Daniel Patricio
Rethinking how we communicate, collaborate and innovate
Rethinking Advertising, Branding and Reach – Socialnomics
In: Marketing
16 Aug 2009I have been busy reading these crazy things called books lately – yes the ones made of paper.
I have become reinvigorated with the fields of sociology, branding, advertising and something called behavioural economics. Though I believe far too many companies are over invested in advertising and under invested in actually investing in initiatives that drive revenue, I don’t think it is Advertising’s fault we have just forgotten why we turned to advertising in the first place.
Advertising is about increasing brand equity to help differentiation products and increase awareness of the product so that if we find ourselves at the counter we just might choose that brand. Advertising is not about reach and the CPM. Just because you can shout louder doesn’t mean more people are listening.
What I want to do is reach the right people at the right time, communicate more than just a set of brand attributes and provide value.
We need to rethink our preconceived and indoctrinated notions of marketing, advertising and get back to realising consumers are people with needs not numbers.
At the same time we can’t throw out the world of metrics. If anything there is an opportunity to start quantifying the previously immeasureable value of interactions between people previously coined as customer service which is becoming the responsibility of every part of the organisation.
This is by no means a comprehension post, merely a rant to update the world on what I am thinking and working on.
I am working on something big, a project that will attempt to bridge the gap between social capital and advertising but more on that later.
In the meantime, I recommend you pick up the Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz, Predictabilty Irrational by Dan Ariely and watch the video below.
The Key to Facebook’s Plans for World Domination: You
In: Social Web
6 Aug 2009
Facebook hopes to one day sell advertising across all of its partner sites and apps, not just on its own site. The company will be able to draw on the immense volume of personal data it owns to create extremely targeted messages. The challenge: not freaking out its users in the process – Wired
Facebook wants to take down Google as the champions of online advertising and their key is you.
What do you think of that?
Photo credit, Swiss Roll
Does my business need a blog?
In: Marketing
28 Jul 2009
I often get the question posed by businesses of many different sizes about whether a blog should be a part of their business strategy.
Blogs have been hyped up for many years as everything from the doom bringer of traditional media to a lead generation tool for small business, however in recent years they have been downplayed in favour of the fresh buzz surrounding newer tools such as Facebook and Twitter.
Now that the dust is settling I think we can really take a clear look at what role each tool can contribute to the overall marketing and brand strategy.
From my experience with managers of businesses large and small with a plethora of different target audiences I have noticed two prevalent issues.
- Brand managers aren’t sure if blogging is a fit for their organisation and their customers
- Most brand managers and consumers have no idea what the difference is between a blog and a website.
This is not necessarily a bad sign but rather a sign of the lack of knowledge of a still relatively new and misunderstood tool for business.
Let’s be real here, a blog is not mystery bottle of social media magic, it is a part of the web and often would be indistinguishable from what we know as a ‘website’ to the average internet user. Blogs can take on many different forms and functions and it is misleading to group them as tools such as Facebook and Twitter.
In fact a blog can be an important way of satiating Google’s indexing algorithms need for frequently updated content raising the traction of the rest of the website.
The way I typically explain the differences between blogs and a corporate website are:
Your website is the front door, your blog is the board room table
The most common differences are
- Frequency of content
- Tone of content
- Interactions with readers
A blog allows businesses to frequently update visitors on new developments, articles, tips and even new products or services as often as they need to with little to no marginal cost and limited knowledge of the technology. For small businesses they can effectively become their own publishers.
The role of the website is often a destination where visitors can quickly learn about the products, people and services behind a company however that only serves to answer the ‘Who and What’ of the marketing mix. The blog is where people go when they ask “Yes, I can read your marketing copy but what you guys really do?”
A blog is an important part of the marketing mix where businesses have the most creative control of the medium to really flesh out their brand identity. Business can use it to leverage media mentions, interview members of their community and share their expertise of their product and industry.
