Hello faithful marketers. I come to you with a story of what I hoped would be a fruitful friendship with Levis, but quickly turned into a selfish ME ME ME story - how disappointing!

Where did the friendship begin?

Last Saturday evening a real, living, breathing friend of mine shot me a message that one of favorite bands was going to be streamed live from Levi’s Facebook fan page.

I thought - AWESOME

I must say as a consumer, in general and because I lived in San Francisco for most of the decade, I was excited that Levi’s seemed to understand the social media value exchange equation. We were on the road to court each other for awhile. I kid you not - with seeing their FB page and recognizing the things that they were going to do for me, their new friend, I immediately put them into my consideration set for Jeans. And, for anyone that knows me - I’m a jeans guy. I probably buy 30 pair a year. Yes, I love me some jeans

I am what most brands would consider a fairly heavy influencer. And, I immediately shot the news to my network and it even made its way into a few of my phone calls because I was genuinly exciting about a few upcoming events. I also liked the way that Levi’s was utilizing and apparently understanding the social space.

It’s good to see brands understand that consumers are demanding value and Levi’s was delivering on that value by providing valuable content to me.

That was Saturday

As of Monday morning I’ve come to the harsh realization that Levi’s is not my friend, not even close. Apparently, they couldn’t wait to capitalize on their new found equity that they had earned with me.

Monday morning

I’m getting emails from Amazon telling me that I’ll get free shipping if i buy Levi’s ( I DO NOT think this was coincidental). I felt like my privacy was invaded. Then, I logged onto FB and Levi’s is beaming ads at me on the screen.

WOW! Is this for real? We just met on Saturday

Couldn’t you have waited a little while? Perhaps even romanced our friendship a wee bit before you came in with the hard sell? I mean I thought we were going places.

If i didn’t see it for myself I wouldn’t have believed it. I’d like to thank Paul Omps for giving me the heads up on this one.

SO the GAP decides to rebrand itself. You take one look at the new logo and you can just see the creative douchebag saying,” You can’t think of it as 2d - you must think of it as 3d and that it represents leaving the old blue square gap behind and it shows that we’re moving forward.”

The new logo is so bad it’s ridiculous. But why is the GAP a bunch of A$$holes? Because they didn’t just make one mistake and stop there - they compounded it with a much larger mistake. Someone thought it would be a great idea to DEVALUE THE MARKETING PROFESSION ONCE AGAIN by turning it into a crowd sourcing project.

BTW - crowd sourcing is great when done properly. However, it isn’t a great idea to correct a major mistake by saying OK, “You do it for us since we’re a bunch if incompetent A$$holes.”

They can’t go out of business soon enough. The worst business mistake in history was Old Navy. They should have just written a book How to Cannabilize Your Best Brand In 30 Seconds.

O - the Horror of it all- HAPPY FRIDAY

Space Age Marketing - The Sonic Revolution

Written by Condiment Junkie

As we all are experiencing, the economic downturn is challenging the ways in which we connect brands with consumers. In an environment where maximising impact and return on investment have never been more important, you need to squeeze more out of every communication, ensuring every customer touchpoint is delivering on your brand values and promises. But it's not all bad. Out of challenge and adversity come opportunity, creativity and innovation. We all start looking at new or different ways of doing things. A recent article in Marketing week featuring Condiment Junkie, entitled Space Age Marketing, has put it very well; “Now is the time to try something new....experiment with new formats....get consumers excited, and do something out of the norm”. Well there's something that surrounds us, influencing our thoughts and moods and feelings every day, minute by minute, that does all this, but is still underutilised in most brand's marketing armoury; Something that delivers a genuine and powerful emotional connection between consumers and brands. Something that creates a more engaging and enjoyable customer experience. Something that your audience will absorb, recognize and remember. SOUND. At Condiment Junkie we believe that sound must become an essential part of every brand experience. A sonic strategy can help you connect with customers in the most powerful way, increase the impact of existing activity and generate new and exciting ways of reaching consumers. We are very interested in how people interact with their surroundings through their senses, and how creatively thinking about every aspect of our environment can influence how we feel and greatly affect our experiences. Sound can make something good even better. Sound can tap into the emotional side of your audience; Being present and harmonious across your digital, online and advertising strategies, to product design, experiential events and in-stores, it can engage and entertain consumers, help them form lifelong positive associations, relay information, and express brand identity. We work with brand owners and agencies to realize the true potential of sound for brands. We can help you identify how sound can make your campaign even better, and then make it happen. Please visit our website and read in full our ideas and approaches to experiential and multi sensorial marketing, and please drop us a line if you're interested in discussing things further. R ussell Jones This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it condimentjunkie.co.uk - sonic art & design agency

