Matter/Anti-Matter

Forrester is about to release a new report on “Adaptive Brand Marketing: Rethinking Your Approach to Branding in the Digital Age,” in which it proposes replacing “brand managers” with “brand advocates.” Advertising Age provides a sneak peek at the ‘new 4 Ps of Marketing’ presented in the report: permission, proximity, perception, and participation. Other core elements include: “embracing an expanded role for consumer intelligence, focusing on strategic brand platforms, and empowering a federated organization."

A fervent advocate of marketing as a cross-organizational catalyst for change myself, I wholeheartedly agree with BBH Labs which believes the Forrester report points to a potentially larger opportunity for the discipline: “It’s not just the marketing organization that needs to reorient itself given the now normal digital age, but the company itself should consider how it reorients itself around its marketing organization. In most progressive companies, it is the marketing function that has most quickly and deeply engaged with the new interactive toolkit.”

This view is really becoming a groundswell, and you will be hard pressed to find anyone these days who would deny the profound change social media presents for all customer relations; the new need for openness, agility, and hyper-sociality; as well as the call for “networked” (or “federated,” as Forrester calls it) organizations. David Armano from the Dachis Group (“Social Business Design”), Francois Gossieaux (Beeline Labs), or Charlene Li and her Altimeter Group are just some of the pundits who have very succinctly articulated these themes.

Further reading:

HSM Interview with Amazon’s former Chief Scientist Andreas Weigend on the four P’s of marketing

Ogilvy and Acision white paper on advertising in 2020

Jones and Bonevac: "Should We Be In the Advertising Industry?"

Dave Evans: "Social Business: the New Black" 

John Ellett: "Marketing has changed"

George Potts: "Political Campaigns: The New Paradigm for Marketing Organizations in the Social Media Age"

Rob Rose: "Stop Being a ‘Data Driven’ Marketer"

After participating in a Digital Brand Think Tank in Munich a couple of weeks ago (a lively discussion with 20 marketing executives from Audi, BMW, Google, Continental, and other top-tier brands), I must admit that I’m a bit tired of having to evangelize (or even justify) the value of brands using social media. It is astonishing to me that companies still ask for evidence when the tweet is on the wall. The event showed that there is a new Digital Divide that cuts straight through the ranks of the marketing industry--some executives get the Social Web, some don’t. No one has figured it out yet. Most would admit that they need to catch up and keep learning.

Marc Mielau, head of digital media at the BMW Group, certainly belongs to the former cohort, and at the event in Munich he shared some interesting insights into his company’s much acclaimed online strategy. BMW has long been on the leading edge of marketing innovation and has embraced social media formats early on (remember the hugely successful branded entertainment “The Hire” film series, featuring renowned directors like Wong-Kar Wai?). To me, more than the actual programs, the most remarkable thing about BMW is how the company has managed to establish a culture of marketing innovation. It is much easier to pull off a sporadic viral hit than to build and sustain a proactive and trendsetting digital marketing engine.

Management guru Peter Drucker once wrote, “The business enterprise has two--and only two--basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results: All the rest are ‘costs.’” BMW took this axiom literally and created a “Marketing Innovation” group. Mielau described how the Bavarian carmaker concluded that an innovative brand needed truly innovative marketing and consequently put its money where its mouth is. With the Marketing Innovation department, it installed a function that was freed of any P&L pressure, given a considerable budget, and the mandate and support to experiment with various types of emerging marketing technologies and techniques--occasional failures included. Serving as a sort of marketing R&D, sounding board, incubator, and innovation catalyst, the Marketing Innovation group explores new user behavior trends on the Web and on mobile devices, while at the same time rapidly prototyping tools and campaigns to address them. While not every program has been an immediate or massive success--BMW’s engagement in Second Life, for example, was terminated, albeit in an elegant way--all activities undertaken by the group helped BMW learn by doing and enabled it to be the first mover when new formats eventually became mainstream. This has led to the high ‘social media readiness’ needed to instigate, enhance, or rebut conversations occurring in the echo chamber of BMW’s expansive and influential social graph. The key is that BMW’s short-term social media agility is based on a strong commitment to a long-term vision for its brand.

