There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.

~ Indira Ghandi

When it comes to competition, I know a lot of people might say ‘don’t worry about what other people are doing’.  My mom would say that.  My grade school teachers would say that.  I might even be tempted to say that if it weren’t so helpful in strategy building to know exactly what other people are doing.

I had a client recently that came to me very worried about the Facebook pages of its nearest competitors, we’ll say that this client had a diet product.  They wanted to know how each of their competitors were communicating with an audience that wanted to lose weight online so that they could build a better website and Facebook page.  They listed out each weight loss product that sold something similar to them and I took a look at their strategies – none of them were very good.

But knowing your competition isn’t just about knowing who makes the same product or offers the same service as you.  The wonderful world of the internet has made it possible to click from your site to your competitor’s to a shoe site to a site for baby pandas in about 30 seconds.

After I was finished with their strategy the competition landscape had changed completely.  The top groups talking about weight loss weren’t my client and their competitors.  It was yoga studios, The Food Network, and Special K cereal.  They had no idea that they weren’t just in the ring with competitors they knew about, they were going to have to participate with anyone having a similar conversation with their target audience.

1) Find Out Who They Are:

Who else is talking to the audience I’m targeting about the same type of ideas?

You can do a number of searches to figure this out.  Search Twitter, Search on Google, set up an alert for the topics you talk about and see who else is weighing in and how, look through Facebook, etc.  This is a better view of your landscape and will help you construct a better strategy because you will have a better idea of the conversation and who is participating.

2) Where Are They Succeeding?  Where Are They Dropping The Ball?

Sometimes, these are obvious.  Let’s take my weight loss product client again.  While most of their competitors were on Facebook and Twitter having great conversations, there were lots and lots of individuals uploading photos of their healthy meals for weight loss on Flickr, and no one was responding to these.  This is how we started to determine where there were opportunities online for my client to take the lead.

3) If You Can’t Beat Them…..

Sometimes the brands having robust conversation online won’t be competitive enough that you can’t work together.  LOTS of brands co-write blog posts, host contests, and come out with online deals together because they can better have a conversation with this audience if they do it together.

Strategy Thought: Building your strategy shouldn’t be just about keeping up with the Jones’s Facebook Page.  Determine where there is unique opportunity by finding mediums or platforms that aren’t as heavily used (Tumblr is doing VERY well with audiences but most brands haven’t jumped in here yet) but will still resonate with the audience.

The film ‘Between the Folds’ is a documentary about origami.  It covers everything about how origami originated, how its made, and who is the best at it.  It also shows all of the different uses for origami – some scientists are using it to figure out how to fold the airbags into the steering wheel of a car.  Some people are using it to talk about math and the universe.  One artist is making little people out of it and says that he can never make the same one twice.

There is an undertone of debate about what ‘good origami’ is. At the origami shows people try to come in with shapes that have the most folds (like 200 or 300) and that is the winning measurement.  But that’s not the end of the story,  some origami artists say that they try to make an interesting shape out of the least amount of folds – like one fold.

Some of the older origami artists said that at first they felt like they wanted to have more and more folds so that their emotion would be sure to be visible through their mastery of the craft.  Then, they started removing the folds that were only technical so that all that remained was the emotional folds.  Each fold held something important.

This made me think about strategy.  Some people want to make very complicated plans and want to see a million tools and platforms that have created an intricate shape and message.

Sometimes you can make a killer strategy with just one fold.

I wasn’t supposed to go to Coachella (which, if you are over 30 you might not know is a music festival of about 100,000 people in the desert outside of LA showcasing a huge lineup of bands, mostly indie) but ended up there because of some good luck (thanks Christina and Asos.com!), in 97 degree heat, with a lot of sweaty people.

So, the first thing I did was of course, look up the sponsors and see who was doing what.  100,000 music fans are a good group to be able to get in front of for 3 days straight.  The demo here is an under 30, style forward, “I was listening to that band way before they were cool”, kind of group.  In other words – the cool kids.

