Brand Voices vs Brand Conversations

It’s easy to confuse the power of voice, when discussing ‘brand voice.’

(Don’t bother Gogling it, as there are some 441 million results, some of it with the predictable talk about signage etc.)

The Voice of the Brand belongs to two groups, depending on whom you speak to:

(a) The people who define the brand, and “know” what it stands for, and articulate it in their channels. This is really what I would call Brand Talk. Sometimes I cynically call it Bland Talk.

(b) The folks to buy it or use it, and talk it up in their own communities, and sometimes on the brand-owned channels. These are, arguably, more authentic Brand Voices. They tell you why people are using the product or paying attention.

But let’s cut through all this and look at brand conversations, to figure out what are the most valuable conversations? These are what social media helps us unearth: those incomplete, poorly phrased sentences, the angst-ridden, or cult-like exchanges in a forum, or comments section. Those self-appointed ambassadors and know-it-alls…

Sadly, brand managers are not always up to snuff on handling the latter; this sort of anarchy; of data-mining conversations; of engaging with those the bosses instinctively want to block or ban those outside voices from the website.

ONE OF THE FEW AD-MEN who bucks the trend and critiques one-way Brand Talk, calls for true brand conversations.

Nimal Gunewardena, CEO of Bates Strategic Alliance, happens to be moderating a round table discussion I will be part of, when I launch my book, Chat Republic, in Sri Lanka in a few weeks.

His screed about Brand Conversations, called for an abandonment of ‘sales talk’ and the 30-second-commercial mindset. It seemed akin to 1st century monks arguing against using calligraphy.

“It’s time to start thinking beyond that 30 second commercial. It’s time to combine the power of TV with the connectivity and engagement power of digital and social media. It’s time to explore new formats. Two-way conversations, rather than one-way broadcasts. It’s time to talk to communities who have common interests.

To which one person commented:

“oh how our vocabularies have changed recently! We are all part of a social media revolution and it’s simply not possible to have our heads deep in the sand any more.”

It’s so easy to provide knee-jerk responses to the role of conversations: To engage, to discuss, to share etc. I try to pry these apart in Chat Republic, and encourage readers to think of conversations as the ‘operating system’ for their community (OK, maybe the brand) they manage.

We cannot bury our brand-saturated heads in the bland.

 

Podcasts on iTunes

For those who always ask, here are the podcasts of my radio show, Your Triple Bottom Line.

They are on iTunes

http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/your-triple-bottom-line/id399839403?ign-mpt=uo%3D4

 

When you can’t broadcast, why not podcast?

A funny thing happened on the way to the radio station this week.

We had a great guest lined up, but were informed a day before that that time slot –7 PM Arizona time — was being preempted because the station, KFNX, had a prior commitment to carry the University of Arizona basketball game.

Rather than take a hiatus, I decided to pull out my trusty Zoom H4N and record a podcast with my co-host Derrick Mains. It happened to be a fitting week to talk of the launch of a baseline study by his company, GreenNurture and Miller Consultants. (More details here at the show web site.) This podcast also includes a report from Heather Clancy, our second on-the-ground correspondent.

• Listen to the Podcast here:
• Or find the podcast on iTunes: http://bit.ly/itunesyour3bl

The irony of this is, the radio show grew out of a weekly podcast! So, using social media-based format to broadcast a ‘show’  is more than a fall back. It’s an integral part of what I’m doing in radio in the digital era.

 

Do HR Managers ‘get’ social media?

“If somebody in your industry becomes responsive to social media,” observed Jay Baer,  ”then your silence becomes deafening.”

He was talking of how listening in for customer feedback, and hiring employees who are attuned to these kinds of feedback mechanisms, have huge implications for business. “Everybody in your company is in ‘marketing,’ whether they are in Marketing or not.”

Jay, a social media strategist, much sought-after keynote speaker, and author of an award-winning blog, Convince and Convert, was our first guest on the show.

We paired him off with Patty Van Leer, Exec/ VP. and Chief Strategy Officer of NAS Recruitment Communications.

We decided to do a show to talk about HR practices, and how talent acquisition (and retention, and employee engagement!) has changed and is changing. Employees today live a greater part of their personal and professional lives online. “HR is still process driven, she observed, so resumes are still used because of application tracking systems. “We still live in two worlds,” she admitted, but also recognized that for generations coming out, building a resume isn’t the first thing that employees do. Building an electronic profile is going to be their gateway to introductions with companies.”

Great show, touching on the hot-button issues of branding, customer service, marketing, and workplace behavior.

At the front end of this show, we also launched On The Ground With Abigail Rethore, a new segment, that will become a weekly sustainability report from different parts of the country.

In the last 10 minutes of the show, Derrick Mains officially announced the launch of a Sustainazility grass-roots movement, and the launch of the wiki -at www.Sustainazility.com.

