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Proven big ideas for companies with bigger plans
When brand ubiquity occurs, people search and find brands even when they aren’t
looking. The brand’s reputation precedes its presence. It garners evangelists online and
off. More important, brand ubiquity conjures up a universal thought in your markets’
minds—the single compelling reason they need your product or service RIGHT NOW!
All have a common purpose: to not
only move people to buy their brand over
a competitor’s brand, but to perpetuate an
everlasting brand that holds a cherished or
respected place in the market’s mind.
We wrote this for CEOs, VPs, agency-types, entrepreneurs, brand managers, MBAs and
everyone else hoping to influence new business through creativity. Each spread is 300
words or less so that the big idea showcased is both a quick read … and a quick “get.”
STREET SMART
A BIG IDEA
BRAND UBIQUITY
The idea for this book evolved from a fascination with brands and the place they reside in our brains. Every day, we are
surrounded by brands that elicit an immediate and visceral response in our heads—and sometimes not always in a good
way. But the most successful brands carve out a niche in our zeitgeist. They become a part of our universal culture and
thus become ubiquitous in our minds (if not in our media).
When brand ubiquity occurs, people search and find brands even when they aren’t looking. The brand’s reputation
precedes its presence. It garners evangelists online and off. That’s more than marketing gold.
That’s marketing Californium-252!
But what were the single decisions that create and extend ubiquity in a market? Can we identify a brand’s Big Bang
moments? Can we trace the strategy back to find where the brand crawled out of the primordial soup of obscurity and
developed the legs that carried it toward ubiquity? Can we see when brands evolved?
That is what is truly fascinating.
And we’re
certain Follow the action at
it will trigger microarts.com/ubiquity.
other ideas.
So many times, brands go too big or too broad when it comes to their online marketing strategy.
An accountant shouldn’t say they want to be the experts in accounting. That’s too big and, frankly, impossible. A more reasonable strategy,
for example, would be to position himself or herself as the leading accounting expert for small, retail-based businesses.
So what about online marketing? “Internet marketing” is huge and way too crowded. Wouldn’t it be better to find a niche, such as “search
engine marketing practices for Fortune 500 companies?”
• Repositioning the industry in all our content from custom publishing to content marketing
• Being where our customers and prospects were everywhere online, including LinkedIn groups, Facebook, Twitter and on key blogs
• Ramping up the creation and promotion of valuable, relevant and compelling content—often many times per day
• Writing the industry handbook
• Giving away as many trade secrets as possible (where others were charging for it)
All of this helped position us as the go-to resource for content marketing,
especially with the launch of our new membership site,
The Content Marketing Institute (http://contentmarketinginstitute.com).
Any brand can do this if it knows who its customers are and where they hang out;
realizes its content point-of-view; and truly acts like a publisher
(without the advertising revenues, that is). cb
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By Peter Getman, Principal Brand Director, MicroArts
Todi USA, Inc. (www.TodiUSA.com) manufactures résumés are hosted and updated regularly at roes.
après athletic shoes, a new market category and www.TodiUSA.com. Also, friends and fans of each athlete can lever-
certainly a big idea of its own merit. Made exclu- N o w, i m a g i n e w h a t y o u c o u l d d o w i t h a age their social networks on Facebook, MySpace
sively for aggressive souls, Todi™ symbolizes the “Facebook” of athletes, as it were. You could spon- and Twitter to drive participation—whether to drive
spirit found deep inside an athlete’s core. sor scholarships for eligible athletes as determined scholarship and contest voting, game attendance or
Working with Todi leadership, our brand ubiquity by public voting; you could help athletes raise money plain old social fun. The goal? To create the viral spread
big idea was to seed the Todi brand via athlete to attend specialized camps; you could build aware- of Team Todi watching through www.TodiUSA.com.
scouts who find the hardest charging undiscov- ness about upcoming tailgates at events and tourna- It could prove invaluable to Todi brand awareness.
ered athletes in the USA. These aggressive souls ments; moreover you could follow promising athletes In the meantime, buzz for this new athletic lifestyle
will serve as our brand ambassadors. They are at the naissance of their careers—and interact with shoe is deafening. Month over month revenues
not necessarily the best players on the field, pitch, them. are doubling.