The expertise, tips and updates, branding and open door invitation conveyed through a corporate blog are not isolated solely to blogs. If implemented appropriately, it is just quality content displayed on a different medium however the majority of users will not look for a blog, they will look for good content.
The question is not, should my business have a blog?
The question is – does our business have knowledge to share or a story to tell and would our clients appreciate our expertise?
If the answer is yes, then a blog can be a viable solution to reach out to more customers, increase traffic to your online presence, retain relationships with your customers and increase brand awareness.
Photo credit Industry is Virtue
I am a marketer that is invigorated and driven by the possibilities and opportunities of the online world. I look at it as an opportunity to quantify what we haven’t understood for years – attention, comprehension and the very fabric of our social interactions with each other and how that leads to buy into a brand experience.
The opportunity is in quantifying what was previously immeasurable not defending the new ‘immeasurable’ territory of social media.
Freemium isn’t an excuse to not make a profit, the brand experience does not supersede the need for results and finally coolness should not play a role in real business strategy.
Let’s not get carried away here. Slow down and don’t fall in love with the technology (email is still my bread and butter). It is still just a tool and has to be a part of a thought out business strategy with an laid out scope, objectives, expectations and yes, limitations.
At the end of the day your social media campaign needs to lead to someone picking up the phone and saying hi or walking down the street and thinking about the brand differently.
If that isn’t a part of your social media strategy, then you are a hobbyist (similar to day time television enthusiasts) not a social media expert, strategist or guru.
Lets not fall in love with the shiny and glittery things, there are huge opportunities to use these tools to make a real impact in the business world. How about we don’t put them to waste?
Photo credit Hubspot
Marketing when you couldn’t give it away for free
In: Marketing
15 Jul 2009
Have you ever tried a product where you have thought “They couldn’t give it away if it was free”. Though it has been commonly associated with products of a substandard quality, we are starting to see that in any given product category companies are competing with newcomers who offer a similar even superior product for free.
However unless you work for a government agency or a university, you can’t just create or sustain an initiative just on an whim of an ideal.
Businesses do not give away their products for free, there are bills to pay, mouths to feed and accountability to shareholders. The evolution of *free does not throw the pursuit of revenue out the window, it merely is shift in where the revenue comes from.
Free is not a radical new business model but a tried and true marketing strategy that has been pivotal in the adoption of iconic brands for over a century.
Companies package free into every single product we buy. Banks, governments, retailers, television shopping channels and manufacturers have all been using free as a marketing strategy long before the seemingly insane Google bundled unlimited video, email and office applications away for free.
RBC recently gave away a free netbook with a new account, governments give subsidies to farmers, retailers offer complimentary gift wrap, tv shopping channels bundle away deals till exhaustion and manufacturers sell electronics at close to cost.
The reason is that banks make their money back ten fold on rates and loans, governments on tax revenues, retailers on the gifts themselves, TV shopping channels on the shipping and electronics retailers on the accessories and set up.
Google has been criticized for seemingly bizarre investments in Google Voice, Google 411, Gmail, and most recently Youtube. Youtube which they paid $1.6 billion amount for and supposedly loses them 415 million a year despite being one of the top 10 visited websites in the world.
So how does Google sustain this?
Well they happen to be quite good at what they do, to the tune of 22 billion dollars last year. You see Google has a very simple business model.
People use the internet and they sell advertising on internet. The more people use the internet the more advertising Google to sell.
So if their goal is to maximise their advertising revenue, they need people to use the internet more. If someone uses Gmail instead of outlook, Google Docs instead of Office and Youtube instead of America’s Funniest Home videos – Google can slap more advertising on it. For Google, if investment leads to more business we call it marketing.
So how does this apply in the REAL world?
Would a conveince store charge you a dollar for a plastic bag to carry a two dollar carton of milk? Sure they could make a great margin up selling the plastic bags but it would reduce the volume of customers buying groceries from their store.
Is a buying music with a t-shirt (as rapper Mos Def most recently tried) any more ridiculous than buying it with a plastic disc?
