Michelle A. Heath

If you haven’t heard about the Old Spice video campaigns you must be either living under a rock or rendered speechless by Isaiah Mustafa’s six-pack, towel wearing bod. Some say he’s a god. I say the campaign is brilliant (and happen to concur with the god-like references). Weiden + Kennedy, P&G’s ad agency, pulled together one of the most integrated and truly buzz worthy social media campaigns of 2010. Their timeliness, randomness, and honest-to-goodness humor has put Old Spice on the map in terms of social media. Instead of me gushing about it, feel free to read the great articles by Mashable and Fast Company. But of course my $0.02 anyway.

As I thought about what worked so well in this campaign, I kept thinking about the 4Ps of marketing and how, in this new social media world, we need a new P. Sure, every successful marketing mix has something to do with product, price, placement and promotion. But what they don’t teach you is what we learned this week about a healthy dash of social media and a heaping helping of a hot guy in a towel.

As marketers, we spend most of our time cooking up clever ways to share our brand with the people we think are most interested – a.k.a. our target audience. Whether it’s chocolates, cars, ShamWows or Forex – there’s a buyer for what we’re selling. They just don’t know it yet.

Brands have to work harder than ever to earn our attention. We’ve all heard the urban legend of the viral video that refused to produce the golden YouTube views and its silent death at the hands of its maker. Tragic. We’ve all seen the Facebook pages that vie for us to like them only to disappoint us and the Twitter streams that offer nothing of value in 140 characters or less. Sigh.

The great thing about the Old Spice campaign is that it took something that’s been around for decades (my grandpa wore it for years) and made it new by starting with fans and followers. It is what every good campaign should do – start with the people and let them build it. It’s something they don’t teach you in school but something I admire in practice. IMHO, People should be the 5th P. Think about it. Social media is all about People. It’s about engaging People in conversations, creating new ideas, forming and sharing opinions and connecting. These are People who may or may not like your brand. But, they know other People. And when they see and hear cool stuff in action, they tell them.

Hats off to W+K for focusing on the People and to Old Spice taking a risk and putting a hot guy in a towel (seriously, thank you.) And because I work for Currensee, a social network where we admire great examples like this one…AND because we are a little goo-goo for social media, we decided to ask (and by ask I mean, make) one of our interns, appropriately named Orli, respond to one of the Old Spice commercials. Watch the original here. Then watch Orli’s response.

I remember my job at Fidelity back in the late 90’s. We were cooking up this revolutionary new way for people to trade…online. It was back in the day when you sometimes paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for a url and every website had a little worker guy image on it because it was under construction.

I remember how many people at that time said it would never happen, this internet fad. It will never take off. Who wants to go on the internet to shop? Who would ever give their credit card across the world wide web, into the ether? Why would people rather talk online than on the telephone? Well, friends, if you are living in the year 2010, you are living the internet dream. We are connected 24×7 and it’s getting easier and easier to shop, communicate, browse and work.

But there always has to be someone who doesn’t believe it. Along comes Prince, who I love dearly. My first album that was banned from my record player by my parents was Purple Rain. I think I know every word to every song on that album. The man is a musical genius and has millions of fans around the world but refuses to embrace technology and went so far as saying the internet is over in a recent interview picked up by Mashable. And, he went on to say

All these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.

It is hard to believe that there are smart, influential, talented people out there who believe that the internet is the root of all evil. What about all of the great things the internet has does to open business and commerce? To connect people around the world? To create access to information? To make music available to fans everywhere?

Maybe we’ve all fallen prey to the cult of Steve Jobs, and Facebook, and iTunes and Twitter and the many gadgets and websites we use every day to help us do our jobs better, live better, learn more and be more productive members of society. Maybe we should go back to our pre-internet days and forget all the gizmos, gadgetry and websites.

…on second thought, I’ll stick with the cult. Sorry Prince, I ain’t buyin’ it.

My son’s teacher went into early labor today. So scary and awful. Luckily, he’s only 3 and has no idea what that means except Ms. A won’t be at school this week because she’s sick. My 7 yr old, on the other hand, was fully involved and wanted to know everything. I mean everything. Questions like, “Is the baby going to die?”, “Why does the mommy’s body want the baby to come out so soon?”, “What happens if the baby comes out and doesn’t have all its parts?”. Jeez louise. The Spanish Inquisition. She’s been like this since the day she started talking. Always asking very detailed questions that often feel like they deserve answers inappropriate for little ears.

And I always ask myself, should I answer the questions with the details and the honest answers? Or do I pare it back and obfuscate the issue?

