iThnk.com

iSnack2.0 & Co-creation = Fail!

So what did they do & what should they have done?

Some time ago I wrote a post about Threadless.com and the way they use co-creation to create an amazing self promoting community.

Clearly co-created T-shirt designs are not the same as a competition to name a spread. The “Name Me” promotion was never going to be a cyclical decision process.

But if we contrast start of the process for what KRAFT have done with Threadless.com do we can see that there the two red circles (community voting & popular designs are made) are the key differences.

The clear difference is that the decision behind naming KRAFT’s new spread was made by exec whereas with Threadless.com the community is involved in the final decision on which T’s are made.

To KRAFT’s credit they listened to the community backlash for iSnack2.0 and did involve the community in a vote for a new name. The options were between these six: Cheesybite, Creamymate, Smooth, Snackmate, Vegemate and Vegemild.

The result from the vote was “Cheesybite”. This article explains the whole story quite well.

So is “Cheesybite” any better?

While it’s an remarkable improvement on iSnack2.0, I can’t help but think that by limiting the options to the six above KRAFT have still inhibited the true power of community interaction. While I understand there is an element of risk mitigation in only offering six names to vote on, I feel that they may have let the fear of “loosing control” get in the way of the true power of co-creation. What do you think?

Pocketsmith & Social Media

Pocketsmith is Dunedin start-up that really has it right when it comes to social media. Being a  personal finance and forecasting application they could be dry, boring and rather stale but as you’ll hear in the video they’re on-to-it, personable,  engaging and strategically minded with their online social interactions. (Please forgive the background noise, I couldn’t get rid of it).

As you can tell they’re pretty switched on, and are a perfect example of a new bread of company that really understand the importance of focusing on their community.

Please do get behind the guys from Pocketsmith by connecting on Facebook, following their blog, oh and trying out their app.

The Marketing Renaissance?

The “Marketing Renaissance” is a beautiful term that I began using after hearing it in CC Chapman’s podcast Manageing the Grey. The term really resonated with me, it seemed to sum up all the changes that free and open media is bringing about. But having only a basic understanding of the renaissance I decided to explore it a bit further and see how applicable it actually is for describing what  we’re going through. So what was the renaissance? – vid explains it well.

“Renaissance” literally means “rebirth.” So is this really a renaissance period? Is this the rebirth of marketing?

If so what are the changes that are to live for the next hundred years? And who are our people?

• Art
  • Social Television? Augmented Reality?
• Literary Ramifications
  • Blogs and tweets?
• Scientific progress
  
  • The scholarly world of marketing is redefining it’s principles around embracing rather than interrupting. But is this a rebirth?
    
• Religion
  
  • Is social media a religion? (there are certainly enough fanatics).
• Self-awareness
  • Maybe we’re more aware of how interrupting others with ads over the last 100 years is intrusive and annoying?
    
• People?
  • Jeremiah Owyang, Seth Goddin, Kevin Rose, Ev Williams, Larry Page, Sergey Brin?
    

Improvement?

Much of the debate around the Renaissance has centered around whether the Renaissance truly was an “improvement” on the culture of the Middle Ages. How will this period of change for marketing be seen in 100 years from now? What do you think?

Does Web 2.0 Create an Even Playing Field for Business?

Has the plethora of new marketing tools available with Web 2.0 helped create a more even playing field for business? The short answer is, potentially… The more accurate answer to this somewhat loaded question contains a lot more ifs, buts and maybes.

The Dilemma

Web 2.0 certainly has the ability to reduce the gap between small and big business. See  Micro-brewing Social Media for a great example of how. But as the gap potentially narrows; the reality is that it also widens in the majority of cases.

Sounds deep I know, and it is. Deeply troubling if you’re an old school small business content to watch the world pass by. But equally as disturbing at the other end of the spectrum if you’re reliant upon traditional media to push your message to increasingly selective consumers. In either case opting not to join “the conversation” will put distance between those who do and those who don’t.

Small Business

If you’re a SME ticking along nicely it may be hard to see how an activity like joining a social network could help improve your customer relationships. It probably seems like too much hassle for most. For those who consider online communication as just a necessary box to tick and not a powerful marketing platform, investing time in Web 2.0 is not going to appeal. It will always be difficult to make inroads when the true value is not fully understood.There are heaps of SMEs embracing web 2.0 with great results – check out this success story. However, I don’t think I’m wrong when I claim is the exception rather than the rule (at least for the time being).

The Big Fish

A lot of the big companies that have historically spent loads of cash through print, TV, and radio advertising are in the same boat as the hesitant small companies. The “lets see what happens with this second web thingee”, soon to sink boat. Being purely a spectator to online developments will certainly allow competitors to catch up, or more likely, go further ahead.