Dear EMF Members,

We have recently added several new articles written by community members,please be sure to check them out in the Member Articles section if the website. We would like to add a lot more of your articles and are always looking for new, relevant material. To submit an article, simply login to the EMF, then click the Submit An Article link under Member Articles on the left menu. Please note that articles do have to be approved by the Moderator, so you will not see your submissions appear immediately. Also note that while it is fine to includer company name and your URL (or blog link) in your article, we are not looking for a sales pitch and those types of articles will not be approved.

Also note that the Member Articles area is not for regular posts that should go out to the whole community. Please use the message board for those or post by sending and email This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it .

We look forward to getting your articles and posting them on the EMF!

Best regards,

Ruth E. Moore, EMF Web Director
KCA Internet
http://kcainternet.com

Just a quick note to let you know that you ask and you shall receive.   Please register at http://www.experientialforum.com 

We'll need your input

Erik Hauser 

For contextual purposes (a little broken-off sentence stylistic structure writing about me) - This is gonna be good.....

I am a marketing philosopher of sorts. 

I strongly believe in the consumer. 

I’ve lived through 36 years of the corporations’ telling their side of the story.

I believe that when i do things people say break with tradition that I’m merely creating my own traditions and being myself

Right now I’m listening to the new Eminem album.  I gravitate towards the sound of someone’s passionate truth being relayed through the lyrical word - regardless of the genre. 

My real work is to find and organically create universal truths that can authentically link corporations and consumers to allow for the existence of a better, more focused marketplace.   A marketplace that practices commerce on a platform of truth - transparency is a given.

I have chosen a particular part of the marketing field to specialize in because it deals with the emotional rolodex - with a cautious eyes towards rationality. 

I’m an experiential learner. 

I spent my late teens and early twenties getting bruised and battered finding the balance between the idealism that lives inside of me and the realism and rationalities that exist outside of my skin in the collective world.  I’ve tested almost every boundary, I make more emotional purchases than rational ones. 

I believe that real passion can’t exist at 0 RPM and that the depths of passion can only be explored in one’s bedroom or above 180 MPH.  I’ve got tapes and tickets to prove both.  OK - the last part was a joke.  

Ok - next verse...moving beyond me:)......

One of the most important corporate mistakes that companies are currently making is failing to realize the depths of transparency in today’s marketplace - it’s potentially huge upside, and the swift backside slide towards bankruptcy when things don’t sync.  This particular strain of transparency is brand new  - while other strains are much older and aren’t particularly clear BTW.   The difference of course, ironically due to the proliferation of actual products and services that your corporations have empowered them with, is the ability for today’s consumer to access the corporate bullshit index meter with just a few touches of a keyboard etc. 

Think that your experiential campaign makes a bit of difference or is barely believable as consumers sit on the mountain top and look through your company’s open windows with their binoculars firmly fixed on their truth?  This isn’t a particular group, a new generation or just an unlearned, beaten down generation that have been living with their eyes closed.  Their eyes have been wide open, and the almost impossible to recover from lessons that they perceive you’ve brought onto them as their wealth and potential for wealth vaporized - left them scarred but a whole lot smarter.  And in most cases the confluence of the new transparency and the new consumer  mean that we need to to get you to:

1) Understand that if the “brand image” you’re selling doesn’t sync with the “internal cultural brand” that lives inside of your office building -  you need to cease experiential efforts immediately as your stories are being digested as the continuation of “the lie”

2) Understand the DIRECT link between experiential marketing methodology and internal corporate culture.