court, ice, or slope. But they are the gutsiest. To encourage public participation, Todi announces But even shoe companies take baby steps. Led
And they make up Team Todi™. each athlete’s naming to Team Todi via press releas- by a 22-year general manager who is also a tri-ath-
To highlight these ambassadors, the Todi scout es, posted on Twitter, Facebook and www.TodiUSA. lete, Todi is proving the model in New England first.
interviews athletes and creates comprehen- com and submitted to hometown newspapers, radio Then, watch the brand really kick ass nationally.
sive athletic résumés. All Team Todi athletes’ and TV stations eager for good news about local he-
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BY JAMIE GROVE As a pure play, there isn’t much about our company that
isn’t game changing. However, I think the one thing that
sets us apart is our authentic voice. So many companies
VP, EVIL SCHEMES struggle to find a way to speak directly to their
customers; but because we’re all geeks here, that part
& NEFARIOUS PLANS comes naturally to us.
(aka Marketing) Most people point to our product copy as the best
Pretty basic stuff, even for a guy who, until a year ago, thought AWeber was
the nickname of an NBA player.
The film was a documentary called “Lemonade” about 16 people who got
laid off and went on to do the most rewarding work of their lives. To
create initial momentum, I posted segments of the movie over the course of
the five-month production.
Because of the year it was released (2009) and the subject matter (hope), a
majority of subscribers tended to be victims of the economy themselves. To
me, it just didn’t make sense to charge the unemployed to see a film about
unemployment. So we decided to make it free to watch on Hulu in early
2010.
But that meant it was free for anyone with an Internet connection, which
wouldn’t have been much of an extra reward to the loyal subscribers who
were there from the beginning, many of whom donated money to the
effort despite being laid off.
And you know what? Many of those same people who were rewarded with a
free film ended up buying the DVD anyway. And because of the thousands
of Twitter mentions, there was a built-in buzz for the launch.
It was the right decision, too, because for three days in February it was the
#1 film on Hulu; and it also got press on CBS Evening News with Katie
Couric, FastCompany.com, and NPR’s “On Point” with Tom Ashbrook.
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OhMiBod is a music vibrator that pulsates in sync to the music on your iPod®.
Feel the music.™ Inside and out.
OhMiBod combines the hottest product of the decade with the hottest topic on the
Internet. iPod meets sex.
The company set out to be the first vibrator to be openly discussed in social circles.
After all, it is just sex.
Its big idea was simple. Invent and own a new market category of music vibrators.
As the brand launch agency, we positioned the OhMiBod brand to be the Coca-Cola,
Xerox, FedEx of music vibrators in the minds of women all over the world. We seed-
ed the brand by launching a highly personalized Internet public relations campaign,
leveraging perhaps the largest, most viral topic of conversation on the Internet: sex.
Today, bloggers are your first customers. Treat them well. Treat them like royalty … and
they will introduce you to ROI.
We gave our bloggers the regal treatment. And OhMiBod went viral. The inbound hy-
perlinks to OhMiBod.com on both “music vibrator” and “vibrator” are in the thousands.
When you Google “Music Vibrator,” OhMiBod is the first organic search result. In fact,
Google just “Vibrator,” and it is organically fourth out of 90+ million competitive pages
for this term.
I was also well aware of the need to surprise and delight our customers with unexpected
developments; and my early interest in blogging allowed me to connect with people who
were early blogging innovators.
At that stage, one of the emerging brand challenges (and this challenge continues),
was the way in which brands were being incorporated in user-generated content.
When Jill Litwin began cooking meals for her friend’s son as an alternative
to canned green beans, she had no idea she was on the path to launching a
business. Her goal at Peas of Mind is to “better feed kids today.”
That’s why today you’ll find Peas of Mind creating foods that are a spin on
childhood favorites. Realizing kids will be kids, this San Francisco-based
company develops new products that creatively blend (some might even say
disguise) healthy ingredients in familiar foods such as fries and pizza.
