Last night some of us attended a Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association event on “digital reputation management.” (Let’s be honest—when you’re on the board of directors of MIMA, and you co-chair the programming committee, you’re somewhat required to attend.) It was a great panel discussion, moderated by Greg Swan, Digital Strategy Manager from Weber Shandwick; with panelists Tammy Lee Stanoch, VP Corporate Communications from the newly merged NWA and Delta Airlines; Lela Phommasouvanh, Senior Consultant, Search Marketing from FindLaw, a Thompson Reuters Business and Steve Bendt, Social Technology Activist, from Best Buy, Inc. 

Lots of useful insights here on tools for monitoring your name, brand and competition as well as insights in how to engage with internal and external audiences. We had great candor and transparency from the panel, with unvarnished stories from NWA and Best Buy detailing how they dealt with issues around reputation management online. Greg Swan’s new post on moderating the panel is especially insightful. 

The video’s about an hour long, I believe. But well worth it.

[This post was contributed by our friend Matt Lindley, a digital consultant and former head of interactive at Arnold Worldwide in Boston.]

Time to rethink the holy trinity of TV, Radio, Newspaper?

The Three Stooges, the Three Musketeers, the Three-peat; a Priest, a Rabbi and the Easter Bunny; and of course, the venerable bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.

The rule of threes. It’s an age-old organizing principle. Even ad folks have a holy trinity: Print, Radio and TV.

The premise was/is simple enough. Any comprehensive advertising ‘campaign’ should include all three major media types. The idea is to repeat and reinforce messaging across these mediums so you’re everywhere the consumer might be. First touch could be the TV ad, second the morning paper, third the radio spot in drive time. Works backwards or forwards and has served nobly for 50 years.

The problem is customer behavior has changed (duh) and the triad of TV, radio and print has not (double duh).

The obvious question: Can we re-master the triad? Can we to give brands a new trilateral paradigm so that dollars can flow confidently again?

I think yes.

Consider a new triad suggested by a colleague of mine, Stephen Randall, Symbian co-Founder and current CEO of LocaModa. He thinks Print, Radio and TV are being pushed sideways by:

Internet
Mobile and
Digital out-of-home/Location-based digital signage

Here’s why. Consumers are finding their own way to media at their own speed and on the device(s) of their own choosing. Further, they’re snacking on, and participating in media based on mood, location and available free time. So predictable patterns and subsequent efforts to wrap these patterns in sponsored messaging are difficult at best.

Now consider the channels best suited to support this behavior.

1. The Internet. It’s the foundation and core of the new triad. It is, as TV was in the 50s, our universal touch point.  However, the ‘gee whiz,’ universally shared experience is no longer about what Johnny Carson or Seinfeld did last night—it’s about what we as individuals find, access or take part in online, whenever we chose to do so—then share with our friends. In essence, the singular great moment where we all come together has been replaced by a billion moments shared via the Internet between individuals.

2. Mobile. The pocket-sized device that connects us. Voice is certainly the killer app, but the expectation of instant access makes mobile part of the triad. Need an answer? Use the phone. Upload a picture to the web? Use the phone. All instant. And all actions that bring us closer to what interests us, when and how we choose.

Locamoda's mobile-driven digital sign in Times Square

3. Digital out-of-home/Location-based digital signage. It’s the newest member of the trio but catching on fast. Why? Because it delivers content in context. Consider a beer ad on a network in a bar. Imagine how much more sense for both consumers and advertisers it makes. Now connect those signs via IP, so they can communicate back and forth to the web, and make them mobile phone addressable and the circle is complete—fully trackable and measurable consumer interactions.

Seems the future is faster, more frenetic, more responsive. Frequently random and impulsive. Yet completely networked.  Bet on the media vehicles that can deliver the same without snapping in two. The web, mobile and digital out-of-home will give us a new triangle we can trust.

I’m beginning to think we’ve reached a point where advertising as it is currently practiced has become an exercise in futility—not unlike some aspects of the current credit crisis and the bailouts. Is there an apt metaphor in the unraveling credit markets to describe what’s happening in advertising? Let’s see.

Herman Daly, an economist and professor at the School of Public Policy of University of Maryland, College Park and former Senior Economist in the Environment Department of the World Bank describes part of the reason for the credit crisis as a disconnect between financial assets and real assets.

“Financial assets have grown by a large multiple of the real economy—paper exchanging for paper is now 20 times greater than exchanges of paper for real commodities. It should be no surprise that the relative value of the vastly more abundant financial assets has fallen in terms of real assets. Real wealth is concrete; financial assets are abstractions.”

This isn’t to say financial assets or tools are bad. But perhaps too many of them can be. And the underlying culprit—the driving force behind too many abstract financial assets (credit default swaps, anyone?)—is growth. As in “more.” As in, “make the logo bigger.”

Has growth become an enemy of effective advertising?

In a different presentation titled Towards A Steady-State Economy, professor Daly argues, ”Growth is more of the same stuff; development is the same amount of better stuff (or at least different stuff).” Put more vividly, ”Growth means pushing more of the same food through an ever larger digestive tract; development means eating better food and digesting it more thoroughly,” said Daly.

We have reached a saturation point here in the U.S. where more messaging growth doesn’t mean anything more than more advertising. I sense the budget-holders might agree. Noreen O’Leary’s recent piece in Adweek, “Ad Industry Preps for Pain in ‘09,” notes, “Even the quadrennial stimulus of the Olympics and presidential election couldn’t boost spending this year in the world’s largest ad market.” 

What’s needed are fewer ads, and greater “development,” which I define as relationships, community and consumer empowerment. As Daly points out, “If economists really believe that the consumer is sovereign then she should be obeyed rather than manipulated, cajoled, badgered, and lied to.” (Anyone hear echoes of Howard Gossage and David Ogilvy?) In other words, let’s cut the growth of blunt messaging and focus (i.e. limit) our persuasive efforts towards developing more robust conversations with our audiences.

Do we have a choice? O’Leary writes, ”The unpredictability of the year ahead could bring the kind of challenges that have never been experienced by the current generation of executives running marketing communications companies.” In other words, seriously fundamental change is afoot. The same tactics, the same strategy focused on growth, simply isn’t going to cut it anymore.

[flickr photo by Jeff Carr, ©2007 CarrPhotography, all rights reserved]

There are tons of marketing books out there. But few can boast a roster of 237 authors. 

Age of Conversation 2: Why Don’t They Get It? (Link to the AOC2 blog here) is a wonderful opus, with over two hundred authors from around the globe contributing one chapter each to one of five core subjects affecting marketing and advertising. We’re proud to be a part of this collaboration.

ACO2 is a follow up to the first Age of Conversation, which brought together over 100 of the world’s leading marketers, writers, thinkers and creative innovators in 2007 for a ground-breaking and unusual publication.

The new book is available here (from Lulu publishing), as hardcover, softcover or download. All proceeds from the sales of the book (less printing and shipping) go to Variety, The Children’s Charity.                 
I chose the subject “business model evolution,” and wrote the chapter, “Models Are People, Too.” In essence, I argued, 

“A business model can’t take action, can’t react, can’t create the next great idea. People, however, can and will do all of the above. If you hire and nurture correctly, the (business) model becomes self-evident.”

There are 236 even better chapters to peruse inside AOC2. 

If you’re looking for a great book to kick start 2009, this is the one to buy. And hey, your contribution goes to a wonderful charity.