Designdamage Blog

In an effort to keep up with the rate of change in the marketing landscape, it’s important to understand the tools available to drive results.  Social media is the fastest growing tactic according to a survey by virtual events provider Unisfair, “Marketers’ top priorities for 2010 will be customer acquisition and retention and the most common tactics marketers plant to increase was social media, selected by three-quarters of marketers polled, followed by search (51%) and e-mail (49%).”

It’s indicative as the internet gets more social, the speed at which information is shared through platforms like Twitter and Facebook will continue to expand.

There is no argument that social media can benefit a brand but the problem is most companies are operating with a limited supply of resources.  And with TMI (too much information) flowing around the internet you can easily lost yourself in a sea of information resulting in analysis paralysis.

In order to utilize the time [...]

Last week BusinessWeek published its 100 Best Global Brands 2009 and to no surprise, financial brands were largely untrusted which dragged down all brands across the board with them.  Moving forward, brands are rethinking how they can win back the trust focusing on the psychological aspect of marketing and advertising in an attempt to rebuild its relationship with customers.  You can see from the gradual shift in magazine ads and TV commercials using regular everyday people to lead advertising campaigns instead of celebrities with messages such as the “we’re here for you in this economy” (Hyundai guarantee programs, Subway’s $5 foot long, Gieco’s money saving tips), or the “we stand by our product and services” (GM’s may the best car win, Carl’s Jr.’s value comparison with McDonald’s Big Mac) that centers around authenticity.

What’s interesting is that with more marketers embracing social media, the actual adoption bottleneck are brands themselves.  I’m not speaking about the Fortune [...]

One of the first priorities in building your brand is to know who you are and why you matter before you uptake a brand strategy.  I received some feedback on the post “12 Principles of Brand Strategy” and thought it would be important to discussion how to utilize strategy to achieve business goals.  Whether you’re selling a product or a service you need to be able to articulate why you are doing what you set out to do. What’s the meaning behind your offer? Do you have a core belief in what it is that you do?

Too often businesses jump on strategy and tactics but forget the real character behind their brands.  Strategy determines how to position your brand so you can optimize the brand experience you’re trying to emulate.  If you aren’t clear with your brand’s attitude, don’t market, don’t advertise, don’t publicize – don’t communicate to the world because you will likely [...]

What happens when hype is no longer hype but a real trend? Can you afford to miss benefiting from social technologies?

These are questions I get about using social media as part of the brand strategy conversations. This is when I introduce the theory of Technology Adoption Lifecycle (aka Rogers’ bell curve) to illustrate product adoption to better understand how new ideas and technologies spread especially in today’s digital culture.

Fundamentally Innovators seek new ways of doing complex tasks and are willing to take the risk hoping to gain competitive advantage over time. The Early Adopters want speed and cost savings to drive other innovations that’s mostly perceived advantage. I see the rest of the adopter groups (early majority, late majority and laggards) as Mass Market. This group relies heavily on the concept of social proof and wants proven process from credible source that demonstrates significant cost savings over the existing way of doing things.

Now let’s [...]

In a situation where you’re selling to multiple personalities, it’s best to first connect everyone on a common ground then articulate clearly what’s in it for each of them.  The goal is to stimulate an engaging conversation that allows us to change perception, diagnose expectations and bring clarity to the dialogue.

That’s the essence of developing a brand strategy – the foundation of your communication that builds authentic relationships between you and your audience.  It is by defining your brand strategy that allows you to utilize marketing, advertising, public relations and social media to consistently and accurately reinforce your character.  Without defining the core strategy, all channels of communication can often become a hit and miss expense.

Here’s 12 brand strategy principles I believe to be the key to achieve business success.
1. Define your brand
It starts with your authenticity, the core purpose, vision, mission, position, values and character.  Focus on what you do best and then [...]

This week an interesting question came up during a discussion I had with business owners wanting to learn more about integrating social media into their existing marketing strategy. As expected, the second question hit on the topic of social media ROI (return on investment), specifically it was “Can social media help my bottom line?” I quickly went into a discussion about measuring the result which is sales, and how companies must understand customer profitability in order to make smarter decisions that produce higher profits.

Of course we can use the “old way” of analyzing impact such as clicks, eye balls or traffic, but those are limited not to mention unproven at this point.  We’re still at the “testing before the test gets developed” stage before a solid method of measuring social media ROI is meaningful.  However, it’s about time that we all try to find meaningful metrics that truly justifies the investment.

Accordingly to the research [...]

Recently a report was released by US market research firm Pear Analytics with a statement on how 40% of Twitter messages are “pointless babble.” As you can see from the comments followed, the statement rubbed some people the wrong.

Although the analysis was based from a personal value judgment on individual’s communication, it somewhat puts Twitter usage in perspective. At the end of the day nobody can speak words of wisdom every time they open their mouth (not even Warrant Buffet), but the real value of Twitter is its openness as a real-time platform for engagement opportunities.

Perhaps the report is subjective but the truth is Twitter has allowed users to utilize the platform however they like propelling this incredible movement towards the personalization of media. Simultaneous to this growing personalization of media is a stronger notion of connectivity in social media. Not just Twitter but all social media technologies must be seen as revolutionary not [...]

Recently I gave a presentation on social media in which I mentioned that one of reasons social media is gaining great momentum is that it fosters the creation of community.  Naturally, we all have the desire to be part of a community, to become an insider on something that we’re interested in.  I gave the example of how two fans who loved Coke created a Coke Cola Facebook fan page that became the 2nd most popular page on Facebook with more than 3.5 million fans and yet they don’t work for Coke.

I was then asked “How do I build our community?  Where do we find them? On the internet?” To that I replied “Start by looking around your office, the community should start here, with your employees first. Internet just makes it easy for brand enthusiasts to gather and share their collective values.”

That led to a discussion about how internet is redefining the concept [...]

With the recent acquisition of Zappos by Amazon, many companies are now taking a serious look at social innovation especially after the latest Engagement report by Wetpain and the Fluent report by Razorfish on social influence marketing. Basically these reports prove that brands with high social media activity increased revenues while the less active ones aren’t as profitable.

The statistics not only adds fuel to the social media hype but helps to convert the naysayers to believers.

Even Twitter is leveling the playing field by publishing its own “Twitter 101” guide, which contains ideas, tips and case studies intended for businesses to make the best of the service.

The beginner’s guide to Twitter is intended to lower the learning curve but could evolve into the ultimate Twitter knowledge base.  This is actually a good thing because it allows users to focus more on the strategic usage of Twitter rather than the tactical side.  It also forces the [...]

We are in the middle of a second major paradigm shift in IT (information technology).  This is not about simply going from web1.0 to web2.0, but something that’s going to have a major impact on how we work. I am referring to the disruptive force of “cloud computing.

I’ve been focusing on brand strategies in the technology sector for quite some time now and I’ve seen some resemblance in cloud computing hype similar to that of social media on the web.  Further investigation led me to identify some of the underlying implications and the cumulative impact of them on businesses.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia
Primary Characteristics
Cloud computing is basically a dynamic computing environment that’s delivered over the internet with on-demand resources that are scalable and flexible. In the old days businesses had to purchase hardware, software and then hire IT staff to manage them.  With cloud computing, you simply pay for the service on a per usage [...]