I was part of the Hanes Comfort Crew this past week at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida (more about my Disney experience later). Basically, they wanted to show off their new lines of garments and underwear, but mostly they wanted to understand a bit more about how social media and moms/parents who use it will help influence the experience of buying more product. It’s an important game for Hanes to win. Over 85% of households in the US have Hanes products in them (the exact number eludes me, but who cares), so to grow is a tricky challenge.

How Do You Work With the Influencers?

But more so, they want to know how to build relationships through some of the great folks I got to meet like Erika Lehmann, Lori Falcon, Vera Sweeney, and more. What does the new world of advertising at a distance look and feel like? How do each of us find the right lever to help Hanes with their goals, while feeling that we’re doing something for our community?

(Quick note: the “we” and “us” in this is more my work over at Dadomatic, not here at [chrisbrogan.com].)

What’s the return on these efforts? How do you move more socks and underpants and the like?

Cause Marketing is Solid

One thing I loved: Hanes is working hard at cause marketing. They did a great project with Mark Horvath of Invisible People, not to mention that they’re a key sponsor of the Susan G. Komen foundation. And they’ve got some great plans for 2010 in that aspect. That, I believe, helps a brand: showing that they’re working with causes.

But What of Influencers?

It’s a tricky business on all sides. Large brands (not just Hanes; I’m using them as the storytelling element) are seeking relationships with people who have an audience the way publishers sought to build relationships with magazine readers and TV viewers, etc, only the way we interact as bloggers and media makers is much more different than the way shows were produced, and the lines were far more distinct between editorial and advertising. It’s a tricky situation on all sides with regards to disclosure (though I feel that disclosure is probably simpler than we make it).

And audiences aren’t the same as communities. I’ve worked long and hard at [chrisbrogan.com] to make this a community. I can’t and won’t treat you like an audience. My friends in the Hanes Comfort Crew feel similarly. Daddy Brad from DadLabs knows that his community trusts him with their time and attention. He won’t sell out for camouflage boxer briefs.

It’s an interesting time. Companies are saying, “We’re going to invest in this social media stuff, but we have to see a return.” On our side, on the media making side, you and I are going to have to find how we can ethically, seamlessly, and with value to all parties tell stories that will help all sides of the triangle.

What say you?

But when we think about brands and brand loyalty, it’s strange to consider what that means from the company’s side of the equation, versus what it means from the consumer’s side. For instance, every computer in my house is an Apple except for my (rarely-used) netbook. I’m thinking of loading Windows 7 on it, because I’m hearing so many good things about the OS. Does this make me LESS loyal to apple? I’ve got an iPhone, but I’m seriously thinking about checking out Verizon’s Droid when it comes live. Does that make me a bad Apple customer?

I have two Visa cards from two different banks. Am I less loyal? I have an AMEX card. Am I less loyal?

When I work with a company, I put my business intentions around helping them succeed. To that end, it wouldn’t suit me to work for Coke and Pepsi at the same time. (Pepsi and I did some work in March, and I’m friends with some of their great team.) I visited Coke headquarters last week, and I might possibly do something different with them. Do you think that will cross streams? That I’ll somehow negatively impact the experience by working to improve business communications and human business within the organization?

A few months ago, the mix was Panasonic and Sony. Next month, it’ll be two other big brands.

Here’s the thing: we, as consumers, are in the business of using the products of multiple brands. It’s how we operate. I, as someone running New Marketing Labs am in the business of equipping companies with successful projects that move the needle. Do I overlap what I learn from one competitor to the other? No. Industry to industry? Hell yes. Why hire me if you don’t want a benchmark of what’s worked or not worked in another organization?

I’m curious as to your thoughts. I have a feeling that PR professionals might have something different on their mind than marketers and non-PR types. Just a hunch, but we’ll see how it bears out in the comments.

