The history of marketing has been an unending stream of “biggest sale ever,” “now with extra raisins,” and “easy financing available.” The power of social media is that it allows consumers to peek behind the curtain of brands that have historically been stoic, pushy, and unresponsive.
Successful social media programs cannot be just a digital yellow pages ad for the company. Unfortunately, we’ve seen a lot of these efforts on Facebook and Twitter recently, where the company sets up shop in social media, but just continues sending one-way promotional messages like they always have in old media. This won’t work, and why would it?
Caution, paradox ahead
To really make social media work for your company, your message cannot be ABOUT your company. Unless you’re one of the very few companies that already has a natural community of raving fans (apple, nike etc) people don’t care about your company enough per se to get involved with you online in a meaningful way.
Instead, you have to find the ONE THING in your company that is truly defining and interesting, and build your social media program around that. It could be something operational. Perhaps your customer service program. How people use your product in unique ways. Anything, as long as it isn’t “we’re a good company that makes a good product”
Fiskars used the fact that scrapbookers were crazy about their scissors as their ONE THING when they launched the Fiskateers program with the help of Brains on Fire, and now it’s a definitive social media case study.
For most people, when they think Zappos they don’t necessarily think shoes anymore, they think customer service. That’s their ONE THING and they beat that drum continuously.
A campaign I worked on with Mighty Interactive for Exide Batteries focused on NASCAR fans and Exide’s status as the official battery of NASCAR, not the fact that they make a great car battery.
It’s probably under your nose
Finding the one thing often requires really spending time with the brand and getting a feel for its operations and culture. Agencies can uncover the one thing better than clients can, because for the clients the one thing appears to be no big deal. It’s just routine.
Here’s an example that pre-dates social media by about 15 years. When I was an intern at an agency in Phoenix I worked on communications for car audio maker Rockford Fosgate. We wanted to devise a campaign that was different from most car audio gear, which typically focuses on testosterone, loudness, and detailed specs.
On a factory tour, we came upon a huge guy with a long black ponytail, a white apron, and a giant rubber mallet that looked like something out of “Cooking with the Hell’s Angels.” Standing at the end of the assembly line, he grabbed every amplifier off of the line as it came down, and beat it as hard as he could with the rubber mallet about 9 times. After the thrashing, he hooked the amp up to a testing station and made sure it still worked.
We asked the client tour guide about it, and he said it was indeed a daily occurrence, part of Rockford Fosgate’s quality assurance program.
A campaign was born.
We convinced the company to let us use the actual guy in the campaign, and we created a series of print ads and media outreaches using the “If We Can’t Wail It, We Fail It” tagline, with explanatory copy.
It’s too bad social media wasn’t around then, because we really could have put some legs on that effort. YouTube video. Guest wailers. Twitter campaign. I’m stoked just thinking about it. (Rockford Fosgate if you still wail it, please steal this idea).
What seems boring to you inside your company might seem fascinating to your customers. It could be your ONE THING. And without it, your social media effort will never take flight.
Do you have examples of the ONE THING? Leave a comment with the brand and their one thing, won’t you?
(photo by Qole Pejorian)
Tags: conversation marketing, Exide, Fiskateers, Rockford Fosgate, Social Media, social media marketing, social media strategy, Zappos
Jason – enjoyed this post, and congrats on Marketing Profs.
I’d even venture to say that the “one thing” is rarely something the company can find for themselves (with exceptions, of course). We as corporate marketers spent years looking at our brands myopically, filtered through our “key messages” and “value proposition” and “unique attributes”. Truth is, those things are usually rather worthless to the people that matter most – the customers.
Let’s continue to help companies listen carefully to their communities and let THEM help discover that “one thing”.
Cheers.
The “one thing” is what the customers keep asking you about, and what they recommend you for when they talk to others. You have to identify it, embrace it, then (the easiest part) make a campaign of it.
@ Amber. Thanks. I completely agree that corporate employees are not best positioned to find the one thing. Too bogged down in memos.
@Steve. Talking to customer service department and listening in on calls, etc. is a great way to try to find the one thing (as well as listening to the social media community, natch).
Thanks for the shout out, Jason. I think the reason that Fiskateers is the “definitive social media case study” is that 2-and-a-half years later, it’s still growing. Still maturing. Still getting amazing results. It’s a long-term, sustainable movement instead of a short-term campaign that’s here today and gone tomorrow. And the amount of money Fiskars has had to spend on the movement is so much less than the cost of running constant campaigns for the past 2.5 years. Just another factor for ROI.
My favorite “one thing” is the comment years ago by the head of Revlon. They didn’t sell makeup, he said. They sold “hope.” I love that!
Jason – another outstanding post. I just sent a copy to all of my clients and a link to my Twitter community. “Finding the ONE THING in your company that is truly defining and interesting, and build your social media program around that” is central to having success with social marketing.
Hi Jason – you’re right. And I really liked the Brainsonfire intro on their Web page. Right on.