Who Did It Right

H&M:  H&M got it spot on with their tent because they understood that being out here for 3 days (some of these brave souls camping) this group would have needs.  A lot of them.  So their tent wasn’t about jean shorts, paisley tank tops, or hoop earrings.  They had a tent full of something more valuable than gold here – deodorant.  By supplying basic items like deodorant, smelly sprays, sunblock, etc. they became so much more relevant to this audience.  Case in point: the line 50 people deep at some points during the weekend. H&M did provide several other things as part of their sponsorship,  this part was just the most creative.

Who Was OK:

5Gum. They made a nice dark tent that was somewhat air conditioned for people to take a break in, which was absolutely necessary for the heat that weekend.  Still, with the sensory coolness they are showing in their commercials they could have done something more interesting – piping in scents?  More tactile experiences using textured walls?

Then The Trouble Started:

Coachella is held in Palm Springs, Ca where there are maybe 50 cab drivers that work there regularly.  At 3AM, there are 100,000 people trying to get somewhere.  I managed to make friends with a driver right away and convince him to pick me up every night at the same time and place but from my window view I saw hundreds of kids trying to get to a hotel, or anywhere.  I asked my driver why there weren’t any cabs coming. “There aren’t enough.  Some of these kids will have to sleep here tonight”  They were hitchhiking, jumping in front of cars, seriously – desperate for a ride. I was thinking:

“wait a minute…..  isn’t Hyundai a sponsor of this thing?”

For the rest of the weekend, getting a ride was a common complaint at Coachella.  People waiting 2-3 hours to go somewhere.  As a sponsor, Hyundai could have saved the day by sending cars, golf carts, cabs – even if they just took VIP guests they could have come off as a hero here.  I honestly kept waiting for them to step it up but night 3 was as bad (if not worse) than the first night.

The Brand That Didn’t Sponsor But Was The Most Visible:

When Kanye West came onstage, people began to cheer and a funny thing happened that everyone in the crowd felt.  Everyone raised their iPhones to the sky – videotaping Kanye’s entrance.  The Jumbotron to the side of the stage captured and showed to the crowd tens of thousands of iPhones in the sky.  Even the occasional iPad could be seen taping the show.  People noticed.  A girl next to me said:

“this is like a religious thing, everyone praising the Apple gods”. I wondered who would actually use the recording of the show, which sites it would end up on, or who’s Facebook page the next day.  Didn’t matter, that Apple icon was on the Jumbotron hundreds of times.

So with all these people bringing recording technology into this festival, sponsors could have really gotten some great press here.  Just sayin’.

Trends From Coachella:

Boho chic, boho chic, and more boho chic.  We took dozens of photos of feather earrings and fringe bags. ( I bought this one right away when I got home). There were feathers in hair (from tasteful to outlandish), feathers on bags, and feathers on shoes.

Bright sunglasses and unique sunglasses. The huge oversize sunglasses trend seems to be out in favor of rocking your own style.

Waiting for a ride.

I’m not a huge football fan, but I AM a huge advertising fan.  So, when I went to watch the game I brought along some magazines to read at the same time.  I believe my sister said something to the effect of “oh, Caitlin brought her coloring books to play with at the kid’s table during the game”.  Nice.

So while I may have been the only dork at the party watching the ads so closely, the moment I hopped on Twitter I found hundreds of other nerds like me watching and commenting on the ads.  They were barely watching the game and picking apart every ad….   I’ve never been so happy to see a Twitter feed!

Here are the goods:

Best – Definitely the Chrysler ad.  Because how can you go wrong with the 8 Mile Song?  And a city’s comeback, and a celebrity?  And a church choir?  You can’t my friends.  I’ve been picking on boring car commercials for a while and this is not one of them.

Worst - The Groupon Debacle.  This was a little….   awkward to say the least.  Not sure how this got past all the approval processes that I ASSUME were in place but people were pretty incensed about it.  “Unsubscribing from Groupon!” was a common tweet the 2nd half of the game.  I love Groupon and probably won’t unsubscribe but their advertising needs a little work (ok a lot).  Somewhere, Motrin and the Gap were probably high fiving in relief.

Who Was Totally and Ridiculously Predictable – Sketchers.  I get it, guys like Kim Kardashian, she’s hot.  ok.   but guys aren’t buying Sketchers.  Women are.  And there was no punch line, no humor, no huge burger from Carl’s Jr.  I’d give Sketchers a solid “meh”.

