The Mess of Marketing

One thing about great marketing that seems counter-intuitive is that the best is very messy. I don't mean that the ultimate product, message or expression is necessarily a mess, but getting there, especially within the innovation and product development cycles, is ugly.

Take Google, for example. There has been a cascade of news reports (I have read mostly through the Wall Street Journal, myself) about the fits and starts of Google's own brand and feature extensions. Last week they pulled the plug on Wave. A week before, they were developing a Facebook alternative. I've already written about Google Buzz. There's Google TV. Google Android phone OS. The chart below (which I found through Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim), shows a seven year arc of development, succession and abandonment in just the social media sphere (thanks to Mashable.com). Google tries a lot.

I know that many users and observers have significant complaints about Google, and I have my own issues, but you can't fault their intention to be leaders and innovators. And that leaves a fair amount of debris in their wake. This is the essence of my comment about messiness.

A total commitment to innovation requires a rapid sequence of trial. Think, develop, test, introduce, evaluate, improve or abandon. The great innovators (Edison, IBM, GE, Apple) know that "getting it right" means a huge amount of "getting it wrong."

What are you doing in your firm to accelerate the cycle of trial?

New Spice for My Social World

The social media I travel in for my day job, the legal industry, has been buzzing for the last few days with a change that could be a fundamental shift in strategy for many of us. And I'm not talking about "Old Spice Guy", although many have been across the blogsphere: here, here, here and here, for instance. BTW, congrats to Wieden and Kennedy for their creativity!

No, I'm referring to the introduction into LinkedIn.com of the JDSupra.com channel for "Legal Updates", now available as a tool to any LinkedIn user. Here's the news release. From my standpoint, it addresses almost all the issues I've had with other online publishers.

First, because of the prominence of LinkedIn and its growing membership in the legal business (an estimated one million lawyers among it's 75 million members), activity in LinkedIn gets picked up by the main professional organization in the US, the American Bar Association. That distribution is additional to the large LinkedIn and JDSupra audiences notified of the news. And the channel we support in JDSupra gets all of its content carried in the sections of Legal Updates, thereby assisting me with distribution in LinkedIn, which was, until last week, restricted manual input previously to the groups and contacts for the lawyers in our firm.

Second, because it is a tool available to anyone in LinkedIn, we get around the subscription model of sites like Mondaq and their brethren. JDSupra makes the content more like passing a news article around the office, a contact or friend just shows up with it or emails it to you. In LinkedIn, you'll get an updates message about your contacts every so often, and they will have subscribed to the Legal Updates. The tool makes it easy to distribute specific articles to specific contacts, but the whole stream is visible on your profile.

No need to describe the system, it's pretty easy to use and my friend Jayne Navarre has a wonderful outline of its benefits and a case study on the Virtual Marketing Officer blog. But I think the social utility world has just changed permanently for the legal business.

Do you agree?

Hey, Verizon Wireless: Can You Hear Me Now?

Verizon Wireless puts up some clever commercials and spends a ton to get noticed. Just how long did it take the 2002 "Can You Hear Me Now?" campaign to become integrated into the popular lexicon? A year? Two? It's ubiquitous now.

Hey, I'm a Verizon Wireless customer, even. In fact, I have the Verizon total communication package: HTC Android phone on the Wireless side, FIOS TV/internet/phone number on the home side, VW blackberry on the work side. Verizon wall to wall.

Even used to own some Verizon stock. Sold it a while back out of frustration: the communication giant has no idea how to communicate with its customer base. Strong technical chops. Powerful ad creative and media buys. Stellar customer service for customers, if you're willing to use the automated phone system or Web site. Want to let the company know you're bring treated poorly by customer service or see an error in their processes? Take a hike.

There is no choice on the Contact Us pages to lodge a complaint or send a suggestion. There is no email address to petition, no phone number to call. The marketing message is crystal clear: If your need doesn't fit into the technical support for an existing service or the selection of a new one, they simply have no reason to listen to you.

And the evidence of their cluelessness and disdain is actually being send to their customers regularly. Take the Android upgrade I ranted about in my last post. This took effect in May and the rollout was completed May 16. Then, on July 16, at my Verizon.net email address, this message arrives:


Hey, Verizon. Been there, done that.

So, what's the progressive marketing angle? Just this: the fundamentals still count. Communication must be two-way. Marketing may send the message through mass and online media channels that Verizon Wireless has the service array and customer support everyone needs. But it also must offer their audiences a feedback channel to monitor how the company is actually delivering their promises and have the opportunity to benefit from their mistakes.

Communication => Feedback => Restatement => Feedback.

Recognize that? Public Relations 101.

Now, to give some credit where it's due, my wife recently upgraded her wireless phone and actually got a call post-purchase to ask if things were going well. She received information at the sales desk that cause her to look into a possible discount on wireless service. When she made that call, the rep let her know that the FIOS side was running a special deal on premium channels on the TV for three months. Now, that's what I'm talking about!!

And a week later, they sent me a notice on an upgrade that was two months ago. Sheesh.

How Facebook Made My Phone Less Useful

Last year, at upgrade time on my Verizon Wireless account, I bought the HTC ERIS Android phone (full disclosure: uses the Google Android OS, and this blog is on Blogger, a Google site). Neat little handheld computer. Problem is it's not a great phone. Don't get me started.

Even so, as I used one of its features to indicate my favorite connections from my contact list, it populated a widget with the names and photos of these people. On each one I could assign a default action. Plus, by providing my Facebook identity for another Android feature, the widget would search my Facebook friends and, if one of my favorites was there, would retreive their profile picture from the Facebook page. Sw-ee-t!

