Five Resolutions for Marketing Your Brand

Making New Year’s resolutions? Here are five to boost your brand recognition in 2012.

 1. Improve Our Social Media Engagement.  You can achieve this by creating more opportunities for your customers or followers or donors to engage. Invite them to follow your Twitter feed, then offer a discount coupon or special offer to those following you on Twitter.

2. Get Our Executive Team Engaged in Social Media Outreach. It’s so yesterday to have your intern blogging for you or posting the CEO’s twitter feed. Get with the program and encourage the Thought Leaders in your institution to engage with social media on behalf of your brand. This includes the C-Suite team and Board leadership. Send out email ticklers to remind them to post, with suggestions for topics. These can range from impressions of a conference they are attending to an inside view of a new product or service developed by your organization.

3. Ask Movers and Shakers to Tweet About Us. The tweet is the modern equivalent of getting an autograph, but more useful for your brand. One of my nonprofit clients recently gave a tour of their facilities to Justin Bieber, who subsequently tweeted about it. The impact was to increase their Twitter following by 10,000 in a single day, dramatically increasing their outreach. Figure out if any key personalities are already being connected to your institution and ensure that they will Tweet, post on Facebook or blog about you.  And yes, specifically ask them to do it!

4. Make Our Video Content Multi-Platform Friendly. If you haven’t already, it’s time to ensure your promotional or donor outreach videos can be viewed easily on multiple platforms, from desktop computers to mobile phones. H.264 is now the standard for web-delivered video. But if you are acquiring footage that could ever be needed for a larger screen (i.e. at a major meeting or conference), be sure to shoot in High Def, at 1080p (29.97 frame rate) for maximum flexibility and image quality. This larger acquisition size takes up more space, but storage is cheap. Whereas having your fabulous web fundraising video look horrible and pixelated at your annual conference could be an expensive mis-step.

5. Multi-cast Our Podcast Content. Now it’s easy to share branded videos not just through Facebook, iTunes and YouTube, but also through Zune Marketplace, Podcast Alley, MeFeedia, and more.  You can even reach the television-viewing audience by doing a direct to TiVO distribution. This allows you to bring more eyeballs to your content, and syndicate your branded content across multiple delivery platforms.

Merry Branding and a Happy New Year!

Interviewing for Great Results

Perhaps you have to interview your boss for a video clip on your website. Maybe you are hosting a podcast. Maybe you have to interview a job candidate.  Whatever the reason, interviewing is an art form and not just a list of questions. Here are a few tips to creating a better outcome for both participants that I’ve developed over my 20+ years as a successful interviewer.  These tips apply primarily, by the way, to the friendly interview and not the “gotcha” news interview.

1. Do Your Homework. Just like an attorney doesn’t ask a question at trial to which s/he doesn’t already know the answer, you should have a good sense before the interview of what the content will be. Spend time learning the narrative of the person, conducting a pre-interview by phone if at all possible, and be well versed in the important content points you want to clarify.
2. Make Eye Contact. If you do your homework, then you shouldn’t be referring to notes too often, if at all. (It’s a point of pride for me not to do this when I do video interviews.) Breaking eye contact breaks the personal connection between you and the interviewee, which is essential to keeping them comfortable and focused. Even if you, the interviewer, are not seen, the interview will be significantly more successful if you maintain eye contact throughout.
3. Understand Your Interviewee’s Learning Style. There is significant research on people’s learning styles, which broadly fall into three categories—visual, kinesthetic and auditory.  When you can identify which learning style best fits your interviewee, your questions can be better tailored to generate a good response from them. This all comes from the science of Neurolinguistic Programming, and I’ll let you do the internet surfing for more details. But basically you can develop several quick questions at the start of your interview which will help clue you in as to the learning style of your subject. From this you can craft better questions. “Describe what a typical day at your factory looks like” is not a great question for an auditory learner, for example. So, if I’ve got a visual learner, I might say “what does success look like to you at this company?” If she’s a kinesthetic learner, I might phrase it this way “How did you actually build the company for success—give me the steps?”  For an auditory learner, “What kinds of feedback do you hear from customers that tells you you’ve hit on a successful formula here  at Company ABC?”
4. Plan the Arc of the Interview. Every interview has a beginning, middle and end much like a story. I never ask my most critical question first, but rather build a story line to the entire experience, that both my subject and I move through together. If you have to edit video, this is the most successful way to create editable content that won’t eat up valuable editing time.
5. Know How to Get A Better Answer. The worst thing you can say to an interview subject is “can you repeat that?” because it generally makes people become self-conscious and/or entirely forget what they just said.  If you instead use body language to indicate you couldn’t hear the answer properly 9even if you did), or a simple “Sorry…?” people almost always repeat their answer and improve upon it.

