Author: Mark Di Somma

Reaching the social consumer

By Mark Di Somma

New media guru Brian Solis has filed this excellent article on what some are predicting to be branding’s next key customer: the social consumer. Based on research from attendees at The Pivot Conference, there are a number of key out-takes: Social media has a strong in-house bias and is the biggest responsibility for marketing/advertising teams. But while marketing dominates social media responsibility right now, Solis’ view is that “social media will extend the capacity of any business unit or division affected by outside behavio[u]r.” So expect to see social media making its presence felt in PR, sales, customer service, even investor relations … If Solis is right – and there’s no reason to doubt him – that means companies will need to hard-wire social media into their lead and sales generation processes and into their customer and stakeholder response systems. My view is that some functions will find this easier than others. The significant benefits of course are timeliness and efficiency. But based on research I’ve seen in the investor relations’ space for example, this …

Stars and scandals

By Mark Di Somma

I’m not a huge one for the ins and outs, behaviours and otherwise of the fashion world (preferring to leave such pursuits in the experienced hands of friends like Jack), but I did take some note of the recent John Galliano scandal because it highlights the risk that brands take when they associate themselves so closely with an individual who is a brand in their own right. It’s not always bad of course. Steve Jobs turned up for the iPad2 launch, and everyone took heart. The stock price even went up. And in fashion, most would agree I think that designers like Marc Jacobs and Karl Lagerfield have done wonders for the brands they are associated with. Galliano too up until this point. But how quickly, and dramatically, things can change. Almost every brand today it seems is just one YouTube clip away from a crisis. And when things go wrong in this kind of situation, there is fallout on three levels: the individual’s brand suffers; the employer’s brand suffers; and the halo effect that …

Cult branding: Developing a scarcity strategy

By Mark Di Somma

In a world dominated it seems by the push for scale and mass coverage, it’s easy to forget that sometimes the smartest thing you can do is the polar opposite: develop a deliberately limited edition brand that shuns the mainstream. I’ve written about this a number of times – here’s an example – and coined the phrase cultrepreneurs to describe those enterprising individuals who have chosen to create and market brands with cult status. As this story about Julian Van Winkle and his Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery shows, there is nothing accidental about why his aged bourbon attracts a fervent following. I really liked the owner’s description of ‘a strategy of scarcity’. Here are just some of the ways Van Winkle builds cult status: The company deliberately stymies supply in order to raise cachet and lift returns. It’s one of the great ironies of cults that, beyond what you need to be viable, sometimes the less you produce, the more you make. As Van Winkle says he could unload two or three times what …

Lessons from Wikileaks

By Mark Di Somma

What’s Wikileaks really selling us? Access to information we deserve to see or the chance to participate in something that piques our curiosity? How many people have actually read the Wikileaks files – and at the end of the day, does it actually matter? Is Wikileaks important for what it says, what we’re told it says or what it claims to represent? Julian Assange has done a masterful job of linking his ‘product’ to some powerful and highly emotive causes: freedom of speech; censorship; government secrets, and of course persecution of the individual by the state. Big causes; global causes; causes that attract a committed audience; causes that broaden and deepen the Wikileaks’ brand story. In the process, of course, the brand has deftly snookered the authorities. If governments don’t express outrage at what Wikileaks has done, then they may encourage other persons with access to such files to release more leaks. If they do condemn the brand’s actions, that merely strengthens Wikileaks’ brand story as the modern day Robin Hood of free speech. In …

Rediscovering trust

By Mark Di Somma

While the officials, scientists and insurers in Christchurch start the interminable discussions over what, when, where, why, how much and who, perhaps the toughest task of all for the authorities doesn’t lie in rebuilding the structures, but rather in bringing back the very human aspect of trust. With time, patience and enough goodwill and funding, government, insurers, investors and the private sector can restore order, power, water, services, homes, the CBD, everything that has been physically lost and damaged. But what the hell is it going to take for faith to return?