About two months ago, HTC put out an upgrade for the Android system, going from OS 1.x to 2.1. Among the many changes it implemented was the erasure of all the favorites in the widget. As I patiently revisited each connection, I noticed that the Facebook pix were not appearing. I reset my account data. Still no pix. In fact, many of the Facebook-accessing features had been eliminated. Curious, but I erroneously blamed the HTC Android update.

Then, last week, I read on Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim about Facebook blocking a recent Twitter tool. The item details a lawsuit that reveals Facebook's assertion that its terms of service have the force of law by defining data access to individual accounts by third-party applications.

This is not the place to argue the relative merits of Facebook's terms, that's being done many other places, including at the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. (I touched on it over a year ago here.) However, this much is clear to me: Facebook has made my phone less useful by blocking the software program I was using to link to information about my closest connections.

From the marketing perspective, this seems counter-intuitive. It's pretty obvious that much of the value of the internet and wireless networks over the last decade has been in driving out obstacles to the sharing of information. In fact, it can be argued that the fluidity of the information system is one of the prevailing forces behind greater business and personal productivity, which has been a significant and positive economic influence during the past two years of recession.

Now comes Facebook, with global domination aspirations (see Peter Shankman's comment below), damming up the information flow as a business model. Could be that they intend to introduce their own Android app and want to protect that market space. However, because the gates are closing even to worldwide networks like Twitter, there is little doubt to Facebook's ultimate intention to own and control every bit of your life and social behavior inside its electronic walls. Beware of the illusion of transparency that Facebook attempts to hold out as a benefit. They're rapidly displaying the type of tyranny that steals your identity and sells it off to the highest bidders.

A Shrinking Social Landscape?

The Wall Street Journal today covered the throw off of Bebo by AOL, a capitulation to the accelerating consolidation of the online social space (which I comment on here). Soon, there may just be one online social network, and it's name will be Facebook, according to Peter Shankman, founder of Help A Reporter Out ("HARO"). Peter, whose wit and candor is legendary, pointed out the other night that both the time and effort necessary to thread together the various parts and passions in one's life and the need for immediate and viral viewing and sharing of all things personal demand the utility reside in a single interface. Facebook is the only one with the momentum and scale to accomplish this, according to his view, at least in the English-speaking world.

It was my privilege to serve on a panel with Peter and Spencer Baretz of Hellerman Baretz Communications this week in New York for the Law Firm Media Professionals (see below). Frankly, I don't know why I was invited to this party, except for the fact that I happen to work for a law firm that has embraced social media at the core of its marketing and business development campaigns. I possess neither the irrefutable creative experience of Mr. Baretz nor the dynamic vision of Mr. Shankman.

My hat's off to both of them. We know where Peter stands. If you had to confine your online social networking activity to a single channel, would it be Facebook? Why? Why not?

Hey, Big Apple.

Thanks to Joshua Peck and the Law Firm Media Professionals, I'll be in New York City briefly tomorrow and Wednesday talking about the online social media plan at my employer, Sands Anderson PC.

I've covered a bit of this information before (here and here) and will be on the panel with Peter Shankman and John Hellerman (or a stand-in, if John's a third-time daddy). Concentrating on actual activity and value for reaching media contacts and other stakeholders, we will try to throw a little more light on the fast-developing strategies and ever-changing landscape for lawyers among the online social utilities. Maybe I'll see you there.

The official word:

The LFMP event is from 7-9pm in New York featuring social media panelists Peter Shankman of Help A Reporter Out (HARO), L. Russell Lawson of Sands Anderson, and John Hellerman of Hellerman Baretz Communications LLC.

When: Tuesday, June 15th , 2010, 7-9 pm

Where: Paul Weiss, at 1285 Sixth Avenue (at 51st Street in the UBS Building).

Note: The Sixth Ave. entrance closes at 6 PM, so enter on 51st St. adjacent to Heartland Brewery. Take the escalator to lower level, there will be someone there to greet you.

Thanks again to Paul Weiss, and Madelaine Miller and Rebeccca Lojo for hosting us.

Great Jakes. Great Scott!

The Daily Planet's Perry White used to exclaim "Great Scott!" whenever he was surprised or amazed, by Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Superman. I was amazed while talking to Robert Algeri of Great Jakes yesterday.

#1: Robert had called to ask me my opinion of a new idea in Web sites that his company was starting to introduce. He had listened in to my Twitter stream, looked at my LinkedIn profile, checked out the blog, seen what I was up to at my law firm. Made him think well of me. Reputation development through social media. Amazing.

#2: Robert's company has reimagined the legal Web site at the most personal level: the reputation of the lawyer. What does a visitor want to know about a lawyer, what are the characteristics of experience and skill that persuade action for further communication, what are the conversation starters? Some commonalities? Yes. Some unique identifiers? Yes. How can these be organized for complete transparency and customization? Great Jakes calls it the Rainmaker Focused Web site. Amazing.

In truth, there's nothing you can do to the facts of a lawyer's background that has not already been done. Cases, articles, testimonials, social media, yadda, yadda. Here is the Great Jakes breakthrough: every lawyer can assume the rainmaker mantle. Because the styling of the Great Jakes site allows for every part of a lawyer's reputational array, whether deep and bet-the-company, or niched and long tail, to be conveniently accessed and effectively displayed.

No more "my resume trumps your resume" battles on length and complexity. Each lawyer becomes their own Web site, in essence. And each can display what makes them unique, without compromising the brand message of the overall Web appearance of the firm.

Great scott! What would your lawyers say to their own Web site?