For more interview techniques and hands-on practice sessions, contact me for one of my workshops. I bring these into organizations and also give them at major conferences and events across the country.

A Word of Thanks

While getting a jump on holiday food prep, I’ve been thinking today of what makes me thankful.

I’m thankful I get to work with organizations and people who spend every day trying to make the world better than how they found it.

I’m thankful to so many talented individuals whose ideas make me look good, and who have become friends. DP’s like Richard, Matt, Jim, Ben and Mark. Editors Jamie and Adam. Sound ops like Dwayne, AJ and Jonathan. Graphics gurus like Xi and Ed. Makeup artists like Kim and Barbara. Production support like Jay, Brenda, Sara and Pam. And all around techno wizards like Rich.

I’m thankful my husband got a great new job. And to those of you who reached out during all those months of looking.

I’m thankful my family is healthy and my kids are turning into pretty cool and interesting people.

And despite the shenanigans on Capitol Hill, I’m thankful I live here and not somewhere we have to walk miles to find clean water, or fear secret police will come knocking.

Have a great holiday and thanks for following my blog!

-Amy

Putting Your CEO On Camera: 5 Tips to Get the Best Video

More and more companies are turning to video as a way to communicate with customers, vendors and the general public. Often the CEO finds him or herself front and center. What can you do to make your leader come across better on camera? Here are five tips from my work coaching on-camera performances from a wide range of national and international leaders.

Hire a makeup artist.  Often makeup is an after thought or considered to be “only powder,” but a makeup professional—one who is trained for on-camera uses, not salon or theatrical makeup—can make all the difference in how your CEO looks and feels.  He or she also has tools to keep bald pates from looking shiny, can keep shirts from wrinkling, and ties from drifting. A good makeup artist is also a conversationalist, making your leader feel more comfortable before the camera. The $600 day rate is well worth it!

Have the CEO review the script ahead of time. Often whoever has written the script will keep it from the CEO until the last moment, trying to avoid a lot of revisions or politics. The result is your on-air talent is now not fully comfortable with the copy.  This tends to lead to more mistakes and copy changes while the cameras (and dollars) are rolling. Making sure your CEO has seen the copy and is comfortable with the style of language. Making the the verbage both accurate but also conversational and easy to say out loud will be critical to your success.

Choose clothing that works for Television. If your CEO is more comfortable in shirt sleeves, don’t make him put on a jacket. If she loves wearing bold colors, bring them on. But avoid tight herringbone patterns in jackets and ties, as these can cause a “moray” or shifting of the lights and darks back and forth when they conflict with scan lines on a monitor. Shooting in High Def can minimize this, but it’s best to be safe.

Use a Teleprompter…Sometimes. If your CEO is comfortable with a teleprompter and there is a lot of copy, it’s best to use one.  Teleprompters are designed to fit over the lense of a camera so that the eye line of the individual speaking goes directly to the viewing audience. I’ve often done training sessions with teleprompters ahead of time, so leaders with less experience feel better stepping on stage and before the cameras.  If your CEO is happy with bullet points, those can also go up on a prompter.

Keep Everyone Out of the Eyeline.  Often a CEO has various press secretaries, assistants, consultants, etc. who must be present any on-camera appearance. Do your best to keep them out of his or her eye line during taping. They can often become an unintentional distraction. They can also raise the anxiety level of someone without extensive on camera experience.  A calm and focused CEO is one who comes across with confidence.

If you have a story about putting your CEO or other leadership on camera but you’d rather stay anonymous here, feel free to share them with me at amy [at] amydelouise [dot] com.

Was Steve Jobs a Philanthropist (and who cares?)

c 2010 Barbara DeLouise

Since the recent death of Steve Jobs, there has been lots of discussion about how he changed modern culture, with all of the i-things he invented. There’s also been talk, in hushed tones, as to whether or not he should have taken some of his gazillions and changed modern life through philanthropy.