The question you have to ask is are you selling milk or the plastic bag?
Practical Social Analytics From Christopher Berry
In: Presentations
14 Jul 2009I had the pleasure of seeing Christopher Berry present at Netchange Week on social media and online interaction measurement and it inspired me and my team to pull up our socks and dedicate more and more of our time to measuring and communicating results better in everything we do.
Here is a copy of the slides from his presentation. I highly reccommend taking a look at slides 34 and onwards, he gives some great practical ways to start measuring any social media campaign you are working on.
Three Ways to Use Twitter to Market Your Small Business
In: Marketing| social media
14 Jul 2009Many big brands are still wrestling to quantify and measure the success of social media and how it contributes to their marketing activities however some of the best examples come from smaller, local brands.
Some of the best implementation of social media strategy I have seen comes from local small businesses that have taken advantage of their connection and passion for their product, customers and local community to roll out a social media strategy that delivers real business results.
After hearing several recommendations from friends in the community such as Satish Kanwar, Verne Ho and Aidan Nulman I decided to pull together a list to see how these small businesses approach their social media strategy.
Freshii
Freshii, formerly known as the Lettuce Eatery, is a North American franchise with a location in Toronto can be found on Spadina and Richmond. They specialise in fresh, fast and custom meals and snacks served with an emphasis on healthy, fresh and creating a waste free environment. Their menu consists of salads, soups, bowls, burritos, wraps and even breakfast. They aren’t just on this list for their social media presence; they have really developed a great brand experience which has created many passionate lunch time fans that pack their Spadina location daily.
They can be found on Twitter under @freshii and they use it as a great tool to speak directly from the kitchen. They frequently surprise customers with free food, promote exclusive Twitter only deals and tips on healthy living from CEO and founder Matthew Corrin.
Freshii uses social media as a part of their strategy of reaching out to their customers by extending the experience past the 30 min lunch hour, getting them involved and retaining and leveraging relationships with existing customers.
Pusateri Fruit Market
This one was suggested by Aidan Nulman and is actually run by one of our glorious staff at Orange Rhino Media, Antonino Cerminara.
Pusateri’s is a grocery and fruit market on Church and Wellesley and has been around since the 1960s and is run by Tony Cerminara and Frank Mangione. They personally stop by the market every morning to pick up the best fresh produce and are frequently featured as one of the top fresh fruit markets in Toronto.
They use twitter as a way of sharing their knowledge and love of food, to connect and promote others in the food and grocery community, updates on upcoming promotions in the store and reaching out to their community.
Darkhorse Cafe
The Darkhorse has only been around for a few months but have already embraced Twitter and the community around them in the beautiful Robertson Building including the Centre for Social Innovation above them.
The the Darkhorse is an espresso bar near Spadina and Queen in the heart of Toronto’s creative district that specialises in rich espresso, fresh roasted coffees and delicious baked goods. The first thing you notice when walking in is the community feel of the large shared tables in the beautiful building and they try to facilitate the same atmosphere online.
Donnie Claudino of Techsoup Canada, who is a resident of the Centre for Social Innovation, encouraged them to join Twitter after showing the owner a log of all the conversation and meetups in and around their cafe already taking place online.
The first thing that stands out is that they really bring out the passion of their craft and their community. They use twitter to notify their followers of any fresh baked goods, new shipments of coffee and events in the community happening in and around their neighbourhood.
Best Practices
Local
An important consideration even with social media is to keep it relevant and pertinent to the people in your community. As a small local business you don’t need to connect with the world wide community rather use it as a tool to map out the conversations happening in and around your community.
A great tool for finding people in and around you is Twitter Local
Passion
The main reason why I selected these three businesses over many others was that I felt they communicated what I believe to be the key aspect of small businesses, the passion and craft of the entrepreneurs.
Social media for small business is not just about driving sales. The reason customers buy from their local coffee shop over a Starbucks is the quality and culture, social media is a great way of sharing that expertise that might not be revealed in a early morning or lunch time rush lineup.
