Marketers are finding it harder and harder to keep tabs on how their brand is used (or abused). With the amount of user-generated content online, it is becoming more and more difficult to protect brands from unfavorable exposure. Like it or not — and whether we initiate it or not — our brands will be involved in many conversations.  With Facebook reaching over 200 million users, and Linked-in growing by 146%  from 2007-2008, there is no doubt your brand will discussed in cyberspace.

The best way to steer the conversation in your favor is to be part of that conversation on a regular basis.

These days, social media must be a part of every marketing plan. Make sure your company is represented on industry related blogs. Conduct webinars on important industry issues, and be very clear about your company’s position on matters that are shaping your industry’s future.  The more you initiate conversation, the stronger your brand becomes.

One way to protect your brand from an OUCH!

Get them off your dog.

Image from The Cool Hunter

Content is still king, but it rules increasingly by committee. The biggest web content provider is now the vast array of users themselves. Whereas once it took resources and expertise to disseminate information online, friendly technologies like blogs, social networks, and real-time communication tools such as Twitter now make it possible for anyone to be a broadcaster. What makes any particular content, communication, or information valuable, however, is the degree to which it is embraced, approved, and shared.

Providing sharable content is already a new fundamental for online marketing. It starts with the notion that branding is as much about expertise as it is about image and message. Ideas and information comprise expertise, and can be offered in a range of formats — text, image, video, even games and widgets and mini-applications — and through a variety of delivery systems. So, it’s no surprise, then, when even the likes of Microsoft gets in on content sharing.

And yet, in this accelerated world of ever-evolving modes of marketing communications, some traditional principles still apply. “It’s all in the execution,” for example, or, put another way, “the devil is in the details.” Embracing new paradigms is not enough. Smart strategy is useless without tight tactics.

Let’s look at a rather instructive example.

Microsoft runs a banner ad on Wired, and right inside the banner is the offer of what appears to be a useful article. Smart strategy: Create expert content, share expert content. And they are apparently making it very easy to get — my initial expectation is that I can download it right from the banner.

Except that I can’t.
I click, and I am redirected away from my intentional location to where Microsoft wants me, which is not where I want me. This is of course the reason that click-through rates are so low.  Not because people aren’t interested in what brands have to offer, but because a banner click means, in the traditional paradigm, a redirect away from where a user wants to be. This remains the behavior of a vast majority of banners, despite the fact that today’s technologies allow for virtually every type of interactive feature a web site could offer right inside the banner itself.

Okay, fine, so they haven’t quite gotten around to putting the download right inside the banner. I assume I will be linked directly to the article.

Foiled again.

Now, at this point, as a user, once I realize I am not being given what I was promised on that click (after already being disappointed that it didn’t come right from the banner in the first place), I’m out of there. I don’t hang around long enough to give these jokers the benefit of my attention to try and figure out how to get what I was promised in the first place. But because, as an online marketing professional, I am now rather amused at how transparently self-serving and cynical their approach is (not to mention clueless), I persist.

“Amusing” turns to “laughable” when after a good 20 seconds or so, I still can’t find the article.

Microsoft’s online advertising concern may well be reporting impressive click-through rates on that banner. But I suspect the rate of “bait and switch” impressions among the clickers is just as high.

Social media is becoming the unlimited universe in which people are exchanging ideas, both profound and moronic.  It is the world people enter through their Internet devices to investigate any interest they might have.  And not related only to purchases, as the web was primarily viewed once upon a time (like, last year).

The web-enabled screen is like the world’s largest accessible library, business conference, tipline, entertainment source, and way to share your life with your friends.  Your browser is rapidly becoming the window through which everything passes.

The question is: What will you do with all the time you used to spend going to stores, libraries, conferences, making phone calls, attending seminars, searching out others who share your interests?

Occasionally, however, unintended associations can occur. The clip is a bit long but stick with it. The payoff is hilarious (despite–or perhaps because of–the serious nature of the programming), and a nice bit of leading-brand schadenfreude.

The fact is that “Moneyball” is no more about Billy Beane than “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire” is about Nero or “The DaVinci Code” is about Jesus Christ.  Major characters, yes.  But not the real focus of the story.