The culture of Silicon Valley and the tech crowd had been pretty mute on the topic of philanthropy, until Bill and Melinda Gates stepped it up with their Foundation in 1999. And even after that, a generation of new millionaires has not been as visible on the philanthropy scene as their predecessors like Andrew Mellon and Edsel and Henry Ford. Why? (And who cares?)

This new generation of (potential) givers is more skeptical of institutions. They are more likely to give through self-organized groups like Crowdrise than through existing foundations. If they are large institutions themselves (i.e. Gates), they may defer giving until they can create their own foundation and manage it themselves.  This is not always optimal, as there are plenty of 501(c)3′s already convened and working on the ground. But it’s the new reality of “control” we all seek through electronic and social media.  A Convio survey found that website giving increases with each younger cohort so that for Gen X it is nearly equal to mail, and for Gen Y it is greater than mail. Nonprofits with websites with videos showing demonstrable impact of donor dollars have an even bigger spike with the Gen Y donor group.  And if you’re thinking, well these young folks are pretty under-employed right now and won’t be our big donors, remember they are the Big Donors of the Future. To capture this younger generation of givers, we can’t wring our hands, but instead have to engage them where they are in meaningful, hands-on philanthropy.

How is your nonprofit engaging the younger generation of givers? How much control are they seeking over how their gifts are used? Are you finding this engagement burdensome or exciting (or both)? Please share your experiences with me for more in a future post.

How to Avoid Selling a Fiat

Fiat is not having a stellar year. Last month the Italian carmaker had its worst results since 1996.  (Of course Fiat now holds a majority stake in Chrysler, whose sales rocketed up 27% in its best September performance in 4 years. ) Clearly the European debt crisis is affecting sales. But Fiat‘s new 500 is not selling well even in the US.  And I read in my new issue of Advertising Age  that the problem is simply lack of visibility. Fiat’s Chief Marketing Officer is quoted as saying “I don’t think we have a car problem; people love the car. I think we have an awareness problem.”  Even a spot with Jennifer Lopez couldn’t jump-start sales. (bad car joke) Here’s a little behind-the-scenes clip, if you want to know how driving scenes get made

“Amy, I know you love cars,” you are thinking, “but what on earth is your point?!”

What I’m getting at is there are plenty of organizations that have wonderful products or programs that no one knows about. An Awareness Problem, just like Fiat. And they don’t have the bucks to hire J-Lo. So what can they do?

Get your fans to promote you. And help the process along. Give them a great video they can send out links to. Create a “how to” downloadable tool they can pass along (after giving you an email address for the free download). Or simply create a Twitter hashtag for a new program, service or event. That way you and your fans can promote these but also track how well they’re faring.

Design communications that suit your customers habits on many different channels. Social networks, mobile applications, and SMS are just a few of the newer ways consumers are engaging with your content. Add that to email, direct mail and e-newsletters. The trick is what kinds of content they want from each channel. Market segmentation has been around a long time. Now the mantra is content segmentation and editing so it is the right length and style for the medium.

Timing is everything – As this great infographic by KissMetrics shows, when you send info is just as important as how.

Ask questions—A short survey can help you find out how someone reached you to make that recent purchase/donation/request for more information. And it’s amazing how many organizations don’t ask their members/donors for input. That will help you make better decisions about reaching that same customer or donor again. And how to reach others.

Measure results. In my next post I will discuss some simple metrics you can use to track your success with different outreach strategies. Stay tuned…

The Big Netflix “Oops”

Our family loves old movies, so we’ve been long time Netflix fans. Then came the announcement that the company was splitting its streaming and DVD services, requiring customers to conduct two separate searches for movies, have two accounts and two bills. Worse, the market anticipated Netflix would dump the DVD line soon in order to optimize streaming profits. As you have likely already heard, customers—ourselves included–weren’t pleased. Then Netflix went on to look even less user-friendly when fans discovered the Twitter handle Qwikster was already being used by a pot-smoking, foul-mouthed dude who suddenly got 500 new followers he didn’t know. Meanwhile, the tech crowd noticed that the new business had only a placeholder “coming soon” on its website.