Online networking tools such as Twitter can be a great customer relationship tool to retain communications with that customer that drops by once for the first time, the person that picks up their signature order every morning at 8 am without fail or the person that had their order mixed up. When used as a communication tool in conjuction with on premise strategy, small businesses can extend that few minute daily face-to-face time to build relationships and reach out to more loyal customers.
Action
As great as chatting with customers all day on Twitter might be for large brands that can hire a whole social media divison, for a small business, if they are going to invest their time on anything that deviates from face-time with their clients it better bring in the revenue.
The key success measure of social media campaigns is the conversion from online to offline. Whether it is inviting your customers with an alert of fresh baked brownies, a daily twitter only deal or in store promotions, action, is an essential part of creating the value proposition for customers to follow you and to deliver a return on the investment.
What is your social media strategy in your business and what local small businesses do you look up to?
Thanks to Donnie Claudino, Verne Ho, Satish Kanwar, Antonino Cerminara and Aidan Nulman.
Photo credits, Blog TO, Freshii, Matthew Burpee
- (1) Comment
- Tags: darkhorse, freshii, pusteri, social media, toronto, twitter
Chris Anderson and the Economics of the $0.00 Price Tag
In: Free
7 Jul 2009
Chris Anderson, the famed editor of Wired Magazine who is most famous for his coining of the Long Tail business strategy and most recently his proclamation of Free as the future of business, recently published Free: The Future of a Radical Price.
In an age where we have seen lawyers at the stoop of anything even smelling of free, Anderson says that free should be encouraged by the marketing team, product development and the executive board not just pirates and copyright violators.
I believe that all companies give away something free, eg. time with an account manager at a bank, customer service when you have a problem and even a sales person spending time to guide you through a decison.
In our digital world this balance is in flux. Consumers are still spending money and always will, if a product or service serves a gap or a need. The issue is what customers want to pay for is a) not being offered b) not what the companies want to sell.
When the first caveman banged on two rocks for his friends and asked for some wooly mammoth in exchange, he wasn’t selling plastic discs, he was selling music.
Music is not about selling plastic discs and today, customers don’t value plastics discs as much as they used to. Despite the resistance from the industry and their legal team, Chris Anderson, asks could free be the future price?
This doesn’t mean companies shouldn’t make money, it just needs to come from somewhere else and it might not be the model they want or have used in the past.
Anyways back to the book, it is available online – for free of course on Scribd, however I have been kind enough to post it up here for you.
Will you be reading it online or order a copy from the book store, or do you think all this talk of free is ridiculous?
- (2) Comments
- Tags: Economies of Free, Free
9 New Media Strategists That I Follow
In: social media
6 Jul 2009The social media expert is one of the most misleading titles that have evolved with the recent buzz behind new media. These days social media expert is a title that is pretty much a golden star for signing up to every social network that is featured on Oprah.
I wouldn’t hire a guy that reads Garfield in the comics section of the newspaper as a journalist, a daytime television couch potato to manage a million dollar advertising campaign or someone who has listened to every Celine Dion album to sing at your wedding, why then would you call someone who spends all day on Twittering about what they had for lunch to roll out a well thought out strategic social media campaign.
That being said I judge social media experts on the merits of their strategic knowledge and track record for results rather than enthusiasm for watching videos on YouTube or having one way conversations with Ashton Kutcher on Twitter.
I have put together a list of 7 social media strategists from different fields that I look up to, not for the number of Facebook friends or Twitter followers they have but for the impact they deliver and their contribution to their respective fields.
Public Relations: Dave Fleet
Dave Fleet is blogger, public speaker and senior consultant at PR firm Thornley Fallis.
His insights into the traditional world of PR and familiarity with the world of technology lead to a balanced and innovative approach to PR and how it is involving in the new media space.