My decision with my kids is to give them as much as they can handle. Typically, my 7 yr old will ask a series of very detailed questions. I always answer the questions with truthful, simple answers. I don’t use alot of words or fancy jargon – she’s smart but she often can’t process it. Or if I do use a word she might not understand, I stop and ask if she knows what it means. I think we often take for granted that our kids know what the hell we are talking about when alot of the times the words we use ramble on without meaning. Stop and explain it in one word. She gets the benefit of learning a new word and understanding it in context at the same time. My philosophy is that she will stop asking questions when she has gotten her fill of the answers. I tested this out tonight.

I tried dumbing down the answer. Her: “What’s wrong with Ms. A?” Well, she’s sick. Her: “Sick like with a cold?” Her tummy hurts a bit. Her: “What do you mean? Like throwing up sick?” No, a little different than that. Her: “Is something wrong with…gulp…the baby?” The baby is okay but Ms. A just needs to rest for a few days. Her: “Why? Is the baby going to be okay?” We hope so. Her: “What do you mean…

Can you see where this is going?

What happened next is I said, her body thought it was time for the baby to come out but it’s too early. Her: “Why did her body do that?” It just happens sometimes. Her: “Can the baby live if it comes out too early?” There are lots of things they can do to help the baby if it comes out early but it’s better if the baby stays in the mommy’s tummy and finishes growing there. Her: “Is the baby going to be okay?” They need her to rest and will give her some medicine to help the baby and mommy be okay. Her: “Wow, that is sad for Ms. A. I hope she feels better.

Amazing.

What would have dragged on into 20 more questions was simply answered in 3-5 questions requiring thoughtful, detailed and simple answers. I was thinking about this conversation after my daughter went to bed and realized it’s a very simple lesson in the art of clear communications:

1. know your audience

2. convey the message in as few words as possible

3. anticipate the questions they’ll ask and work them into the message

4. get to the point fast

5. help them make a decision and move on

That’s how I see it. I believe in transparency – as much as a kid can handle. Jack once said “You can’t handle the truth.” But maybe they can?

Tell me…do you serve up the truth? How much do you tell?

I spent this morning at Emerson College participating on a panel as part of the School of Communication’s “Communication Week”. The Chair of the Emerson Marketing Communications department, John Davis, is passionate about hybriding the strategic and communication aspects of marketing and is building an experienced team of faculty, alumni and outside peers and influencers to enhance the program. I must admit, I didn’t know much about Emerson’s Marketing program and was very impressed by the faculty and students, along with Cathy Waters, Emerson Graduate Marketing Director.

The topic was around the role of marketing in today’s globalized world. I had the pleasure of meeting fellow panelist,  Joan Schneider, president of Schneider Associates. It’s amazing that our paths haven’t crossed until today as she is also a passionate marketer and creative brand thinker – and we tend to agree on alot of points, which is nice when you’re sitting next to someone for almost 2 hours. The conversation kicked-off around launching new products, something Joan and her firm know alot about. Being in start-up land at Currensee, launches usually happen over-night, or so it seems. Joan talked about launch planning and how she helps her clients get ready. Her advice? Start the launch planing while ideas are still ideating. Waiting until the widget comes off the assembly line is often too late to plan all the details and line up the pieces for a successful launch. I spent time talking about launching a social network and how to gain sign-up momentum. The key? Identifying your influencers – the people who are willing to try your product early and tell other people about it. Joan and I both agreed that influencers are everyone from mommy bloggers, to WSJ press to the average consumer. It’s all about figuring out who they are, how to connect with them and what helps them engage with your brand.

We talked alot about social media and how we are using Twitter, Facebook and other social channels to engage customers and how we measure the success of social media. It was a topic that picked up on the themes from last week’s Espresso lunch with friend and colleague, Marta Kagan, where we talked about how social media is creating new channels and new challenges for us as marketers. Before, customers wrote an email or called us to complain. Now we manage the trials and tribulations of upset customers who can do more to damage to a brand in 140 characters than we ever thought possible. Measurement of social engagement, awareness, lead gen and membership is blurring the lines of ROI and marketers often don’t have the time or budget for big measurement products and, quite frankly, they’re not always the answer to the measurement question.

After a great discussion that’s far too detailed to transcribe here, we opened the session to the audience, mostly comprised of students. There were some great questions:

- What do you do when you have a bad press launch? How do you measure that and communicate that to your clients/management team?

- How do you decide what level of writing is appropriate for an audience mixed with newbies and experts?

- How do you find the influencers who can help launch your brand?

