Digital Digest: Simplify and Repeat

Digital Digest: What Edelman Canada is reading in digital marketing, technology and strategy. Fresh links served up Fridays.

In the mid-1990s, Lego rocketed past its historical business of selling interlocking bricks to open theme parks, television programs and learning labs. The results were dismal, and in 2004, writes The Economist, a new boss took over and brought renewed focus to innovating its old business, rather than inventing new ones. You can now buy Lego Marvel Super Heroes, Lego Star Wars, or Lego Pirates of the Caribbean (and the business is doing better too).

It is tempting to add new and “innovative” processes to manage the rapidly changing digital landscape (see, for instance, this tech reporter’s absolutely crazy reading habits). But the purpose of process isn’t to get it right, but to get it right again and again and again. Successful companies will zero in on what works, and apply that same, simple model to new opportunities. That’s why this week’s edition of Edelman Canada’s Digital Digest encourages readers to simplify and repeat, even (especially) when things get messy. Read more »

Digital Digest: Don’t Just Solve the Problem

Digital Digest: What Edelman Canada is reading in digital marketing, technology and strategy. Fresh links served up Fridays.

Your editor heard a story once about how the architects at OMA – the Rotterdam-based firm famously founded by Rem Koolhaas – do their work. It goes like this: a young architect is partnered with an experienced architect to work on a seemingly impossible project. After a series of coffee-fueled all-nighters they come up with a brilliant solution. The young one sits back and say “we did it, this is great!” The more experienced one reaches for the plans, tears them up, and tosses them on the floor, saying, “we’ve demonstrated that we can solve the problem. Now let’s find the best solution.”

Every now and then it’s important to stop and rethink what you’re doing. Digital strategists as well should revisit the fundamentals of what they do: How is an online community different from an offline one? What is the value of a community to our clients? Why do we gravitate to our peers in the first place? How does a successful community differ from a bad one (see first item)? That’s why this week’s edition of Edelman Canada’s Digital Digest asks readers to revisit their assumptions about online communities, so that they don’t just solve problems but also understand them. Read more »

Digital Digest: Cutty Sark

Digital Digest: What Edelman Canada is reading in digital marketing, technology and strategy. Fresh links served up Fridays.

In the late 19th century, British sea traders on the lucrative China-to-Britain tea run were being outpaced by American boats. So Britain, at the height of its commercial power, launched the Cutty Sark, a sleek cutter that, it was thought, would leave American rivals in its wake. But ultimately the Cutty Sark’s mission proved misguided and expensive: it never won the tea race, the shipyard that built it went bankrupt, and the captain was eaten by sharks.

People, like seagulls, are drawn to shiny objects. Readers will be familiar with the inflated expectations that come with over-hyped technology. But you don’t need fancy technology to do good work. That’s why this week’s edition of Edelman Canada’s Digital Digest encourages readers to remember the Cutty Sark, and nurture a healthy skepticism towards the latest-and-greatest. Read more »

Digital Digest: Super Dimensional Fortress

Digital Digest: What Edelman Canada is reading in digital marketing, technology and strategy. Fresh links served up Fridays.

You’ve probably never heard of Super Dimensional Fortress (SDF), a UNIX-based social network that has been running continuously since 1987. SDF’s interface is text only, without images, video or even a mouse. Nevertheless, with 30,000 computer hobbyists logging in regularly, SDF constitutes “the Internet for people who actually understand how the Internet works.”

Of course, there are Super Dimensional Fortresses everywhere. Instagram is the Internet for photography junkies. Pair is the Internet for couples. RedFlagDeals.com is the Internet for Canadian bargain-hunters. Individually, none of these communities can match Facebook or Twitter for scale, but they don’t necessarily have to. If your company makes beer, engaging a community of beer lovers could make more sense than launching a Facebook program.

That’s why this week’s edition of Edelman Canada’s Digital Digest makes the case for skipping the major social networks altogether, and finding the Super Dimensional Fortress that’s right for your brand. Read more »

Digital Digest: The Real-Time Agency

Digital Digest: What Edelman Canada is reading in digital marketing, technology and strategy. Fresh links served up Fridays.