3)  Understand that your brand’s narrative that serves as the backbone for your experiential efforts should have a captivating narrative arc, a fluidity based on the realism of “the now”, but shouldn’t deviate 1% from what consumers identify as the REAL BRAND - or their truth (not the brands that you use as masks).

4) UNDERSTAND that connected meaning and relevance, truth and authenticity are at the core of experiential marketing methodology.  THEREFORE, if you are a fat, bloated cow of a company and are selling a brand connected to speed etc and that brand doesn’t sync with your internal, cultural “brand” - you are being perceived as a liar.  Your attempts to systemize, self-legitimize and/or mechanize the experiential marketing process begins to strip away the very layers of emotion that you intended  to “connect” with.  You're tinkering with the “realness of it all” makes the money you’re currently spending money go directly into the drain.  The only thing important is  -  to the consumer, no matter how forgiving we are - you’re acting like the friend that just can’t tell the truth and eventually gets walked away from. And as humans we really only have one notion of what a relationship is - we aren’t coming back without some self improvement work and you taking off your “selling masks” that you think are what brands are. 

If you haven’t noticed the question “WHO MAKES IT?” is heard now more than ever.  So, your days of “brands as part of a game masking the parent company” days are OVER.

PLEASE ACCEPT MY INTERVENTION - I’M HERE AS SOMEONE THAT CARES ENOUGH TO POINT THIS OUT W/O CASHING A CHECK WITH YOUR COMPANY’S NAME ON IT - CALL THE DAMN BOARD MEETING EH?

Whew......Stay Tuned for the SOLUTIONS in Part 2..........That was fun

Four score and many seasons ago I stood in front of a Toronto audience at the RBC Innovation Symposium and made one simple statement, “ Innovation lives inside of everyone of you - I’m here to get it out!” What’s the issue with this?  Hit your pause button and follow me here......

As every novelist will tell you - everyone has a great novel living inside of them. 

Any experienced manager should tell you that great, innovative ideas live inside each person.  .......again, where’s the rub? 

 Pavlov would be proud. The average person has become so conditioned that they make it through a typical day at the office without really using any critical thinking functionality of their brain.  Therefore, each individual deprives their brain of “exercising” and the opportunity to create new mapping in their brains. What should look like a tropical thunderstorm on a brain scan looks like a foggy Solider Field in Philapdelphia

OK - It’s honesty time.  This is a more visceral exercise in person, but I’ll just picture your faces from my desk. 

How many days do you go through mindlessly and you turn around and it’s already 5 o’clock? 

On how many of those given days were you posed very similar questions and gave very similar answers? 

Here’s what we’re going to do. 

Next time someone asks you how your weekend/night/date etc. was pause.  Don’t reach into the normal basket of answers - reach into places that you’ve never reached for before  - nothing radical - just make sure that you choose different words etc.

Rinse and repeat this for a couple of weeks.  Pause before answering routine questions and  give non-routine answers.  You will, and I promise this, in just a few weeks feel your brain come to life.  As if it was a sleeping giant laying dormant for all this time. 

You see, the problem isn’t that you aren’t the one with the answer - the problem is that you’ve been told repeatedly that you’re not the one with the answer or nobody has challenged you to see if you can solve a complex situation.

Practice it.  It doesn’t come overnight, but it does come.  You’ll find yourself acting and talking differently and carrying yourself more confidently in the room.  SO the next time the water cooler gang asks how was your weekend - hear my little voice in your head.

What’s your next great idea !!!!!!!!!!!

Guest Blog By: Dan Hunter, Partner, IMI International

Hello EMF Nation,

Recently on the EMF posts, there has been a lot of reference to a change in consumer buying habits as a result of the economic conditions in recent times.  One such article referenced from Comscore suggests consumers are trading down in price and becoming less loyal to National brands.  Just last week, another EMF post referenced an article from the Globe & Mail suggesting consumers consider short-term reward more strongly than the long-term gains. Thus consumers are irrational, and it has been argued that this emotional context needs to be overlaid to more rational economic models.