“You will never get your kids to stop eating fries and pizza,
that’s why we’ve made them healthy and nutritious!”
It’s no wonder parents are stuffing Peas of Mind products into lunchboxes.
And it’s no wonder kids are stuffing their faces with something that is ac-
tually good for them—whether they know it or not.
So here’s some food for thought. Sometimes, branding is not always about
changing behavior, but discovering new ways to leverage existing behavior.
You just may have them eating out of your hands.
www.peasofmind.com
Anna Street™ is the original customizable fashion handbag. a Designer Studio in Barneys New York, as well. Barneys selects
You design it—create it. They sew it. fabrics that are exclusive to their stores. It’s great for high-fashion
You sel ect the bag shape, style, strap, hardware, fabrics and bow retailers like Barneys because they take on no inventory. They
styles to capture the look in your mind. The combinations are simply link customers to the Barneys Designer Studio for Anna
infinite. www.AnnaStreet.com. Street handbags. Customers design and pay for custom handbags
Initially, customers would come in to the Portsmouth, N.H. studio at Barneys online; Anna Street sews and delivers the handbags
and create their look by selecting all the various options. Then, one short week later.
Anna Street’s seamstresses would sew their one-of-a-kind bag. Additionally, this chichi handbag shop is partnering with popu-
The company expanded to three studio locations on the “Rodeo lar fashion bloggers that love the brand and have the traffic, fans
Drives” of New England and found the brick and mortar rents to and followers already in place. Instead of simply advertising on
be crippling. their websites, Anna Street will partner with them by placing the
Then they nailed it. At least, we think they have. Designer Studio directly on their site. The bloggers leverage their
Anna Street is recreating the customization aspects of their stu- traffic and share in the financial success of any sales generated.
dios in an electronic form and launching Anna Street Designer We anticipate tremendous success for both Anna Street and its
Studio online. Customers will soon be able to drag and drop dif- blogger partners, whereby reported revenues will far and beyond
ferent handbag looks until they design just the right one. exceed banner advertising in the same space.
But here’s the big idea. Instead of investing aggressively into When you start with a sexy brand, enable endless possibilities and
driving traffic to the Anna Street website, let’s use that Designer add one big idea to make your brand ubiquitous on the Internet,
Studio to monetize other websites’ traffic. increased revenues are in the bag!
Working with our web team at MicroArts, Anna Street will pilot
STAT:
Brand Anna Street
Market Category Fashion Accessories
Product Custom Handbags
Revenues < 1 Million
Big Idea Monetize other people’s traffic
via hand bag customizer
INNOVATION IS A PITCHED BATTLE
Some brands are products. Some are pure attitude.
For NEMO, design and speed of innovation are built into its DNA.
NEMO is a spirit. The brand is about taking customer feedback, needs and ideas and
turning them into implemented innovations … now! This spirit urges its
It is not a rah-rah spirit. Nor is it a candy-coated line in a marketing campaign. employees to constantly advance and execute improvements within one
NEMO Equipment, Inc. exudes an authentic, sincere and honest spirit— season. It’s a nimble process that is not laden with interoffice memos,
one infused throughout the company, which makes state-of-the-art meetings, multiple formal presentations and multi-level approvals.
mountaineering tents. It is a living breathing culture. And you’ll feel it every Rather, it’s a can-do attitude facilitated by impromptu conversations,
time you interact with the brand, at every touch point and with every employee. stand up huddles, over-the-weekend engineering and “let’s go” approvals.
As a result, NEMO tents were named among the 100 best And they’ll tell everyone they know about it. Being ultra-responsive
inventions of the year by TIME and Popular Science magazines. yields brand evangelism.
(Their air-supported tents require no poles. How cool is that?)
Given the brand’s responsive spirit, it’s no wonder even U.S. Special
Accolades are great. Customers are even better. Most brands don’t Forces rely on NEMO innovations.
even recognize customer feedback with a reply. But for NEMO,
proactive responsiveness becomes contagious. It’s only human nature.
When customers realize their feedback has been considered and NEMO is built to innovate on the fly.
actually implemented, their affinity for the brand grows instantly. (And sometimes, it’s literally a fly.)