Government 2.0: Mark Kuznicki
Mark Kuznicki works at intersection of technology, public policy and social innovation according to the website of his consultancy Remarkk Consulting.
He has played a big role in initiatives such as ChangeCamp and Toronto TransitCamp which aimed to ìre-imagine government and citizenship in the age of participation”. He has great insights into social change and the essence of community and is always doing something interesting for the city of Toronto.
Newspapers: Matthew Ingram
Matthew Ingram is the Communities Editor at the Globe and Mail and is tasked with helping make it easier for readers to interact with the paper and its writers and content.
In reality this means aiding the newspaper’s transition into the new era. He is definitely one of the more forward thinking minds in the industry and is fully at home online which makes him one of the more ambitious online media strategists.
MatthewIngram.com
Communities, Love and Buzz: Saul Colt
The self proclaimed ‘Smartest Man in the World’ – Saul Colt is one of the few people out there that doesn’t need to talk about community building and experiential marketing, his droves of loyal fans, speak for him.
In his work at Freshbooks, Zipcar and now Zoocasa, he has managed to rally people behind great products and inspired them to be a part of a experience rather a marketing plan.
When asked about how he measured marketing success I clearly remember Saul replying: “If you have to measure it, you probably aren’t doing a good job”.
Saul is a lively personality that is admired because he follows no one’s rules but his own and at the end of the day brings in the results and makes people rethink the brand experience.
Marketing metrics: Christopher Berry
Christopher is the Director of Marketing Science at Critical Mass and works with exciting clients such as Mercedes-Benz, Rolex, Dell and even NASA.
I had the pleasure of hearing Chris lead a session on social media metrics at Netchange and it was a great preface for measuring the immeasurable of the world of social marketing.
It wouldn’t do justice to corner Chris as a social media expert, he is a marketing science and web analytics strategist that aims to marketing better and more traceable.
As valuable as the brand experience is in marketing, without any metrics it is hard to justify the spend, marketing can just be a novelty. Chris does a great job at putting marketing at the board room table by quantifying results and success.
Communities, technology and innovation: Rahaf Harfoush
Toronto native, Rahaf Harfoush, is a new media expert and the Associate Director of the Global Cooperation Initiative at the World Economic Forum in Geneva where she co-leads the development of the Forum’s online community platform.
Prior, she worked as an analyst at Don Tapscott’s think tank nGenera where she contributed to several notable books including Wikinomics and Grown Up Digital and most famously, spent three months with the acclaimed Obama New Media team in Chicago during the past American election.
Enterprise 2.0: Kevin Morris
Kevin is enigmatic young technologist that works with as a consultant with several construction companies, an adviser at an executive coaching firm, a contributor to the Wikinomics blog and a researcher for nGenera.
In his work with large corporations with thousands of employees, he uses technology to solve fundamental issues faced by the construction industry and help them become more transparent, efficient and collaborative.
Web and digital divide Craig Heintzman
Craig began building the World Wide Web Foundation’s development strategy and assisting in the overall fund-raising process in 2009 and is playing an instrumental part in their future.
Their mandate to advance the web, connect humanity and empower people across the world using technology and the internet, making it accessible to more people.
The organisation was founded by creator of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee and they working on several interesting initiatives including implementing web standards such as voice XML, mobile and commerce empowerment in third world countries.
They are planning on rolling on several new initiatives over the next few months and have grandiose plans to bringing the web to the world and even the global playing field.
Mobile Media: David Coleman
Dave Coleman is a young maverick from the Toronto start up community that is known for both his drive and exciting vision of the future of mobile media and those companies we commonly refer to as the newspapers.
He calls himself the modern day newspaper delivery boy and is the Director of Marketing at Toronto based startup Spreed Inc. that develops mobile applications for newspapers such as the Globe and Mail.
Dave believes in mobile as more than just a channel for distributing newspaper articles but rather of relaying the strengths of the traditional media in the new world of online and mobile.