The podcast is now available on iTunes.

Cross posting this from www.your3bl.com

 

Podcasts of Your Triple Bottom Line, now on iTunes

Now, there’s an easy way to get to podcasts of my radio shows, that I co-host with Derrick Mains, on KFNX 1100 AM, every Wednesday.

They’re available on iTunes.

Check them out!

 

A formula for going viral? Picking Everett’s and Brown’s brain

I had a great conversation with Brown Russell, former Chairman of Gum Tech (GUMM:NASDAQ), last evening on our radio show.

Brown was behind (and by this I mean he led) the launch of Zicam –the cold remedy, medicine. I didn’t know this but Zicam was one of the fastest growing new cold treatments in recent history.

The reason I thought he would be a great guest was because of a book I noticed on his desk one day. It was one of those thick books on communication that communicators who have just graduated may have not even heard about: The Diffusion of Innovations by Everett Rogers, first published in 1962. (By the way Rogers published 30 books in 15 languages.)

To put this in perspective this was before the Internet was ‘discovered.’ And some of the concepts Rogers analyzed presaged  viral marketing by what, 40 years, maybe?

How do ideas spread and products take off, I asked? Is the diffusion of innovations across networks (the unwired kind) dependent on a marketing and PR push? Derrick brought us a good point –that demand, could possibly be influenced by planned scarcity (as in Apple’s play); by game mechanics (as in earning rewards), and filling the need that nobody has quite recognized (as in Facebook).

Here’s the podcast, if you’re interested. http://bit.ly/your3bl11

By the way, if you occasionally use terms such as ‘early adopters,’ ‘late majority’ or ‘laggards’ you’ve been borrowing from Roger’s theory!

 

What’s a ‘Great Place To Work?’ Podcast of radio show

Employees are either ticked off or raring to go.  That’s the commonly held wisdom, right?

I wanted to find out and conducted a survey before my radio show, Your Triple Bottom Line.  Some pleasant surprises: A large percentage of responders have positive things to say about the workplace. (The survey is still open for a week, so that number could change.)

However, when asked to describe what a terrible place to work was, one respondent cited “Filth, blind micro-management, too many chiefs.”

Hmmm! Too many chiefs is a common refrain whenever I speak to companies about what’s the biggest stumbling block to a more collaborative workplace.

I conducted this snap survey because we were planning on asking our guest, a much-acclaimed author of the book Fired Up Or Burned Out, about what kind of leadership makes workplaces so dreary or at other times, inspiring. The book (it’s received great reviews on Amazon!) takes you into the ‘power of connection’ at work from the American Revolution to… Starbucks!

Show # 8 – with Michael Stallard

Download a PDF of the book free here.

Cross-posting this from the Show blog, Your3bl.com

 

Podcast: Is mobile marketing on the right dirt track?

I don’t know the answer to this. I don’t even know what ‘‘The future of the internet’ is, even though I was featured on a podcast by Antonio Edward about this week.

But I think he was trying to tease out what we practitioners of social media and Marcom think of the mobile device as it becomes the primary means of connecting, communicating and collaborating online.

http://mobicast.mobi/2010/08/14/the-future-of-the-internet/

This I do know.

• There is far too much that tech companies and advocates of their tools take for granted. Many people are still in at the ground level when it comes to tagging, quick response codes, social media collaboration, and ‘location-aware social networking.’ What’s that? Exactly my point!

• Mobile marketing is still on a bumpy, meandering dirt track, but there are lots of great detours that are off the map and worth exploring. Mobile billing is great but it scares most people!

• The iPhone and iPad are sucking up all the oxygen of publicity and discussion, so people on other operating systems haven’t begun to discover value in the ‘laptop replacement device’ in their pockets.

 

Podcast of radio show

Here is the podcast of our first radio show, Your Triple Bottom Line

Our guests were:

• Cindy Laurin, co-author of  The Rudolph Factor
• Andrew Nisker, film-maker, producer of documentary, Garbage

Link to show.

 

Podcasts and Slideshare – a cool way to distribute ideas

I’ve been dabbling with Slideshare and love how it lets you create and embed content.

So when my friends at GreenNurture began creating a series of presentations, we experimented with not just regular presos, but wondered what if we package a media kit as a SlideShare? What if we published a Press Release in this rich format? What if…..

We tried a few, and guess what? Our presentations were so popular that SlideShare contacted us to say that they were featuring GreenNurture on the home page.

Today we have moved beyond that, and turned podcasts into a presentation. See below. I think it’s neat not because it pulls the format into a new skin, so to speak, but for anyone who does not want to download it to an MP3 player, but likes to listen to it on a computer, it adds a new experience. The forward buttons help you get back to a part of you missed.

And yes, there’s a word for this hybrid format –it’s called Slidecasting!

How Climate Gate is Leading Us to True Sustainability

View more presentations from GreenNurture.