As for me, I don’t feel that my loyalty is what’s for sale when I work with organizations. I maintain their privacy. I perform with their best interests in mind when under their hire. I don’t divulge competitive data. Seems like I’ve got it covered.

What do you think?

See my point on this one? It’s “interesting” (cough cough) that someone came up with the idea to advertise while I’m peeing, insofar as someone thought that’d be a captive audience moment for someone else to convey their message.

Advertising works best if we’re at a point of need. Being that humans move around a lot, are inundated by messages all day, and are paying less attention as a result, what does this all say to you?

Photo credit daveybot

I just checked out a project from Federated Media called BingTweets.com. It sniffs Twitter’s trending topics and merges that with Microsoft Bing search results (note: parts of Microsoft are client of NML, but NOT the folks at BING).

What’s cool about that is there are MANY times when we see trends on Twitter and we wonder what the backstory is. In my example, I clicked half-blood prince and got local showtimes for the new Harry Potter movie (hmmm, I could sneak off and watch THAT). I think this can be pretty darned useful.

But think about this: this is actually an ADVERTISEMENT, and yet, it’s useful. Chew on that a bit. It’s a relationship with an application built by Federated Media to help Microsoft promote Bing.

This beats the HELL out of a banner ad, don’t you think?

What’s your take?

Here’s the thing, Facebook. You KNOW what I like. You KNOW who I connect with. You KNOW how old I am, whether I’m married, what I’ve liked or favorited, or joined. You know TONS about me, that I’ve freely volunteered. But you don’t listen.

Sadly, it reminds me of this video:

You COULD do so much for me, Facebook. Just try?

Less than a hundred people work at the Loretto, Kentucky distillery of Maker’s Mark bourbon, and every one of them loves their job. “Turnover here? It’s pretty much zero.” That’s what Denny Potter, Assistant Master Distiller told us on our exclusive tour of the Maker’s facility. On a sunny day in May with just a slight breeze rolling down over the Kentucky hills, Denny took us on a tour of how bourbon is made, and what separates Maker’s Mark from the other fine bourbons made in what the tourism board is calling the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.

The distillery has an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for being “The World’s Oldest Operating Bourbon Whiskey Distillery.” History is all around you here, starting out at the house where a replica 1950′s era kitchen and study show the story of the Samuels’ family’s historic decision to stop making “rotgut” and to create a new recipe for bourbon. Worth seeing, by the way, is the cool interactive storytelling done in picture frames, created by Doe-Anderson, Maker’s 38-year-and-counting advertising agency of record.

Maybe because we were with Denny, or maybe because we had Jason Falls with us, we got an extra special tour, which involved opening up mash tubs, sticking our fingers into the early phase materials that make up bourbon (at least 52% corn is what makes a whiskey a bourbon), all ending in a delicious taste test (but I get ahead). I also learned that Maker’s Mark is made without rye grain, because the Samuels family was shooting for a sweeter, smoother finish for their product. Instead of rye, they use red winter wheat. The taste difference was obvious, even to an unskilled palate like mine.

What was equally interesting about the tour was that every bit of the distillery is tour-ready. We walked through the cedar plank mash tubs, into the area where the actual “still” in the distilling process works, and through to several other parts of the process, ending out in one of their barrel barns (there’s a really good name for this, like “rick rack” or something, but I forget it). They give tons of tours every day, and it seems to be a focal point of everyone’s job at Maker’s Mark. Why? Because brand ambassadors beat the hell out of any standalone advertising they could do. (The idea for creating a formal ambassador program – and boy is it cool! – came from a brainstorming session between Bill Samuels, Jr and Doe-Anderson.)

Maker’s Mark has a process for storing their barrels, too. They rotate them from the top of each barn (3 summers at the top) to lower into the barn, and then to the bottom. This rotation gives the bourbon a much more robust setting process, and normalizes the differences in the heat you’d expect at the “attic” area versus the “basement” area of the setting. They age bourbon for somewhere between 5-7 years, and that’s another difference: Maker’s doesn’t believe that the older a bourbon gets, the better it gets. They believe the peak time is somewhere in that 5-7 year spot. In taste tests later in and amongst the barrels, we got to test that first-hand.

