I am a sucker for the referred fly.

That’s fly as in “fly fishing.”

I just returned from my annual fly fishing trip with a friend of more than 30 years. We fished the Lower and Upper Madison, the Missouri, and the Gallatin rivers near Bozeman, Montana.

Every year, I swear that I will not buy any more flies. Of course, the typical fly fisher has hundreds (thousands?)  in his or her vest. At $2 a fly, the excess inventory adds up.

Truth be told, when nymphing (fishing wet flies on the bottom of the river), I rotate between five to 10 flies. Period. Maybe that accounts for my (lack of) success.

Yet, every time I walk into a fly shop, I am suckered by the kid at the counter, usually in his mid-twenties, who recommends a new fly, whether a nymph, streamer or dry.

The conversation goes something like this:

“What are they hitting on?”

“Well, what really works for me is this yak-bug  You can use it as your top fly and dead drift it or strip it across the river.”

A few minutes later, I walk out with two or three yak bugs, plus a couple more flies just for good measure.

I try the new fly. It never really works, and then I switch back to what I know.  The asset also known as my fly vest grows in value. I wonder if Lloyd’s of London would insure it!

The engine of new business

Cold-calling and its first cousin, direct mail, have their hallowed place in the world of marketing, as, now, does social (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc).

But in a world of a million imitations and possibilities, and inane status updates, “What really works for me …” will always be priceless.

It will always make me buy another fly.

You’d have to be Rip Van Winkle not to know that social is changing the cultural river bed in which we boat.

Facebook, Pinterest, Yelp, etc – they are not merely digital platforms where people can express more of their inner selves.

They may symbolize a tectonic shift about how a culture holds a conversation about what it values.

But for many organizations, the takeaways are still mixed. In short, so what?

In recent months, several articles have highlighted the conundrum that many organizations face as they navigate the maturing world of social marketing.

Here is a quick snapshot:

1. Social is not going away. Duh! Do we need yet another article on the strategic importance of social?

2. Social is miserably hard to measure. Double Duh!

HBR Blog Network: http://tinyurl.com/6w7cdtf

3. The big brands are spending big bucks on social yet have little to show for it. No surprise here. They have scale and thus line items for investment in social marketing.

Ad Age: http://tinyurl.com/74opqpj

4. B2C (business to consumer) firms tend to find more immediate success than B2B companies such as professional services. If you’re schlepping pizzas, you’ll have an easier time of it than if you are selling accounting services to CFOs at manufacturing firms.

You really can’t tweet a $3,500 off coupon for tax consulting. Then again …

Wall Street Journal: http://tinyurl.com/6w3whdr

5. Success with social, depending on what is being measured, is also patchy among nonprofits. Every nonprofit wants to unleash the “viral video” (read: Invisible Children).

Good luck with that.

So What?
Much of the work of social is paying attention. That requires paying someone to pay attention, whether you outsource it or staff the position internally.

If you have a CEO who tweets deep thoughts, or has an outsized personality like the founder of, say, Zappos.com, then you can more lightly step into the stream of social culture.

According to the troops on the front lines, though, some currently find the investment not worth the return. And others find that much of social (especially on the dependent web platforms) is simply inappropriate or ineffective, given their customer.

Yet, many see social as mission-critical. Certainly that’s true for Jon Bon Jovi and Lady Gaga. Perhaps for coffee shops and retail outlets. And politicos.

For now, though, one of the primary social metrics is the wires hitting the banks of Facebook and Yelp founders.

Hostile Dependence

In the short story, The Short Happy Life, Ernest Hemingway writes a dark ditty about a wealthy man and his beautiful wife on safari in Africa:

“They had a sound basis for union,” writes Hemingway. “Margot was too beautiful for Macomber to divorce her and Macomber had too much money for her ever to leave him.”

Not a happy marriage by any stretch. Margot ends up shooting Macomber in the head as he is about to be trampled by an enraged, charging buffalo. Hemingway leaves the reader wondering whether the gunshot was accidental as she was trying to protect her husband from the buffalo. Or on purpose.

The marriage may be a metaphor for how many executives feel about social.

An article in The New York Times recently provided some statistics on the state of blogs on the Internet. The stats originate from Technorati, an Internet search engine that tracks blogs:

•There are roughly 133 million blogs;
•Only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs had been updated in the past 120 days; and
• Between 50,000 and 100,000 blogs generate most of the page views.

Millions and millions of poppies: Which poppy is prettier?

The stats on blogs confirm how cluttered the marketing landscape has become. The herculean challenge is to position your organization accurately and to communicate your message to your prospects with clarity and power.

I say, “Good riddance to the blog fever,” if in fact fewer folks are paying attention to their blogs. Most were lousy writers. Maybe the slow death (or at least slower growth) of blogs will free up some attention for those organizations whose message is worth hearing.



One size does not fit all.

You’d think advertisers would know that, before spending billions aimed at so-called Soccer Moms. Research indicates most women aged 25 to 45 don’t identify themselves as such.

Whether or not you’re marketing to women exclusively, tailoring your message to the segments of your audience is critical.

Holly Buchanan, co-author of The Soccer Mom Myth – Today’s Female Consumer: Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys, talked to Brand & Strategy about identifying your customers’ personas and giving them what they want and need:

Brand & Strategy: You argue women want to be acknowledged as consumers with individual needs, not just as members of the female demographic. Is that also true of men?