This very vision would help Vodafone these days, whose “Generation Upload” campaign in Germany has been the subject of much ridicule and scorn from the very Digital Natives it so eagerly (and maybe a little too eagerly) aimed to embrace. The company had obviously studied the social web playbook and thought it was doing all the right things: It created cross-platform social media channels for live-feedback to the campaign’s launch press conference; it put user-generated content at the center of the campaign; and it featured a prominent German blogger as the campaign’s ‘hero.’ However, it made one big mistake: It launched the campaign without backing it up with an actual product offer for the targeted “Generation Upload.” The “medium is the message” approach was simply not enough in this case. Sure, the Gen Y’ers love to converse--but they also appreciate products and rates that meet their needs. Besides that, “Generation Upload” is an unfortunate term that describes user behavior as purely mechanistic when in fact it is not so much characterized by the function of uploading but the desire to share.

And yet: “If you can’t get fired for your marketing campaign, it is not innovative,” marketing author Seth Godin once pointedly said. I’m not sure if any heads were rolling at Vodafone, hopefully not. The company deserves credit for taking a risk and jumping right into the social Web without a safety net. Ultimately, I believe, this strategy will be rewarded by the marketplace. Already, the campaign--notwithstanding all the negative comments--created a lot of buzz. And as they say, there is only one thing worse than negative PR--and that is not being talked about at all. This truism is magnified on the social web. With a long-term commitment and flawless follow-through similar to BMW’s, Vodafone might indeed have made a first step towards transforming its brand.

Marketers, beware! The New Digital Divide is very real--but you may not always know exactly which side you are on.

Forgive this self-serving plug but I think this is worth sharing: My colleague, Frog Design founder and former CEO, Hartmut Esslinger, has written his first book, and it is available in stores now: A Fine Line - How Design Strategies Are Shaping the Future of Business. Part autobiography, part how-to innovation guide, part outlook to the future of design, A Fine Line is "a must-read for designers and business people alike" (Satjiv Chahil, senior vice president, Hewlett-Packard).

A Fine Line offers a step-by-step overview of the innovation process -- from targeting goals to shepherding new products and services to the marketplace -- in order to reveal how to arrive at an authentic human design that connects strongly with consumers. With a unique perspective, rich stories, and a global mindset, Hartmut Esslinger explores business solutions that are environmentally sustainable and contribute to an enduring global economy.

Michael Moritz from Sequoia Capital, in his foreword, said it all: "Hartmut's book contains the ruminations of a man who has devoted his life to the challenge of marrying the aesthetic with the functional while standing firm against the deadening forces of mediocrity. His work shows that taste can triumph, design and production can be soul-mates, and the eye of an individual can shape a product and a company. The idea that finely designed products can change the fate of companies while also becoming our indispensable companions is a message that millions of us owe to Hartmut."

You can find the table of contents, sample chapters, testimonials, and videos on http://www.afinelinebook.com

And here are some excerpts from a video interview with Hartmut:

Several blog posts this week, combined, pinpoint what are arguably the two most influential trajectories for the impact of communication technologies on business these days: from real-time web to real-time business, and from social media to social business design.

Let’s start with the former. Referring to Salesforce.com founder and CEO Marc Benioff and his presentation at the Structure 09 conference in San Francisco last week, DigitalBeat claims that the real-time web is not only shaping the future of all computing but also that of business overall: “In business it’s real-time or it’s no time.” It goes on by quoting Benioff: “Customers (…) expect everything to happen right away— if they update their data, they expect those changes to appear immediately, not an hour or two in the future. (…) Any concept of batch or delay in development or execution, I think, will not be tolerated by customers anymore. (…) Even in development, customers are demanding now that they want to be able to build in that sandbox and deploy immediately, instantly, no delay.”