What I’ve eluded to above is that it’s not the business size, rather the business attitude that dictates what impact Web 2.0 can have on growth. So to answer the opening question is no, it does not create an even playing field. I personally believe the new net has actually pushed big business even further ahead. Why? I’m glad you asked…

Reality Bites

Bigger companies are in a better position to capitalise on new developments, quicker. It comes down to resources. Lets say you’re trying to build a kick ass corporate blog, first you need good content. That content comes form interesting people, genuine company insight, and well written posts . Putting all these together is hard work, time consuming and almost impossible if the right people aren’t involved. Big business have the resources to put all the ingredients in place. If one of the important ingredients [e.g. video production] doesn’t exist in house, they have the means to outsource it. Importantly they can do it quickly, spread the load between employees to ensure good content is always coming through, and even throw some money into search engine advertising to promote it if need be. Not very “even” if you ask me.

Small business does has the advantage of agility. Less organisational red tape coupled with a more intimate company culture can help SMEs rip into new web domination. I believe the rise of Web 2.0 has given small business a realistic opportunity to compete with the big boys head on. Communicating through blogs and social networking is much more cost effective (than traditional media) and  the barriers to entry are few. The well resourced companies will make it happen quicker that’s for sure; but there’s no reason why the underdog can’t catch up.

Social Media Aint No Revolution

The fact is that marketing at its core is only concerned with one thing – audience. This is as true today as it was 100 years ago, and will remain true for the next 100 years. Marketing evolves, but its core remains the same. It exists to effectively communicate with an audience.

A message is nothing without people to hear it and your audience, your target market, isn’t a fundamentally different creature than it was before everyone got excited by Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or any of the myriad other sites that make up the social web.

Now, it would be naive to assume there had been no change. The tools available to connect with people are immensely useful and to ignore them would be foolish. That being said, the fact remains that in order to convince your audience to engage with your product or service, you still have to do the same three things.

1. Grab Them

You need to get their attention. Without someone’s attention, your message doesn’t exist. It’s nothing. The fight for people’s attention is harder than ever, and to get people to notice you, you need get your message not just to wherever they are, but where they’re open to receiving your message. Nowhere are people more receptive to new ideas than in conversation. You have access to these conversations through the social web. Don’t ignore it.

2. Hold them

Getting someone’s attention for long enough to hear your message is one thing. Getting them to listen and take your message on board, that’s another. If you think that jumping on Facebook and getting a page up is enough to keep people interested, think again. Conversations are all about give and take. Provide real value through your social offerings and take the time to earn the privilege to take, or rather, to receive.

3. Convince them

Again, this isn’t anything new to marketing. There are probably a hundred companies out there offering the same thing that you offer. You don’t only need to be better than the rest; you need to offer people a reason to choose you over someone else. It will do you no good to shout at people telling them that your product is better than another company’s. You need to engage with them. Tell them your story. Tell them why you made a better product, not just that it’s better. Let them know your company and what it stands for. More importantly, know them. Maybe then they’ll tell your story for you.

Social media hasn’t flipped marketing on its head. It is simply a new tool to add to your existing communications strategy, albeit a very powerful one. You’d do well to keep this in mind.

Taking Freemium Viral

What it is Freemium?

It’s a term that was coined by venture capitalist @FredWilson…

“Give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc., then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base.”

How does it work?

In the online world most companies understand that the ‘free’ in freemium is necessary to increase the likelihood of people trialing their service or app. Everyone who uses a Freemium model gets two things right, they have a free version and a premium version.

Dropbox is an storage service which allows you to back-up all your files online and access them from any computer, very valuable! They give you 2G worth of storage free, then you can pay a monthly subscription for premium storage of 50G or 100G.

Like a dealer giving you your first hit for free to get you hooked and coming back for more, the more people that try Dropbox the more likely they are to find a niche of users who love and are willing to pay for the convenience that Dropbox gives them.

Supercharging Freemium

What is often overlooked in the fremium model is the importance of “word of mouth” and “referral networks”. Yes, merely offering a free service can lead to referrals, but how do you ramp up this referral and turn it viral?

Principles of viral marketing:

• Create something of value
• Reduce barriers to entry (make it free)
• Reward sharing
• Make it easy to pass the message on

Assuming that you’ve created something that people want to use  and you’re operating a freemium model how do you make the last two points work?

Reward Sharing

What Dropbox do, which is really quite innovative, is incentivise sharing by offering their free users extra storage for each of their friends who sign up.

Make Sharing Easy

I didn’t have to go looking for the opportunity to gain more storage, it came to me. Three months ago they sent me the email that you can see here.

I simply clicked the ‘invite people’ link and I was taken to the drop box referral page.

Once I was there I had three options, scan my email address book, enter a specific person’s email address or share a link via Facebook and/or Twitter.

Me being me, I opted to share the link on FB & Twitter, but then I also thought about specific people who would actually find this useful, and I emailed it to them as well.

The Result

The beauty of this is that everyone is happy. I was rewarded for my sharing efforts, my friends who signed up were happy that I had recommended a valuable service and of course Dropbox are happy because they’ve got a few more users that might one day upgrade to a premium account.

Rewarding referrals is not a new concept, Threadless and Amazon also have referral schemes, the difference being that they don’t offer anything for free(mium).

It’s the barrier destroying “Free” in the Freemium business model combined with the rewards for sharing that almost guarantees any viral energy will turn into new users.

Think about it, would you be more likely to share this post if you were getting rewarded?