These two articles provided impetus to share with the EMF membership what we at IMI International have learned about changes to consumer buying habits from a proprietary study we fielded called "Building Your Brand in Turbulent Times".  We asked some questions that could be benchmarked versus more "normal" times in 2007, fielded during the 'dark days' of  January 2009 and followed up again in early 2010 to see which of these changes have a lasting effect.

First, our study agreed with both the articles referenced above:  

1.  Consumers are indeed trading down to the lowest price more often now than in 2007 (for details, please see the June 2010 EMF/IMI research article in the members section).  
2. What is interesting, however, is the consideration of "short-term reward" in this environment.  Consumers have also increased their consideration for the "best quality"-while this seems inconsistent, consider that there has also been a consistent increase in the attitude that it is "worth spending more time to be a smart shopper".
   
3.  Another finding reflects a return to the importance of Brand Name products versus price considerations, after a dip in 2009.   
   

Some other category studies we have done at IMI International (from snack food to autos) lead us to conclude that some of the switching to low priced alternatives may not have turned out so well, and the consumer has learned from this experience.  For bigger purchases, you'll know this as "buyer's remorse". 

One of the key pieces that was missing for me from the previous articles was a big "Now What" - as a marketer or a person working at an agency, what can I do about it?  This thinking is precisely why we added other questions around value, brand benefits and price (essentially, inputs into the value equation) into our Turbulent Times study.  The conclusions we make provide some clear actions steps for EMF members, as price and value are intricately linked.

To summarize action steps for this audience, we would suggest the following:  

1. Do your homework to determine your brand's unique value proposition.  That is - which brand in my portfolio represents high value, which benefits can I highlight to illustrate added value versus my competition (i.e. 'washes more dishes' versus 'soft on hands'...) and,
2. How can I best showcase these benefits to overcome potential purchase barriers?  
   

While price discounting is a tactic that can be used, and is always a consideration, it tends to erode brand equity (and ROI/margins) over the long term.  Our consistent learning for over 15 years has illustrated the power of Experiential Marketing as an excellent method to convey new benefits or activate new learning areas, whether it is to overcome a shared barrier or perception, showcasing new value benefits or illustrating new 'reasons to believe'.

So, it's time to act. Consumers are still buying. Our shared challenge is to break through the spending concerns that this economic environment has brought to consumers and make them feel good again, as "smart shoppers".

As experiential marketers when we begin new adventures both personally and professionally - we do it because it feels right. In essence, we are connecting with our own internal emotional Rolodex and clearing our own "pathway to purchase" or final destination to get to where we feel our body, mind and spirit need to be. Experiential marketers just can't fake it. So, simply put, when the landscapes of our own lives change - we have no choice but to act. In my experience it is the experiential folks that are the most conscious and understand the importance of being true to self

We understand that by doing this we are controlling our own internal emotional equilibrium which therefore allows us to continue - to walk unafraid - from one day to the next knowing that we have sacrificed nothing while looking for everything to gain.

It is this simple principle which experiential marketers, using the transference principle, begin to understand their clients' intended audiences, what makes them tick, and relentlessly seek the "perfect moment" where to best regulate the external consumer by managing their emotional equilibrium by providing meaningful and relevant brand experiences where and when the consumer will be most receptive to it. We do this by relating their own extremely interpersonal consumer journey as they make their purchasing decisions.

It's the ability to understand that while it may be actual, tangible products and services that are moving off the shelf that it's actually the powerful moments of connections by marketers "selling the emotion" that allows this whole process to take place. I've always said that I've never sold a product or service, that I'm in the business of selling narratives and emotions - it is that strategy that serves as the salient differentiator between the monologue days of the 90's and the current landscape.

When the final curtain drops, as the customers are opening the trunk and putting their purchases inside, they will have bought what they have related to that fits in their budget, but it's a never ending challenge to search through the emotional Rolodex, the heart strings inside of the consumer base, to learn where to form those relevant connections - it's what will have your product/service in the trunk as Joe and Jane consumer make their way back home feeling more understood and that the actions that they just performed were much, much more than shopping - they were a fulfillment of self.