Consumer Centric

Co-creation, social media, engagement, viral campaigns, etc. New tools for today’s marketers? Well, yes and no.  The digital side is new… the practice is not.

I’m reading the new book by Magic Johnson and Larry Bird and came across a piece of NBA trivia new to me about the 1979 draft that landed Magic at the LA Lakers.  Little did I know it involved a co-creation exercise with a viral component and a social media spin.

The result was the Bulls missed out on drafting Magic Johnson and, instead, picked up UCLA senior David Greenwood.  But they had engaged their fans in helping make the decision:  ”heads” instead of “tails” was the consensus.

Turns out the Bulls and Lakers were up for the first pick in the draft, and Magic was the expected first pick.  On June 25, 1979 the issue was resolved by a coin flip.  But the Bulls general manager, Rod Thorn, didn’t call it out on his own.  The Bulls ran a fan promotion in which the poll results showed more fans wanted Thorn to call “heads” and win the toss to pick up Magic.

As reported on a NJ Nets fan page:

“I’ll never forget that,” Rod Thorn recalled. “We had some sort of promotion with our fans, and we let them choose what we’d call. And Bill Sharman, the Lakers’ GM — he was on the line from L.A. — Bill was so gracious, he let me call it. Then I hear, ‘Tails, L.A. wins.’ I would have always called tails. It was always luckiest for me, but we did it for the fans.

“But it’s amazing and ironic how life works out, isn’t it? Had the Bulls gotten Magic, we never would have gotten Michael Jordan five years later. The Lakers won all those titles, but I’d say it worked out great for everybody.”

Fascinating concept:  engage your loyal fans to help win the prize on draft day.  So, was it good or bad for the fans given they ended up picking wrong?  Or did they?

Would it have been better to get Magic Johnson in 1979 and miss picking up Michael Jordan in 1984? Obviously, not a question you can answer… and not the point.

The real point is brands have been doing things to involve their customers for years.  Today’s tools make it so much easier, but the rules of needing to provide relevance and utility have only become more important today.

I think the Bulls’ actions show how brands have to be “all-in” to genuinely involve their customers in charting the future of their franchise.  And they have to be willing to risk that what you create together may not payoff in the short term.

Stick with it, though, and you just may find the next Michael Jordan in the process.

Who knew?  Sports, the NBA, social media, and co-creation… all 30 years ago.

I’m speaking in LA and NYC this week on similar topics at two totally different events:  Persuasive Technology 2009 and the ARF’s Advertising Effectiveness Council. In both cases, we’re trying to challenge the push toward a single currency metric for ad effectiveness to be about more than reach, frequency, and, now, engagement. 

Let’s get to value. Let’s get to relevance in a person’s life. Let’s get to what helps marketers plan. 

Rewind to just a few weeks ago… I was in DC at the CTAM Research Conference, a group gathering for the cable TV industry vying for ways to prove their value as a medium. Sure, great ideas were shared. But the industry problem was blasted on a megaphone during a panel when an established player in the business made this comment:

“We need to get to a single currency, and try to get to value.”

She literally paused and then offered the second statement of “try” to get to value.  She was explaining the real problem, accepted by almost everyone in the room, is to get a metric that works across all mediums to capture the numbers of people exposed and amount of time they spend.  

The former EVP of planning at media agency Carat went so far as to explain that “a number is a universal truth.” Her position epitomized the attitude of networks and those on their side of the business:  It’s all about quantification of consumption, then I have something I can sell to you for more or less money based on that “number”.

I thought this can’t be the prevailing attitude of the innovators in the category.  But, to my surprise, an even more archaic sentiment was offered the next day by the head of analytics/research at ESPN:

“We need solid measures of reach and solid measures of time, that’s essentially it.”

You’ve got to be kidding. But he certainly was not.

Luckily, there was someone in the room who cares about more than monetizing the latest cable TV blockbuster show. It was so refreshing to hear Tony Ambroza, head of men’s marketing for Under Armour, respond to the researchers and cable execs in the room:

“If you can deliver information around the consumer and what your content means to them, that’s what we’re interested in knowing.  You all are looking at data and research to help sell your content and programs.  I’m interested in something different.”

Sure… he’s looking to be relevant. He’s looking for value. He can’t afford to “try” to look for value in deciding what strategies and tactics to implement for his marketing activities.  

We still have a currency calculated off anything but value because the money in advertising is controlled by the content providers. Where else do you see a product increasingly less valuable become astronomically more expensive? Think TV :30s spots.

The argument made at CTAM was that it is too complex to go beyond reach, frequency, time spent, and a little into engagement.  But the resources and money they are putting into these observational, data fusion, and usage patterns research suggests they know how to deal with complex issues. 

The real issue is too much money is riding on the big, old-school mediums for mass consumption. The mediums have real value. But the way they are measured and sold today has very little to do with marketing value to the advertiser. They have even less to do with relevance to the average person (you and me) watching.

What if we sought to understand how a person goes about making a purchase decision–buying a car, eating out, shopping for school supplies, etc.? What if we looked for what that person wants or needs along that journey? What if we even knew where they might look for, find, or get that need met? What if it was all about adding value to that person’s life?

This approach puts the person first. In this way, we can measure the value of information, content, and experiences with/from/through a channel (think TV, radio, online, game, FSI, word of mouth, etc.) in the context of real value.

Marketers, armed with this insight, will be in a much better position to be relevant when making channel decisions. Networks (and other content providers / channel asset owners) will be in a much better position to differentiate their value to marketers.

Most important… you and me will be treated as people and not consumers. The information we get through the channels we use will be increasingly on our terms, and we won’t quickly look for the skip button. 

But, I guess that’s still far off when it comes to network and cable TV players and the media agencies they negotiate with for rates.  I mean, this same former EVP from Carat made this last most insightful comment of the conference:

“Online video is just TV on a box, it’s nothing different.  What I love about it is there is only one commercial at the beginning, it makes it easier to watch.”

The irony of it all!