Suddenly it wasn’t just bad customer relations, it was a social media calamity. CEO Reed Hastings wrote a mea culpa blog post this past weekend, saying the company may have misjudged in its rush to capitalize on the streaming technology. “Companies rarely die from moving too fast, and they frequently die from moving too slowly,” he wrote.  As of today, his post had more than 23,000 comments. What‘s the saying—“there’s no such thing as bad publicity”?

Oh wait, the ending of that saying is “…except your own obituary.” Let’s hope this isn’t the end of Netflix. Where am I going to get all those classic movies that don’t play on TMC?  Takeaway lesson for other companies: don’t forget to think about how your customers will interface with you, both online and in social networks. And be sure you own all possible social media renditions of your name, including a new Google+ identity, before you launch.

Market Your Brand Like a Food Truck

By Amy DeLouise and Pam Vinal

This year’s edition of the famed Zagat restaurant guide includes a brand new section titled “Food Truck Reviews.”  Gourmet food trucks that use social media tools like Twitter and Facebook to reach their customers are not new.  But recognition in the world-renowned guide proves these meals on wheels have not only created a new dining experience, but their marketing strategies are garnering even more customers.  Here are a few marketing tips we can all learn from the Food Truck craze.

Create a Customer Experience

“Happy Friday! Today we R serving lobster & shrimp rolls, whoopie pies & cool drinks near Conn & M St NW and Ballston Metro! Both start~11:30.”

This is just an example of a recent Twitter post from Red Hook Lobster DC, a gourmet food truck serving Maine lobster rolls daily to the hungry masses in Washington, DC.  Throughout the day the lobster truck will post similar updates of its whereabouts, even offering a digital map on their website. These digital tools make grabbing lunch an interactive treasure hunt instead of a mundane meal.  Customers are seeking out the food trucks, traveling to new locations, and meeting new and interesting people.  The main draw of social networking component of food truck marketing is the interactivity.  Food Trucks have found a way to use social media to create an entire experience for their customers instead of simply using the medium to push advertising on them.

Encourage Customer Participation

Too many organizations waste the community-building value of Twitter and Facebook by simply posting the same advertisements they use in all other outlets.  Social media is interactive, so make your social media campaigns interactive.  Let your customers participate in something instead of just consuming information.  Throw contests, request feedback, give them a reason to contact you.  Food Trucks have proven that if you give them the map, customers will find you.  And don’t forget to give feedback to those customers:

“Thanks to all the intrepid customers who came out today @GPBFarmMarket.”-LobsterTruckDC

Go Where Your Customers Are

Food Trucks are always on the move, and not just when they drive to different locations.  In the past several years, these traveling restaurants have continued to adopt new technologies and used social media to listen to and act on customer feedback.  One example: Food Truck Festivals.  This new trend is popping up in cities across the country.  Festivals invite all the local food trucks to one place, sell tickets in bulk, and hold contests.  The result of this collective marketing and shared venue is an expanded customer base for all participants.

Team with Other Brands

Even if your current campaign is a successful one, consider opportunities to team with other brands—yes even brands in your own space—to reach more customers collectively. If you are in a service space, offer a workshop or webinar series in which multiple companies offer expertise and share the expense and resources of a Facebook marketing campaign for the event. If you are a nonprofit, combine with related nonprofits to do and integrated fundraiser for a specific community. The goal is to maximize outreach and minimize duplicated efforts.

Excel in Your Niche

You can have a million dollar marketing campaign, but if your product isn’t good then the advertisements are not worth a dime.  The most popular Food Trucks are not your average hot dog and sandwich carts. Each  has a specialty — from crepes to Korean fare and everything in between. Although some have expanded offering a wider range of foods, each started with a niche set of high quality products.

Like the Food Trucks, social marketing is viral and has landed in some part in the customer’s hands.  Sites and Apps like Yelp and Foodspotting are based on customer-to-customer reviews.  If your customer leaves loving your product, and the experience it took to get it, then be sure that they will post that opinion.  In this social media world a happy and satisfied customer is now equal to a quality advertisement.

What I Learned from the Hurricane

With Hurricane Irene bearing down on us and news stations blaring 24/7 about the states of emergency being declared all around us, my husband and I dutifully prepared. Battery backup for the sump pump-check. Backup pump-check. Sandbags around the pump hole-check. Bottled water-check. Canned food-check. Flashlights-check. Candles-check. Then we headed to the liquor store to stock up for a hurricane dinner party (hey, we live inland, we had to have some fun).