At CASACOM, it is our warm house feel that is special I would say. I’m not sure this is what my clients want to hear. We are also amazing on results but isn’t what others PR firms would say. On the house feel, we’re alone… We need to think about it. Not easy…
Anyway, I also think that this idea comes down to the simple but great idea of The category of one book that I really enjoyed many years ago. Cheers
@Spike. Thanks for dropping by. Honored that you’d comment. Keep up the killer work, and please keep publishing updated results on Fiskateers, as you’re right, it’s duration makes it special.
@Linda. I love that line! Might have to appropriate it for my next speech.
@Michael. Thanks so much for the pass along. Much appreciated.
@MJG Thanks for the comment. I agree your personal touch is what makes your firm special. Need to capture that in a tighter, more impactful way. Need to really humanize the staff in the minds of the clients.
It all comes down to customer awareness, and brand awareness. Are you aware of what is going on internally within your company, as well as externally. We’ve all known for a while we need to listen to our customers, but sometimes we fail to implement this simple step. Great post Jason!
I don’t entirely agree with you, Jason.
Finding ‘the one thing’ that makes a company better in some way has always been the foundation of any successful branding or marketing communication exercise. It’s simply the core of what makes a brand stand out: What makes you better? What makes you different? What is the one thing that will make me, Joe Customer, pick you over every other company who does what you do? What is the one thing that will make me love you? As a brand manager, you have to understand this AND you have to be able to communicate it through every touchpoint in your company, from customer service and accounts payable to PR and design engineering. Fair enough.
However, as vital to a company’s success as finding what ‘the one thing’ is – or the two things, or the three things, even – this has nothing to do with social media. Communicating your client’s “one thing” is still broadcasting and messaging, which we all agree is not the best use of SocMed channels.
Better advice would be to get your clients to consider what they hope to accomplish by investing in social media. Increase sales? Increase touchpoints with customers? Generate feedback from users? Build greater brand equity? Create a WOM channel for upcoming events and launches? Recruiting net new customers? Just being able to say “hey, we’re in social media too?” You need to have objectives. They can be many, but you need to know what you want to get out of it, both for you as a company, and for your customers as well. Where’s the value for everyone? That’s the real question.
If the point is to NOT talk about yourself – and you’re 100% right about that – then you’re focusing on the wrong thing by talking about “the one thing”. The ‘one thing’ should already be evident through your marketing and other business processes by the time you get into social media channels. The focus of your social media strategy should be about transcending the ‘one thing’ and shifting the conversation to the passion you help stoke in your customers, users and fans.
If you’re a rock band, social media works best as a vehicle for a participatory, community-focused, rich “behind the scenes” experience. Photos, videos, blog entries, merchandise, surprise appearances, a chance to talk with your favorite band member via Twitter or Plurk, etc.
If you’re a car manufacturer, social media can be used to give drivers/owners a place to share their experiences and find out about how to enhance their lifestyle through your products. Its also a place to share information about prototypes and product development (again, a behind the scenes experience) in a way that excites people about their cars and future models. It’s essentially an online club hub for fans of your cars.
If you’re a restaurant or a bar, social media is used in a completely different way. Hair salons, running stores, hospitals, schools, municipalities, law firms all use social media in completely different ways based on what they are trying to accomplish. While “the one thing” is always present as a theme or thematic undercurrent, it can’t be much more than the contextual background music in social media channels.
If your clients are still at the “what’s our one thing?” stage, maybe its best to wait a few months before allowing them to jump into social media. The possibilities are probably too overwhelming, the medium too fluid, and the fans potentially too demanding for a company still in the process of articulating its own identity.
Force a company to jump into SocMed too soon, and they will most likely blow it by broadcasting – or perhaps worse yet, just sitting there with no idea what to do.
PS: Congrats on the Marketing profs gig!
Hi, Jason. I’m a recent Twitter follower and RSS subscriber of yours…looks like I picked a winner first time around!
Truly, no gratuity, but I really enjoyed this piece. Great nugget of an idea and well written.
I agree, a brand can’t feasibly be all things to all people. Focusing resources on the one quality of feature in which a) the brand either won’t compromise or b) is an intrinsic part of their culture are two great places to start–there’s an inherent passion and commitment that when applied to social media, will ring authentic.
@olivier I believe we actually are very much in agreement. The whole point of the post is to figure out your one thing before getting involved in social media. And while communicating that one thing in a social media context is indeed “marketing and communication” that’s really the whole point for brands to get involved (generally speaking). I wholeheartedly agree that strategy and defined objectives are the MOST important aspect of social media, because the stove is hot enough to burn you. Sadly, strategy often goes lacking, with or without the one thing established. I have a series of strategy-focused posts coming up, including one here on Da Fix. I sincerely hope you’ll take the time to comment thoroughly again. It’s 1000% appreciated.
@Heather Thanks very much for the kind words, and the RSS subscription. You might want to check out Olivier too at thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com
[...] and your board to get to the core of your mission statement and keep focus on your organization’s one thing, its raison [...]
[...] ask “What’s your thing?”. What is the single THING ABOUT your nonprofit that is truly defining and interesting.¬†When you ask your supporters why they support your organization – the reason in their [...]