Who Was Almost Amazing - Mercedes Benz. The beginning was so good. The old cars and the Janice Joplin – great ideas considering how popular the 30′s / 40′s throwbacks are right now. The only problem was the end. I feel like the goal of this ad was to introduce the new line of Mercedes but they weren’t sure how to make it flow with the Janice Joplin, old car coolness. Felt a little bit awkward.
Who was missing:  Lil Wayne.  Seriously.  He made a ‘Green N Yellow” song that I didn’t hear and if Eminem got two commercials.  Lil Wayne should have gotten one.  Just sayin’

Last night I was reading an article in AdAge about advertising agency Wieden and Kennedy and something one of the founders said about marketing creatively really struck a chord with me.  Dan Wieden said:

“It was like doing crossword puzzles for a living”

And he’s so right that I underlined it, read it again, and then ran in to tell the New Jerseyite about it.

Strategy is a LOT like doing crossword puzzles for a living, and even the basics have elements of a puzzle because you have to know a lot about some things and something about everything.  I have sat in on several strategy meetings for brands of all sizes and the biggest thing that I am noticing is that they are not prepared to have the meeting.  Yes, brainstorming is important, cool ideas are great, and sure you should invite the interns for their opinion on Facebook but there are other components to a strategy meeting that can help to set you up for success.  Here are a few basics to gather before you talk strategy:

Your Own Industry.

This is the easy part.  Every time I meet with a client they usually know all about their own industry, competitors, their traffic, their conversion rates, etc.  This is great because you’ll need these. You should have before the meeting:

A basic knowledge of your website traffic over the last year.  An idea of the people that are sending you traffic (this is in Google Analytics, if you don’t have analytics that tells you who is sending you traffic you should get that immediately).  Pull out the top 10 and have a brief description of their sites or the article that’s sending traffic at the meeting.  A good outside opinion on what your visitors are experiencing when they come to your site (what’s confusing, is it inviting, are they getting enough information from your company).  Ask someone who doesn’t work with you to spend a few minutes looking at your site, Twitter, etc.

Your Competitors:

You probably know who your top competitors in the area are and it’s important that you have a good look at their sites as well as their social channels (Twitter, Facebook, blog, do NOT forget to check if they are using smartphone apps!).  You should also think big.  Look at the brands at the very tippy top of the country or the world and have a good list of notes on their sites as well.  You might be surprised at what your development or web team can do to get some of those pieces on your site.  Ex.  if you are a local coffee shop it definitely makes sense to look at Starbucks’ success - it’s great for getting your team excited and thinking big.

A little about everything:

This is somewhat harder because the direct tie to your own industry is not as obvious and after working day in and day out in your own workplace, it might even feel surprising that there are industries outside your own. Yet your audience certainly is aware of other businesses and activities outside your industry.  When developing online strategy it’s important to know that the share-of-wallet brands are only a click away.

This can actually be a fun part of the meeting because it’s also the time to talk about things you read about that were really cool.  For example, how can we incorporate Groupon?  Or, if you saw all the press about Quora lately, maybe you want to see if there’s some way to use that.  Have everyone on the team come to the meeting with the coolest online item they’ve seen in your industry and in general.  It doesn’t have to be over the top, it can simply be “hey, I like the new video tab that so and so has on their Facebook page”.

Next, before the meeting write a list about your audience.  What other sites might they be visiting and what are their Twitter feeds, blogs, and other communication like?  Notice the comments on their sites, blogs, etc.  Are they all complaining about one thing?  Asking a certain question over and over?   Write down things that pop out at you as either really neat or really an obstacle to having a good experience there.

Now, armed with all of this good stuff you’re ready to have a conversation about what you should be offering online.  Aim to “keep up with the Jones’s” by having the basics that your industry has online and then surpass them by taking a look at what the brands with millions of dollars are doing.

Have a great meeting!

I have to say, I’ve been really enthralled by all of the logos making headlines over the last few months.  Seems like everyone wants a logo makeover and we’ve seen the good, the bad, the Gap, and now even Starbucks is joining in with it’s newest logo where they’ve opted to remove their name entirely.  Like Prince.

So why are all of these brands so eager to shed their logos in favor of something trendier, cleaner, more or less colorful, and just plain different?