®
But game-changing creative wants to beat the snot out of the competition. So it
does all this while simultaneously repositioning all other brands in your market
category ideally in one sentence.
For example, cat litter is estimated to be over a $1 billion industry in the U.S. …
and growing. The number one reason consumers buy cat litter is for odor control.
World’s Best Cat Litter™ truly does control odor the best. Its name is already
a tagline. But its slogan?
Here’s one big idea—one single line—that repositions the rest of the market
as inferior. Plus, its cadence has phonic stopping power, significantly aiding
consumer recall.
Let your competitive spirit keep pushing you past strategically sound creative
toward game-changing creative. Even in the cat litter market, it’s a dog-eat-dog
world. Be the top dog. Tell your market why.
™
TREAD FAST.
You can’t always be the brand that invented the market category.
But here’s what you can do: when you follow in someone else’s
footsteps, improve the footsteps. Fast.
Take the case of Chaco shoes. They didn’t invent the world’s first
sports sandal. (Teva owned that position.) But they improved them.
They made them fit better.
Think of what they were up against. They were second to the market.
They changed their name. Yet, the Chaco brand still trail blazes and
dances in the minds of its consumers because it was a successful
“fast follower”—the very next to leverage, build upon and improve
the original product or service.
Not the first in your market? That’s OK. … But step lively.
www.chacousa.com
Should a brand target a narrow market and build momentum from there?
Or should it try to appeal to nigh on everybody?
Designers of “active play” toys, OgoSport bounced its brand into the
$20 billion toy market with the idea that the true value of a toy is the
gazillion things your imagination can do with it. “Look at the toy
industry today,” says Fu. “They’ve taken imagination out of play.”
Video games dictate rules. Toy manufacturers dictate ages and genders.
And no longer can a plastic stick transform into a sword with which to
slay a dragon, or a bat to hit the game-winning homer, or a magic wand;
it’s a highly mechanized light saber to fight Sith Lords. And that’s it.
But look at what a red rubber ball can be. It’s a kick ball, dodge ball, bat
ball, wall ball, roof ball, peg-the-kid-in-the-head ball and myriad other
kinds of ball—dependent only on the rules and imagination of the user.
For me, the sweet spot of this brand was its ability to bridge generations.
On the other hand, show OgoSport toys to people with closer siblings,
and they’ll think otherwise. They won’t imagine tossing a disc with
grandma, but making up all sorts of games—and changing the rules to
ensure whipping the snot out of their siblings.
Take, for instance, the company called Incentive Systems. It made, not surprisingly, “incentive
management systems for large sales enterprises.” And that might have been dandy … until a
competitor’s tagline becomes, advanced incentive systems™ or proven incentive systems™.
With that name, the company marketed the entire market category and not their unique value
within it. In turn, you could use the company name, Incentive Systems, as a tagline under the
top three competitive logos. And it would have been true.
Yet, arguably, Incentive Systems invented the category. It couldn’t afford to let this happen.
To avoid its thunder being stolen, the company evolved its brand name to Centive.
If a competitor can claim or modify your name as a tagline, consider changing it.Your employees
won’t mind changing the stationery. Your vendors won’t mind changing the invoices. If done right,
your customers will be delighted. And your competitors? They just might hate it.
The issue:
World Series of Poker is the world’s
biggest poker brand. As big as it is,
however, interest in the brand was
cyclical, centering around two major
events.
The solution:
To leverage seasonal interest into
year-round brand experience, you
have to work your ass off all year.
The quote:
My strategy is to take up as much
online real estate as possible. If you’re
doing just SEO, you’re failing. If you’re
not doing PPC, local, search, news,
video, and images—if you’re not cov-
ering all your bases—you’re giving
business away.
Olivier Amar, SEO Consultant, Over-
ank / Whiteweb Marketing
The results:
Through online and viral engage-
ment and groundbreaking alliances in
broadcasting, digital media and cor-
porate sponsorships, the World Series
of Poker has maintained interest in the
off-season.
Are
Their new challenge:
Keep fans interested.
Ante up.
you all in?
