Marketing With Meaning - Bob Gilbreath

It's Time to Revolt...

2009-10-06T06:02:00.000-07:00

Check Back Here for the Marketing with Meaning Announcement on October 6 at 9 a.m

2009-10-05T18:36:00.001-07:00

2009-10-05T13:13:00.000-07:00

Last week I had the chance to present our Marketing with Meaning concept and hand out copies of my new book, The Next Evolution of Marketing, at the iMedia Brand Summit in San Diego. Today I wanted to share an interesting experiment of my own that shows how meaningful marketing can even be the basis of a 90-second new business pitch.

One of the recurring iMedia events is something that its organizers call “One Minute Matchups.” It’s essentially a speed-dating concept in which “buyers” sit at tables around a room and “sellers” rotate every minute or two and pitch their product or service. As odd as it may seem, it can actually be very useful. For both buyers and sellers it is a low-investment way to quickly size up whether there is enough interest to merit a follow-up discussion, and both sides get to weed out those that are not a great fit.

On Thursday evening, just 36 hours before my flight out, I got an email from the folks at iMedia with a list of companies that I would be matched up with. I actually had no idea that my keynote address would afford me this opportunity. As an agency guy at this conference I was to be in the “seller” position, so now it would be my turn to see if I could do a better job of pitching. I huddled with Jonathan Richman, my Director of Business Development (and top blogger over at Dose of Digital). We quickly decided that I had to do something meaningful in my matchups, and likely something related to my keynote topic. We decided that the best thing to do would be to bring each company one or two ideas for how they might practice meaningful marketing. I stayed up until 1 a.m. that night coming up with ideas by using their websites and my gut as a guide. Then on Friday Jonathan and Carole Amend from our team worked on turning these ideas into blown-up cards with the idea on one side and my contact information on the other. I picked them up Saturday morning on the way to the airport and they looked great. The image at the top of the screen is one example (the person from Atkins didn’t show up), and at the bottom you can see the contact info side.

One of the best things about this approach was that I really enjoyed these one-minute matchups. The decision to bring a unique idea for everyone forced me to do my homework on the companies, and better prepared me for longer discussions with prospects over meals and cocktails. The ideas gave me more confidence in sitting down with a stranger for 90 seconds, and I felt great knowing that I would be giving them something worth remembering when they got back to the office later that week. This approach was more meaningful to me, too.

Read more on the Marketing With Meaning blog

Dunkin’ with Meaning

2009-10-04T08:46:00.000-07:00

Regular readers know that I’m a big fan of any marketing campaign that gives people the chance to squeeze their creative juices in and around a brand. So it should be no surprise to hear that my favorite case study from the iMedia Brand Summit where I spoke this week was the “Create Dunkin’s Next Donut Contest.” The case was presented by Cynthia Ashworth, Dunkin’ Donuts VP of Consumer Engagement (a title the audience loved). It was obviously not the first “make your own product” contest, but the results show that people’s hunger to be creative and make a brand their own can never be satiated.

In my book, I spend several pages writing about how brands can forge meaningful connections with customers by allowing them to be creative, personalize their brand experience, and share with others. I talk about how brands such as Kroger, M&M’s, Jones Soda, LEGO, The Simpsons Movie, and Pringles have all seen strong marketing results from this way of meaningful engagement with customers. The core reason for success again and again is that people are literally putting themselves into the brand when they have a chance to co-create. Instead of just leaving a dull “impression” with traditional, interruptive advertising, customers who co-create a brand build a deep link to the core of what makes them who they are. And they often cannot resist sharing their creations–and a little piece of themselves–with the friends and family in their digital worlds.

Read more on the Marketing With Meaning blog.