Two VPs at a prominent agency stride into the boardroom of a major airline and pitch the CMO. Their 15 month campaign targets all the major travel hubs relevant to the brand, kicks off with a 15 minute high-value video segment that ties into a dedicated microsite and engages brand advocates in social media. The unifying idea is to feature the two-person teams in the cockpit of every airplane. Expected potential impressions are in the hundreds of millions. The owlish CMO listens quietly and says, “you misunderstood. We asked for a pilot program.”

Like it or loathe it, many companies are no longer making big bets on blockbuster campaigns, preferring to hedge their limited spend with small ideas that can be rapidly evolved. Call it the Google AdWords approach to marketing: launching a handful of small campaigns lets you test your ideas in a live environment, doubling down on what resonates and killing off what doesn’t perform at all. That’s a new skillset for communicators, which is why this week’s edition of Edelman Canada’s Digital Digest examines how agencies are adopting an agile mindset to generate good ideas, and can bad ones, in real-time. Read more »

Digital Digest: Co-Creating Content

Digital Digest: What Edelman Canada is reading in digital marketing, technology and strategy. Fresh links served up Fridays.

There are two common kinds of social media strategists: those who think the tactics evolve while the fundamentals remain the same, and those who think social media resets the basic tenets of how public relations is practiced. Your editor falls into a third group who think that social media pushes PR practitioners to realize the full potential of their field. To quip, there are now both more relationships and more publics.

Organizations today collaborate in more ways, with more partners, to produce more creative content than ever before. (See, for example, the tie-up between Absolut vodka and Swedish House Mafia at the end of this article.) Where brands could once grab customers’ attention by borrowing a famous smile, this week’s edition of Edelman Canada’s Digital Digest shows how organizations are (co-)creating and (co-)distributing standout content. Read more »

Digital Digest: The Social CEO

Digital Digest: What Edelman Canada is reading in digital marketing, technology and strategy. Fresh links served up Fridays.

Digital communicators “talk a lot about the need for business to become more ‘human,’” writes Edelman Digital SVP Michael Brito (see first item below). But the reality is that brand attitudes won’t change “unless employees within the organization first change their own behaviors, starting from the CEO.”

From communicating a shared vision for social to launching a social media governance model, senior executives have a decisive role to play in driving social adoption across every facet of the organization. That’s why this week’s edition of Edelman Canada’s Digital Digest focuses on what CEOs and senior executives need to know to evolve their whole businesses, not just the marketing and PR functions, for a social world.

- Matthew Hayles, Editor Read more »

Digital Digest: Reaching Your Customer

Digital Digest: Community Managers vs. Analysts

Digital Digest: What Edelman Canada is reading in digital marketing, technology and strategy. Fresh links served up Fridays.

“Everything from disgust at business to the influence of online culture is driving consumers away from bland, boring brands in favor of brands with some personality,” begins Trendwatching.com’s March briefing on brands that show a human side (see fifth item). A personable community manager is your best resource for engaging your audience in memorable ways. But increasingly community managers are expected to be data-wizards as well (see first item).

These are very different skillsets. But can they sit side-by-side in one brain or should they be separate roles? This week’s edition of Edelman Canada’s Digital Digest will help community managers put their analyst hat on. Read more »

Digital Digest: Just Shoot It

Digital Digest: What Edelman Canada is reading in digital marketing, technology and strategy. Fresh links served up Fridays.

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking to a mentorship group of new and experienced PR practitioners, during which one mentor asked what skills were of value to communicators today. Everybody agreed that strong writing ability should be at the top of the list.

Nobody can be faulted for focusing on their strengths, but the most compelling content today doesn’t sit on a page, it moves and shouts on multiple screens. Communicators should treat the ability to produce long-, short-form and interactive video as a trusty side arm in the war for customers’ attention. Show me the person who has written a viral press release and I will take this all back.

We have a long way to go. That’s why this week’s edition of Edelman Canada’s Digital Digest features six videos from all over the world that are either persuasive works in themselves or celebrate work that was made, not penned. Read more »

Digital Digest: Future-Proof Your Social Media Team

Digital Digest: What Edelman Canada is reading in digital marketing, technology and strategy. Fresh links served up Fridays.