Doing that whole brandy verby thing.
The Holy Grail in brand ubiquity is when your brand name symbolizes an entire
market category—and becomes a verb!
Fax it?
In 1843, Alexander Bain patented the basis of what would become the fax machine. Yet we
don’t Bain it … or HP it … or Brother it … or Cannon it … or Panasonic it … or Anyone-Else-
Who-Makes-Fax-Machines it.
It’s a shame.
In 2010, the latest craze in water sports is stand up paddle boarding, commonly know as SUP
or going SUPing. Originating in Hawaii from Beach Boy Surfing, the modern day SUP market
is still fairly unclaimed. In fact, Google (there’s that verb again) “stand up paddle boarding”
and you’ll get entries for:
When you’re ready to enter a market, can your name be a verb? Ask around. Twitter it, even.
ddle boarding | Stand-up paddleboarding
addle surfing | SUP surfing
Name Sullivan Tire
“Buying tires and auto service is never a fun purchase for most people” says 1,591 1,729 102
Mark Gillard, advertising manager of Sullivan Tire, a New England chain with following followers listed
more than 50 locations. AND
COUNTING!
So it’s no wonder many service-oriented brands rely on spokespeople, mascots, and
proxies to represent them. GEICO has a gecko. Aflac has a duck. E*trade has a baby. Tweets 4,858
Sullivan Tire has Boston sports. The people of Sullivan Tire have an authentic love
for Boston sports. And it shows.
Favorites
Sullivan Tire weaves their fandom into the brand way beyond advertising. They live it.
Following
“Our enthusiasm for Boston-area sports helps us promote the personality of
our brand,” says Gillard. “If you see a baseball star on a TV commercial, that’s
one thing. But if you can interact through social media, you become more than
just a tire company; you become a fellow fan. And when customers do come
in the store, they feel familiar and feel a personal involvement—and now don’t
feel so bad putting tires on the car.”
Today, customers and potential customers can talk sports with Sullivan Tire via Twitter
and Facebook. Or they can find out what sports star is appearing at what location.
Could they take an even stronger position with their fandom? As Boston sports
fans ourselves, we’d love to see a Twitter post as bold as “Today we have great
discounts for Red Sox fans. Yankee fans always pay full price.” View all ...
And that just might give the Sullivan Tire brand even more traction.
last post about 2 hours ago
FOLLOW US
When you manage a “be good-do good” brand, there are two major
market cultures you need to cater to:
1. Those who truly live the lifestyle your brand represents
2. Those who aspire to live it
Guess which one is bigger. If you said #2, you win a burrito.
In 2009, EVOL Burritos launched its “be good-do good” lifestyle brand to
clearly differentiate its value from the rest in the frozen burrito market—an
established segment within a frozen foods market that totals nearly $30
billion in the U.S. alone.
is
backwards—a symbolic mirror of their consumers’ values. It’s also the
beginning of an evolution in food manufacturing. EVOL operates under
the philosophy that it’s natural to give animals the humane lives they
deserve; it’s natural to source fresh ingredients from sustainable, cage-
free and green sources; it’s NOT natural, however, to inject hormones,
antibiotics and preservatives into meat and dairy; and it’s totally natural
to want to help your neighbors and protect your environment.
The company website admits that they don’t have all the answers.
But they’re trying to be sustainable, green, and philanthropic.
So are we as consumers.
We may not raise our own chickens. We may not even recycle every
bottle. But we’re trying.
Your customers may not be able to truly live the lifestyle you represent
24/7. But, in EVOL’s case, they can feel just a little better about
themselves when that microwave dings.
MARKET
ING
ROI
/ Create content around high performing search terms. / A/B test pay-per-click programs and search words. / Invest in viral and
social media initiatives to pique interest and clicks. / Reach out to bloggers to encourage brand evangelism. / Create new land-
ing pages to support high performing search terms. / Get on Twitter and Facebook to deploy a series of customer engagement
programs. / Optimize your inbound links by nurturing relationships from related websites, associations and partners.