As it turned out, Irene was a flop–at least in our area. But the preparations and evacuations were reminders of the Katrina legacy.  Understandably, no one wanted to repeat those horrific scenes of people who could not be rescued for days. But how would people now respond to what now appeared to be an overblown response?

In some ways, the situation was like a real life drill, so we could see how things worked.  Did our governance structures allow for quick response? Did our communications pathways let us reach affected stakeholders quickly? I was interested to watch each mayor, governor and federal agency leader acting out their own crisis response plan.   Which made me think of the top four things organization can do to be prepared for communicating in a crisis:

1. Build multiple pathways to your customers. Be able to reach them via text, phone, cellphone or email. But boots on the ground may be necessary as well. Newark New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker actually knocked on doors to get people to evacuate. (I noticed he also responded directly to a constituent on Twitter who was worried about his mother’s loss of power and offered to go check on her.) Reinforce the pathways to vital communications by not overwhelming them with junk, or they won’t respond when you need them to. In my area, PEPCO left voicemail for customers warning them about possible power outages. This was useful. But part of the message suggested checking the PEPCO website for updates. Oops.

2. Develop a quick-response team. This may not just be top organizational leadership. It may include others who can connect to different parts of your staff or customer base.  Prepare the team on how to respond to media inquiries.  Ultimately you may bring on a crisis PR group to help, but in the initial hours your own team will need to handle the job.  One person should be the “face” of the organization if you must go on television. This was one of the big missteps during the BP oil spill crisis. For days and days, there were multiple people at the microphone, resulting in coverage that said  “who’s in charge here, anyway?”

3. People come first. Not your company/entity.  That means being as honest as possible in responses, as timely as possible, and as transparent as possible about your process for fixing the problem.  The gold standard of crisis response remains the Tylenol tampering scare of 1982. The fact that they responded quickly, put safety first, and changed their packaging were both smart moves for the brand and for the customers.

4. Maintain post-crisis communications. Tell the story of what happened, what you did about it, what you could have done better, and what worked. Giving your narrative and keeping the communications lines open after a crisis builds trust for future response. This may be some of the hardest work ahead for the folks responding to Irene. Mayor Bloomberg will have a delicate messaging job to do in the coming hours and days to ensure New Yorkers don’t roll their eyes the next time he or a future Mayor orders an evacuation. It may not matter today, but it could save future lives if he does it right.

What I Learned from the Earthquake

My youngest child was extremely bummed out by yesterday’s DC earthquake. He was understandably shaken (OK, bad pun).  But more than that, he was blindsided. That’s because he’d been focused on the spate of massive storms we’d had this summer, with dramatic lightening bolts sweeping the sky.  “I knew I had to worry about big storms, mom,” he announced, “but now I’ve got to worry about earthquakes!”

The scene reminded me of many organizations I work with. Sometimes they are so focused on critical issues like personnel transitions, budget changes, and marketing challenges that they are completely blindsided when a new issue surfaces.  This is why process is so important. Which also takes me back to the earthquake. At the moment it hit, I was sitting in a creative meeting with a client and a group of animators, videographers and editors.  When we finally realized what was happening, we realized none of us knew exactly what to do. Was this the thing where you run to the basement? Stand in a doorway? Get under a desk? Run inland? Not having many earthquakes in DC, we couldn’t quite recall.  After it went on for more than 30 seconds–which is an eternity in screen-time, by the way–we decided to head out of the low office building. I read the next day in the Washington Post that FEMA atually recommends you just stay put in a low building and to get under a table, as you are more likely to be injured by falling debris or things falling off walls.  Everyone was fine, but if we’d had a process in place we might have known just what to do.

Developing process can be challenging when you are moving at a hundred miles an hour. Like changing the tire while driving. But if you can build periodic “process checks” into your organizational system, you may get a better handle on surprises. That could mean a monthly review of how you deal with new clients, what your crisis PR plan looks like, the check-points along the way to producing strong marketing materials, or the way in which your board makes decisions.  it’s a “50,000-foot” conversation that doesn’t always happen in agenda-driven meetings. If you can build just one open-ended, process-driven question into those meetings, you are on your way to better process management.

What processes do you keep tabs on, and what questions do you ask at the management and board level so that you’re not surprised by the next organizational earthquake? I’d love to hear from you!