- What advice do you have for finding an internship or full-time job?

The last question really stood out to me because it takes marketing full-circle. Marketing is all about identifying the differentiator – the value prop that makes your idea, brand, product or service unique from the other guy’s down the street. Then, once you figure out what that is, you write it down and convey it in everything you do – consistently and emphatically. You talk about it, you Tweet it, you find people to talk about it. The it is the differentiator and the differentiator is the marketing. When it comes to getting a job, the same rules apply. You send me a resume. I look at it. The marketer in me does a few things immediately – 1) Assess the design. Did you just use a Word doc template or did you actually get creative and create a logo or unique format? 2) Check for typos and grammar. I know, it’s so anal but I can’t stand typos in a resume. You want me to hire you but you don’t have the attention to detail to actually proof your resume before you send it to me? Trash can.  3) Scan to figure out what’s different about you. Oh, you know Word, Excel and PowerPoint…yawn. Oh, you were the captain of your lacross team? Hm, team player, competitive, interesting. Oh, you were a sugar plum fairy in the Nutcracker Ballet? Discipline, focus, practice, cool. You started a mentoring program for inner-city kids? Initiative, compassion, giving back. Love it. You did an intership for the summer? Gave up the beach for the office. That’s dedication.

In my book, you have about 30 seconds for your resume to either get my attention or not. I apologize that I have the attention span of a gnat when it comes to stuff like this but I know I am not alone. People are busy. You need to cut through the clutter and create your difference. Whether you’re marketing yourself or a product someone’s going to buy, you’ve got 30 seconds to get your differentiator across, get them to understand it and make them feel like they need it (or you) right now.

And, now, over to you. Are you marketing your differentiator?

You grow up with a desire to win. It’s ingrained in you at your first soccer game, first game of Chutes and Ladders, first sack race. It was always a matter of who won and the poor kids who lost. Sure, our parents tried to instill the spirit of being a good sport and “good game” but, let’s face it, it was always about winning.

Yesterday, I ran my first 10k. Let me preface this by saying, prior to three months ago, I didn’t run. Sure I would run on the treadmill one of the few times I made it to the gym (that’s another story). But I was not a runner. I had no desire to run a race, no desire to run outside in sub-zero weather, no desire to finish something I couldn’t win. Then, my sister asked me to run the Hyannis 10k with her. I casually said yes, which turned into me saying I was doing it on Twitter and Facebook and, next thing you know, I was preparing to run my first race. HOLY SHIT. I don’t run. Especially in the freezing cold on a Saturday morning when I’d rather be eating pancakes, drinking my coffee and reading the paper. But I was committed so I started to train. I ran. I started slow and ran 3 miles here. 4 miles there. I could feel my lungs getting stronger. My legs running faster. Then I started my Saturday long runs of between 6-8 miles once a week. I am still amazed that I can actually run this far. The first time I ran from the North End, across the Mass Ave bridge and back, I couldn’t believe that I had run the equivalent of a 10k! Then I started to really look forward to my weekend runs. I downloaded new music and set up my playlist, got some crazy cold weather gear, started eating Goo, began tracking my miles and progress with RunKeeper (highly recommend!) and started to feel the buzz of a runner.

Yesterday came and I will admit…I was nervous! Sure, I had run over 6 miles for several weeks but I’d never run a race. I’m competitive. I don’t golf because I suck. I can be a sore loser. I don’t like to lose. But this was different. It was just about finishing. Crossing the finish line. That’s all I needed to do. With my sister (who totally rocked the race!) by my side, I ran all 6.2 miles and crossed the finish line and got my first medal. I was proud of my sister and proud of myself for finishing.

I ran over to see my family and my daughter said, “Mommy, you got the medal! Does that mean you won?” I explained that I didn’t come in first place but that I finished the race. She spent the rest of the day telling me that it was okay that I didn’t win because I did the best I could and finished what I started and that maybe I would win next time. Well, I guess it all comes back around.

For those of you out there who have never run a race, I highly encourage you to give it a go. It’s amazing what a goal can do for your personal commitment to finishing something, even if you don’t win. It was liberating, humbling and thrilling. All I could think of as I crossed the finish was….hmm, maybe a half marathon…and another medal.

I did it. I finally did it. I know, you’ve all been giving me crap forever about my Blackberry. Some made fun of it’s phallic trackball, others it’s lack of app power, still others its inability to play music or even take a darn picture for that matter. Many asked why I wouldn’t switch. My answer? 1) Don’t want to switch from Verizon to AT&T  2) Don’t want to give up my keypad.

Well, on Sunday, November 15th, I did both.

