I had a small idea about 6 months ago: rather than paying celebrities loads of money to record their voice navigation into Ovi Maps, we should take some of that money and develop a little mobile app that allows people to record their own voice navigation, and share these voice packs with other people.

I got the guys at Starcut to make the little app, and asked them to keep it really simple. The team at Ovi Maps made sure it worked at their end, and the campaign team integrated it into their major Ovi Maps campaign which gave it a huge boost in terms of visibility. It ended up being called Own Voice, and I’m really proud to say that it was released last week, and the initial response has been extremely good.

It really is a tiny, simple idea. But – of all the things with which I’ve been directly involved - it is the best example of my marketing philosophy:

1. It creates social objects. Voice packs become gifts that lovers or mothers or friends can share. Each shared pack may only be to just one person, or a few, or the whole world. But it doesn’t matter because the combined effect is what we are looking for. This is making the service itself a gift, which means it is passed on for us and is received with pleasure. (thanks Jyri)

2. It is dandelion marketing as we cannot be sure which voices will be most popular, so we are instead creating the eco-system for thousands of voices to be created and shared.

3. It is Baked In marketing, as it creates something conversational about the service itself, making it a product that better markets itself. (thanks Mr Bogusky)

4. It is an idea that creates content, rather than being an idea that is content (thanks Faris)

5. It augments the actual experience and context of being an Ovi Maps customer. It actually works at the design level of the communications pyramid, where most of the fundamental value is added. (thanks Helge).

6. It Earns Media. Lots of people have Tweeted about it, and it was one of the rare marketing-led ideas that actually made it to the mainstream press (BBC Click and The Independent among others already).

In summary: it’s not the size of the idea that counts, it’s what you can do with it.

My former colleague Karl Long puts it succinctly: “the very heart of strategy rests on the value creation question, who does it, why, by what means, and how do we do it better and cheaper than the other guy”. One way to create value, he proposes, is to create and lead a community. Communities add real but intangible value via the connections that they provide (hat tip to Scott)

Social communications tools provide the ability and opportunity to deliver actual, albeit intangible, value e.g. perception, reputation and trust, emotional attachments, and, perhaps most importantly, customer satisfaction.

In accounting terms, when one company acquires another, the excess paid above and beyond the tangible assets is called the Goodwill. Goodwill is made up of many things, including: perception, reputation and trust, emotional attachments and…

Goodwill is an asset that is worth building.

Chris Brogan was at the #likeminds summit I was lucky enough to attend last week, and he mentioned Milton Friedman’s point that businesses primarily exist to return value to shareholders. Although people are free to question this, it reminded me that a company’s valuation is not merely about this quarter’s profits, but is instead dependent on its ability to generate future profits. Today’s sales keep a company afloat,  but business value is determined by intangibles like Goodwill.

Rather than focusing on increasing this quarter’s sales, the role of marketing is helping and delighting customers. Making customers feel like guests or members of a club is a great way to increase the amount of value that you are providing them.

Seth says: just make remarkable products. Even though not all of us work directly in the product development team, we all have to think about how we augment the value of products by keeping value-creation in mind – baking in our marketing, as Bogusky has written about.

As difficult as it is to construct, a phone is just some metal and wires and it is really quite low value in terms of its tangible assets. Once we add services and software capabilities to the mix (what we at Nokia call the “solution”) then the value is greater. But still, the value really only exists once the customer starts to use the product i.e. once the solution meets the context in which it is used.That is where marketing should be focused.

It’s difficult to measure Goodwill, but it gives you super profits. Literally.

Goodwill is notoriously difficult to measure (sound familiar?), but it does exist. One method of valuing Goodwill is to look at the overall ”super profit“: the difference between the profits made by investing the tangible assets into a business, rather than at the risk-free interest rate.

So, by definition, Goodwill is the super profit: Increase Goodwill, and you increase your profits.

How do you increase Goodwill? Make people feel special. Make happiness your business model. Do things that matter for the people who matter. Be an experience facilitator. It’s about pro-active customer service as marketing, but also about guest experience design. You measure customer satisfaction and happiness and focus 100% on that.

You do all of that good stuff, and when the finance people ask you why you are doing it, you tell them that you are creating super profits and building up the intangible assets they like to refer to as Goodwill.

The analogy does have merit here are 5 lessons we can learn from dandelions.

1. Get lots of content out there.

Cory tells us that a single dandelion may produce 2,000 seeds per year. Most will fail, but that’s not important to a dandelion; it just wants to be sure that every single opportunity for reproduction is exploited.

On the web, it is almost impossible to predict what will be have a large “earned” impact. I freely admitted that I would not have predicted the success of the T-mobile dance clip, which to me was just a copy of things already done on the web. But it is clearly a success, with over 16 million views now, and is now one of the first things you find if you search for T-mobile on Youtube (which is the default search engine for some kids nowdays btw).

Some companies have tried to release multiple things simultaneously, and just hope that one of them succeeds. See this case study about Officemax.

2. Capitalise on fertile areas

As my good friend Juuso Myllyrinne pointed out to me, if we act like dandelions, then we perhaps fail to capitalise on successes. The randomness of the approach could mean that we are oblivious to market feedback.

But I think the analogy still holds: Some dandelion seed fall on particularly fertile ground. When this happens, dandelions reproduce quickly and plentifully.

Same with creativity: when something lands on a fertile creative patch, it is possible to take advantage of this situation and capitalise. And as Ben Mason over at 101 Culture says, organisations need to listen more and then be able to react quickly.

3. You’re not in charge. (No one is.)

Just as dandelions can’t control the wind, Brands can’t expect to control the ways in which content and stories will be reproduced, altered, improved upon.

