Create Moments of Engagement

How short and simple can a video be and still be effective?

 

Shorter and simpler than I thought. I was impressed this morning when I logged onto The Wall Street Journal’s Lessons in Leadership series of videos featured on their home page.

 

I watched a 50-second video of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg talk about she sparks creativity. It was ok and I learned something, so I clicked on Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer’s insights as a recovering micromanager — 60 seconds or so. I learned even more from a self-depreciating Mr. Balmer.

 

My observation: As mountains of content threaten to engulf us and our attention span has been beaten down to seconds, nuggets of insights and spoon-size bites of information can break through and create moments of engagement.  

 

A video doesn’t have to boast the production values of an over-the-top 60-second commercial. Packaging and promotion are important, but content is what's critcal. Often the simplest idea can be the most powerful, but as you know, it must be relevant to your audience.

 

I bet there are a lot of ways you can reach your audiences with relevant content—it doesn't have to be long, weighty or expensive to add value.

 

It takes one insight and a few seconds to break through, make someone’s day and boost your brand.

 

Check out Mr. Balmer and several other leadership videos at WSJ and see if you agree: Brevity is the soul of wit.

Today’s books are anything but old school.

Once upon a time a good novel was, as they say in philosophy, a thing in itself, a material object composed of atoms structured into a discrete number of pages. Your involvement with the book was limited to reading, imagining and perhaps discussing it in a book club or, if you happen to be the book’s author, and are quite lucky, on Oprah.

Not anymore.

Witness Personal Effects: Dark Art, a new supernatural thriller that follows art therapist Zach Taylor’s investigation of an accused serial killer who claims to have foreseen, but not caused, his victims’ deaths. Library Journal’s review calls it “the future of modern fiction.”

Created by Jordan Weisman, Dark Art combines the experience of a traditional novel with a multimedia-fueled “out of book” narrative. Clues in the novel, and items that come with the novel, such as ID cards and photos, propel readers into an online experience where they become protagonists themselves.

You can call phone numbers and get a character’s voicemail. Google characters and find them on real websites. Even discover in the art and other printed artifacts inside the book’s cover information and clues about the characters. This makes the reader a participant in the fiction events of the story, and thus more involved.

Of course, this kind of online extension is nothing new in the world of television dramas and reality shows, but it is new in the world of publishing. The dematerialization of information and content is expanding the possibilities of what it means to read and enjoy a book. Something that extends through time and space in a whole new way.

Social Media: A Brief Historical Timeline

9^th century B.C.: The poem now known as the Iliad is shared orally for the first time in ancient Greece. Social media is born.

1895: Nikolai Tesla invents the radio. Big media is born. A century of darkness and plague descends over the planet.

1960: The all-talk radio station format is invented, galvanizing cranky senior citizens everywhere. Sales of checkerboards plummet.

2003: Two American college freshmen want to more widely distribute drunken photos of their friends with obscenities written on their foreheads in Sharpie. Facebook is invented.

2004: With the human imagination finally liberated from the shackles of corporate broadcast media, it takes a mere seven milliseconds for a phony celebrity death rumor to sweep from coast to coast.

2007: Deborah Cullings of Omaha, Nebraska, becomes the first 30-year-old to join Facebook, posting three pictures of her pet labradoodle, Muffin.

2007, exactly 10 minues later: Every Facebook user under 19 closes his or her account.

2008: Remember Second Life? Me neither.

2009: Darryl Vandenberg, a Dallas middle manager, walks into a corporate conference room and utters the sentence, “Sorry I’m late to the meeting, team, but I was on the Twitter and really had to tweet,” and no one laughs. Social media is now an officially accepted form of corporate communication.

What Isn't a Magazine?

If you're a content-based Web site (an online zine, a blog, whatever) and you want to sell ads, you pretty much just click your mouse. You don't have to convince any governing body that you are, in fact, a Web site, fill out paperwork in triplicate, or categorize yourself into someone else's taxonomy.

Not so in the world of printed media, where some very old audit and circulation rules still apply.