Sure, you may say, customers always want it faster and cheaper, that’s not news. But the implications Benioff talks about are more profound and affect the way organizations operate and adapt their business models to the new and ever-changing demands of immediacy. Some examples: Zara, the Spanish clothing chain, uses customer feedback to develop new clothes, in near real-time. TCHO, the San Francisco-based chocolatier, relies on continuous flavor development and customer feedback to drive constantly evolving versions of its dark chocolate, with variations emerging as often as every 36 hours. Status updates, embedded news feeds, and Twitter apps have injected some “real-time-ism” into professional online social networks such as LinkedIn and XING, converting them from address books to conversational circles, from networking forums to collaboration platforms. Zappos, the online retailer, successfully combines real-time customer service on Twitter with near-real-time delivery – having established a powerful, dynamic brand before letting its customers decide what business it was actually in. And Skittles, the candy brand, ingeniously replaced its corporate homepage with the 'Interweb,' a collage of real-time social web conversations not by but about Skittles – essentially recreating itself as the first ever real-time brand. All these models show that the news industry’s big conundrum applies to every other business, too: It used to be that there’s nothing more boring that yesterday’s newspaper. Now there’s nothing more boring than today’s. When you relaunch your business model, product, brand identity, web site – it’s already too late. Real-time beats planning to the punch.

Real-time businesses therefore must get rid of long-term strategy plans, product road maps, goals and objectives, and all the other superfluous documents that distract organizations from focusing on their true mission – the here and now. Most of these documents are inward anyway and can be easily replaced with one strong and permanent mission statement (which, if your company culture is intact, does not even need to be verbalized).

Real-time business is inherently social – there is no real-time without social. The more businesses open up their organizations and invite external voices into their inner sanctum, the more real-time they will become. Getting social will help companies gather customer intelligence in real-time and use it to move faster. In the future, real-time businesses may deliver before their customers even articulate their needs. And they will provide immediate value without immediate return, in other words they will over-deliver – free for now but with a material or immaterial return later. What is the inadvertent business model for media might be a fulcrum for companies that manage to achieve a brand premium through customer participation as a part of real-time product development: “building a plane in the air,” together with their customers.

"The process is the product,” as Trendwatching writes in its latest report, in which it also claims that the real-time the web is breeding a new quest for longevity or “Foreverism”: “the new popularity of technology that allows consumers to find, follow, interact and collaborate forever with anyone & anything.” It’s not as paradoxical as it may sound. Living real-time means living in the ongoing – forever. If everything happens in real-time, nothing is ever final and always in permanent beta. Conversely, if everything lasts forever on the Google web (your emails, networks, conversations) and your digital presence is only as good as your latest search results and Twitter updates, you better utter some digital impressions NOW.

And yet, what’s required is a shift in thinking and ultimately a new organizational model that goes beyond feeding the social media beast on the real-time web: “If the big picture is business transformation, it's going to take more than a few tweets to get there,” David Armano writes in his post on ‘social business design,’ and argues that ““Social Businesses are those which are designed from top to bottom as a reflection of the world we all live in online today. A business where everyone is connected and able to contribute but also where the right tools are available to them to do all of this with business intent from the beginning.”

For centuries, organizations have considered it their task to conquer chaos and manage people, now they have to embrace the sudden chaos instigated by unmanageable throngs of instantly and elegantly self-organized individuals. Whether that will lead to the end of organizations remains to be seen; it will definitely lead to the end of organizations as we know them.

There seem to be three (non-mutually exclusive) models for marketers tasked with building brand equity: marketing scarcity, marketing artificial scarcity, or marketing relevance.

Scarcity seems to be at the core of all marketing: an exclusive, unique value that can be reproduced; an original idea replicated for many. That's how markets work, how marketing works. Branding is effective when it keeps the aura of an original idea intact despite its mechanical reproduction. Apple's original idea, for instance, could be described as "technology must be fun and human," and it has not lost an inch of its integrity. That's the trait of a strong brand: the idea remains scarce while its distribution becomes abundant. The scarcity of all branded, manufactured products is of course artificial. If it wasn't, these products wouldn't need to be branded. That's the whole point (and the difference between water and bottled water.)

Some brands have taken this concept a step further by creating a special type of artificial scarcity: "democratic exclusivity." Sounds paradoxical? Well, it is. But it works. Gmail has pioneered it: An (exclusive) invitation-only service that pretty much everyone can get invited to (democratic). As another example, take Apple's strategy with the iPhone app store. It is a closed system (exclusive) but principally open for third parties (democratic). Look at the Kindle that Amazon purportedly shares as an app for other mobile devices. It shows that it's certainly good to have recognizable hardware (exclusive) but the true value lies in the software that you own and that you can use to extend the reach of your brand (democratic). Or Radiohead's pay-as-you-like release of "In Rainbows": Buyers could determine the price (democratic) but the offer only stood for a limited period of time (exclusive). The album - online and physical distribution combined - sold more than Radiohead's previous releases, and the radically democratic way of pricing created a significant amount of brand equity for the band. Democratic exclusivity at its best: artificial scarcity in abundance.