Adweek: Building Brands, One Act at a Time

2009-10-03T10:28:00.000-07:00

I’m writing from the Delta Sky Club in San Diego today as I wait for my return flight to Cincinnati after a whirlwind iMedia Brand Summit. My keynote speech yesterday went very well and I got to hand out 400 copies of my new book to an audience of brilliant digital marketers. I got to meet many of them, and, thankfully, my Twitter feedback on the presentation was strong! I’ll share more of my experience and lessons from iMedia in the next few days, but for now I wanted to share an article that I wrote for Adweek, which just hit today.

In this piece I put traditional equity building ad campaigns in the crosshairs and call out several examples of big brands that have failed to turn themselves around despite big spending and slick, celebrity-laden ad campaigns. Meanwhile, a handful of companies are making tremendous revenue and equity gains by creating marketing that actually adds value to people’s lives.

Take a read and let me know what you think!

Don’t Miss the Revolt Tuesday, October 6 at 9 a.m.

2009-10-03T10:25:00.001-07:00

Can Big Brands Adapt to Marketing with Meaning?

2009-10-03T10:23:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Seth Godin and New York Magazine, over the weekend I discovered the Lululemon brand of yoga clothing and accessories. It’s a remarkable business that seems to be sweeping the nation and broadening interest in a 2,000-year exercise ritual. One of Lululemon’s main marketing strategies is to host free, public yoga sessions weekly, such as the photo above in New York City’s Bryant Park. It’s a terrific example of Marketing with Meaning, but this case study and Seth’s post suggest to me that the evolution to this new marketing model might favor new brands over the old.

Traditional, interruptive, impression-based marketing is one of those existing models that a lot of big brands have gotten very good at mastering. They can tweak that commercial to perfection, squeeze out more efficiency in a media buy, and even find new ways to gauge consumer reaction to an ad (such as brain scanning) and new places to put an ad (airplane trays, anyone?). But those skills are all spent in polishing a model that has decreasing marginal returns—and with the revolution in consumer power and media options, these actions might be leading to decreasing returns, or at least widening opportunity costs from not embracing meaningful marketing.

Lululemon went from zero to a $1 billion market cap thanks to marketing with meaning. But it did so because it had zero to start with. This challenge forced Lululemon to think differently from the start. But big brands have the disadvantage of lots of money and existing equity. This mirrors the evolution of life on earth—the specialties that made plants and animals successful in one era can become weaknesses when the climate shifts.

Time will tell which brands are able to make the leap. I believe thousands of small brands will rise from the chaos, and a good number of big brands that quickly admit the challenges and commit to a new path will make the journey as well.

Read more on the Marketing With Meaning blog.

Kroger Shows Loyalty to Customers

2009-09-30T09:21:00.000-07:00

One of most exciting things about the DHI Non-conference last week here in Cincinnati was a session by The Kroger Company, one of our clients at Bridge Worldwide. Through its various banner stores, Kroger is a major player in the retail food business, capturing 10 cents of every dollar spent on food in the United States. The company is not secretive, but it doesn’t go around regularly beating its chest about how it is winning in a very competitive market. In a session titled “Innovation and How to Meet New Expectations for Media Delivery,” RW (Kirk) Douthit and Angie Rose from Kroger shared several nuggets about how they are working to evolve to digital marketing by putting their customers in the center.

Read more on the Marketing With Meaning blog.

Best Buy Plays a Meaningful Note with Instruments

2009-09-28T06:12:00.001-07:00

In my final post of takeaways from last week’s iMedia Brand Summit I wanted to give props to a competitor who I admire, Clark Kokich, Chairman of Razorfish. Clark got the second day of the conference started by asking the room to think less about digital tactics and more about marketing strategy. He shared a handful of examples of work that brands are doing that start with big, strategic ideas that happen to lead to some killer digital work. For example, the Nike Human Race 10k, and Fiat’s new tool that allows people to upload information about how their driving is impacting CO2 emissions. But my favorite example, and something I just had to share here, is that of Razorfish’s work with Best Buy in selling musical instruments. This story shows how getting into a new product category is a great way to launch with meaningful marketing at the center.

Read more on the Marketing With Meaning blog.