As for #2, actually, surprisingly, it wasn’t that tough of a switch. Mind you, I have small hands (not sure how you big guys do it) and the auto-correction works pretty well, for the most part. I’ve put my thumbs to work and have gotten pretty good at typing pretty fast. The interesting thing I’ve found about typing on the iPhone is that I need to concentrate much more than I did on my Blackberry. My Blackberry was like typing on a computer – you know where the keys are, you could be putting on lipgloss and talking to your boss and still typing fast and furious. On the iPhone? Well, not so much. I have not yet attempted to apply gloss and type but have tried to talk to my boss and type (sorry, Dave) and it requires more concentration on the actual letters I’m trying to press. I know this sounds weird but it’s true and I guess I’ll get used to it so I can, once again, talk to Dave while typing.

As for #1, here’s my opinion. This device is not a phone at all. It is a mini-computer in disguise which is why the zillions of people who have iPhones just say “Yeah, AT&T sucks, but what are you gonna do?” Nada, that’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to fall in love with the slick display and the shiny buttons (mmm…shiny). The swift touchscreen action, the skakey-shakey to refresh Facebook, the endless app store, the iTunes all in one place, and the list goes on. You’ll notice I never said…the phone.

There was an interesting and timely Twitter post today by Jeremiah Owyang where he asked…

What percent of the time do you use your phone to actually talk? I use iPhone maybe only 5-10% for talking.

To which @Aaron Strout RT’d and said he uses his phone “about the same” and @jspepper said “Talk on iPhone??!”. Jeremiah later posted…

Most responses were they use their “phone” as a device/computer now. And the iPhone voice capabilities are substandard.

But isn’t the thing called an i…Phone?

You see, I talk on the phone. Alot. I have blown-out every wireless plan I’ve ever had. The interesting thing that happened on Sunday when I got my iPhone is that I started talking on the phone less and using email, text, chat and other communication methods to “talk” to my peeps. I guess between email, text, Facebook, Twitter, Four Square and the other apps I haven’t even discovered yet, I can know where they are, what they are doing, what they had for lunch, where they’re meeting for drinks (mmm…drinks) and how they feel about the lastest celebrity drama. I can open attachments of all shapes and sizes, browse webpages and take pictures and share them on Twitter.

So, I ask you my new lovely, are you really a phone? I hear you ring every once and a while but, IMHO, you are not a phone. You are a shiny, beautiful gateway to helping me share more stuff with more people. Whether that sharing is through a Word doc, text message, song, photo, geo position or a simple virtual gift, it’s less about talking on the phone and more about sharing on my device.

Maybe you should have been called the iShare? Hm, that has a nice ring to it.

*iPhone photo credit: weboptimiser.com; Rotary phone photo credit: cornbreadandbeansquilting.wordpress.com

TechCrunch reported yesterday about an interesting new iPhone app they came across in the App Store. It’s an official app made by the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (NASDAQ), the American stock exchange. In the words of TechCrunch writer, MG Siegler, “That itself is interesting, but perhaps even more interesting is a key functionality of the app is to highlight tweets about various NASDAQ stocks.”

Wait, this is the NASDAQ, right?

Here’s the scoop. The app is called NASDAQ Portfolio Manager and, according to TechCrunch, it’s pretty slick. In addition to providing all the real-time quotes and data you’d expect, it also has some pretty cool charting features and, IMHO, the most interesting part of the whole app is that it has a special view that integrates all the latest tweets about that stock, coming in from StockTwits. If you don’t know about StockTwits and you’re a Forex trader, you need to check it out. The service is organized in “streams” and they recently launched a Forex stream, where you can see all the latest Forex tweets. A Forex tweet is denoted with $Currency pair (i.e. $USDJPY), and what’s even cooler is that you can sort the Forex stream by pair. Say you’re only interested in tweets about USD/JPY, click on the pair and just see that stream. We use StockTwits with our @Currensee Twitter stream to connect with influential Forex traders from around the world.

I love that an institution like NASDAQ sees real value in social data. Their new app shows the innovation that comes when you blend the conversation of the crowd with traditional data. The world is moving to a place where “how we always did it” just doesn’t do it anymore. In the old days, if the chart said go long, I most likely would. But today, if the chart says go long while everyone on Twitter is going short, I just might reconsider my position. It doesn’t mean the crowd is right, it just means I have more information and more resources to help me make a much more informed decision. Nicely done, NASDAQ.

