People can talk about a lot of stuff that affects the bottom line of a business, some more and some less. I believe there are four different topic areas that could and should be considered when trying to create more word of mouth for a brand:

1. The brand values – what the brand believes in and stands for.
2. The offer – the actual product or service offered.
3. The customer care – how the customer is treated in contact with the company after the sale.
4. The advertising – what is portrayed in the brand’s communication.

I believe the first three of them are more important than the fourth. Advertising needs the other ones to be working on a longer term, but the other three can create word of mouth that leads to a prosperous business on a long term all on their own. That said, to create a really strong brand, it needs to help individuals or groups build identity. The brand needs to satisfy higher level needs, so it needs to stand for something, and the brand values should be part of the equation.

And as always, what needs to be achieved for all four is something that is “remarkable” – something worth making a remark about.

This is both brilliant and gross at the same time, with a very close connection to the movie’s theme.

Via Brandflakes for Breakfast.

Help spread the word further! It’s in about a month.

Via Twistimage – Six Pixels of Separation.

Some brands always recruit from within. Others recruit from the outside. No doubt there are different advantages to both of these approaches, like experience with the product and corporate culture or bringing in new perspectives and experiences.

But, what about passion? What kind of passion for Opel does a marketing manager who previously worked for Peugeot and Seat (article in Swedish) bring to Opel’s marketing department? Sure, he worked for almost two years as a consultant since he left Peugeot, so he has some new perspectives. But, what does this say about the brands? Do they have personality? Do they stand for something different? Do they inspire passion? Do we want to talk about them as something entirely different?

Or are they entirely exchangeable? I believe not, just like Branding Strategy Insider writes in The Seven Markers of Passion:

“Hire Passionistas as Brand Stewards
Nothing brings a brand down more quickly than an interchangeable parts philosophy in the recruitment, hiring, and rewarding of the people behind it. Careerists who jump from one company or industry to another on their way to ever more senior posts may be building their own brand, but they will neither feel nor fuel the passion.”

The irony of the story is that just last autumn Peugeot recruited their new marketing manager… … from Opel!

Disclaimer: This post is NOT about the knowledge or professional skills of the respective marketing manager. I know neither of them nor have heard anything about their current or previous work!

Two days ago we were reached by the news that an 11-year old girl had been dismissed from a train because she didn’t have a ticket, while her sister (with the ticket) were in the bathroom. The 11-year old was left on an empty station halfway, and was luckily taken care of by an older woman who saw her crying. The story has spurred an outrage on twitter and blogs in Sweden. See for example För några få kronor ensam i Kumla. The conductor’s excuse was that the girl seemed to be older than 11 years, and the initial response from SJ was that it was a big mistake, but is in fact a criminal act to ride the train without a ticket. The girl was lost more than half a day, but to make a long story short, the girl was found and the older sister is now forgiving the conductor.

This story raises the issue of personal responsibility – something Seth Godin has written about a lot before and Deepedition writes about in relation to this story (in Swedish). As Seth writes in another post…

It comes down to this: only people can have ethics. Ethics, as in, doing the right thing for the community even though it might not benefit you or your company financially….

[...]

…I worry that we absolve ourselves of responsibility when we talk about business ethics and corporate social responsibility. Corporations are collections of people, and we ought to insist that those people (that would be us) do the right thing. Business is too powerful for us to leave our humanity at the door of the office. It’s not business, it’s personal.

There are no rules nor corporate policies that can excuse dismissing an 11 year old from the train and leaving her on the station in an unknown town. I have a small grudge against SJ after my own experiences this summer (see below) and I believe they have a lot of problems and a culture that isn’t very healthy right now, but the responsibility for actions taken are in the end always personal, no matter what policies say.

———-

I really wanted to take the trip to Oslo, Norway this summer. But after an hour on the train, without even leaving the station, I gave up. There was no driver. For some reason, the driver didn’t make it and the swedish railroad company, SJ, wasn’t able to get him/her replaced. And, they couldn’t tell me when I would arrive, since I would miss my connecting train. So, no driver, no info, no nothing.

That was my third experience with SJ this summer. The first was also to Oslo – I arrived more than an hour late and had to go by bus part of the way due to some problems with the tracks that they discovered halfway. The return trip was without problems.

Fail ratio for SJ: 67%.

… treats you as if you are on a family dinner, making sure you are satisfied not just with quality but also with quantity?
… lets you try the plate before you decide, just like you try the wine?
… lets you order not just what’s on the menu, but what you really feel like?

What could be done to reinvent other businesses?

BlendTec has had some tremendous successes with their viral clips on the theme Will it blend? Among them the iPad, the iPhone and (imitation) Diamonds.

Here is the BlendTec predecessor it seems. And really, this Machine Destroys everything!

