Author: Mark Di Somma

Shapeshifting how your customers feel

By Mark Di Somma

I was at a speakers’ function once when the conversation turned to those who make the big dollars on the podium. Referring to one particular keynoter who charges around $100K for an address, one of the people in the group observed, “That’s $1700 every minute they’re onstage.” Are they worth it? It would be an interesting exercise wouldn’t it to pause a video of such a presentation every 60 seconds and ask ‘was that worth $1700?’ because I suspect that not every minute is worth the same amount. I suspect there’s some variation of a flight of stairs of value, with relatively little ‘value’ at the beginning while everyone settles in and the speaker introduces themselves, a building and paced period of value-delivery in the middle as they extrapolate a story, and then a sustained and high value end-game where they leave the audience inspired before exiting. Skilled speakers are experts at pacing their presentations to deliver that shape of experience. With so much at stake over such a condensed period of time, they have …

How to create strong signals

By Mark Di Somma

Spotted this article in The Economist on the growing cost of thought leadership. In an escalating battle for top-of-mind, the top consultancy brands it seems are prepared to spend large amounts – up to 5% of gross revenues by one estimate – to produce thinking they then give away for free. The activity shows no sign of slowing down in these recessionary times, with spending on such papers up by 500% according to one estimate, yet ironically the very consultancies that hammer their clients on the need for accountability can ascribe very little hard data – at least publicly – on the return on the investment. So why do it? My sense is that this really is a battle fought around something my friend and colleague Alex calls “strength of signal”. Much of the thinking about that is fairly obvious in a B2C market, but how do you generate ‘strong signals’ in the B2B market where the big consultancies are competing? I subscribe to more than my fair share of such papers. So what follows …

What’s new about what your customers already know?

By Mark Di Somma

Most brands get launch. They understand how to make a splash for a product on a day. But what do you do between splashes? How do you keep front-of-mind? And more importantly, how do you stop the inevitable awareness fade as the ripples from your big splash die away? If you’re Walt Disney, you start introducing shorts between your new features, just to keep up awareness of your most popular and lucrative characters. And you do so knowing that such a cue will reactivate interest and re-kick merchandise sales. Cross-referencing in order to cross-sell. Nothing new in that – except that here it’s happening at a launch. When Disney releases Cars 2 later this month, audiences will be reintroduced to the key characters from Toy Story in a six-minute short. As Albie Hecht observes in this article in BusinessWeek, “It’s a way to extend the characters and the brand without its fans waiting two or three years for a new movie.” There’s a lesson here. It’s tempting for brands to think of their products as …

Reaching the limits of conversation

By Mark Di Somma

Reach is one thing. Notice, and more particularly trust, are quite another. Yesterday Alex gently challenged me over my assertion that six degrees of separation will soon be replaced by six clicks. Her point – and it’s a very important one – is that there is a marked difference in loyalty between degrees and clicks of separation because we generally build stronger bonds face to face than we do online, and the strength of those bonds will extend further into our networks. Six clicks, she believes, is just too many. Alex’s view is that much after two clicks, the network is already so wide and the bonds of engagement so unsupported that people simply drop off our radar. We don’t take it any further. There is a limit to the familiarity we can, and probably choose to, leverage, and it occurs at a much earlier point than in the physical world. In the physical world, knowing someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone is intriguing and …

Would you be a fan?

By Mark Di Somma

What would you do with your company’s mission statement? Would you tweet it?, Brian Solis asks in this article. Just as importantly – would you retweet it? In other words, does it carry enough meaning for you, and is it personal enough to what you strive in life for that you would literally want to put your name to it and circulate it? I love this thought because it’s a great reminder to all of us that purpose isn’t about what you’re told to do, or believe or say. It’s about what you choose to share with others. Or at least it should be. The “BBQ script”, “elevator speech”, “picket fence précis” whatever you want to call it can’t just be a set of words that you roll out on cue. It can’t just be marketing. Not if you really want people to believe you, and therefore the brand you represent. Speaking of belief, let me ask you this. How much of what you talked about, thought about, met over, reviewed, presented, rationalised, advocated, defended, …

9 lessons planking can teach brands

By Mark Di Somma

1. Sometimes, there’s just no way of knowing why something becomes a phenomenon. But momentum is addictive – once an idea takes hold, it assumes a life of its own. After a time, it is because it is. The power of an idea is not in actually in the creation, it’s in the radiation and the subsequent take-up. 2. Remember though that a global idea can still be an idea going nowhere. It can be just one more thing to wile away a moment. The numbers can be impressive, but they don’t always point to something meaningful. A million downloads is often a million free clicks. That’s not the basis for a business model. 3. Life is most powerful, and perhaps becomes most alive, when it is visual. Powerful images move us to laugh, share and try. Give people amazing things to look at, and they will literally stop and do so. 4. Posts are the new fingerprints. Give people a simple but fun way to participate in something, especially one they can easily record …

Every brand must dream

By Mark Di Somma

Positivity comes with benefits if this article on the optimism bias is anything to go by. While, collectively, our view of the future can swing in synch with the news, the budget or the crime stats, a 2007 study found that 76% of respondents were optimistic about the future for their own family. According to the author, “Even if that better future is often an illusion, optimism has clear benefits in the present. Hope keeps our minds at ease, lowers stress and improves physical health.” It gives rise to phenomenon like talk of ‘green shoots’ in the midst of terrible financial depression because, it seems, we are compelled to find them. The take-out for brands is obvious. Clearly, there is merit in espousing a clear and positive view of the way forward. It’s not enough to just inform. Brands need to inspire, because that optimistic prognosis of what lies ahead holds real opportunities in terms of engaging and involving people. It humanises brands. Optimism, I surmise, also aligns directly with our worldview. In other words, …

Waiting for the uplift

By Mark Di Somma

I once had a flatmate who was a pilot. He used to fly these ridiculously small planes in and out of crazy airstrips throughout Papua New Guinea. Every take-off, he used to tell me, was almost literally a leap of faith. You barrelled down a ramshackle runway in the middle of the mountains, literally fell off the end and waited for the winds to pick you up. He used to come home from an assignment, throw his bags on the couch, and announce, “So far, so good”. For some reason, I thought about Simon today as I read this article about the fall of Martha Stewart Omnimedia (MSO). What a long way down. In 2005, Martha Stewart’s publicly listed company was worth north of $1.8 billion. Since then, the stock has plummeted a whopping 88%. Now it looks like it may be up for sale – maybe even revert to private ownership – at a fraction of its peak worth. Sure, they’ve been some contributing factors to that – conviction for Stewart herself and of …

The effect on Oprah?

By Mark Di Somma

We’ve all seen what the Oprah-effect has done for others. Now it will be interesting to see the effect of change on the O-brand itself. By changing the formula, how much does she risk tampering with the magic? Will another talk-show rise to fill the afternoon gap, or will the 40 million O-army decamp and migrate en-masse? Is that even possible? How much do the dynamics of a brand fundamentally change when you quite literally shift the channel in which it is seen?