I thought about it while I got my hair colored and cut over the weekend and determined that they do it for the same reasons that women make beauty changes.

It’s easier to make a change to your life when you have a new look.

You get more attention when you debut the new you.

People are going to  judge you on your look and maybe you’re trying to change their perception.

You are sick to death of your look and if you have to see it ONE MORE TIME…  or… maybe that’s just with hair.

So while I sat there changing my hue from lighter to dark-ish, I was thinking about the reasons that Starbucks is publicly giving for the change.  One article interviewed Mike Peck, the Starbucks Senior Design Manager and he revealed that Starbucks has “An Agenda Of Transformation”.

I like the idea of an Agenda of Transformation, it sounds serious.  It sounds like a non impulsive plan to make a change, which is, I think, how we should view any major self makeover (business or aesthetic).

But you know how when you get a gorgeous new cut, a new outfit, and you go out because dammit you just aren’t going to stay home when you look this great?  I’m worried that’s the reason for some of these logos.  That they want the attention, even if it’s negative, to get that pop on the social media reader.  They change their whole persona for a bump in ‘online buzz’.  So here’s the thing, if ladies know that you can don a pink wig on New Years Eve and get that same boost in attention, why haven’t brands found a wig equivalent to changing their logo?

pink hair photo credit

The minute I saw this simple site I started thinking of all the ways that different industries could use the concept. It’s a site that’s set up so that the default is ‘dear Copenhagen’ and then visitors can use 250 characters to tell Copenhagen what they think of their city.
Here’s the best part:
Comments are divided by category into colors – so traffic comments are yellow, talk about social issues (like noisy streets) are blue, and so on. This way viewers can see at a glance what the most popular topics are.
People can ‘agree’ ‘disagree’ or comment on the comments.  It’s all share-able.  Suddenly, Copenhagen has a place for people to discuss things with each other that’s not on a boring city forum.

photo credit: Julie and Katherine Hat tip for the Copenhagen site find: Guerrilla Innovation

Instead of just the regular “here’s who we are” and “here’s what we do”, which I think you’ll agree can be boring, spend some time introducing yourself online.
I stumbled on this video for the Dare Agency in London and thought it was pretty cool.

This is Dare. Are you? from thisisdare on Vimeo.

I am sort of a phone addict.  Not in the ‘can’t have a conversation with you because I’m too busy eyeing up my phone’ kind of way (I cannot believe how many professional people do this incredibly rude thing) but definitely in the ‘check it when I’m bored’ kind of way.  Obviously, I’m not the only one that’s doing this sort of thing but here’s a scary graph to back it up:

The rest of the article goes on to outline all sorts of horrors about how tons of people are checking their online presence in the car, while they are in bed, while they are at work, at home when they are with family, basically everywhere.  We could go on all day about if this is healthy (maybe not), if this makes us less productive (probably), and if some rehab facility is going to make a killing off of people who can’t stop Facebooking (I bet it’s in the works now).  What I do want to discuss is that money spent on mobile phones was up 24% since last year which is a lot and people even say that they are EMOTIONALLY attached to their iPhone as a brand. As opposed to say, warm and fuzzy brands like Hershey’s or Fruit of the Loom. Here are the top 20 —->

So what does the fact that people are spending tons of money on phones, accessing their phones ad nauseum all day, and emotionally loving their phones mean for the average marketer?

That there’s opportunity here.  The good news is, that while most brands have caught on to the whole ‘Facebook, twitter’ thing most have no mobile presence at all.  So while you might be tempted to continue to spend tons and tons of time catching up with you competitor’s awesome Facebook Page, you could go another route entirely and come up with a great mobile strategy and come out on top.

The truth is, people aren’t accessing your page from just their laptop anymore.  They are coming from their iPad, Blackberry, iPhone, and whatever other devices they are checking while driving.  It’s really important to plan for this on your site.

1) Is your site even visible on a smartphone?  This is an easy one so you should start here.  Get someone with a smartphone to try and access your site.  Make sure that it comes up and looks good. If it doesn’t, talk to a web professional right away.  Check other devices and see how your site looks on those as well.

