Disqus - Latest Comments for kalisurfer

Re: Behaviorgraphics: Discovering the “Me” in Social Media

kalisurfer — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 14:40:16 -0000

Can you explain your use of the two treatments to display the traits? Are you hinting at primary vs secondary traits?

Re: The Fleeting Illusion of Brand Experience

kalisurfer — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:42:38 -0000

I think you're spot on, in terms of identifying action and transparency as core to success in this marketing era.

In terms of audience, I don't think they've ever cared about shareholder value whether they've been marketed traditionally or in some new transparent and social fandangle way.

I think the main driver of this change has been a move from scarcity to abundance. This has led to behavior changes where folks don't want to add to the stream of messaging they are already actively ignoring or trying to, but are looking for products/widgets/processes to simplify their life or at the very least integrate / or improve their life.

As far as social media, it's certainly a "succesful" tactic/strategy like TV was, but is it core to a product success these days?

If you like at Apple for example, they are driven by an incredibly good product line and user experience around every touchpoint, whether it's their store, product or customer service. Yet they have a non-existent social media strategy to speak of. At least to my knowledge. In terms of transparency, no one is more opaque than Steve Jobs.

The key to success IMHO is to focus on making a great and useful product, and focus focus focus on the experience.

Re: Why It Pays to Befriend the ‘Little Guy’

kalisurfer — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:08:32 -0000

Little or big guy, i think fundamentally you're making an argument that smaller networks are more likely to be better quality networks because of increased awareness and interaction among the nodes. I tend to agree, but would like to point out that there are exception to this rule. Robert Scoble for instance has great signal to noise ratio within his social network on twitter and on friend feed.

I'm sure a company out there is working on a network quality quotient. Be pretty easy to discern based on the number of replies from network owner back to network participants.

Re: Mastering new modes DRAFT.

kalisurfer — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 16:26:50 -0000

Hi Michael,

Yeah i believe you're talking about Frito Lay's Net Zero initiative. If you subscribe to the model that brands should be more human like, it's totally ok to demonstrate a few personality traits or occupations. The caveat is, that one traits shouldn't conflict or be in opposition to each other. In this case you can certainly be a prankster and be environmentally conscious (just look at Ashton Kutcher).

Where the danger lies, as past cases have shown (Unilever with Dove vs. Axe), is that if another brand within your companies portfolio strays from that occupation or conflicts with, consumers will call you out on it. Credibility a commodity not often associated with marketing is a key construct of brands today. Without it regardless of what platforms brands are utilizing, their messaging will be seen as advertising and thus ignored.

Re: Mastering new modes DRAFT.

kalisurfer — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:23:16 -0000

Agreed. But i hope that from a brand and strategy, that an important motivational pillar is to want to add value to the "community" by building better products and being relevant as opposed to the fear of being exposed.

Re: Mastering new modes DRAFT.

kalisurfer — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:11:20 -0000

don't pretend to have the answer to why this shift is happening. But would love to see your thoughts on why the nature of brands are changing.

My thesis is that we're moving away from personal narrative creating our identity and towards shared narrative defining our identity.

Re: Mastering new modes DRAFT.

kalisurfer — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 13:51:40 -0000

Adrian,

Lots of great insight in that presentation. I really like your use of the tag clouds to make your point between traditional and controlled marketing vs the more modern approach.
IMHO when thinking of modern brands, a few themes start floating in my head:

- occupation vs role vs aspiration: I may be splitting hairs, but i really think that the brands that are successful today are the ones who've ask themselves what can i do to help, to be useful to simplify my evangelist life. And by evangelist i don't mean the magic 20%, i mean everyone.

- demonstration vs communication: Users today, potential or existing of products, want brands to walk the walk. They want to touch and feel the product and see it banged up, not because they cannot make the connection between product promise and use, but because they've been lied or exaggerated to in the past. Before they will recommend the product to their friend and thus put their rep on the line they need to believe in it.

- herder vs controller : the biggest brands today absent of Apple, act more as caretakers of their brand image than herders, scientifically and clinically controlling the messaging going out the door. Successful brands today invite users to integrate their products in their life on their terms as well as communicate the benefits or pitfalls openly and in their own way as well.

- Platform or holistic vs singleton: By that i mean that as Dove proved to us, resounding success and engagement with one brand in your portfolio may translate into the same expectation for all brands / products in a company's portfolio, that they further the companies or brands role or occupation. If we don't take a holistic view of our products and the roles they have, customers might get confused and worse feel like we're not being completely honest about who we are/want to be

- MAKE GREAT PRODUCTS - there is no substitute for creating great products. All of the mechanism we've talked about previously are built to demonstrate and let great product shine through. Give people something remarkable/honest to talk about and provide them with the tools to do it to their own community in their own way.

Hope this helps...