Tom Fishburne: Marketoonist

influencer stalking

I doubt there's a marketing plan in the world nowadays without some form of influencer marketing focus.  Reaching influencers is part of every agency pitch. With mainstream media becoming less effective over time and widespread recognition that influencers play a big role in buying decisions, the influencer hunt is on.

The challenge is how to do it right.  How do you identify who is really an influencer?  How do you reach them?  And with everyone else targeting influencers, how do you break through the clutter?

Many brands apply the same heavy-handed approach to influencer marketing that they do with mainstream marketing.  They shout.  

Somehow I ended up on agency influencer lists this last year, and I now receive dozens of emails a week, asking me to write about some piece of news or another. Aside from the fact that these emails are unsolicited, they are usually badly targeted, often lacking any news that is even moderately relevant to what I cover.  The other problem is that they usually arrive in an impersonal press release format with "for immediate release" marked at the top. One recent note was addressed to "Dear <first name> <last name>" because their email mail merge didn't work.

It's a common pitfall to assume that influencer marketing is just the same old marketing, only targeted more finely. If whatever you're trying to share is mediocre from the start, it's simply not going to spread, no matter how loudly you shout it or how many people you put on your shouting list. It doesn't matter if they're influential or not.

One of my favorite (albeit 5-year old) examples of a bootstrapped influencer marketing program is the Stormhoek winery 100 Blogging Dinners in 100 Days, developed by Hugh MacLeod. The winery credits this event for doubling their sales in 12 months. They sent out a free pre-release bottle of wine to any blogger who was interested (with no obligation to write about it), along with a great manifesto about wine and blogging.  It didn't shout.  It started an intriguing conversation and talked to bloggers as people, not as press contacts or direct marketing targets.  

I like this quote from Hugh after the event: "Blogging as a marketing tool is easier when you think of it as a chemical catalyst, not as a hammer and nail."  I think that "chemical catalyst" is a good description of influencer marketing in general too.

managing the brand

In the last two weeks, there’s been a lot of chatter about the role of the "brand manager" and marketing organizations generally, after Jack Neff at Ad Age previewed a Forrester research report in an article called "Why it’s time to do away with the brand manager."

"Managing a brand has always been a slightly odd concept, given that consumers are the real arbiters of brand meaning, and it's become increasingly outmoded in today's two-way world. That's why a new report is going to recommend changing the name "brand manager" to "brand advocate," and fundamentally changing marketer organizations in response to the onset of the digital age."

Denise Lee Yohn picked up this thread in a fascinating post on the CMO’s Dream team and advocated for the role of “brand operator”. David Kiley at BusinessWeek argued for the role of “brand editor” with an interesting story of the McDonalds CMO thinking of its brand as editorial. 

These musings on the role of brand manager inspired this cartoon. The role of "brand manager" implies a certain level of power and control. From inside the marketing ivory tower, it’s easy to see yourself as a puppeteer for the brand. Ultimately, though, it’s the consumers who determine what your brand means. 

Think about Stella Artois. For years, the beer carried an advertising slogan of "Reassuringly Expensive". Yet, in the UK, the common slang nickname for the beer is "wife beater" (because of its high alcohol content). Patrons are even known to order a "wife beater" for short in the pub. Years of marketing position statements and heavy advertising couldn’t shake the nickname that consumers gave the beer. Stella finally dropped the "Reassuringly Expensive" slogan in 2007 and are the in the midst of repositioning themselves, including the launch of a lower strength beer to try to counter the meaning attributed by consumers. 

It’s important to remember that most consumers have probably never even heard the term “brand manager” yet alone think about the brand in the same way that marketers do. 

Rather than draft brand positioning statements in language that has meaning for other marketers, how inspiring it would be to talk in terms than real consumers can understand. Better still, to turn it into a actual two-way conversation with consumers.

