The On-Demand Brand 10 Rules for Digital Marketing Success in an Anytime, Everywhere World RICK MATHIESON AMERICAN MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION New York ● Atlanta ● Brussels ● Chicago ● Mexico City ● San Francisco Shanghai ● Tokyo ● Toronto ● Washington, D.C. Bulk discounts available. For details visit: www.amacombooks.org/go/specialsales Or contact special sales: Phone: 800-250-5308 Email: [email protected] View all the AMACOM titles at: www.amacombooks.org This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assis- tance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. All brand names and trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. The BURGER KING® trademarks and advertisements are used with permission from Burger King Corporation. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mathieson, Rick. The on-demand brand : 10 rules for digital marketing success in an anytime, everywhere world / Rick Mathieson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8144-1572-6 ISBN-10: 0-8144-1572-5 1. Branding (Marketing) 2. Internet marketing. I. Title. HF5415.1255.M38 2010 658.8'27—dc22 2009040693 © 2010 Rick Mathieson. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. 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Printing number 10987654321 ForJ&K,asAlways This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Introduction ..................................................IX RULE #1 Insight Comes Before Inspiration .........................1 Q&A: The Klauberg Manifesto..................................21 RULE #2 Don’t Repurpose, Reimagine ............................31 Q&A: Alex Bogusky Tells All....................................51 RULE #3 Don’t Just Join the Conversation—Spark It ................59 Q&A: Virtually Amazing: Sibley Verbeck on BuildingBrandsinSecondLife2.0.........................81 RULE #4: There’s No Business Without Show Business ...............89 Q&A: Adrian Si: Rewriting the Rules of Branded Entertainment..................................107 RULE #5: Want Control? Give It Away ...........................113 Q&A: “Obama Girl” Makes Good: Ben Relles’s Racy Videos and the Democratization of Digital Media ..................127 RULE #6: It’s Good to Play Games with Your Customers .............135 Q&A: Mike Benson and the ABCs of Advergames..................151 RULE #7: Products Are the New Services .........................157 Q&A: Agent Provocateur: Goodby’s Derek Robson on Reinventing the Ad Agency ............................169 RULE #8: MobileIsWhereIt’sAt...............................179 Q&A: BMW and Beyond: “Activating” Traditional Media through the Power of Mobile .......................199 RULE #9: Always Keep Surprises In-Store .........................207 Q&A: The Future of the In-Store Experience, from the Father of Social Retailing® .......................221 RULE #10: Use Smart Ads Wisely ...............................231 Q&A: TheSocialNet—Privacy2.0.............................251 Additional Resources..........................................261 Notes......................................................263 Acknowledgments ............................................273 Index......................................................275 About the Author ............................................281 Call it the digital generation. The websites are so twentieth-century generation. The iPhone toting, Facebook-hopping, videogame-fragging, Twitter–tapping, I-want-what-I-want, when-where-and-how-I want-it generation. By whatever name, today’s marketers are desperate to connect with an ever-elusive, increasingly ad-resistant consumer republic. And they’re quickly discovering that the most powerful way to accomplish that is through blockbuster digital experiences that say goodbye to “new media,” and hello to “now media.” Enter: The On-Demand Brand This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION You can always blame it on Burger King. It was, after all, nearly three decades ago that the “Home of the Whopper” first introduced a simple, seemingly innocuous notion into popular culture that would have profound and unexpected repercus- sions well into the twenty-first century. As those around in the 1970s can tell you, consumers everywhere were told that, yes, they could “hold the pickles,” or “hold the lettuce.” With a song and a smile, TV commercials featuring dancing cashiers reassured a previously unrecognized nation of anxious fast foodies that “Special orders don’t upset us. All we ask is that you let us serve it your way. Have it your way—at Burger King.” Have it your way. A simple, refreshing, underheralded introduction to “mass customization,” the technological capability to personalize any order, on demand. Fast-forward to the present day, and you can see the workings of what has irresistibly and incontrovertibly become an on-demand economy. The medium that introduced us to that old-time fast food campaign couldn’t be more different. Where once there were three broadcast television networks, there are now literally hundreds of TV channels, seemingly niche-programmed down to subsets of sub- sets of consumer tastes. History buffs, homosexuals, gardeners, and gearheads all have their own TV networks. Programming is no longer a one-time-period-fits- all affair. Indeed, it is no longer a one-device-fits-all affair, either. X ● INTRODUCTION In what the television industry often refers to as 360-degree pro- gramming—the practice of making content available for consumption via any number of consumer devices—you can watch the latest episode of NBC-TV’s The Office or MTV’s The City either live or time-shifted on your TV screen, your computer screen, the screen of your mobile phone, your car’s built-in entertainment center, or the monitor on the airline seatback. On your schedule. At your convenience. Always. What’s more, this content is no longer bound to what you view and hear, but how you interact with it, mold it, make it your own. Today, you can take part in extended realities of your favorite shows—online games and experiences that expand upon the program’s plotlines and characters so you can delve into backstories or divine the next major plot twist. You can react to, or spoof, what you see on the Boob Tube via YouTube—creating and uploading your own video satires in record time. You can comment on or even shape storylines by lobbying online among the show’s community of interest—those who are passionately involved with the show and even those who produce or distribute it— via forums, blogs, and more. You can even live within your favorite TV programs, through 3-D virtual worlds where you can hang out with characters and fans in environments replicated from the shows. This media revolution has not occurred in a vacuum, of course. It has been enabled by technological advances that have come to define every facet of modern life. Back in the antediluvian days of Burger King’s “Have It Your Way” campaign, consumers who knew their bank tellers on a first-name basis looked on skeptically at the rollout of ominous, monolithic machines known as ATMs. Today, these same consumers routinely and cavalierly check bal- ances, make purchases, and place trades from home via their laptop computers or while on the go, via their iPhones and BlackBerrys. INTRODUCTION ● XI The trip to the bookstore is often usurped by a quick click to Amazon.com. Business trips and vacations are arranged in moments, with nary a thought of calling one’s travel agent (remember those?). And high-ticket items, from automobiles to real estate, are regularly searched, categorized, compared, and even purchased on the fly. In just about every corner of society, “just a moment” isn’t good enough anymore. Waiting for anything—cash, food, our favorite products and experience, dished up just the way we like them—simply will not stand. Clearly, this revolution is having a seismic impact on every facet of how we work, learn, and play. But in an age of immediate, malleable, and very social real-time media, its most profound effects are on those seemingly least prepared for this changing world: marketers. GOODBYE “NEW MEDIA,” HELLO “NOW MEDIA” Indeed, a generation of consumers weaned on Facebook, iPhones, TiVo, Twitter, chat rooms, and instant messaging has grown accus- tomed to living seamlessly and simultaneously on- and offline, accessing the people, content, services,