The third and perhaps most game-changing model for marketers is selling relevance rather than scarcity. Jeff Jarvis points to Digg's new advertising system that enables users to vote on ads. Techcrunch calls it a "self service advertising product" that is "somewhat similar to Google Adwords, but with a twist." The twist is essentially a reversal of the traditional advertising paradigm: The most popular ads, as voted on by Digg users, will get more prominent placement and a lower cost-per-click. In other words: The more users digg an ad, the less the advertiser pays. "The Digg system rests on a Cluetrainy need to deliver authentic value and relevance - like Google's ads," Jarvis notes, and he argues "that's the way advertising probably needs to go: The better your relationship (which springs from a better product and service), the more your customers will market it for you, the less you'll have to pay to market it." Jarvis is right: "The future of advertising needs to be selling - that is, enabling - relevance instead of selling scarce space, time, or eyeballs. The future needs to be about adding value - relevance - rather than selling scarcity (extracting what the market will bear)."

Equity is the accumulation, the repeated occurrence, of actions, interactions, and transactions that add value. The best way, then, to build brand equity is to repeatedly and consistently add value through all your interactions with customers. Advertising doesn't add value; branded content does (information). Promotions don't add value; branded entertainment does (entertainment). When you brand something, you don't just market scarcity and advertise your products and services, you market your ability to add value that is relevant.

The web, and the social web in particular, reconciles artificial scarcity with relevance, and that's why more and more branding dollars are moving online. It is the ideal forum for creating an abundance of scarce moments, thousands of small great ideas instead of one great big one. These small great ideas come to live in brief moments of attachment with customers that are personalized and truly relevant for them.

"Advertising is failure," says Jeff Jarvis, and he thinks "media only get in the way of customer relationships." And indeed, how will you make more friends at a party? Showing up with a big banner around your neck that says "I am a great friend" or engaging in a handful of conversations with strangers, listening to their stories and detecting affinities whilst accomplishing a sense of privacy that gradually becomes intimate? Right. In the end, that's what we should be doing as marketers to build real, sustainable brand equity - creating publicity through intimacy, loyalty through decency.

By Nick de la Mare

I saw an interesting article in the New York Times this weekend titled "Put Ad on Web. Count Clicks. Revise." The premise of the article goes something like this: because the web provides functionality to test every variation of a banner ad for effectiveness, the next big thing is tailoring advertising in the moment, and leveraging findings from click-thru rates to construct more relevant offerings for consumers.

If I had to construct a tag-line for the so-called "data practice" services cited in this article it would be "downstream solutions to upstream problems." From the media-buying perspective I understand the argument: if the chosen vehicle for the ad is wrong, the advertiser will recognize it faster and will be able to adapt on the fly. Quick changes in placement and timing make ads more effective at targeting particular populations. But from the standpoint of advertisers and brands trying to understand the consumers they serve, this service misses the boat.

Coming from a research-heavy design consultancy, I believe this effort represents not a huge step forward but a band-aid placed over a much larger issue. Ad agencies and the companies that hire them should be doing a much better job understanding their consumers before they ever put their banner ads out there.

The article cites a Vespa campaign of 27 web-based ads, with variations in messaging ranging from "Pure fun. And function" to "Smart looks. Smarter purchase." The second message, combined with a no money down, zero-percent interest offer, attracted 71% more responses than the average of other Vespa ads. The two underlying value propositions ("Vespa, all about the fun" vs. "Vespa, it's a prudent financial decision") represent wildly different core assumptions about the product and its users.

It seems like a no-brainer to assume that doing a little research before designing the ads, speaking to customers and employees in-store, conducting contextual inquiries into existing owners and trend-scrapes tracking the rise of couponing and price consciousness, would yield the same results as the results of click-thru rates, as well as revealing additional deeper data that could be leveraged to fill out the campaign and adapt the product offering itself.

I'm not saying that tracking click-thrus isn't sensible and smart; it's just reactive. Only after you put something out there can you judge the validity of your messaging and when you do, your tool for judging that response is relatively blunt and binary (and the product, if off-base, is fundamentally unchanged).