2) Apps aren’t just games anymore.  A lot of b2b brands and more professional services think that an app. isn’t for them because they have only seen game apps.  Not so.  For example, I really wish I had thought of this app.  TeuxDeux.  It’s a site that’s basically just a simple To-Do list online. Then they added an iPhone app version of it.  I love it because I can add items to my to-do list on the go and when I get on my computer, there are all my new items along with my original items.  I don’t have a lot of time for games but I can certainly respect a brand that makes my life easier.

Is there a portion of your site that you can turn into an app to make life easier for your customers?

3) People are getting more comfortable with purchasing on their devices other than a laptop.  I personally think it has to do with iTunes and Amazon making it ‘push of a button’ easy to purchase things but people are okay with setting appointments, checking balances, and buying services and goods without ever talking to anyone on your staff.  People are going to think of doing this while waiting in line, in the car, picking up the kids, etc. so the need for easy purchasing is going to get bigger and bigger.  Explore options now so you can provide this for your own customers.

photo credit – from moon to moon

When I saw author of “Eat,Pray,Love” Elizabeth Gilbert speak this spring she said “every afternoon I take a silence bath” in which she basically just sits in a room quietly and hangs out with her cat or falls asleep.  “Rough life” I thought “must be nice to be an author with a gazillion readers so that you can take silence baths every day”.  Sometimes I don’t even get to take a real bath every day and  the only silence I get is after I offer up a great idea at a meeting which is frankly less than tranquil.  So yay for Elizabeth and her silence baths.

But the idea stayed in my mind for months.  I wondered if this silence bath was more than lazy meditation or relaxation.  I began to think maybe it was more of an incubation period and perhaps similar to a process I call “marinating”, the secret ingredient to the strategy process.   Also why my bigger projects take me over a month to craft.   Here’s where it fits into the strategy timeline:

1) Read tons of articles.  See films, listen to music, watch plays.  Look at blogs, people’s Flickr feeds, design. Read more articles, go to speeches, watch TED videos ad nauseum.

2) Start thinking of strategy ideas.

3) Marinate.

4) Think some more. Work on other projects.

5) Develop full strategy.

6) Deliver strategy and listen to applause and general adoration.

Though my marinating is far less silent than Elizabeth’s it is still an incubation period of sorts for an idea.  Sometimes an idea marinates for 5 days and there are some I’ve been marinating on (like opening a coworking space) for years.   During the idea incubation process I do all sorts of other things like work on other projects, write content, or develop new processes for my business but it’s still in the back of my mind.  “If I were this or that brand’s audience…..  what would I want to see them writing about?”  This idea of incubation isn’t new but it is frequently skipped because, well, people are busy and being busy to the point of insanity is important at a lot of workplaces.

Sometimes I walk into an office where everyone is uber busy and think “how do people come up with good ideas here?”.  You can tell people are just totally stressed and running from meeting to meeting (sometimes actually running).  In some cases, this busy-ness seems more of an “if you have time to lean you have time to clean” type of thinking where people feel like they have to be insanely busy or they are a complete failure.  I know lots of business owners that feel this way.  They would feel incredibly uncomfortable just “marinating” on an idea and maybe they already have good ideas.

So why is it so important to incubate?

Because coming up with good ideas isn’t really that hard.  Developing them to the point where they are right for the situation, the timing is correct, the resources are there to complete the idea, and a million other factors takes time.  There are so many examples these days of a decent idea in social media strategy and I can tell the team was probably pressed with a 5 day deadline.  No one was given time to draw from their reading, their experience, something they saw that made them connect dots, etc. and it was put out into the world and was unremarkable.   Ideas that are rushed out the door tend to be the most obvious idea and can be full of rookie mistakes.

If you want to try the silence bath, incubation, marinate start by giving yourself two deadlines.  Make your first deadline where you would need it to be if you hurried the process and then make the second one 5 days later.  Don’t use this extra time as a way to procrastinate the project.  Use the extra days to add in some thinking time and maybe you will add some features, an extension of the idea or a partner that will pop into your mind as a perfect fit.  During these 5 days you can and should work on other things but build in an hour or two for your idea and go to a thinking lunch during that time or spend it explaining your idea to someone who isn’t part of the project to see what kinds of words you are using to describe it and what kind of questions it garners, you will inevitably come out with a better strategy.