We live in a society where everyone says yes. Can you stay late again tonight? Yes. Can you shave two weeks off that project deadline? Yes. Can you stop and pick up milk even though it’s pouring rain and the store is in the opposite direction? Yes. Would you like more pasta with your pasta? Yes. Can you make lemons out of lemonade? Yes.

No.

I know the drill. I get it. I used to want you to say yes too. But there’s a time and place for you to say yes and there are tough calls when you tell me yes but you really should  just say no.

I don’t want you to try to figure out intricate ways to do it. I don’t have the budget for you to source it out to a freelancer or find another guy. I can’t spend the time project managing the vision and task-mastering the execution. That’s why I asked you to do it. Duh.

You see, I have high expectations. If you tell me yes, well, I start thinking about how great the thing is, how much it’s going to rock my world and how excited I’ll be when I have it. I know, there’s therapy for issues like this, but I can’t help it. My expectations are what they are. So, rather than selling me on the fact that you can do it either A) just do it or B) just tell me you can’t do it. I will still love you if you choose option B. Actually, I might love you even more.

What I want is for you to know your limits. Know what you can do and how that’s different from what you think you can do. People worry about letting other people down when they say no. I say show your cards and let me down early. Please, I beg you, if you know it’s no…just say no.

Originally posted on the Currensee blog on Sept. 15, 2009.

I spent most of my career in the financial services industry. Back in the day, when I was working at one of the “big guys”, we were truly innovative. New products, new technologies, first to market on many fronts but then something changed. The big guys got big and when you get big, you get hung up in meetings, politics, reorgs, red tape, managing up, reforcasting budgets and, voila, all the big innovation gets pushed aside for making the numbers and keeping the beast steady as she goes.

When I took the leap into the land of startups I never imagined a financial services vertical for startups. I wondered what there was to innovate in a place so layered in compliance, risk, security and privacy hangups? Well, first I discovered Currensee, and was charmed and delighted by the innovation and technology in the space. Then, most recently, I came across Finovate.

For those of you who know TechCruch50 or DEMO, Finovate is the financial services equivalent. A Spring and Fall yearly event (NYC, Sept 29) that “showcases the best new financial and banking technology innovations from established leading companies and hot young startups.” The Finovate judges hand-pick the companies that get their 7 minutes of fame on stage to show (live demos only, no slideware) their latest and greatest to an audience filled with VCs, big financial services companies looking for ideas and other startups watching the competition.

After checking out several of the companies, I was pretty impressed. I loved Smarty Pig – simple, smart savings plans and accounts you can create with your family and friends. And, BrightScope – transparent information and ratings for your 401k plan. Then there’s my favorite, Bill Shrink – where Dave in Witchita found a cell phone provider that will save him $500 a year. Now, that’s smart.

The best news in reviewing all the Finovate finalists is that they are all in the same business – making life simpler and better. That’s where the big guys often miss the boat. When you connect to the real goal of the average investor it is, quite simply, to have a damn, good life. I am loving the fact that financial services startups are connecting to this reality, cooking up unique products and services and serving up a solid dose of innovation. We’re happy to share the financial services startup space with these exciting companies and putting Finovate on our horizon for 2010.

Originally posted on the Currensee blog on Sept 15, 2009.

Last week, TechCrunch reported that Intuit will acquire the free online personal finance service, Mint, for around $170 million. The deal, which should be announced in the next few days, puts Mint in a new league. As TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington described it, “This is a terrific exit for Mint, which first launched two years ago at TechCrunch50. Mint took the top prize at that event and has been growing fast ever since.” Growing fast, eh? Let’s talk about explosive growth. I’m talking gaining 3,000 new users a day and jumping from 600,000 to 850,000 users in a matter of months. The best part is that Intuit didn’t believe the numbers and sent Mint a threatening letter demanding an explanation for the user sign-up success.

I guess Intuit got the answers they wanted given today’s news. I can see exactly what they see in Mint. As Rob at Regular Geek points out, it was born in the glory days of Web 2.0 and comes without all the baggage of Web 1.0 software products. Where Quicken is desktop-like, heavy and complex to use, Mint uses light graphics and is focused on spending against a budget versus the dull and overwhelming focus on bill payment and tracking. They’ve done a lot of things right with the Mint product and have made personal finance accessible and and even fun for the average Joe.

This acquisition bodes well for those of us in the social trading and investing space. It shows that a serious player like Intuit finds tremendous value in the product and the users of an innovative Web 2.0 company. It proves that breaking the model of the way trading, investing and saving have always been done creates market opportunity, revenue opportunity and innovation opportunity. What a great way to start a Monday. Congrats to the Mint team on this exciting accomplishment.