By taking a proactive approach instead—i.e. talking to people and testing your assumptions before ever constructing an ad, and then altering the product to more closely align it to your findings—allows you to build your offering holistically. Now your banners reflect your product, and vice-versa, and there will likely be less need to retrofit the argument around a leap of faith.

The rise of data practices in digital advertising appears to be more of an effort to retain relevancy on the part of the agencies than something that fundamentally creates value for the consumer. And calling it new is a bit of a misrepresentation. Many of the old lessons of direct marketing are simply being ported over to the web by advertisers. Like the good-old days of 800-numbers and rebate codes, I'm sure it'll be successful. But calling it a "radical new approach" may be an overstatement.

I’m nervous, seriously nervous. In a few hours, in the Olympic stadium in Rome, FC Barcelona (or “Barca,” as its supporters call it) will face Manchester United, the other soccer superpower, in the game of all games, the final of the UEFA Champions League, the most important club competition in Europe (and the world, for that matter). Both teams have already won two trophies this season (their national leagues and national cups, respectively), and a victory in Rome would see either one clinch the “treble.” For Barca, it would be a historic accomplishment–no other Spanish soccer team has ever won all three possible titles in one season. That’s not the only superlative in the lead-up to the game: Messi, Eto'o, and Henry–Barca’s offensive trio–have scored more goals together this year than the entire squad of any other European club.

I’ll be watching the game at a resort near Santa Barbara, and it’ll be the end of journey for me, in many ways: I have been following Barca’s triumphant season leading to today’s final  in different cities all over the world on TV. I saw the team struggle against Lyon in an earlier round in a packed sports bar in Amsterdam; I bit my nails in a smelly pub in Austin when Barca remained goalless in the home tie against Chelsea; I took a day off from work in San Francisco to enjoy them trashing Bayern Munich 4-1; I was in Barcelona in a bar without any Euros but a kind bartender (the comfort of strangers) who even accepted a few lousy dollars for a beer that helped me make it through a dramatic away game; I followed games on the Internet live-ticker in Sonoma County in lack of TV; and I celebrated euphorically the decisive 1-1 goal in Chelsea in the semi-final with my best friend in Hamburg. After all these memorable moments, I realize that I am emotionally exhausted. There’s just enough sentiment left for today’s game. I will use it to cheer Barca to victory.

So I am a Barca fan, but you may wonder why in the world would an otherwise level-headed (I hope) German professional, living in San Francisco, be so crazy about a Catalan soccer team? Joan Laporta, FC Barcelona’s president, asked me exactly that question (more diplomatically phrased) when I met him briefly two years ago at an event at Stanford University, and I uttered something like “because Barca is more than a club.” I felt stupid and exposed as succumbing to the marketing formula the club had promoted for years: “Mes que un club.” But then I thought of that one remarkable moment in Bill Maher’s documentary “Religulous” in which he tries to make fun of the actor who plays Jesus in a Christian theme park in Florida. Not a difficult task, it seems, until that very actor asks him back, with great sincerity and earnestness: “So you think this is all made up and crazy talk. I get it. But what if you're wrong?” There’s a short pause, and Maher, the cynic, has just been disarmed. That’s exactly how I feel about my passion for Barca. Not that Barca is like a religion to me, but it is a matter of faith. It is something to believe in–the why doesn’t matter.

And yet, I could cite very good reasons for why Barca ought to be the favorite club of anyone who loves the “beautiful game.” In fact, Albert Schweitzer must have had Barca in mind when he coined his famous aphorism: “Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.” Much has been written about Barca’s aesthical  play and its underlying philosophy. Barca’s style is a showcase of sparkling creativity, but what one must not overlook is the enormous tactical discipline and the intelligent organization that serve as the platform for the magic moments of Messi, Eto’o, Henry et al. The Barca superstars wouldn’t be able to shine without the works of Xavi, Iniesta, and Toure in midfield, and what pundits have rightly dubbed an “efficient ballet” is a collective movement of great fluidity and elegance, and a unique series of human-ball, human-human interactions that are a true pleasure to watch. One must also credit the incredible discipline that coach and former Barca player Pep Guardiola has introduced to the club this year. When a few players showed up one(!) minute late to a training session last week after winning the Spanish cup the night before, Guardiola reprimanded them and fined them – a symbolic act, of course, but one that reinforced the high standards of professionalism.

