As you can probably tell I'm starting to get anxious about this thing - which is on Wednesday. Many of you have left helpful suggestions and I had a very nice chat with Chris about it last week (though I think I spent most of my time complaining about how much I hated university) but I'm way behind where I normally am three days before a presentation.
And just now, it struck me why. It's because I've never spoken about brands and blogs in public before. I've got no stuff, I've got no fall-back material, no oft-used examples or can't-miss bits of video.
I often think a planning career is a bit like that Jerry Seinfeld movie - Comedian. This is the tale of Jerry trying to construct a new act after vowing never to do any of his old material. He goes out night after night doing five minutes here and there, finding stuff that works, discarding stuff that doesn't, until he's got enough to constitute an act. It takes a long time. And that's what a planning career is like. Do it for long enough and you get an act. You get some examples, some anecdotes and some theories, which you regurgitate again and again, tailored to fit the situation you find yourself in.
That'll do for me.
Except on Wednesday I'm starting from scratch. I'm talking about brands and blogs, solely on the basis that I have a blog. Hence the nervousness.
Anyhoo, I've been thinking about it for a while and just now I've been sketching some themes out in Inspiration and some of them are starting to make some sense. And I thought, since some of you are often kind enough to help I thought I'd float some of these ideas past you and see if you can make them better/cohrenent/not stupid.
It also just occured to me that loads of people reading this have probably already seen or even done, exactly this presentation, with a ton more expertise and wisdom, so putting these thoughts out there risks me looking a bit naive. Oh well, that's what blogging's all about.
Thought One - blur
I've been asked to talk about this stuff, mostly, because I have some blogs. My personal interest is becoming part of my professional expertise. There's a blurring of life and work. That blurring idea seems to be something that brands are going to have to get used to and blogs represent.
Blogs blur the line between employees as corporate mouth and employees as people. Blogs work best when they're expressions of real personalities, not when they're written according to corporate guidelines.
Blogs (and the marketing 2.0 world they represent) also blur a lot of the traditional silo lines between disciplines and business activities. Perhaps the most interesting blurring is in the line between marketing and services - but I'll come back to that later.
So I thought I'd open with blur. That'll have them rolling in the aisles.
Thought Two - blog as 2.0 instructor
Here's the simple version - blogs are to Marketing 2.0 what TV commercials are to Marketing 1.0 (whatever that 1.0 and 2.0 means).
By which I mean - in the old world, if you got your bit of brand film right you'd proabably worked out most of the things you'd need to know in order to get everything else right. If you've got a functional TV commercial (always remembering that 90% of the time people don't have a functional TV commercial) then you've probably got your strategy right, you've got some sense of how the brand should look, feel and sound. You know a little about its voice. You can probably go off and do some decent print and posters, maybe some DM and a shelf-wobbler.
And I think the blog does the same thing for Marketing 2.0. Get the blog right and you've probably worked out how multiple people will express the brand voice, through words and pictures other stuff, you've probably learned how to be open, you're probably having real conversations with people and you're learning how that works, your lawyers and IT people are probably a little more relaxed than they were 6 months ago about copyright and virus issues. Your people and your organisation is learning to trade control for influence.
There are a few reasons why the bit of brand film will continue to be a crucial part of the communications repertoire...
(1. Nothing is as easy and effective to present as a TV commercial, they work really well in board-rooms and employee meetings, have you ever tried to talk a bored board through an event plan or a website schematic. 2. When they work, which is very rarely, nothing is as high leverage a communucations asset as a good piece of telly, the effect you can have, versus what you put in, is yet to be beat, if you know what you're doing - Richard H points this out a lot and he's right)
...but I suspect the blog is going to sit alongside it in most marketing textbooks as a 'lead tool'.
(And there have to be lead tools. You have to start somewhere. I hate this way people have taken 'media neutral' to mean that every channel is equal. Some are better than others. Especially when you're trying to scuplt an understanding of a brand in your own head or your own organisation - some channels/media are better clay than others.)
So that's thought two - blogs are important because getting your blog right means you'll be more likely to get a lot of other 2.0 stuff right too. There won't be a dry eye in the house.
Remaining thoughts will have to wait. World Cup build-up is about to start. More tomorrow.
warc and engagement/attention