Here's an interesting story about a custom publication call MK Bruce/Lee that is so innovative in packaging and design that the Audit Bureau of Circulation -- the Olympian Bureau of Weights and Measures of printed matter -- refuses to classify it as a "magazine." The result: a major ad sales headache.

It seems obvious that magazines -- in order to compete with the Web, the iPhone, Kindle, and content-delivery devices we haven't even dreamed of yet -- are going to have to showcase their tangible packaging and design properties in innovative ways. A magazine, unlike a white plastic Kindle, can surprise you and affect multiple senses, creating a completely different experience every time you pick it up.

So what do you think makes a magazine a magazine?

Create handy shortcut menus on your Windows taskbar

 

This trick works in Windows XP, Vista, and 7 (to my knowledge—it might work in earlier versions, too). I thought this was a newbie tip, but a lot of people come into my office and point to my shortcut folders on my taskbar, wondering how the heck I did it. Here's how.

1. Create one or more folders on your desktop (actually they can go anywhere but the desktop seems to be the easiest way to do this). Give them fairly short names (I use 'Apps' and 'Games').
2. Right click on an empty area of your taskbar, and choose Toolbars > New Toolbar.

   

3. Browse to one of the folders you just created on your desktop and click Select Folder.
4. You can repeat this process as many times as you want.

Now you can start placing shortcuts to all of your frequently used applications & games in your newly-created folders. These shortcuts will automatically show up in your new shortcut menus.

Ahhhh...only nine icons on my desktop. It's a beautiful thing.

You can also add sub-folders (like I did; see my first image above) to further organize your shortcut menus. This keeps your desktop clean and ... let's just face it, takes your nerdiness to the next level.

You Never Owned Your Brand

There may be no faster growing profession than the social media marketing guru. These overly caffeinated, bleach-toothed, wireless-mic-weilding wizards bear a suspicious resemblence to their old-media predecessors in that what they purport to sell (helping you grow your business) doesn’t quite match what they’re actually selling (expensive speaking engagements and $24.99 hardcovers).

Business books typically reach the best-seller list by proclaiming a revolution and inciting mild panic. The line today’s social media marketing gurus are shilling: you no longer own your brand.

Newsflash: you never owned your brand.

Remember when FedEx was called Federal Express? The company rebranded in part to honor the shorthand their customers were already using. The customer has always had a hand on the controls. Your audience was influencing one another’s brand experiences long before Al Gore invented the Internet.

The rise of social media isn’t about losing anything. It’s about gaining — gaining new and more powerful channels to reach your audience, just as your audience gains new and more powerful channels to reach one another. Where “exchanges of influence” once occurred in person or over the phone, they now happen online, right in front of your eyes: transparent, measurable, and (buzzword alert!) actionable.

Time to panic? No way. It’s time to dive in, learn and evolve.

Whether your audience’s media of choice is print, a Twitter feed, or a laser beam, your core belief shouldn’t change: Give your customers the trusted experiences and authentic information they want — useful content to make better decisions — and you’ll get better business results in return.

[Disclosure: FedEx is a long-time and beloved client of Hanley Wood Marketing]

Bing takes the high ground

  Bing. It has a nice ring to it. If Microsoft wanted a name that captured the sound of search, they got pretty close.

 

Speaking of smart marketing, I will say this: When it comes to content, Bing captured the high ground with its position: Bing is touted as a decision engine, not a mere search engine. Don’t we all need a decision engine in our lives? Just the sound of it promises relevant content, and Bing delivers by featuring travel, shopping, health and local categories. Right off the bat, that makes decision-making feel more organized--and relevant.

 

On the Tour Bing page, they spell it out: When it comes to decisions that matter, Bing and decide. Not sure why they didn’t put it on the home page to help users understand how Bing is supposed to be different than Google or Yahoo.

 

Supposed to be different.

 

That’s what will eventually determine Bing’s success, even it’s just the perception of being different. I’m just getting to know Bing, but I found the image Porto, Portugal, on the home page beautiful and compelling. I love traveling and wanted to know more, and you know what? As I moused over the image, a few content gems popped out: “The city is known for its wine, its cuisine and its architecture. Find out what the fuss is all about.” I’m easily persuaded so I decided then and there that Porto was on our short list of must-see places.

