The ultimate question

According to US brand owners the ultimate question they want the answer to is 'How likely would you be to recommend my brand'?

The net promoter score was mentioned three times in the course of two days by some of the world's biggest marketers at the recent Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) Masters of Marketing event.

If you don't know how it's calculated, it goes like this. People are asked to choose a number between 1 and 10 where 1 is low. People who choose between 1 and 6 are called detractors. Those choosing 7-8 are passives. Only those choosing 9 or 10 are considered to be promoters.

So how do you work out the score? You subtract detractors from promoters. Simples.

The P&G way

Marc Pritchard, global marketing officer, the Procter & Gamble company, gave an impressive motivational keynote at the recent Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) conference.

You can see his platform in full via YouTube courtesy of the ANA marketers. For those who don't have time to view, here are some of the highlights:

"Brand building is the future...one of the most positive forces in the world for doing well, and doing good." Marc Pritchard, speaking at the ANA conference, Thursday 14th October

Marc's tips for marketers:

1. Change the definition of why our brands exist - seek our the bigger purpose that fits with their core benefit
2. Change our understanding of marketing - not marketing to but 'serving with'
3. Change the definition of who we serve - 'people' not consumers, a deeper definition
4. Change our advertising - to tap those deeper human insights
5. Change from small incremental ideas to big ideas that build brands and make people into brand ambassadors.

Marc's view of how to make integration work:

It takes fundamental management change. P&G have cut out the silos, brought all their internal marketing disciplines together into 50 brand groups led by 50 brand franchise leaders.

They've done the same with their agencies too: creating 50 brand agency leaders/partners with responsibility for weaving all P&G agencies into a cohesive team.

A strong marketing constitution

The enthusiasm for the marketing profession and marketing output was palpable at this year's US Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) conference. Keynote speakers got standard ovations; when creative output or business results are shown people cheer
and clap.

There was a real sense of pride and purpose. And a sense of importance. No wonder the conference was named 'Masters of Marketing'.

The ANA even have a Marketers' Constitution, with 10 behaviours that masters of marketing should exhibit; and they recognise companies and individuals who have been outstanding performers. Food for thought, for the UK's browbeaten marketers.

So what does the Marketing Constitution say?

1. Marketing must become increasingly targeted, focused and personal.
2. Marketing must build real tangible brand value.
3. Marketing must become more effective - more creative, insightful and accountable.
4. Marketing must become more integrated and more proficient at managing multi-platforms.
5. The marketing supply chain must become more efficient and productive.
6. The marketing supply chain - agencies, media and suppliers - must become more responsive and effective.
7. Marketing leaders must be better highly skilled diverse leaders.
8. Marketing must be indisputably socially responsible.
9. Marketing must be unencumbered by inappropriate legislation or regulation.
10. The marketing discipline must be elevated and respected.

Perhaps it's time for the Marketing Society to dust off its Marketing Manifesto?

Upping your game in social media

Here are the tips and techniques for doing social media well emerging from the opening session at the Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) Masters of Marketing conference, led by Peppercom:

1. Sometimes silence is the best answer to negative conversations. Think about what influence/weight the comments have. Listen to see if the thread of comment continues or begins to die down. Don't reignite it if there is no need.

2. Redirect, rather than go back and forth on the conversation.You don't always have to get involved in the conversation. If the indication is that the threads are getting more and more volatile and are unlikely to correct themselves, try and diffuse the conversation by redirecting it to your company's url where the facts of the matter are clearing displayed.

3. Appoint a Chief Listening Officer. Like Dell and Kodak have, to symbolise the shift from one way to two way.

4. Create social media guidelines for your company. What you CAN do, rather than what you can't do. What language to use, what tone of voice. How to protect your brand while still adopting an open source approach.

5. Keep the conversation going. Don't build expectations and then disappoint. No two week wonder, followed by silence.

6. Develop a digital social media council to break down the silos in your organisations and get everyone who needs to be involved; from Legal and IT to HR and Marcoms to PR and outside agencies.

7. Institute a 'quick request' system for social media to get round compliance issues. A half day response rather than the more usual 4 day. "Four days is four years in the digital landscape."

8. Don't wait until you have a crisis to get involved.. If you haven't been there before this is probably the worst time to start. If you have, and have built up a community around your brand, this is your opportunity to leverage it to counterbalance the negative conversations around you.

9. Put in place a monitoring service and a rapid response programme. Colour code your online reports to make it easy to see what the temperature of the conversations is. Train the right people up to take a brief and respond.

10. Don't let a "22 year old intern loose on your social media strategy just because they're a digital native". Getting the right messages and the right tone of voice is a marketing responsibility.

Economic reality check!

According to Paul Krugman, Op-Ed columnist at the New York Times and Nobel Economic Prize winner, the US economy is going through its worst crisis since the 1930s. And there's little chance of it ending very soon. The Obama stimulus has not succeeded in restoring full employment. There's been a lot of talk but insufficient investment.