Out-thinking the recession

By Mark Di Somma

When everyone’s in sale, no-one is. It simply means the market has reset the prices that consumers expect to pay. So I was interested in this interview with retail specialist Jim Lucas of Draft FCB about how businesses should approach recessive times. Here are my key out-takes from his interview: The lack of decline in small luxuries such as skincare and animal treats is a clear sign that shoppers will hold on to a handful of indulgences in their everyday lives just to feel normal. The secret is to scan for those opportunities in their changing behaviours. Rather than focus on the big ticket buys, look for little pleasures. Lucas says marketing is about trying to change behaviour, and a recession is a strong backdrop for that. “’You need to think of creating behaviours or new forms of regimen or rituals or routines that are going to fit into this new era.” That means, for example, calling for smaller actions: paint a wall, rather than repaint the house. Continued discounting will simply make some categories …

Four hard yards

By Mark Di Somma

Sitting in the lounge waiting to board yet another plane, it’s fascinating how many people are busy. Laptops open everywhere, conversations on smartphones everywhere (at various levels of discretion). No-one wants to miss a minute. And yet today Borders tanked, and local book chain Whitcoulls announced it’s in schtum … I wonder how many of their senior people are at work right now still believing that hard work alone will get them through … Albert Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting things to change. Somehow, we’ve allowed ourselves to be lulled into the false security of doing. Things will just be fine if we work hard, advertise hard, sell hard. But while all this is happening – while everyone is working hard out – it’s easy to forget the real things that actually put distance between you and circumstances. 1. Look hard – at what’s really happening and ask the hard questions about what that might mean 2. Brand hard – so that you continue to …

What’s your reply?

By Mark Di Somma

“I can’t believe they got that job. We are so much better than them”. We’ve all heard that. Some of us have said it. Here’s the question. Then, why did they get it? If it was price, what did they do to their cost structures to make their price possible? If it was networks, what are they doing or who do they know that you don’t? If it was credibility, what makes them a more comfortable choice than you? So many companies respond to a competitor’s wins with excuses. The companies I like are the ones that use every loss as an opportunity to re-evaluate if and how they themselves need to change. Sometimes, decisions are a bit like email. It’s not the message you get that counts. It’s the way you choose to reply.

The real recipe for Coke's success

By Mark Di Somma

So someone’s supposedly discovered the recipe for Coca Cola. What does that mean for the world’s most popular drink? Very little I would have thought. Because the world’s most closely guarded beverage trade secret has already done its job – it has helped build perhaps the most consistently powerful brand in the world. Beyond that, its value as a formula today is questionable. Even if someone did replicate the taste, so what? They still wouldn’t be Coke. Great brands grow beyond the products they marque. They actually come to embody ideas – such as happiness in the case of Coca Cola – that the product reports to, and not the other way round. The New Coke debacle might suggest otherwise to some, but to me that was much more about changing a product that consumers held dear rather than a taste issue. Consumers expressed their apprehension by citing taste, but taste, in my reading of this particular case, was the identifier to the wider fear. What they were really saying is – don’t touch. So …

Ten minutes of Gaga

By Mark Di Somma

If I was a Lady Gaga fan, how would I feel about her claim to have written her latest single in 10 minutes? Would I see that as a sign of her huge creativity? Or would I, on reflection, consider that the return for minutes invested, assuming this is another big hit, is going to make most Wall Street bonuses look relatively modest? A cynic might say if it just took 10 minutes then she didn’t do a lot to make a lot. It didn’t take 10 minutes of course. It took all the experience that Gaga brought up to that moment, and all the subsequent time it took, both hers and for everyone else involved – to get the ideas in the song expressed, captured, edited, packaged, marketed and distributed; time probably better expressed in at least months. So the key value metric here is misleading; it’s not actually time to create (the idea), it’s time to market (the final result). By drawing attention to the 10 minutes, Gaga has framed the product in …