HSM Inspiring Ideas

#WIF10 Meet the WIF Speakers: Seth Godin

On his blog recently, best-selling author, renowned speaker and agent of change Seth Godin rued the emptiness of most writing. Given his 11 best-sellers including Purple Cow, All Marketers Are Liars, Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us and his latest, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?, not to mention his blog, the most popular marketing blog in the world, you have to figure he's someone with something to say. That's why we're excited to welcome Seth to WIF 2010, where he will discuss a broad range of subject relating to marketing innovation and remind us that there is nothing like tough times for refocusing your marketing efforts. Business Week 's "Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age," will also touch on the Internet as an enabler rather than a destination; redefining the e-funnel: how different consumers want to be treated differently; leadership as a form of marketing and today's top secrets of marketing innvation (and the crucial drivers).

For a sense of what Godin thinks about an innovation that has already gone mainstream, check out his 2008 post on micro-blogging, You Will Be Misunderstood.

#WIF10 Meet the WIF Speakers: Andreas Weigend--Viva La (Social Data) Revolution

The tidal wave of consumers shopping, communicating and sharing information online has turned the world of marketing, quite literally, upside-down. Andreas Weigend has not only chronicled its occurrence, he has shaped how companies use to their ultimate benefit the massive amounts of data left by web surfers. As Chief Scientist at Amazon.com until 2004, Weigend has been at the forefront of the social data revolution since the first shot was fired.

What is the social data revolution? It is the shift from a bricks and mortar, and even Web 1.0, world in which companies accumulate data about their customers intrusively, often accidentally, to an online world in which customers and potential customers openly and willingly leave and share data about themselves, whether on company websites where they have purchased products (C2B), with peers, i.e. other customers (C2C) or, ultimately, with the world (C2W) via social media websites like Facebook and Twitter. Marketing in a Web 2.0 world means finding ways to understand this paradigm shift in consumer behavior and to take advantage of transformative ways to connect with their customers who are now, because of their ability to access the data left by others, in the driver’s seat of any given transaction.

Weigend, who currently teaches the graduate course Data Mining and Electronic Commerce at Stanford University, proclaims this the “Data Century.” He will discuss "The New Data Revolution and its Impact on Marketing Strategy" on June 8 at the World Innovation Forum. He sat down recently for an exclusive interview with HSM to offer insights into how our behavior and expectations are being shaped by the web, and what businesses both on and offline should be doing to survive and thrive in this revolutionary new era.  

Kevin Roberts: Lovemarks, Scientifically Proven

From left to right: Michael Samak, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Germany; Johannes Mühl, University of Mannheim


I've never been much of a research guy. For me inspiration and big ideas are driven more by emotion than page 24 of a research paper. But while I give academics a hard time, their research offers important steps to confirm, validate, disprove, or discover new and better ways of seeing and doing.

So I am very pleased to announce that the Lovemarks proposition has been further validated by a researcher at the leading business school University of Mannheim, Germany. Johannes Mühl, a graduate of Business Administration, contended that Lovemarks is a powerful model - but also not rigorously formulated from a scientific viewpoint. No surprise given that I was booted from school at age 16, and had a 30-year career in the cut and thrust of person-to-person selling everything from shampoo to beer (products separated by about 2 inches).

In his research Mühl studied the relationships created by Lovemarks, examined various hypotheses, and concluded that both core tenets of Lovemarks – brand respect and brand love – are empirically confirmed. He shows how brand love is created, and substantiated, by what he terms “brand passion”, “brand intimacy” and “brand commitment”.

For his work Johannes Mühl was awarded the Saatchi & Saatchi Lovemarks Award for “extraordinary scientific studies”. His work adds to the body of research that has affirmed the Lovemarks thesis along with a bunch of metrics that measure the “path to love”. In 2002 I challenged the world research industry at their annual conference to address ways of effectively measuring human emotion. Peter Cooper and John Pawle from QiQ International in London responded to the challenge and developed a model for measuring emotion that led to a full study validating the Love/Respect Model. Today we utilize AMR Research in London to undertake of Saatchi & Saatchi’s Lovemarks research and measurement, and they have built up a significant database across many brands and industry – nearly 300 research studies in 42 countries, 2000 brands over 60 product categories.

My instinct has always been that a brand that is “loved” rather than merely “liked” will attract higher sales, margin, and preference, which is what every marketer in the wants. Johannes Mühl from the University of Mannheim has just added his considerable intellectual weight to my belief, and for this he has our appreciation.

Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, The Lovemarks Company and is a featured speaker at the 2009 World Business Forum.

He is leading the exclusive HSM Webinar "Lovemarks: Creating Loyalty Beyond Recession featuring Kevin Roberts" on Friday September 18, 2009. For more information and to register for this HSM Webinar, visit: www.hsmwebinars.com/KevinRoberts or click here.

