About Vampires, Warlocks and Audience Engagement

It was Kevin Kelly who once said that to make a living an artist would only need 1000 fans.  After all, if every fan generates $50 of income a year and convinces two or three of his friends to also purchase the occasional book, song or T-shirt the math works.

The corollary of this is that creative artists should stop thinking in terms of big audiences and mass media success.  Instead, they should focus on getting to know and engaging their fans on a virtually individual basis.

The cases illustrating this type of behaviour are still few and far between, but over the Christmas holidays I learned about H.P Mallory, US writer of paranormal romance novels that is setting an example in this field.  

As part of my annual tradition to read one book I would normally never buy, I downloaded her first novel Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble, a Paranormal Romance through my iPad Kindle app.  While a little heavy on the oestrogen for my taste, the book did make for a pleasant poolside read and Ms. Mallory is clearly a gifted storyteller.

The remarkable bit, for me, came at the end.  Here I found HP Mallory announcing a competition for readers to be included as a character in the book she was currently writing.  The rules for this competition were not of your traditional lucky draw variety.  Only diehard fans could apply, and fandom was measured by the willingness to engage with the author herself.

Points can be gained by befriending her on Facebook, commenting on her blog, writing a public review of existing work, actually buying her new book, etc.  The more a fan was willing to engage with the author, the bigger the chances the author would actively engage with the fan. 

One can only imagine the effort Ms. Mallory needs to put into this.  But by flipping the model, she is generating a group of loyal fans that repurchase her books and bring their friends.  Today, by her own account, she has sold about 20,000 books this way.  I believe that as long as she keeps delivering what her fans are looking for, she's going to sell a lot more.

What business can learn from Ms. Mallory

We are heading for a world where every product and business will need to rely on a limited group of fans to be successful.  Only by knowing who they are, and by being there for them, you can ensure their continued loyalty and business.

As such, the experience of Ms Mallory is also relevant to your business.  Ask yourself how much your business engages its fans?  Do you actually know who they are?  Is your organisation willing, skilled and able to actually include their views and personalities in the products it makes?  If the fan makes a comment, are you willing to spare the resources to respond and nurtured a relationship?

Can Marketing Save the World?

Last weekend I had an interesting experience.  On Friday and in part Saturday I participated in the International Marketing Congress in Ghent.  On Monday, I was at TEDxBrussels, which by now has become the biggest TEDx in the world.  The two events couldn’t have been more different.

On Friday, IMC marketers were struggling on how to make their initiatives more relevant to their customers.  Here, most speakers stuck to safe ground and repeated the same old same old.  On Monday, TED-sters were challenging themselves and the audience on how they could save the world. Several speakers launched daring prepositions, which sparked debate and even disagreement.

So in the past few days I had this thought.  What if – when considering their relevance – marketers upped their ambition levels.  What if they stopped talking about content marketing, social media and Chief Friendship Officers (?!) and started asking themselves how they could actually change the world?  Make it better?

This doesn’t need to happen on a global scale.  Even though it would take only 3% of the world’s advertising budget to give schooling to all kids in the developing world and 5% would wipe out AIDS.   

It can happen in many small ways.  What if every marketing initiative actually made the world a slightly better place?  Made customer’s life easier?  Did something useful for society?  Helped colleagues in the business to do a better job?

There are hundreds of ways marketing funds could be used to add to the lives of those it targets, instead of intruding on them in a pointless effort of mass-manipulation.  

The good news is that this doesn’t have conflict with the need for marketing to generate a measurable ROI.  On the contrary, customer economics have shown for a while that the intrusion and quick profit game is ending.  Instead, shareholder value is created by being relevant, being engaging and building a reputation among an ever more loyal customer franchise.  Actually doing something these customers consider worthwhile, is probably a good place to start.

So have a look at everything that you have planned for 2011 and ask yourself, how do your marketing initiatives change the world?

T-Mobile 'gets it' (video)

A few weeks ago, T-Mobile in the UK appointed Mr. Srini Gopalan as its new CMO.  I do not know the gentleman, nor his beliefs, but if there were one message I would give to him is "please don't tell your people to change direction".  Because I believe that they are "getting it".

And this is great news.  I’ve grown tired of complaining and lamenting about the things that are  wrong with marketing.  How marketers are not adding value and frankly speak a language no other business person understands.  How campaigns annoy us. How billions are wasted.

While this rethoric is still required in the less brightly lit parts of the marketing universe, I want to talk about the emergence of a sustainable type of marketing that builds a monetisable reputation for a brand by engaging its customers in a relevant way. 

From a comms perspective, the latest T-mobile crowd-project does exactly that.  It is relevant, it definitely engages and if they keep it up I can see it build advocacy and loyalty across the country.

So while I don’t know whether the thinking has already permeated to the other marketing parts of the T-Mobile business (product, business models, channels, …) I just wanted to give a double thumbs up for “Hey Jude”. 

Marketing should change. You’re showing the world it can be done.

A Post Scriptum to the agencies, brands or others that now feel compelled to have 10K of their customers sing the Chiwawa song:  DON’T.

Change Marketing, Yes We Can (presentation)

I don't know about you, but for years now I've had the feeling there's something wrong in the land of marketing.  After all, we all read that the world has changed. That media consumption has changed.  Consumer behaviour has evolved.  That brands aren't trusted.  That mass media are dead. 

But at the same time the basic principles of marketing as I learned them in business school have remained the same.  While the media have changed, the majority of marketing initiatives are still about "shouting and selling" rather than actually engaging with a customer and gaining his respect.

I believe this has to stop and that is why – today – in Helsinki I gave a presentation which called upon the marketers in the room to stop the madness. 

To stop talking about what the brand wanted to say, and start focusing on what we, the customers wanted to hear.  To stop shouting at us, and start engaging us.  To start building a lifelong reputation, instead of trying to be a “one night brand” merely focused on quarterly campaigns.  In short, to help start a revolution that would change the essence of marketing itself.

The experience was unnerving.  After all,  it was the first time I have ever been that explicit.  Calling for a revolution is something you don’t do every day.  And in a country as advanced as Finland, there is of course the chance that no one would rise to the occasion.

But they did.  In fact, many people came up to me with the message that I was articulating what they were thinking.  Others also came up with suggestions on how to make the presentation better.  Areas I had missed and that could be included.

So with the Finnish digital marketing world on my side, I’ve decided it is now time to challenge the world.  Or better, I should say “we”, because my business partner Stefan Kolle has been at the heart of the new marketing model we propose in the presentation below.  A marketing reality which lets go of the “product push” mentality, and focuses on relevance, engagement and reputation.

Change Marketing v01

About the presentation

This presentation offers a digital perspective on life, as the audience at the event (Twitter: #Fword) was active in digital. But our view is larger than that.  That is why we will be applying the concept of  relevance, engagement and reputation to every aspect of the marketing mix.  From ROI to innovation.  From television to Twitter.

It also is an “open source project”.  Even though at Futurelab we can consider ourselves a bit ahead of the curve, reality is that we don’t know every detail on how the future of marketing will look either.  But we do believe that if we all work together, we can work it out.  So I would like to call on you to contribute.  We will shortly be launching a Ning community where all fellow revolutionaries can unite and discuss.  But until then I suggest you use the comment section below.

Because as the man said: Change Marketing.  Yes, We Can.