Surrender Control to Your Customer

We were in a meeting with Envano an innovative social media marketing firm and the owner shared Joe Pulizzi's book Get Content. Get Customers. with us. Turns out one of their clients is featured in the book.

I am a big fan of Joe Pulizzi. Other than the fact that he is enormously articulate, he's right. Here's a summary of his take on content:

Content marketing is not easy because you actually have to listen to your customers and know what their challenges are. You cannot solve your marketing woes through buying advertising space. You must make a connection to your customers, and get new customers, by focusing on their true pain points and healing them with information.

There are millions of "social media experts" out there. Unfortunately, the majority are experts on tools, devices, and technology. Very few are experts on understanding the customer. Why? Because it's hard.

The recent Johnson & Johnson Motrin debacle is a great example.

Why Understanding the Customer is Hard.

Getting insights about the customer is not the challenge. A wealth of data is readily available. The real barrier is "surrendering control". I would argue that marketers know what their customers' want, but the marketers are unwilling to surrender control. Johnson & Johnson's ad agency tried to tell the customer who they are (or control brand perception) and it blew up in their face. Recently, we did a market study for an ad agency and gave them the unvarnished truth about the customer and the tools needed to engage them (lots of social media). They responded that they didn't want that. They either didn't know how to do what we recommended or didn't know how to make money doing it. They asked us to change the report to include tools they knew how to produce and could make money doing. WARNING! This is the norm not the exception.

Technology Isn't the Answer

Now the opposite of the example above is also true. Don't look to the new world of social media to solve the problem. It is not a solution. It is a wonderful tool to help marketers solve the problem. The problem is engaging the customer. The other problem is all the resources (vendors) available to help marketers don't care about engaging the customer, they only care about selling the services they offer.

Don't Try to Be the Smartest Person in the Room

The day's of Darren Stevens are over. Marketers don't need to be geniuses trying to create the next "big idea". They simply need to listen to their customers and give them what they want--not what marketers want to sell.

It's About Content.

As Joe Pulizzi points out, it is all about content; content that is meaningful and valuable to the customer. To do that, you must be willing to surrender control to the customer.

Keep up the good work Joe!

Strategic Brand Architect Revisited

In his book, The Future of Advertising, Joe Cappo predicted the onset of a new kind of advertising agency: the strategic brand architect.

Joe identified two key characteristics of this new kind of ad agency:

1. Profit Neutral - The firm's revenue model would be independent of a specific type of advertising service (e.g. PR, graphic design, packaging design, etc.)

2. Media Neutral - The firm's revenue model would not rely on media commissions.

Joe published his book in 2003. Five years later his predictions are beginning to come true.

What we've seen recently are marketers seeking two types of services:

1. Strategic oversite and management
2. The use of multiple resources

What they want is access to expertise in marketing strategy, campaign management support, and the freedom to select individual resources they like.

This is what I believe Joe Cappo meant by strategic brand architect.

Hmmm, customers demanding what they want, not what sellers want. Where have I heard that before?

This shift reminds me of when the Japanese realized they didn't have to both make and market their products; they could be just marketers and be very successful.

In this new world, ad agencies will need to disconnect strategy and campaign support from function. This will be difficult because their revenue models are tied to performing the functions. This is revealed in the absolute dread that overcomes an ad agency when the client asks for digital files.

I believe the day of the strategic brand architect is upon us. It's no longer a theory, but a reality.