Holly Buchanan: Everyone wants to think that advertisers are speaking directly to them. But women, more so than men, don’t want to be treated as stereotypes. Their lives are so much richer and more complicated than that. Images and messages that will resonate with them are those that reflect how they see themselves.

So how do you do that?

You begin by creating what we call personas. You can typically identify four or five that incorporate the varied lifestyles, needs, motivations, and buying processes of each of your audience segments. Then you can address each in the manner that will appeal to that specific audience. But be careful not to fragment your message so much that you sacrifice consistency.

What are some of the personas you’ve identified?

An oversimplification would be to equate them to the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, which categorizes how people process information. Are they Left-brain or Right-brain? Spontaneous or Methodical? Humanistic or Competitive?

It’s not enough to identify how your customers are the same—you also need to know how they’re different. You need to do what we call “uncovery” to get to the whys behind customer needs and characteristics.

Seems too complicated to reach each persona with a unique message.

The Internet is a powerful way to connect to different segments of your customer base. Your web site is the most effective place to start. The key is to provide clear pathways so that each persona can find the information they’re looking for when they need it. Then your visitors can self-select the experience they want.

How do you determine what it is they want?

Start by listening to your customers, not just talking to them! Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and objections are a great place to begin your research—they tell you what people want to know and where they get hung-up in the buying process. Make sure you address these upfront! And don’t shy away from addressing any drawbacks or “This isn’t for you if … ” scenarios.

If you’re upfront about the negatives, folks are much more likely to believe you about the positives.

What about social media?

Social media has put the consumer firmly in control of the buying process. You can also find out what people already are saying about you on blogs and consumer feedback forums.

If you don’t include your consumer in the “conversation” they will tune you out.

You talk about how “Everything is marketing” and there are hundreds of touch-points. How can you control them all?

You can’t control everything—but you better control everything you can. Small details can be huge in the midst of a purchasing decision—everything from the lighting in your store, the friendliness of your operator, to the cleanliness of your washrooms. The challenge is to not just meet your customers’ expectations but to go beyond that—to delight them.

We’ve found that if you can meet the expectations of your female customers, you will have exceeded the expectations of your male customers.

If your market has ever ignored a product, a concept, or a message you thought was genius, then you know the pain of figuring out what your consumer really wants. B&S recently interviewed John Winsor, author of Beyond the Brand, who says the place to begin is a deep conversation with your customer.

B&S: You suggest that organizations must innovate to thrive. That’s hard for institutions with a long history.

John Winsor: Innovation is about having deep conversations with your consumers to find out if the product you’re delivering is what they really want.

Take Harvard, for example. Recently, they re-evaluated their financial aid program, because they realized that its college costs were driving away low-income and middle-class students. Though largely viewed as an elitist institution, they have increased the number of low-income students by 33 percent. This move is causing other universities to rethink their financial aid models. There’s cultural pressure to change. And it’s scaring a lot of people.

I’m always surprised that more universities don’t take the perspective of “Let’s do something unique!” Not enough universities go out and really listen to their consumers—students and parents—to reinvent what the university should be … or could be.

What kind of leadership do you need to innovate?

There’s a new president, Richard Celeste, at Colorado College. The trustees elected him not for his university experience, but for his life experience and leadership skills. He was the two-term governor of Ohio and the ambassador to India. He brings to the university an eclectic, interesting point of view as well as great leadership skills.

From big consumer companies to universities to non-profits, the prototypical manager/CEO—a guy with an MBA—usually gets hired. But these people have a trained way of thinking about organizational growth and management, which gets in the way of any kind of creative thinking or creative solutions.

One marketing strategy for innovation has been to identify and recruit “Influencers” to carry the ideas into the market. How do you view the power of Influencers?

In the February 2008 edition of Fast Company, Duncan Watson authored an article entitled “Is the Tipping Point Toast?”

In it, Watson refutes the idea that Influencers are largely responsible for the success of a product or trend. Of course, we all want to pin down Influencers, because it seems easier to reach only a small group of people—and not the entire market. But, it doesn’t wholly work, because you have to know how an Influencer actually influences.

So if not solely Influencers, what else drives good ideas into the market?

I think culture does. Watson uses an analogy of a forest fire to explain his point: There are thousands a year, but only a few become threats; in those rare occasions, the environment is ripe.

Or think of it like this: You can send somebody with a tanker full of gas into a forest and blow it up—that person driving that truck has a lot of power to influence. Or you can send somebody into that same forest with a single match, and if the conditions are right, it, too, will start a huge fire.

Influence can come from anywhere, but the cultural conditions determine what will spread. You have to understand your culture.

That sounds abstract and hard to control.

For a lot of organizations it is really hard. It feels like you’re throwing everything to the wind and saying, “Well, influence is really random.” But if you continue having real conversations with your consumers, you can predict intuitively where things are going. To understand the bigger cultural issues, you need to ask: What’s really happening out there? How are things really changing? Then you have to connect the dots to get the full picture. To do that, you’ve got to get out of your office and interact with your customers.

How do social media enable deep conversations?

Social media gets you inside the conversation; you’re not observing from the outside.

You can sit outside the door of a restaurant and analyze the quality of the food, service, and ambiance, or you can sit down and experience it. I think blogging is the same thing. You’ve got to jump in the stream. You’ve got to be a participant. You’ve got to be a part of the conversation—and people will find a way to connect to you and have a conversation. From there you’ll be able to identify key voices and cultural trends.