Instead, we should actively encourage reproduction and remixing: In total, the high-quality consumer-generated Cadbury’s gorilla remixes got more views than the awesome original.

4. Make things easy to spread.

Dandelions make it incredibly easy for their seeds to fly. Any wind, from any direction is enough. Don’t restrict the ways your content can be shared.

“Send-to-friend” is not really the answer either: sometimes just making it possible to link to something – and not burying it under pages of Flash – can be enough.

5. Be a valuable part of your ecosystem

Dandelions aren’t looking to win or destroy others; they are trying to survive by being a valuable part of an ever-evolving ecosystem.

Be valuable. Keep your content flowing. Get people to create it with you.

Reach places that you could never reach alone.

Be part of something bigger than just you.

Right, so now I’m glad that we all agree that there is no such thing as social media.

And that we also agree that everything is social media.

So, we should move on to my next bone of contention:

You do of course need a good strategy.

And you definitely need clear goals.

And one of the best ways for you to reach your shiny, clearly-defined goals will probably be to make use of some of the kick-ass new social tools like Twitter and Facebook.

But they don’t need their own separate strategy.

Having a social media strategy is kind of like having a paper-and-pen strategy.

And that just don’t make no sense.

I’ve always had a problem with the verb Branding.

I think some companies spend way too much time thinking about logos and colours.

Of course, I believe in the importance of having a strong brand, but the reality is that a brand is a reputation, not a typeface.

You should try to make a good first impression with your appearance.

But in the end it is what you say – and even more importantly what you do – that matters.

In the long term, the way we treat people has far more impact on our reputation than our outward appearance.

I’m amazed I haven’t really considered this before, but what we all call Social Media is actually the exact opposite of media.

Derivation of the word Media: Latin: medium is the neuter form of the adjective medius, meaning “middle”; as well as, a neuter noun meaning, “the middle”

The singular, medium, early developed the meaning “an intervening agency, means, or instrument” and was first applied to newspapers two centuries ago.

Conversely, “Social Media” is a set of tools for people to communicate between themselves, platforms for interaction and relationships, not content and ads.

What do these social tools (Facebook etc) do?

They disinterMEDIAte of course!

“Who said this is media? Consumers weren’t trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant. … We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it.”
Ted McConnell, General Manager-Interactive Marketing and Innovation at Procter & Gamble Co

GroupM Search, comScore Announce Study “The Influenced: Social Media, Search and the Interplay of Consideration and Consumption”

- consumers exposed to a brand’s influenced social media and paid search programs are 2.8 times more likely to search for that brand’s products compared to users who only saw paid search.

- 50% lift in click-through rates across the board when consumers had been exposed to social media and paid search.

- Specific keywords that found information about a generic product “went through the roof after being exposed to social media programs,”

- “The biggest challenge becomes understanding how to allocate budgets between the two media, social and paid search. It’s also about understanding when consumers are ready to invite brands into their social space”

ie perhaps it’s not (just) about affiliates and selling *within* social media, but rather using social media for listening and persuasion, then search and owned media for conversion?

Katy has posted this awesome clip on her Seemingly Unconnected blog.

It’s a great monologue, explaining how marketing is to blame for the stupidification of culture, by encouraging us to worship youthfulness and ignorance.

However, I’m not sure about his logic of selling to younger people “so that they buy stuff for their whole life”; actually, marketing is much more myopic than that. This quarter’s targets are usually too important to worry about a customer’s lifetime value.

Instead, I would say that it’s actually the malleability of young minds that has always made them attractive to the Ad Men hungry for quick wins.

Part of the problem is that nearly everything we measure (sales; visits; click-through rates) is short-term. If we are to move beyond making a quick buck and start building value, then marketing and social media metrics needs a Balanced Scorecard, which is what our PESH model is aiming to do. Measuring participation and advocacy scores is then as (or more) important than measuring direct clicks and sales.

Everything seems to be moving at breakneck twitter-speed nowadays, but building genuine value and relationships still takes time.

The alternative is more viral videos… of the Jonas Brothers… wearing Crocs. And nobody in their right mind wants much of that.

In order to entice people to use their firm’s advertising services, it basically says: ad men will take the shirt from your back, and the time of the dinosaurs is over.

How very, very true.

Throw in some sexist photography and some rather racist references to “medicine men being from Africa” and ad men “being greedier than Ahmed Ahne”, and you have yourself a mighty fine advertisement for the firm, and for the Finnish advertising industry!

ps the colours were truly spectacular too, but unfortunately i’ve only got a black and white scanner…

John has a great slide-set on his blog that is very useful for explaining this concept in very simple and visual terms. Most handy!

But there is still one thing amiss with the deck and from much of the overall discussion: The implication is that Brands have to *build* the bonfires.

This is understandable, as we are used to building stuff in marketing (ie advertising, microsites). But the fact is that many people already have bonfires, and they usually want to build their own bonfires; you know, with their friends and that. They probably don’t want to come to your Corporate Bonfire. Anyone notice what happened with Bud.tv?!

So, to continue the analogy, how can we help people with what they want to do at a bonfire?

1. Provide some stuff: some blankets to keep people warm, some snacks and drinks, maybe even provide some entertainment (a guitar?)

2. Go along to the bonfire and actually have a conversation or two (remember to be a good listener!)

3. Most importantly, of course, you could do something *genuinely useful* like put some extra wood on the bonfire to keep the damn thing going!

People don’t want to go to hundreds of different bonfires. So, before you go building anything new, find out if there is anything going on already, and think about how you can usefully participate.