He has been involved in several other Toronto startups including Brainpark, CommunityLend and was the co-founder with myself of the GenYTO monthly meetup for young people in the startup industry.
That is my list. Who do you have in your personal network that you look up to as an expert in their respective fields?
Net Change Week: Social Mastermind from SiG @ MaRS on Vimeo.
Last week Toronto was alive with innovation and new ideas with the events of Netchange Week taking place at the innovation hub of Toronto – the MaRS Discovery District.
Net Change is Canada’s first week long, city wide event designed to dissolve the divide between digital professionals and social change-makers. With a full five day schedule of sessions helping learn more about leveraging technology to aid awareness of their causes and as a catalyst for social change.
I had the pleasure of participating in the Social Masterminds session as one of the social media experts donating our time to working with a Charity in developing a social media strategy to help them take a different approach to their goals using social technology.
I worked in collaboration with Trilby Bittle from Humber and Richard Carmichael from Frank Speaks and a representative from the Hospice of Toronto. As an active Hospice volunteer myself I really relished the opportunity to combine two of the passions from both my personal and professional worlds.
Looking at the issues faced by the charity we noticed they shared similar problems that many for-profits and small businesses faced. They had limited marketing resources, need to reach out the people that need their services and increase awareness of the good work they were doing.
For those that are not familiar with Hospice, they are volunteer run organisations that care for people that are in the last stages of their lives and give both the families and person some relief and hope. It is a free service for the families that is not treatment but rather care and support to help the person and their families deal with the end of life experience. The problem faced by many hospices is that few people know what a hospice is and far too many people suffer in pain without taking advantage of the care available.
The challenge we faced was how do we increase awareness so that doctors might recommend more patients, more families might reach out for support, people are more engaged to volunteer and at the end of the day increase donations.
After spending several minutes analysing target audiences, strategic approaches and tools we came the conclusion that the greatest resources we had at our disposal was the passion of all the people touched by hospice care, both their motivations for getting involved and their personal stories.
Instead of targeting ‘everyone’ they looked at how they incite and drive awareness by going to the people that firstly wanted to tell their stories, were most passionate about the Hospice and were the best advocates of the charity.
We looked at how with a simple web cam or flip camera we could share the strongest messages that people needed to hear.
The people that were helped by the volunteers, the families and caretakers, the donors that give all that they can because they believe in the cause and the volunteers that are out there giving their time and experiencing the gratitude of the people touched by the service.
Now I will be the first to admit that this sounds all well and great from a brand strategist point of view. With a World Vision-esque budget you could make a feature length film telling those stories but with a tight budget and many people in need you need to find practical ways of rolling out a ’social media storytelling strategy’ – I put that in quotations because I can’t help but ridicule myself as a result of the synergistic deployment of that lethal combo of buzz words.
For a small local charity or even a small business, the most important social media tools can be email and a blog. Not nearly as cool as hiring a 16 year old to sit on the internet twittering all day but these tools are important for four reasons.
- They leverage existing investments of time and resources
- They allow orgs to add multimedia to existing communication channels eg. newsletters
- They enable easier sharing than existing tools
- They are sustainable
In terms of strategy, social media can be an effective way to increase the reach of existing business strategy. Social media strategy needs to be adopted by the whole organisation not just by someone who is technically savvy.
Click here for more information on Hospice of Toronto.
This summer I am hoping to help out the Hospice I volunteer for – the Hospice of Peel with some web strategy. If there is anyone that would like to get involved please drop me an email or leave a comment.
About
The world around us is changing and we all are looking for the leaders to show us where this road will take us.
Ambitious and passionate in equal measure, Daniel Patricio is a digital marketing and community strategist who develops social media campaigns and consults to brands on marketing in the digital age.
He is the founder and CEO of Orange Rhino Media and founded GenY Toronto a meetup for young people in the startup, marketing and tech industries.
He has worked, consulted and advised to national and international brands in the pharmaceutical, banking, cosmetics, liquor, university and small business sectors.
Follow Me
