Nightshift

These last weeks, I've been working on a new blog where I can share more about my life at Microsoft Digital Advertising Services, including presentations, videos and press coverage of events I attend. Doing so, my objective is to provide you with even more valuable content created for and inspired by our industry. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I do. Don't hesitate to share feedback with me.

I thank all my loyal MSN Spaces friends and readers and invite you to read me going forward at www.marcbresseel.com. Make sure to update your RSS feed!

Innovation is at the core of the relationships we want to create between our brands and their consumers. We believe Innovation to not only be fundamental to success and business growth but also essential to the way brands are communicating with their consumers. 

I'm often being asked about the innovation processes we're trying to set up with our clients to make sure their campaigns will perform accordingly. While it may sound intuitive, the first logical step - to define the innovation strategy - is often bypassed by a lot of organizations. Remember my post on the low percentage of marketers setting up marketing objectives prior to the set up of their marketing strategy? So it goes with innovation.

One of my readings (well rather listenings) this week provides a good explanation on the reason why 50 to 90 % of the innovation initiatives end up as flops.  Brands think they know their customers' needs without considering the fact there's a crucial difference between what consumers say they need and what they really need - that is between what they need and what they really want. Brands focus on products when consumers' concern is on desired outcome.

Harvard marketing prof Theodore Levitt illustrated this difference with this straight forward analogy: “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!"   Focusing too much on demographics segmentation and qualitative research methods, marketers are improving their products in ways that become mainly irrelevant to their consumers needs- focusing on the drill, not the hole.

In his last Shop Talk Podcast, John Caddell comes back to the basics with Tony Ulwick, CEO of Strategyn and author of 'What Customers want'. Ulwik's simple starting point is to remember that what consumers want is to get a job/task/activity done (a quarter-inch hole). Marketers' role is thus to develop the products (the quart-inch drill)  that will help customers to get their jobs done (the quarter-inch hole). He's going further explaining how customer requirements should be used to determine what tools will be developed to helped them get the job done. What is the correct definition of 'customer need'? What 'metrics' will be used by the consumer to measure the success of the job she wants to be done? A lesson of business process improvement apply to innovation in products development. A must listen to put 'thinking' into practice.

Nice article from Eydie Cubarruba in iMedia connection on one perfect illustration of engagement marketing : advergaming or the art of getting your consumers participating in contests leading to the creation of new branded games. True, one of the most powerful platforms to do so - and heavily mentioned in Cubarruba's column-is the Xbox. So much for the disclaimer. In the last year, big names have seen in our gaming platform a great opportunity to create a dedicated community around their brand - be it with branding objectives or sales generation leads like Burger King which sold 3.2 million copies of its advergames last year and benefited from a 9% revenue increase in their fast food restaurants.

After Toyota and Burger King advergaming campaigns, Doritos just announced the winner of its last branding game contest which generated more than 2, 300 entries. Beta game versions were developed for 5 finalists and gamers were inviting to vote for their winner: "Doritos Dash of Destruction" will be downloadable for free in the Xbox Live Arcade by summer 2008. 

Advergaming - which is foreseen to become the second largest stream of revenue for the game advertising industry by 2012  (Source Parks Associates) - allows perfect  interaction between brands and consumers: brands stimulate consumers to create their own experience around the brand's products (not a requisite) but more importantly around the brand's values. Games creation fulfill consumers' need and desire to communicate and engage with the brands, providing 3 key elements of a deep and happy relationship: emotion, belonging and recognition. The ultimate benefit being that the more consumers are involved in the brand the more they embrace it.

Catching up quickly with RSS readings this morning, I discovered a new blog on creativity thanks to Rubel's Micropersuasion del.ico.us feeds. Well probably not exactly the kind of creativity blog you would immediately expect from my professional 's point of view blog entries. Yet, if it does not sound related to our industry at first glance - except for the fact that its author is working at designing user experiences and interfaces at Amazon. The author is Tina, a Seattle based self-declared CHO (Chief Happiness Officer). Don't be too quick to judge it is unrelevant :-) 

Because a majority of the personal development oriented posts at the very young but talented Think Simple Now blog do apply 100% to any company trying its best to focus on innovation as we've being doing all year long at Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions (just think about our Imagine 07 tour and our 'if you can think it, you can do it' campaign). 

Go through how to build intimacy in any relationship, how to really listen to someone,  the art of smiling or how to be naked like a baby posts and you'll get a better idea on how you can connect them to your own business values. I particularly liked the '7 habits of highly innovative people'.