One of the other key elements of Barca’s supremacy is anticipation – the ability to predict the opponents’ moves and be just one crucial tick faster than them. This ability is based on the philosophy of “Total Football” that the Dutchmen Johann Cruyff and Luis van Gaal brought to Barcelona, and that Barca still cherishes. Total Football requires every player on the pitch to master any position at any time and to “read” the whole game from any angle. In this fluid system no player is fixed in their intended outfield role; anyone can be successively an attacker, a midfielder, and a defender. Total Football depends largely on the adaptability of each footballer within the team to succeed.

Barcelona embodies Total Football and is yet so much more than just football. To learn more about the genuine element of drama that no other club embraces in the way Barca does, I recommend you read Javier Marias' “All Our Past Battles,” a wonderful collection of stories around the “el classicos” between Barca and arch rival Real Madrid. You’ll understand the melodramatic quality of Barca’s defeats (and wins!), and the great poetry that surrounds all of its appearances, on the pitch and off. More than just once, Barca squandered opportunities to close in on a victory that was thought secure because the team’s abundantly talented players gave in to a seemingly insatiable quest for inspiration, artistry, and class rather than scoring a simple goal. The simple way is never the easiest for Barca. Barca’s striving for excellence feels nostalgic but at the same time very relevant and timely.

Franklin Foer also dedicates a whole chapter to the “Blaugrana” (Catalan for blue/red) club and its political undercurrents in his excellent “How Soccer Explains the World.” FC Barcelona was one of the first soccer clubs to be founded in Spain, and it became a haven for Catalan sentiment when Catalan self-government and culture were proscribed during Franco’s dictatorship. The club emerged as the playful manifesto of Catalonia’s spiritual independence, and since then, nowhere has soccer been more fundamental to the sense of identity than in Barcelona. Former Barca full back Oleguer even published a book which was about politics as much as his own career. Barca supporters joke that he only played when he was not on a protest march.

It is ironic that a club rooted deeply in Catalan nationalism has such an international following. But Barca’s appeal is so global precisely because its roots are so local. Barca represents the Catalan people while at the same time creating a sense of \belonging to “beauty and quality.” The meaning of Barca transcends the boundaries of sports and nations, and embodies the universal values of sportsmanship and integrity.

Every brand can take a page from Barca’s “magic ingredients”:

Aspiration: Barca has always set itself and its members daunting challenges to strive for and rally around. The latest one is “The Great Challenge” campaign which aims at growing the membership, fostering Barca as the biggest and greatest club in world soccer. Before the beginning of this season Barca also declared that its goal was to win all three competitions it participated in. Some may call this arrogance, but for Barca it's a brand driver. The “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” set by excellent teams always need to exceed the past ones. Motivation originates in the belief and opportunity to achieve the extraordinary–no matter what it takes. Underpromise and overdeliver is just good execution. Overpromise and overdeliver are the signs of a class act.

Only the best: Barca’s management and members are never satisfied with average, and they despise mediocrity. They understand top quality, tactically advanced soccer as a moral obligation. Only the best players make it to Barca where the competition is brutal. Analogous to GE's famous 10 percent rule, the lowest performing players in the team usually have to leave the club.

Social responsibility: Barca is fully owned by its members, unlike most other big soccer clubs--which are either in the hands of  large corporations or American (Manchester United) and Russian (FC Chelsea) billionaires--and they possess significant voting power. This “power to the people” tradition reflects a distinct social conscience that is expressed in many ways. Sure, other clubs are using the power of their brands as well to do good, but no other club’s social responsibility is so deeply engrained in its DNA as Barca’s. Based on its spirit of independence, the club has always taken on broader social issues and played a pivotal role in promoting diversity, tolerance, and peace worldwide. Barca’s partnership with UNICEF is a statement of the club's continuing efforts to be at the forefront of solidarity projects with a global reach. Under the agreement, which bears the slogan “Barcelona, more than a club, a new global hope for vulnerable children,” Barca contributes to the financing of UNICEF humanitarian projects and endorses UNICEF on its shirts–as the only major European team not to wear an advertisement. Club president Joan Laporta rules out any type of commercial shirt sponsorship and  instead seeks to promote a humanitarian message: "FC Barcelona is not only a football club, but a club with a soul.”

