Every few months, Liquid Agency puts together what we call a Brand Breakfast. This is an opportunity for a few folks to gather, connect and attend a presentation on a timely topic about brand building – and start the day with some “food for thought” as well as a healthy meal. The latest Brand Breakfast featured Ben Bajarin, the Director of the Consumer Technology Practice at Creative Strategies – a respected analyst firm – who spoke about “Social Media and its impact on Branding Experiences”. Ben was joined onstage by Beverly Davis, Director of Digital Branding at Liquid Agency, and Scott Mount, Director of Digital Branding at Liquid Agency. Introductions and the Q&A that followed the event was managed by Martha Bowman, Director of Brand Strategy at Liquid Agency.

The event was well attended, with over 35 senior brand marketing professionals representing companies like Cisco, SanDisk, VeriSign, Nvidia, Creative Labs, and others. For those of you who were not there, you missed not only a good breakfast, but also a good talk and great company! Check out the photos.

Ben spoke about how social media is enabling brands to build relationships with their customers – and how this will continue to grow in the future – especially in terms of more targeted and more focused networks. Beverly and Scott contributed real-life case studies showing how these ideas are put into practice by companies like Starbucks, Nike, Intel, Dell, and others. The examples included leveraging public community platforms such as FaceBook and Twitter, as well as communities developed by brands themselves.

If you’re interested, you can download a PDF of the presentation here.

We’ll also be posting some video excerpts, and if you sign up for our blog updates you will be notified as soon as they are available. You can sign up for blog updates by entering your email address on top right of this page.

Three reasons why brands leverage Social Media.
The principal reasons behind why brands should consider leveraging social media in terms of brand building can be segmented into three categories:

1. Community Building
Enabling constituents to communicate with each other and share information, tips, stories and resources will result in increased brand awareness and loyalty.

2. Crowd Sourcing
Creating a feedback mechanism to solicit and receive suggestions, feedback and insight for the purposes of product development and improvement is an excellent way to create benefits that range from additional loyalty to lower cost of entry or lower risk in product development.

3. Promotional Platform
Whether one leverages an existing public social network or creates an owned branded destination, social media is an excellent vehicle for the distribution and dissemination of promotional programs. The viral quality associated with social media makes it an ideal platform for promotions aimed at a specific audience segment.

Every opportunity also has some risks.
Ben pointed out that, of course, there are some inherent risks in using social media – especially the fact that brands have less control over the conversation…which is something that makes brands a little jittery. For one, Ben said that in an environment that encourages dialogue sometimes the conversation does not go in the direction a brand would like – and negative opinions can influence the perceptions of others. However, like most other communities, social networks are usually pretty good at self-regulating and the voice of people that represent opinions that are not justified (which is usually a minority) are ultimately drowned out by the majority. Additionally, brands do have opportunities to exercise some moderation – and at least cut out the commentary that becomes irrelevant and unreasonable.

In the case of “crowd sourcing” one of the audience members expressed a concern about the “public nature of the dialogue”, which enables competitors to gather information that might not have otherwise been available to them – and potentially benefit from this data. Ben acknowledged that this could be an issue – but suggested that brands still have the opportunity to interpret the information through their own “brand filters” and create products that express their unique brand personality…after all, we don’t all want the same exact thing.

On the other hand, Peter Friess, the Director of The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, explained how he’s using Second Life as a platform for designers around the world to submit ideas for new exhibitions. This practice enables The Tech to receive ideas that they may not otherwise get…and it allows them to test the concepts online prior to building exhibitions in the real world – a truly innovative way to leverage online communities while supporting the idea that The Tech brand is about innovation.

Social media is growing fast and brands should learn to use it.
The numbers can make your head spin. Ben shared data indicating that today there are approximately 1 Billion Social Networking sites on the web….and about 3 Billion minutes are spent on SN sites every day. This translates into huge opportunities for brands. However, Ben warned that this does not mean simply running banner ads on the popular sites – instead, brands need to participate in the conversation and add valuable content if they are to make a positive impact with these highly targeted audiences. He made it a point to focus on the fact that brands need to re-invent content for this medium – because re-purposing will simply not work.

So, all in all, there was much to learn…and we hope that the people that attended walked away with more than just a full stomach.

Continue the dialogue on LinkedIn!
We’ve created a group on LinkedIn called Liquid Brand Exchange, and there we’re continuing the discussion on Social Media and Branding. This is an opportunity to participate even if you were not able to attend the breakfast…and join in our little experiment about social media. If you’re on LinkedIn, all you have to do is click on “groups”, search for “Liquid Brand Exchange” and ask to join. You will be notified as soon as you’re in - and then you can let us know what you think.

For more information, please feel free to contact any of the people listed below:

Ben Bajarin
Director of the Consumer Technology Practice
Creative Strategies
ben@creativestrategies.com

Martha Bowman
Director of Brand Strategy
Liquid Agency
martha@liquidagency.com

Beverly Davis
Director of Digital Branding
Liquid Agency
beverly@liquidagency.com

Scott Mount
Creative Director of Digital Branding
Liquid Agency
scottm@liquidagency.com

Of course, you can also participate in the conversation right here on this blog by posting a comment!

Ciao!!!

Alfredo Muccino
Chief Creative Officer
Liquid Agency | Brand Marketing

Author: Alfredo Muccino
Category: Brands in general

At the beginning of the month, I went to Brazil where I was one of the speakers at the Marketing Mix Conference sponsored by POPAI in Sao Paulo. The Marketing Mix Conference is the largest gathering of retail marketing professionals in South America. About 1,000 people attended the conference, with approx. 320 attending the seminars. The line up of speakers was quite international and included myself, representing the US and speakers who came from Brazil, France, Germany, Argentina and the Netherlands.

My presentation outlined what it takes to build relevant brand experiences at retail, and it was very well received by the audience – who asked many questions after I was done talking. It was my first time presenting to an audience that did not speak English – but, thanks to a translator who relied my messages in Portuguese to those members of the audience that wore headsets, everyone seemed to understand what I said.(At least I hope). Approximately 60% of the attendees were from brands and the other 40% were almost equally divided between retailers, agencies, fabricators and academics.

I very much enjoyed the presentation by Elodie Cyrus, the CMO of Carlipa (France) – a company that delivers Digital Media Solutions. She illustrated how brands are embracing digital media at retail, and creating more powerful and efficient ways to connect with customers and increase sales. I also enjoyed the presentation by Nicolas Loose, from GIM (Germany) - a research firm that studies consumer behavior at retail. Nicolas shared some very interesting data about the exponential growth of “digital signage”.

The trip was mostly about business…however the folks at POPAI were outstanding hosts and they treated me to a few delicious meals and some samplings of caipirinha that I enjoyed very much. I especially enjoyed chatting with Chan Wook Min, the president of POPAI Brazil – and Luciana Barreto and Diego Milani other key players at POPAI Brazil.

I hope to have a chance to return – and next time I hope to visit Rio de Janeiro as well!!!

Ciao!!!

Alfredo Muccino
Chief Creative Officer
Liquid Agency

Author: Alfredo Muccino
Category: Brands in general