The title of the post mirroring one of the most famous business book ever might be part of the successful recipe but the post in itself holds 7 appealing ingredients. Like for a lot of daily challenges - private ones like a diet or professional ones like speaking in public- the art of being successful is more about having the right mindset than being born with the right genes. So it goes with innovation. Here's her 7 tips to create this new innovative mindset,  inspired by the myhts of innovation, also available at Amazon ;) :

1. Persistence - because  "invention is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration“, Thomas A. Edison
2. Remove Self-Limiting Inhibitions - to consciously forge this new mindset
3. Take Risks, Make Mistakes  - because failure is the most certain road to success 
4. Escape - because unusual ideas are often prompted by unusual experiences
5. Write things done- because Moleskine notebooks are so very hype again ;) 
6. Find Patterns & Create Combinations - who said mash ups were a 21th century concept?
7. Curiosity

Why don't we break the 7 ingredients' recipe rule to add an essential 8th one:  keep your child's spirit - daring, adventurous, enthusiastic topped with endless eye-opener-why-questions. If you don't feel reconnected with your talented being now, you might want to think about hiring a Chief Happiness Officer too.

Mid-September I wrote my 'eating our own digital dogfood' post in which I mentioned how Microsoft Global Director of Digital Marcom Planning and Effectiveness Bill Capodanno stressed his willingness to embrace social media platforms as entry points to start more authentic conversations between MSFT and our consumers. I also pointed out that his challenge would be to achieve a cross-platform holistic approach.  

Guess what. 2 months later a new superhero is wanted to consolidate the existing US MSFT digital marketing team. His mandate will be to "lead Microsoft's US efforts in digital marketing in the area of social media (content created, shared, and/or organized by consumers such as YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and Digg) and ensure a leadership position for the company in this space. This person will be responsible for the development of digital marketing media innovation programs for social media".

It seems to me that we are walking the talk, setting a dedicated budget to implement the social media strategy and processes as an integrated part of MSTF marketing program and not just as an add-on. Why should we not have European positions to offer in 2008 ?

One of my earlier posts I talked about Mutual Social Responsibility and the impact on WOM. Today I want to contribute to generate more WOM around one one of my favorite examples of brands engaged on social interest --- besides world famous Dove campaign for real beauty. Not sure why I address this twice in a row now, but maybe it is the Christmas spirit that is dawning on me/  

The UK based Innocent drinks ' Big Knit  winter solidarity action is one of the greatest- and Innocent one of the clever and human faced brands I've ever seen, and met in many occasions in the London streets, zoo, etc . Every year since 2003, hundreds of  volunteers are knitting little hats to top off  the Innocent smoothie juices to raise funds to support older people.

For each bottle sold, the brand gives 50p to Age concern which provides hot meals and warm blankets to oldest people during the cold winter months.  Have a look at the video they made to explain their action and you'll get a sense of their engagement.

The Big Knit action is also a perfect illustration of how to bypass the two major brakes you have to keep in mind while engaging in cause-related marketing: you have to make active participation quick ( 52% of the Edelman surveyed consumers don't  get engaged because of time) and you have to make their financial participation low (41% mentioned lack of  money).  If you come to London in the coming days, make sure to quickly buy some. And send me your favorite. I'll post mine when i get there :-)

Watching that amazing Sofia Coppola movie in my hotel tonight. After seeing all the freaking troubles & issues, wars & unrest we live in this world on BBC. Should we not try to stay committed to make our world a better place. You might find it naive or demago ... or you might just see it as the opportunity to effectively reach your consumers through social purpose. And you' d be spot on: 85 percent of consumers worldwide are willing to change the brands they buy or their consumption habits to make tomorrow a better place.

And if your help your customers with their humble but noble cause, chances are that your reach to your dedicated audience will dramatically and organically grow: 55 percent of them would in turn help you "promote" your product as long as  a good cause lays behind it.  And not only are they more prone to talk about you, the brand, they're also willing to pay your products more to participate (70%).

Social interest i.e helping others and contributing to community comes to second highest source of personal contentment just after spending time with their loved ones, according to a global survey by Edelman and Goodpurpose released this week.  88% saying they feel it is their duty to contribute to a better society and environment. 

Ironically enough, the study also points out that lack of money was a barrier mentioned more often by 'developed' countries than by less wealthy countries.  For more on this check the findings at Marketing Charts.

I spent a great day in Netherlands today meeting our local team and some press. This Great Nation once running in the forefront of online now sees a slight slowdown in online growth - with TV back growing up to 17% year on year... Lack of adequate people in online planning, lack of "risk taking" marketeers, agency cost saving when doing "the usual TV stuff" etc etc etc all the "good bad reasons" are back in the game. But the team is in great shape, great leadership in place - so online will prevail. Keep going guys. We have a mission... 