The more information that is out there on the Internet, the more we need filters to sift through it, to get what is most relevant to us. More and more sites like Google and Facebook try to solve this for us by using information from our social graph to feed us the information that is, supposedly, most relevant to us.

On Facebook, this means that the content that is clicked, liked or commented by friends and family or friends of friends – people in our social graph – is what is delivered to us most. All done on the assumption that what is relevant and interesting to them is interesting and relevant to us.

But it also means that a lot of content is filtered out. Other content, from people, businesses or organizations that are not part of our social graph will not be delivered to us to the same extent.

For a business or organization the first implication is that they need to become part of our social graph to give their content a chance to get through the filter. On Facebook, they need us to “like” them.

But, there is more. The algorithm has other implications too.

Facebook’s Edge-rank decides how important something is to us and it currently consists of three components.

From Techcrunch:

“First, there’s an affinity score between the viewing user and the item’s creator — if you send your friend a lot of Facebook messages and check their profile often, then you’ll have a higher affinity score for that user than you would, say, an old acquaintance you haven’t spoken to in years.
Second, there’s a weight given to each type of Edge. A comment probably has more importance than a Like, for example.
And finally there’s the most obvious factor — time. The older an Edge is, the less important it becomes.”

This means that the more a user interacts with content by a person or business, the higher the Edge-rank they get for that user.

The implication for a business or organization is that they have to try to create content that is highly relevant. They should probably also try to create incentives or suggest interaction, by for example asking questions that really begs a reply or at least makes you want to “like”. However, creating a lot of content doesn’t translate into a higher Edge-rank as the average number of interactions per piece of content probably goes down. It is a constant search for the right content and the right amount of content to maximize interactions and Edge-rank.

Another positive result of trying to achieve a higher Edge-rank is that the interactions between a fan and the business is more visible in the feed of that user.

The Daily Beast has tried to decode further how the Edge-rank is calculated and come up with some conclusions, even though this is in no way scientific facts:

1. Facebook’s Bias Against Newcomers – newcomers rarely show up in the feeds of others.
2. Facebook’s Catch-22 – to be more visibile in friend’s feeds, they need to interact with your posts, but without being visible, they won’t interact.
3. The Velvet Rope: “Top News” – a lot of interaction is no guarantee to show up in Top News.
4. “Most Recent” News Is Censored, Too – the Most Recent feed is also capped to a maximum number of friends shown in the feed. Can be changed though.
5. “Stalking” Your Friends Won’t Get You Noticed – you can’t change your visibility to a friend by constantly visiting their page.
6. Having Friends Who Stalk You WILL Help Your Popularity – you will become more visible if friends stalk you. Even with friends who doesn’t stalk you.
7. Links Trump Status Updates – links are more visible than status updates.
8. Photos and Videos Trump Links – photos and videos are more visible than links.
9. The Power of Comments – when friends comment on your updates, photos and videos, your visibility will increase.
10. Why Facebook Really is Like High School – visibility to people with large networks takes even more time.

For more about Facebook’s and Google’s filters, take a look at this interesting TED-talk by Eli Pariser below.

For more on Edge-rank you could take a look at The Next Web’s “Everything you need to know about Facebook’s EdgeRank” or EdgeRank, den hemliga ingrediensen i Facebook! (in Swedish).

This is really, really well made!

Very impressive execution! Very nice integration of other brands, which did it for free in exchange for the free attention.

Of course you can challenge a friend via Facebook or email, or share your results on Facebook or Twitter. Great concept and brilliant execution! According to Dagens Media, the site got 50 000 visitors last night, from all, over, the, world, and they spent on average 8 minutes on the site. The creative was made by Lowe Brindfors, production by B-Reel and sound & music by Plan 8.

Love it!

Language can be a barrier to viral spread. But, in this case no one understands anything… … or?

That fact, that no one understands anything, and the way it seems these “da da-twins” understand, is definitely one of the viral triggers.

This clip really intrigues me. It starts my imagination. It makes me think, “what if”. It makes me reconsider what I previously had thought almost impossible.

My first line of thought is like this. It seems these baby twins are really having a conversation. What if they really understand what the other one is saying? I doubt it, but what if?

The second one is almost as improbable, but nonetheless the one I think is the correct one. These small kids are imitating a conversation between adults. And they do it almost to perfection. They are talking, waiting for their turn to talk, making gestures as they speak. They even laugh as if the other one was pulling a joke! And almost most amazing of all – they often use a rising intonation at the very end of a sentence, something that we usually do when asking a question. I know kids are curious, I know they imitate, but all in all, the perfect imitation makes me think there is a lot more going on in those small heads than I thought before. I never thought they would be capable of imitating with such accuracy how we speak when we have learnt the language.

Don’t miss out on this lesson in “da da” that has just exploded on the Internet the last couple of days.