The real thing: To a European soccer fan living in the US who has grown accustomed to hyper-commercialized sports events, it is reassuring to see how purist the soccer experience still is in Barca’s stadium, the Camp Nou – a few pre-game commercials, no half-time show whatsoever, and all attention on the players, even during their warm-up exercises before the game. In Camp Nou, it is all about the “beautiful game.”

Charismatic reference point: Messi, arguably the world's best soccer player, serves as a reference point for team mates and fans alike. There is no one else like him, and he outshines all other soccer superstars with his playfulness.

Disruption: Powerful brands need an element of surprise. They should always take the freedom to ignore the quest for consistency and do what they want--irrationally, passionately, and with no regrets. Every three years or so, when a cycle ends, Barca’s management disrupts the existing team structure and builds a new squad. The rule is: Always change a winning team! By all standards of modern business, Barca is a professionally managed club but yet there is a sense that anything could happen anytime – almost like in a soccer match.

The Champions League final today will be another milestone in the saga of the Barca brand, regardless of who wins (2-1 for Barca, my prediction). Humility and hard work have been the traits of Barca's season so far, and in the end, dignity will matter more than titles and trophies at a club that is “more than a club.” And that exactly is the hallmark of a great brand: “Keep yourself clean and bright. You are the windows through which you must view the world,” the ancient proverb goes.

By Kristina Loring

With the Twittersphere reaching critical mass, lots of companies are establishing accounts to speak directly with customers, monitor their brand, and respond to questions and rumors. Most of them are using the microblogging service to become more transparent and as a trustworthy resource for their followers, while also exposing a more personable aspect of their brand.

Here are some examples, researched by Brilliant Ink, a communications agency specializing in strategic messaging and content development:

- Ford used Twitter to host conversations and answer criticisms during the recent federal loan hearings in DC: http://twitter.com/scottmonty. Scott Monty is Ford's social media manager and often uses Twitter to enable people to ask questions of Ford execs. Ford also held a chat featuring its CEO Alan Mulally at #FordCEO.

- Microsoft is partnering with Exectweets, a Twitter chat room of sorts for executives.

In addition, there are several companies that do a good job fostering customer service and engagement via Twitter and occasionally focus on a particular discussion topic:

- Dell: http://twitter.com/delloutlet

- HR Block: http://twitter.com/hrblock

- Comcast: http://twitter.com/comcastcares

- Zappos: http://twitter.com/zappos

- Marriott Hotels: http://twitter.com/MarriotIntl (the hotel chain used Twitter to communicate with customers in during the recent bombings in Mumbai)

How exactly one is supposed to use Twitter is still up for interpretation, but these companies seem to be doing it the right way, especially in contrast to those that have chosen to use their Twitter accounts as nothing more than a means of self-promotion (essentially using Twitter as an extension of their RSS feed). These companies most often find themselves broadcasting to an absent/vacant audience. A stark reminder was the recent controversy over Land Rover's use of social media in an ad campaign, and the fact that some Twitterers were paid to contribute, sparking discussions about the risks of "sponsored hashtags."

Organized Twitter chats are a particularly effective vehicle to provide entry points for consumers to engage with companies around specific topics, events, or issues that are meaningful to them. More and more companies are beginning to use these kinds of "hashtag conversations" (using the hash symbol (#) in front of a keyword is a familiar convention for Twitter users; it allows people to search for and follow specific conversations).

Brilliant Ink studied to what extent these conversations offer an opportunity for consumers to truly inform the company's priorities and perspectives around specific topics. One of the brands it examined was PepsiCo. At the end of April, the softdrink company began #PepTrends, an organized conversation around global trends. The moderator introduced a number of trend themes to the conversation, and the most popular topic turned out to be "social media and marketing." There were more than 1,400 individual tweets from the participants, and 171 people registered to take part in the chat. This was PepsiCo's first moderated hashtag conversation, following a very successful South by Southwest engagement where the company had used Twitter and blogs to interact with customers.

