes to the heart and soul of an organization. Because people want to connect with brands not on an intellectual level. They want to engage from heart to heart. And, dare I say, from soul to soul.