Why do some teams struggle to get anything done, while others plan and execute flawless programs? Teams that mesh don’t just happen, each role on a social media team must be carefully chosen to extend the team’s skills and productivity. But as social media evolves (see fifth item) roles and responsibilities must change as well. That means that community managers, social media strategists and CEOs must all learn new skills for connecting with the social customer (see last item). This week, Edelman Canada’s Digital Digest looks at how communicators and marketers are anticipating changing roles and building future-proof social media teams. Read more »

Digital Digest: Social Media Governance

Digital Digest: What Edelman Canada is reading in digital marketing, technology and strategy. Fresh links served up Fridays.

A recent IBM survey of 1,700 Chief Marketing Officers paints a picture of constantly evolving challenges at the top. Today’s CMO must ensure their organizations have the expertise to make the most of channel and device proliferation, consumer co-creators, a big data explosion, and of course social media. “Today’s CMO has a pivotal role in determining how companies react to industry trends,” concludes Edelman Digital SVP Michael Brito.

But two thirds of CMOs feel unprepared for social media in their organization. To evolve their social media strategy, communications and marketing leaders need the support of a social media center of excellence. Implementing a social media governance model – a toolbox of educational resources, guidelines (see fifth item), internal experts and agency partners – is a key tool for CMO’s bringing social media into their organization. That’s why this week’s edition of Edelman Canada’s Digital Digest looks at how organizations are structuring and motivating their social media teams. Read more »

Digital Digest: Your Customer is Everywhere

Digital Digest: What Edelman Canada is reading in digital marketing, technology and strategy. Fresh links served up Fridays.

Communicators and marketers must come to terms with the fact that doing more social means retiring traditional marketing practices that aren’t delivering results, argue three McKinsey consultants (see second item).  While it’s true that many companies should be investing in their social infrastructure and pilot programs, it is not the time to give up on traditional altogether. Rather, the imperative is to find the best marketing mix to reach your customers, and that means investing in some digital and some traditional channels.

Organizations that look to their customers to tell them how, when and where they want to engage will learn that their customers are, in fact, everywhere. That’s why this week’s edition of Edelman Canada’s Digital Digest looks at how smart marketers and communicators are engaging their customers across channels and launching integrated campaigns that bring many different roles under the same umbrella. Read more »

Digital Digest: Six Views of Trust

Digital Digest: What Edelman Canada is reading in digital marketing, technology and strategy. Fresh links served up Fridays.

Yesterday, Edelman’s global CEO flew to Toronto to present the Trust Barometer, our 12th annual survey of global trust in institutions and the people who run them. The Canadian data is remarkable: while trust in government and business remained stable, there has been a reshuffling of the relative importance of different spokesperson roles. CEOs and government officials are now some of the least trusted spokespeople in Canada.

Canada is “one of few countries we surveyed where CEO trust is the lowest,” among a list of spokespeople, Richard Edelman told the Financial Post (see third item). “That’s a warning sign for business.” So do Canadians believe their leadership is failing them? No, but we are seeing a broadening of who we trust. This “big tent” approach – for example, regular employees are credible sources of information about a company – is part of the ongoing shift of authority away from traditional gatekeepers of information. Read more »

Digital Digest: Failed Communities

Digital Digest: What Edelman Canada is reading in digital marketing, technology and strategy. Fresh links served up Fridays.

Nearly three years ago, Mark Hendrickson left his day job to found Plancast, a social network that helps friends share their plans and get together in real life. Unfortunately, user adoption was slow and it never achieved the needed critical mass. Mark’s detailed and loving post-mortem on Plancast (see last item) is a reminder that despite our best intentions communities sometimes fail.

Increasingly communicators and marketers are engaging directly with customers to create passionate communities around their products, services and a shared vision. But as Mark learned, the threat of community failure is never that far away. This week’s edition of Edelman Canada’s Digital Digest examines communities that failed to thrive, or that hurt the brand rather than help it. Read more »