Another brand that has been able to amplify its voice through Twitter is Growing Bolder, an organization comprised of former journalists and other professionals interested in issues concerning those over the age of 50. The company hosts a chat tagged #ageop and describes the event as a "weekly informal think tank." It is facilitated by a guest host who asks questions to get the conversation going, but the discussion is fluid with participants introducing newsworthy issues of the week. Topics have ranged from President Obama's first 100 days in office to health care to prom memories. Participants also recently called on State Farm to join in a conversation about insurance -- which brings up an interesting dynamic. Will larger companies such as State Farm respond (or not) to activist- and issue-based groups like Growing Bolder? Indeed, can organized Twitter conversations online translate into offline social organization and action?

At frog design, we recently hosted a #froghealth Twitter chat on the subject of mobile health. Participants included our own health care experts, members of the press, and external health care professionals. Originally planned as an internal experiment to explore the use of Twitter, the chat turned into a discussion about a redefinition of health care and a restructuring of the health care system. External participants noted the event on their own accounts and joined in. One participant of the conversation called it "curated crowdsourcing." In the end, the Twitter chat provided a new way to have a frank discussion with our customers and with experts in the field about on-the-ground concerns.

If you want to host a moderated Twitter chat yourself, here are Brilliant Ink's General Guidelines:

- Determine the format (there are three options): 1. Create a free-flowing discussion where anyone can say anything germane to the topic; 2. Establish a structured agenda where the organizer asks questions and gives participants a set time to answer before moving on; 3. Feature a guest speaker, where s/he answers participants' questions and gives advice.

- Use the first 10 minutes for introductions.

- Don't allow pitching of participants' businesses until the final 10 minutes.

- Take banter or irrelevant chat offline ( remove the #) so as not to hijack the conversation.

- Use a specific account to represent the brand for the chat (@frogdesign) vs. a personal account.

- Never disparage or dismiss ideas or comments.

- Participants expect a 1:1 relationship, so the exchanges need to be conversational.

Marketers face three types of media as channels of interaction with their audiences: paid media, earned media, and owned media. We know that in today's hyper-relational, atomized micromarkets, paid media's effect is somewhat limited. The days of broadcasting one-way messages via mass media are gone. Traditional advertising is struggling to cut through the clutter in an economy in which attention is the scarcest resource. Most ads are ignored or perceived as spam.

Earned media, on the other hand, has the merit of third-party credibility, and it reaches people when they are opted in and value the information. Media coverage in the right publications is still the single most effective tool to raise brand awareness. But what are the right publications? The big media juggernauts are ailing, and their authority is increasingly undercut by social media whose vibrancy and dialogic nature has turned static information into a constantly evolving conversation. Blogs, social networks, file-sharing sites, and micro-blogging services have reached the critical mass needed to dominate the mainstream agenda. The timeliness of Twitter, the quintessential conversational medium, makes it a direct competitor to traditional news outlets (which is why Umar Haique suggests the New York Times should buy it). Just ask yourself: Would you go to the NY Times, CNN, or to Twitter if a disaster hit the US?

The stark difference between traditional media and social media is that the former provide original content whereas the latter provide an open forum for content from third parties. This has given rise to the notion that everyone is a media channel, and the rise of owned media. With paid media being largely ineffective and earned media facing the growing irrelevance of traditional media in face of burgeoning social media, brands pursue the avenue of becoming media companies in their own right. Bypassing traditional media channels, they either set up their own TV channels, print publications (corporate publishing), or blog networks (McKinsey's What Matters is a recent example), or they actively participate in the social web conversation, shaping and following the meanderings of the status update economy.

Owned media alone, however, is no longer a differentiator when most consumer and enterprise brands have their proprietary media channels in place. No matter how fragmented the new media landscape will look, there will still be a hierarchy based on authority of voice, and there will be winners and losers. Brands still need to find the right balance between talking and being talked about, and they still have to distinguish themselves from others by having a unique voice and perspective.

Smart marketers realize this and embrace a branded content distribution model that spans all three types of media: By producing compelling proprietary content (owned media), they attract the attention of traditional media and extend it to social media (earned media), and can then amplify the exposure via advertising if needed (paid media). Only this three-pronged media approach works. Multimedia, in this sense, does not only mean a richness of media formats (video, text, audio), it means the combined use of multiple types of media to yield maximum brand exposure through sustained cross-media conversations.