Denny Potter pointed out at many steps in the process the strong and reinforced relationships that Maker’s Mark promotes with its employees. He explained this with great passion out in the bottling area, where he talked about how the company worked very flexibly with the staff, and how they worked on scheduling according to the natural ebbs and flows of family life. I was struck by the feeling that even this difference, the better treatment of their employees, came through in the brand of this product. Could you actually taste the pride of working for Maker’s Mark in their product? Let’s not get far-fetched. But suffice to say that a lot went into the making of this special bourbon before it arrives at the famous wax treatment that sets it apart on the shelf.

What I came away with was an appreciation for Maker’s Mark and a very strong sense that you can’t fake the level of passion that they put into their brand. It’s not advertising. It’s not a slapped-on after-effect. It’s built into every step of the process. This brand is human passion: distilled, bottled and shipped.

I’m grateful to Jason Falls and Denny Potter for the tour of the Maker’s Mark distillery, and to the folks from Louisville that I met who told me more of the history and stories around the whole experience.

See more photos from the Maker’s Mark tour here

Holy crap. I’m reading Marvel Comics’ Secret Warriors #3, and Nick Fury cracks open a computer and opens a Cisco Webex session to contact Dum Dum Dugan. He calls it out. He says “Open Webex connection.” And then he uses it with a very obvious and drawn in Cisco Webex logo in the corner.

Not sure this is the first placement in a comic but it sure is a powerfully obvious one.

Bad idea? Good idea? What’s it mean for things? It’s been this way in movies forever. Why not throw ads into comics? Purists?

In an age when competition and pricing are opened up online and when your product is your ad, you need to spend your first dollar on the quality of your product or service. If you’re Zappos, you spend the next dollar on customer service and call that marketing. If the next dollar goes to advertising, there has to be a reason — and if the product is good enough, that reason may fade away. . . .

He’s not wrong, and yet, some degree of advertising will always be necessary, because it’s product news. We need advertising to know of things like feature changes, new opportunities, and shifts in the status quo.

How much impact does most advertising carry? Less and less, I imagine we’ll all answer, and why? I say it’s because of this: most advertising fell off its original premise: to inform.

Here’s where I betray my allegiance to the premises laid out by people like David Ogilvy (that link will be the 3rd book about or by him that I’ve read in as many months). I think the reason we say advertising no longer works is that we stopped receiving useful advertisements. Entertainment overtook function.

I think Jeff Jarvis is right, insofar as where he chose to go with his premise. In his thought-provoking book, What Would Google Do?, Jeff talks a lot about what comes next in a world where ads have stopped working. The book is essential, I’d offer.

Thing is, I think advertising is far from dead. Further, I think there’s the potential for a renaissance of quality advertising. I think the tools are here. I think the opportunities are powerful. All that’s required next are the minds and the passions to deliver the new (and by new, I might mean very old) advertising to people who seek to be informed instead of entertained.

What say you?

Photo credit marxchivist

This card that came in a recent book purchase made me smile. The book publishers thanked me for my purchase, told me what types of books they tended to sell, and asked me whether I wanted to receive updates on other books of theirs as they came out. In one simple card, I had a warm thank-you, some information, and a call to action.

That card makes me think long and hard about just how clean and simple good marketing can be. How about you?

For whatever reason, this ad suggests that the benefit of getting coffee at the gas station is that there’s no line. The problem is this: lines make us think something is worth it. Ever wander into an empty restaurant? Did you get a weird feeling and leave? If you went to the movies and there was a huge queue to see one movie, and no line at all to see the others, might you be curious as to what was so interesting that people were lined up to see it?

A line isn’t always a bad thing.

What unintentional messages are you sending?