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 :-)