Then think about that poor marketeer that is on that tipping point of 'online or not' - doet ie het of doe ie het niet so to speak. Imagine that same guy looking at the online media mix. Imagine having to convince him about "social media" being part of his strategy. Excuse me, no budget to test Social Media? Well, cut it off from your in-store retailer shops: 82% of  consumers prefer online peer reviews to in-store sales assistance. The findings are coming from the recent ' Social Shopping Study 2007' whose objective was to find out how influenced 1,200 regular online shoppers (buying at least 4 times a year with a minimum of $500 yearly spent) were by peer products reviews.

The social shopper is a social researcher: 65% of the surveyed consumers turned out to actively search for peer reviews before making their purchase decisions. "Currently, 81 percent of consumers use customer reviews to decide between two or three products or to confirm that their final selection is the right one."  Better provide those reviews on your retailer site or they'll leave it to find the content they're looking for...

If you need more numbers to get convinced that Social Media strategy starts with leveraging your existing online selling platforms,  think about those "93 percent of consumers who indicated they are likely to start their shopping process on a Website that offers Social Navigation." Social navigation is a new coined term meaning product selection based on peer reviews. And it clearly is a strong competitive advantage: not surprisingly, Social Researchers are 76 percent more likely to shop on a retailer’s Website vs. their competitor site if it offers social navigation .

Wanna see a good exemple of social shopping and social navigation? Check out eBay Neighborhoods. This is a  great illustration of content co-creation between a brand and its consumers. As of today, eBay's initiative provides more than 600 micro social shopping guides organised around mass and niche products. You'll even find a Ford Mustang  Neighborhoods. I know at least one person who's checking this out daily at least - aren't you Kris ?

When we look for best practices and lessons learned in Web 2.0, we turn to the US to find inspiration, data, do's and don'ts. Same goes for Japan as far as mobile advertising is concerned. We might now pretty soon give it a second thought and turn to Tudou instead of Youtube, Xiaonei for Facebook, Wealink for  Linked In , Yuppo for FlickR and Fanfou for Twitter. I'm often asked about the Chinese adoption of social media tools. More and more American companies are investigating into Social Media to reach the 172 internet users living in the Middle Empire. 

Recent surveys, like the one from Netpop, reveal numbers enlightening why they're going to take it seriously. Chinese consumers are definitely more influenced by Social Media than their US counterparts- 58% of purchase decisions are driven by UGC, compared to 19% in the US- and they are also more active contributers - among broadband users, 48% are creating content on blogs and other chat rooms & forums,  compared to 28% in the US. True, the average user is in his early thirties, meaning by age group belonging more prone to participate actively than the US user on average 10 years older.

"On average, a Chinese consumer communicates in one month with 8 people about brands. 17% of the consumers however talk about brands with more than 10 people monthly. 80% of the consumers think that the Internet is the most essential medium in their life. The Internet is the most important medium for Chinese consumers to learn -for the first time- about a new brand or a new product, followed by TV commercials." The first survey done on Chinese Social Media at Jan Van Den Berg's - the Belgian Shanghai-based president of i-merge/ boondoggle- and Sinomonitor's initiative, looks at brand and product recommendation on the Internet in China and corroborates the Netpop findings.

(If you want to go through the complete data released at the end of last October, download the results here ). Jan's conclusion to the report is that " in China, like everywhere else on the planet, marketers underestimate the value of the phenomenon".  Which significantly summed up my short answer to the initial question: Social Media adoption in China is high and low. High on the consumer side, low on the marketer side. 

For those who are curious to follow the marketer's adoption over there,  let me suggest you to RSS  some influential sources and register to the brand new I Media Asian newsletter . These are in English but if you' re among the most motivated ones, you might want to start using this site: http://chinesepod.com/

Also listen to Jan's podcast he did with the China Business Network on what makes the new Chinese consumer tick.

Looking for an interesting Christmas present ?  MSN UK are running a Harry Potter Competition in conjunction with the launch of the “Order of The Phoenix” DVD.  Harry Potter fans have the chance to appear on the big screen by answering a series of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix-related questions. The lucky winner will participate in a "crowd scene" (which may or may not be a silent scene:-)) in the next movie.  Needless to say this is going to be a highly contested competition !  Quoting Josh Berger, President and Managing Director, Warner Bros. UK, said: “Digital plays an important role in our marketing mix.  We’ve been investing in digital for many years and are constantly pushing the bar to break new boundaries and create campaigns that truly engage with the consumer. Digital enables us to achieve cut through in a very competitive market and allows us to engage with consumers in innovative ways.”