To read more from Kevin Roberts, visit his blog at www.krconnect.blogspot.com

 

The next train leaves from all platforms

 
Kevin Roberts is CEO worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, The Lovemarks Company, and a featured speaker at the 2009 World Business Forum.

The next train leaves from all platforms

Kevin Roberts on why "digital" is a technology, not a medium.

Years ago, when businesses were just starting to use the Web to connect with consumers, I remember wondering if the digital could ever be emotional. Would a Web page ever offer the same emotional impact as a movie, a TVC, or a book? Back then, the Web seemed functional, visually unengaging, and obsessed with detail. Those were the days when an animated banner ad seemed revolutionary! How things change. While the purpose of most Web pages is still to deliver information, the way they do it is becoming increasingly more sisomo (the powerful combination of Sight, Sound, and Motion) and interactive. Last year I could even talk about the emotional Internet and this year we have seen it come into full flower with the Susan Boyle phenomenon. The 110 million YouTube hits on her first breakthrough performance were driven by the pure emotions of surprise, delight, and joy.

The big lesson is that digital is a technology, not a medium. All the various manifestations – email, Web pages, video streaming, Twitter – draw from the same digital source. It’s the same relationship an architectural drawing, a self-portrait, and a handwritten poem have with a pencil. This is an important idea because it helps us to think about all these different digital communications as part of a whole that can be combined in many different ways rather than as a set of unique ideas. Even more, it helps us turn holistic inside out. Instead of the idea of holistic making us as marketers the orchestrators of media of many kinds, we have to start thinking about holistic as describing the experiences of viewers, users, players, and consumers.

There are signs of this major mind shift in some great campaigns. Two terrific examples have been for T-Mobile in the U.K. Not too long ago, the idea of getting a bunch of people to dance in Liverpool Street Station or to sing in Trafalgar Square would have inspired a television commercial. Set ups on this scale cost money, and B.D. (Before "Dance") the only way to justify the cost was TV. Television remains hugely powerful because it is mass but with "Dance", Saatchi & Saatchi used mass with agility. "Dance" and "Sing Along" on TV primed the pump rather than served as the main event. The TV exposure was small but the impact was huge because people chose to get involved. They shared, they commented, they entertained each other. And where did they do that? On the Internet.

The best news? We have learnt that human behavior is shaping our digital future. That might not seem such a revelation, but for a while there it looked as though technology was setting the pace and for people people (like me), the future didn’t seem a great place to hang out. It’s feeling a lot more fun.

Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, The Lovemarks Company.

To read more from Kevin Roberts, go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com

Learn more about the World Business Forum at www.wbfny.com

Business At Radio City Music Hall

 
Kevin Roberts is CEO worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, The Lovemarks Company, and a featured speaker at the 2009 World Business Forum.

Business At Radio City Music Hall

The global financial catastrophe has hit everyone; government, companies, families and individuals. In the background is the endless expert buzz on whether there’s light ahead, with many economists and media commentators now saying yes there is. Well that’s where I sheer off. Not because I want to be a one-time dismal scientist, but because the economic and social consequences of living beyond our means has still got a long way to ripple. There is no spare money and few job prospects - this will squeeze people and businesses to take a tighter course. We are living through a structural shift, a historic global event that hopefully will have one positive effect; that of shifting capitalism from exclusion to inclusion. This is my hope.

For inspirational leaders, the sorts of threats and challenges prevalent and abounding today drive innovation and transformation.  And growth relies on new ideas, adapted and executed quickly. Ideas can come from anywhere; the thing is to nurture them and execute them. And I’m picking it will be ideas around a sustainable future that will get the full treatment at this year’s World Business Forum at Radio City Music Hall in New York on 6 and 7 October.

The annual forum debates the most pressing issues of the day. It’s produced by HSM, the top management event and content team with whom I have worked in Europe and Latin America. The line up in October will include Gary Hamel, President Bill Clinton, George Lucas, Irene Rosenfeld, Jack Welch, Paul Krugman and Jeffrey Sachs. The topics are for the times, ranging from leadership, innovation and branding to crunch arenas like energy, health… and storytelling.

I’ll be looking at how to create Loyalty Beyond Recession, how to reframe true value for tough times and beyond. Sustainability, or what we’ve called True Blue (take care of the people first and then the planet), is at the core of creating value. To be “good value”, not just good for the world, marks a tipping point for sustainability. Last year 500 new sustainable products were launched in the U.S. This year it’s looking to be 1600. Watch as people reframe value themselves in ways that build sustainability into their everyday choices. The next track to sustainability lies more in changing the value equation and less in talking about changing values.  From Greenwashing to True Blue.  At Radio City Music Hall this year, expect this to be the theme tune.

Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, The Lovemarks Company.

To read more from Kevin Roberts, go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com

Learn more about the World Business Forum at www.wbfny.com