The fact is that the real story of “Moneyball” is captured in its subtitle, “The art of winning an unfair game”.  At its essence, it’s about finding ways to succeed when challenged by circumstances.

To set the scene, “Moneyball” positions baseball as an “unfair game” because Major League Baseball teams, dependent on the size of their market, have vastly different resources (budgets to spend on players’ salaries).  Small market teams like the A’s are constrained to very limited salaries while big market teams like the Yankees can spend almost whatever they want to acquire the best and most expensive players.  How then can any small market team even hope to succeed when faced with this, seemingly overwhelming challenge?

“Moneyball” proposes that it can be done - indeed was done by the A’s under the direction of Billy Beane – by adopting Challenger Brand behavior.

What was this Challenger Brand behavior specifically demonstrated in “Moneyball”?
Out-think rather than out-spend the competition – Much like Challenger Brand marketers, the need to out-think rather than out-spend is not something that small market baseball teams chose to do.  It is something they have to do for they have no alternative.  In an “unfair game”, governed by players with vastly different resources, the only way for under-funded competitors to compete with their more well-funded rivals is to find new ways to win, that is, to out-think them.

Break from the conventions of the category – If there is a theme that runs through almost every page of “Moneyball” it is that the “status quo” of baseball had been doing things the same way for over a century.  No one knows why some of the accepted conventions were done but no one was ready to stop doing them either.  What were they?  I think the most prevalent accepted – but erroneous – baseball convention in “Moneyball” is that something useful could be learned about baseball from watching it.  Therefore, the extensive network of scouts and scouting capabilities fielded by every team.  The book is packed with examples of how the old-school way of scouts evaluating the game and its players was flawed.  The book amply demonstrates that rigorous statistical analysis is a far more valid predictor of baseball success than personal observation.  While this concept has gained some acceptance among MLB executives in the time since “Moneyball” was written, I’m still surprised by the resistance by many in the baseball status quo who reject it.  Just recently I asked two players, one a former all star and the other a current all-star about this idea.  Both were adamant that there is no way to evaluate a player without watching him play extensively.
Of course, in baseball, as in marketing, doing things the same way as everybody else – but with less money to do it – is a sure road to failure.

Become a “thought leader” in your category – The thought that dominates “Moneyball” is that certain – undervalued and therefore less costly – skills had a huge impact on the main objective of baseball, i.e., scoring runs.  By using newly emerging filed of computer-aided statistical analysis, the A’s were able to identify the skills that had the most impact on run production.  More importantly, they were also able to use the statistical analyses to identify the players that had these skills and whose salaries were affordable.  That this approach produced the desired results (the A’s qualified for the playoffs each year despite one of the lowest team salaries in baseball) did not go unnoticed by the other teams.  Today, some of the most successful teams and general managers all subscribe to the “Moneyball” approach of systematic statistical analysis.  If that’s not being a thought leader, I don’t know what is.

One final thought.  The theme of “Moneyball” is that a lack of resources mandated the Challenger Brand Behavior by the A’s.  However, it is apparent that a Challenger Brand approach is more than just something to be pursued when faced with being outspent.  The principles are sound for any team – or marketer – under any circumstances.  If Challenger Brand behavior is effective when being outspent, imagine how well it will work when the resources are sufficient for the task at hand.

Dominant brands protect their position by outspending the competition and maintaining a low-risk mar-com status quo. This is also their Achilles heel. With enough creative courage, smaller brands can fly in under the radar and siphon off significant market share. This is the Challenger Brand.  This is where we live.

Challenger Brands have the vision to flip the rules of their category. They have the determination to craft more effective communications. They have a willingness to take creative risks, and a commitment to develop real and lasting relationships with their customers.

As a Challenger Brand agency, we take responsibility for every thought, feeling, association and expectation the market has about you – everywhere, all the time, regardless of project size. Your brand is an unwritten guarantee of performance. Our job  is to convey this promise in a way that translates into greater demand and higher revenue.

The Challenger Blog will be a repository, a discussion starter, a portfolio and a promise of all the things that make smaller and leaner better and smarter.