At the DO Lectures last month, Duke Stump gave a remarkable talk about creating something he called "bonfire brands." In his first day as CMO at Seventh Generation, he addressed the office and said: 

“I don’t know anything about marketing or branding. Here’s what I do believe. The purpose of what we’re here for is to optimize the resonance and relevance for those we serve. That’s how I hold this whole term of marketing. What’s really going to make us great is if we create a bonfire brand. A brand that people are actually drawn to. Where there’s a conversation. And they’re partaking in your conversation. They’re evangelists for your brand. They’ll defend your brand. They’re also your most ardent critics. It’s a beautiful thing when you can sit around a campfire with those you serve and they can tell you everything that’s great and everything that’s not so great. Instead of holding it as a brand, hold it as a bonfire.”

the target market

 
I'm in San Francisco this week, and was invited by Alice at Clorox to give a talk while I'm in town. My talk is titled "everything I needed to know about innovation, I learned by drawing cartoons" and one of my themes is the importance of finding a niche.

I once heard Mark Addicks, the General Mills CMO, complain that most positioning statements he read were way too broad. He described the target market of these briefs as "woman, age 25 - 49, with a pulse."

By trying to blandly appeal to everyone, you wind up not really appealing to anyone in particular.  Yet, in many companies, "niche" is a dirty word, right up there with "polarizing". Concepts that feel too "niche" can get shelved, because the assumption is that they won't appeal to the mainstream. 

The world doesn't need another blandly appealing mainstream idea. I think the real opportunity is to find a niche and give them something they will walk over hot coals to buy. Even if it's polarizing. Especially if it's polarizing. By giving something truly remarkable to a niche, the idea can still be appealing to a wide audience.  But it needs a niche at the core. The mainstream is not a target market.

When I started drawing cartoons, I talked to a few professional cartoonists, and they all told me that my material was too niche, and I should find something mainstream like parenting and then send my material to newspaper syndicates and hope for the best. I played around with a parenting cartoon for a while and scaled back Brand Camp. And then, someone emailed me that he was really disappointed. He said there were a million parenting cartoons out there, but there was only one brand management cartoon.

So I decided to focus on a niche, and realized there are actually a lot of people in that niche. And there are even more people who may not be in that niche, but still like it.  And, after focusing on a niche for a while, the cartoon somehow managed to grow. Just two weeks ago, the New York Times linked to one of my cartoons as part of a feature on the recession. I don't think that would have happened if I'd only aimed wide at the start.  I'd still be writing to syndicates hoping to get a shot at "the mainstream".

the consumer's dilemma

I took my family camping on a goat's milk farm a few months ago and asked the farmer what he thought about organic farming.  He said that organic foods were a "rich man's luxury".

It got me thinking about the impact of a recession on ethical consumerism.  As consumer's start squeezing their pocketbooks, how will this affect brands with a social mission that also carry a premium?

A friend was visiting from the states last week and mentioned that Target was down, but Wal-Mart was up, which made me wonder how consumers are starting to re-evaluate their shopping lists.  I imagine quite a few are feeling conflicted.

Anyway, I find the "angel on one shoulder, devil on the other" device pretty handy, which I used here too.

focus group divas

Thanks to my friend Clint for sharing the term "focus group diva".  It instantly connected with me, because I've witnessed (and sadly exhibited) this behavior many, many times.  As Clint explained it:

"I earned my 'focus group' diva nickname by having our lunch delivered to the facility from an hour away. The group was in Detroit, and there is a great deli in Ann Arbor that I visit every time I’m in Michigan (it’s called Zingerman’s and the sandwiches rock). The facility offered the menu and I picked it. To the untrained eyes of my co-workers, ordering sandwiches from an hour away seemed kind of silly (they came around on the sandwiches)."

It's funny, the back room of a focus group is really kind of like the marketer's "green room".  Only without smashing the monitor Keith Moon-style.

inside the mind of the consumer

This is on a similar theme as an earlier cartoon I drew in July.  I have to remind myself sometimes that my brand is not the most important thing in a target consumer's life.  I think a lot of brand positioning statements are written as if the consumers are constantly thinking and obsessing about the brand.  When I hear the description, "brand loyalist", I envision a groupie with a logo tattooed on her forehead.

Obviously, even "brand loyalists" have complex lives completely separate from our brands.  As marketers, I think it's good to remember the actual role that we play in consumer's very human lives, and not overstep the significance of a brand of, say, "pickle relish".

I've always like the word, "inconceivable", ever since The Princess Bride.

brand identity crisis

This cartoon idea came mostly from the play on words in the title.  It just cracked me up to think of someone having a crisis with their brand identity.  Marketers tend to write brand positioning statements as if the brand was the single most important thing in the consumer's life.