The Economist reported in 2006, that Internet marketing totaled $9.6 billion in 2001, $27
billion in 2006 and is expected to top $60 billion next year, which looks now to be a low
estimate.
Dell attributes more than $3 million in sales revenue directly to Twitter. Ebay found in 2006
that participants in online communities spend 54% more than non-community users. It's
no wonder that a recent study showed a direct correlation in companies' financial perfor-
mance and their online engagement levels. (The top 10 companies are global leaders in
technology. Imagine that.)
So how can your brand manager increase and measure Internet Marketing ROI?
1. Create benchmarks.
2. Increase conversions on current web traffic.
3. Increase traffic.
Trackable drivers of Internet Marketing ROI are dynamic and vast, but you can
start by establishing your brand’s Internet Marketing benchmarks by answering
questions such as:
• What's the current conversion value of each inbound link to your website
(blogs, viral programs, social media, partnership sites, email, etc.)?
• How many visitors choose online services that save your business
time and dollars?
Once you answer these questions, work at increasing conversions with your current
website traffic levels via A/B testing of your website, alignment with your sales process
and landing page creative that includes specific strategies and tactics, fine-tuned why-to-
buy statements, user click-path scenarios, prospect self-qualification tools, better targeted
demographics and relative branded creative.
This matrix gets large fast. But by honing your message and your user interface, you'll end
up with increased conversions to new revenues.
So now all you have to do is increase traffic to your website to really maximize conver-
sions. How?
Lather. Rinse. And repeat. Internet Marketing is never static. Never stop engaging. And
never stop testing. And never accept the status quo. The potential here is too great.
lessons I’ve learned
in 22 years in the brand agency business
I suspect these lessons are viable to any business and not exclusive to branding and Internet marketing agencies.
Selecting the right clients is equally as Don’t dread “walls.” Walls challenge you
important to your success as hiring the everyday, all day. It’s business. Some
right teammates. days, you sidestep them. Some days,
you hurdle them. At other times, you
tunnel under, smash through, pole vault
over or claw up. And some days, you
simply run into them and go nowhere
but to Headacheville. But in the long
run, walls are good; they keep the weak
from catching you.
“Going above and beyond” to create You can make endless mistakes in
customer loyalty doesn’t have to be ex- business and still ultimately succeed,
pensive; but it does have to be thought- except for one mistake: running out of money.
ful, unexpected and ideally surprising.
Just yesterday, our pest control com-
pany came to … well, control pests. My
six-year-old daughter, Zoe, follows him
around as she usually does and is in-
quisitive as per usual. But she then pro-
ceeds to talk about her birthday party on
Friday. Today, the pest control gentle-
man had to come back to finish up the
treatment. Zoe runs out to say hello and
is presented with a birthday card from
her friend, the pest man. Wow.
By Peter L. Getman
Brand managers and their agencies will often create brand extensions or create a new brand to
capture a second and third segment within the overall market.
To move the brand upstream in the market, there must be an increase in the consumers’
perceived-emotional values. This is created by a brand’s communication of its promise and is
confirmed by the actual experience with the brand itself.
An increase in perceived value can be purely emotional or it can be truly relevant based on
performance. Often, it’s a combination of the two that moves a brand upstream.
And what’s really cool is that it is not always the brand that moves upstream. Sometimes, the
efforts of a brand manager and the performance of a single brand can move an entire segment of
the market upstream.
In 1993, Clarient, Inc. was founded as ChromaVision Medical System, a company that made
laboratory instruments that doctors used to help manage breast cancer cases. In 2003, it changed
its proverbial oars to navigate a sea change within the cancer diagnostics industry.
Today, Clarient delivers world-class diagnostic test technologies to access and characterize
patients’ cancers. Their market is the thousands of pathologists who directly support a mature
market of cancer facilities around the world, spanning from thousands of community-hospital-
based facilities to a short list of major world-class cancer centers.
In year 7, GE recognized this success and acquired Clarient for $580 million.
More important, the success of Clarient’s big idea has hastened the current of therapeutic
strategies used to battle some of the most-dreaded diseases facing humanity.
NEW DELIVERY
MECHANISMS
ARE BIG IDEAS.