Ok, score one for the decision engine, but score two for the power of content. Let me know if you think Bing is living up to its promise and I’ll do the same.

 

By the way, as I’m posting this, Bing’s home page changed to feature a stunning photo of the Great Barrier Reefcomplete with content pop ups. I have to admit, Bing and I are getting a little closer every day. But a couple of experiences do not a relationship make.

Satin and a Bologna Sandwich

 "Mystery guest, will you sign in, please?" Those of you who are of a certain age may remember as I do, glamorous Arlene Francis wearing an evening gown and a black eye mask on the long-running game show What's My Line?

What you may not know is that in 1961, Ms. Francis was another pioneer of branded content. As author of "No Time to Cook," she gave readers a backstage glimpse of her New York apartment as she extolled the convenience of cold cuts for the Schweigert meat companyToday's organically minded families would be aghast by her introduction: "We're the luckiest cooks in world history. Many of our goods are so miraculously processed, pre-prepared and packaged that miracle is the only word to use for them."

Consider the recipe for "Party Babs." It begins: "On four skewers arrange folded slices of pork luncheon meat and salami with maraschino cherries, dried apricots and pineapple chunks."

Impeccably coiffed New York actress promotes bologna? An odd partnership, you might say. For 21st century content marketers in search of a celebrity spokesperson, I'd suggest a more disciplined approach to matchmaking. Make sure your brand and your star look good in the same picture.

Art & Copy

When I first caught wind of this new documentary about the advertising industry, Art & Copy, I was instantly interested in seeing it. Here's the trailer. (I hope the film isn't nearly as self-congratulatory as this, um, advertisement makes it appear.)

 

It appears that the work and ideas of the legendary George Lois are featured prominently in the film. If so, that's probably reason enough to give it a viewing. Look for it at a theater near you.

A lesson in customer service…from an unexpected place

Let me preface this by telling you I'm not a car guy. I can change a tire, check tire pressure, wash the thing, replace wiper blades, fill up my windshield washer fluid, and maybe change my oil. That's about it. When mechanics explain things to me about my car, I usually nod and grunt so as to appear manly. But on the inside I feel more like your typical soccer mom, thinking to myself—Like, what does that mean?—while sipping on my venti low-fat, no-whip, double shot caramel macchiato. Well, maybe not that girly, but you get the idea. I'm not a guy car—in fact, I'd say I find car guys slightly intimidating. I'll admit it.

So when I go to places like Welle Auto Supply, or NAPA Auto Parts, I expect to be a little looked down upon. Do you know what I mean? I'm sure you've come across the IT guy who makes you feel two feet tall for not understanding what a startup script is, or the do-it-yourself guy who scoffs at you because you can't put on a new roof by yourself, or the man's man who grunts his disapproval at you because you don't know the difference between an AK-47 and a .357 magnum. You know the feeling.

So...my point. The other night I had to go into NAPA Auto Parts because my bulb went dead on my left headlight. I approached the guy at the counter, and, the conversation went like this:

Me: "I need a headlamp for a 2005 Mitsubishi Galant."
NAPA guy: "High-beams or low-beams, sir?"
Me: "Low beams," I responded quickly, pleasantly surprised at being called "sir."

At this point he taps around on his computer for a while, and then asks, "Do you know if it has one bulb or two?"

I have no idea, really, and I sheepishly admit it.

"No problem, sir," the guy says. "I'll go check." So he goes outside (it was raining, I might add) and checks for me, and discovers that, yes, it is only one bulb. Not only did the guy save me the hassle of potentially buying the wrong thing, but he also did it without making me feel dumb. I was—again—pleasantly surprised. He then told me to have a great night, and thanked me for shopping at NAPA.

Sometimes it's the little things that make or break a customer or client experience—in the case of the friendly NAPA guy, it was probably no huge deal to him, but it left a big impact on me. I left the store a satisfied customer, and I'll definitely go back—maybe even touting a venti low-fat, no-whip, double shot caramel macchiato.