The immediate problem is that people don't want to spend. While on an individual basis this might be seen to be a good thing, on a collective basis it can have a bad impact. There's inadequate demand even though there's no problem with supply.

To compensate there's a lot of talk about looking to exports for growth. But Paul remains sceptical. "Who is going to be the customer for this export boom?" he asks. The US, Japan and Europe are all in the same position. Export growth cannot be open to all.

In his view the US's best hope is for "major innovation on the part of the business sector which gets people reinvesting in new equipment."

No wonder 'innovation' featured heavily in most of the business presentations at the Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) conference. And 'growth' was the major topic of the day.

The best and worst examples of 'transmedia.'

Transmedia's the new buzz word for communicating across media. Think paid media, editorial, experiential, communities and social networks, the blogosphere and twittersphere. In the new digital media ecosystem, all these channels interconnect and so must the messages we convey across them.

The penalties of not doing it well can get serious.

Take BP.

The BP PR and marketing team were known to be excellent in social media; they set up an expectation of being open and honest, addressed the good, the bad and the ugly in equal measure. Their ad campaign was great too. But, when oil spilled into the seas around America's Gulf Coast, and their CEO was called to account on global TV, he negated, at a stroke, all their hard work, leaving their reputation fractured. BG Global PR, a parody of the main BP site was more visited than their own. The outcry was palpable.

In the words of a BP marketing executive at the Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) Masters of Marketing conference: "It provided a terrific crash course in how to do transmedia well."
It will take a new CEO to restore the company's damaged reputation. And a centralised approach to transmedia communication! One team, one message, one tone of voice. One agency; Ogilvy.

So who does it well?

Southwest Airlines for one.

They're a service brand using external comms to lead a culture shift. They recognise that people are core to their business proposition and what works for them is a specific type of employee; one that's as passionate about their business as they are. Their "Nuts about Southwest" blog celebrates their internal culture. As well as publishing stories about their people they also post to the blog 99.9% of the external comments made about their company, taking the good with the bad.
It helped them deal with the sensitive issue of Kevin Smith - the guy who was too big to fit into one seat. And in Southwest Airlines the CEO stands by his employees. When a member of his cabin crew staff was assaulted by a drunken passage the fact that the CEO wrote to the passenger and told him he didn't want him flying on his airline any more, copying in his staff member hit the headlines.

Glee, the fictional high school programme with a glee club, do transmedia well too.

Glee started as a programme format on a passive medium - TV. But it quickly spread because the brand owners understood its values and their audience, and picked up on the vibe created by other media formats e.g. American Idol and the Twilight book series. Now you can buy Glee books; including a prequel - what happened before the TV show - and a (ficitional) 'autobiography' of a book signing. The music from the show has been packaged to download on i-tunes. The series is extended with the Glee show tour, where parents as well as teen fans get involved in live events. There's an app for your i-pad and i-phone, which picks up on the trend for karaoke, and allows you to change the pitch of your voice to make it in tune, add harmonies, record and upload your song to the Glee Facebook page. You can even join someone else's song as a performer. And every new platform and brand extension expands the business model and brings new revenue streams. That's joined up transmedia communication!

"Forget viral. Think spreadable."

So said digital media agency Peppercom's Partner and Managing Director Deborah Brown at an afternoon workshop at the Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) annual conference in the US, which proceeded the conference proper.

"Viral is negative; think of a cold - it's something you don't want to catch. Spreadable media is content that people want to share." But in letting them share it, you have to be prepared to let them reinvent it, for their own purposes, and put it in a new context.

Take Susan Boyle. Her successful opening shot at singing on Britain's Got Talent spread around the world like wildfire. But it wasn't just passed on, it was also reinvented. Groups from conservative christians to karaoke reinterpreted her footage to further their causes. She became a symbolic representation of their own messages.

To become spreadable brands need to be able to loosen up; to let go, and go with the flow. It's counterintuitive, but it works, apparently.

When Bob Liodice met the ANA in the USA

Bob Liodice has by all accounts done wonders for the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) in the US.

When he started, who knows how many years ago, there were only 270 or so in the audience at the opening dinner at the ANA Annual Conference to celebrate the Masters of Marketing. This year, the 100th in the ANA's history, there were 1600. It was a sparkling occasion. I sat between marketing representatives from Southern Electric - the first energy company in the US to go into nuclear - and Sally Kennedy, another Brit, and erstwhile President of Cossette in New York. We were hosted by AETN and their country and western cabaret.

It was the usual marketing event - but with a twist. And the twist was in the scale! The Rosen Shingle Creek hotel is not just a hotel - it's a town, more or less. A 230-acres site just off Universal Boulevard boasting the best in golf, tennis, poolside entertainment and restaurants. It's a 10 minute walk from the Bell Desk to the conference reception. Almost like the walk to the furthermost gate at a busy airport.