Okay, before you accuse me of being a pedant, let me explain. After seeing, reading and analyzing consumer behavior for over three decades, I’ve noticed an increasingly aggressive dismissiveness of the institutions that for so long felt like pillars of society. 

About a week ago, quite by accident, I read a piece on a postmodernism.  While I was aware of the phenomenon, I really didn’t understand its impact until now. Britannica defines postmodernism as a “broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason; and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology. in asserting and maintaining political and economic power.” Here is my definition – Postmodern basically means turning your back on authority figures, relying on yourself and your peers and living in a world where everything is fluid. Starting to sound familiar? I’m not going to venture into the political waters or any of the social debates. I’ll stick to commercial communications.

There are two campaigns that are good examples of postmodernism in commercial communications, and they offer some lessons for those of us in non-profits, education, government and health care. The first is the Progressive Insurance campaign featuring Jon Hamm. If you haven’t seen the campaign, here is a link to it. Watch it before you keep reading.

So, why am I making a big deal out of this? Rarely, if ever, does a brand pay big bucks for a celebrity spokesperson and then make light of that person. The traditional approach was to have Jon Hamm’s brand identity rub off on your brand, usually by putting him on a pedestal so his positive brand standing magically transfers to yours. Now what Progressive has done is signaled to its audience, with a “wink and nudge” that they get that celebrity endorsements are bogus, and they know consumers are looking for more substantive content before making a purchase decision. In an industry where it is so hard to differentiate oneself – one that relied on spokespeople and mascots to distinguish one company from another – this is a big shift. If you don’t believe me, check out NJM insurance, which openly mocks it competitors by saying that their initials stand for “No Jingles and Mascots.” 

But this isn’t the only example. Check out this spot about Hulu’s new service. I love the casting and art direction, but what puts it over the top is that it acknowledges that a catchy product name won’t convince you to switch to a new service. The service will be the reason you switch. And, to get that point across, they chose a “stupid” name.  One more in this vein: Liberty Mutual’s commercial with teenagers having fun – here’s the link to it.  Yep, another traditional communications tactic cut down at the knees.

The point is that this self-deprecation is meant to show today’s consumers that companies and their brands want to connect with consumers as equals. No more selling some unrealistic utopia based on bigness or heritage or superiority complex – no more commercial mansplaining. They get it, so you can get that they aren’t the usual “take themselves too seriously” company. 

So, how do we, the education, non-profit, government and health care sectors, exist in this postmodern world? You can’t use self-deprecating humor like an insurance company or cable service can. And, it isn’t showing a lot of smiling people in your communications, either.

So what should you do?

1.    Build facets and components into your product and/or services that are absolutely unique. If you are a “me-too” organization, then you need to build that differentiation into upcoming upgrades. Otherwise, you will undermine any brand promise you make.  If you are asking a person to choose you and promise them you will deliver a superior product or experience for them, the promise is more believable if you are distinctive. In other words, what makes you unique is what makes you a better choice for them. 

2.    Most consumers want to know you sincerely care about them.  Not being a “number” means being sincerely open to them. Have you made it as easy as possible for them to interact with you? Do you respond in an appropriate fashion when they reach out to you? Do you show sufficient flexibility in dealing with them? Trust me, it’s more than scripted dialogues, it’s honesty, transparency and being helpful.

3.    And finally, and as always, all your communication needs to be an “Unforgettable Conversation with a Friend.” If you treat your consumers as friends and speak to them about things that matter to them, they will be open to your messaging. This will never change, even in a post-modern world.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out to me at mtinati@kineticsmarcom.com.

Yep, it’s the middle of the summer and I am about to take some time off. But that’s not exactly what this post is about. It’s about making sure that no matter what time of year it is, you use the right message distribution technique for what you are offering.  

In the old days, this was called “media planning and strategy.” And, unfortunately, in most cases people don’t really think beyond the tactical when it comes to media planning and message distribution. Many will focus on the more tactical considerations such as do they skew their budget to digital vs print and broadcast? Do they invest in email or launch a PPC campaign? They might say, ‘we’ll measure it on the backend and adjust accordingly.’ All widely-used tactics, but they don’t constitute a proper message distribution strategy. Its not their fault, because the data has overwhelmed the message distribution decision making process. Data is good, don’t get me wrong, but it shouldn’t be the sole determinant of what message distribution strategy to take. You have to align it with your target’s decision making process as well as your competitive advantages. 

Now if you will indulge me, let me expand on the fishing analogy and how it illustrates the three basic media strategies that can work for you. Just keep in mind that good message distribution factors in two of the three “R”s in a communication strategy: the right person, and the right time. I think we know why it’s important to reach the right person at the right time — the closer you can get to a person who is on the verge of making a purchase decision, the more likely you’re able to register a conversion or a sale. Asking me to buy your suntan lotion while I’m in a meeting is an example of what you don’t want to do. 

Okay, here we go with the fishing strategies:

Bait Fishing. What that basically means is that you figure out what your main messages are as you scan the water and paddle out to where you believe the fish are gathering. You drop your line there with the hope that the fish are going to buy. This technique has been used for literally decades prior to the explosion of digital media, but it’s still an effective strategy.  And in some cases, it’s still important because regardless of how precise your communications efforts are, you still benefit from less intentional, more casual consumers. These are the consumers who didn’t think they were in the marketplace for, let’s say, a pair of shoes, but saw an ad for a nice pair and decided they wanted them. In some cases, 20 to 30 percent of all purchases can come from this type of consumer, so, they shouldn’t be written out of the equation when you develop your marketing and communications plans. 

Net Fishing. This is where you put a net across a stream and catch whatever crosses the net’s path. What you catch depends on where you place the net and the size of the net’s openings. This technique is good for any organization that has data and information on their target audience, related to life stage or lifecycle – academia, for example. Most academic institutions seeking to recruit students cast a net across whatever communication stream they use, and set it to capture as many students in a certain age group as they can. Another group that can benefit from net fishing is one that has a symbiotic relationship with another product or service. The best example I can think of is car insurance. If I buy a car, I’m going to need car insurance. Net fishing is the most efficient message distribution strategy because it allows you to target audiences at the right time. If you can, you might want to deploy this strategy in place of what you are using now.

Spear Fishing. This works best for organizations that cater to very specific audiences. Think of the scuba diver who targets one particular fish.  Many nonprofit organizations and those that sell luxury goods use this technique.  For spear fishing to be successful, an organization needs to have detailed information on what constitutes the perfect target and needs to make sure the message delivery mechanism allows delivery of specific criteria. A  bevy of software programs exist that can help you figure out if someone is qualified to be one of your customers and worth the time and effort it takes.  Social media advertising is another way of executing this strategy, but it has its limits.  While social media advertising can target the audience, the message  can get muddled in a cluttered social media environment. The most effective delivery of this message strategy is in a more personal, one-on-one conversation. For a school which is identifying a very qualified student, or for a non-profit which has profiled a candidate, it pays to pitch them personally.  

So, you can see,  if I put up a sign on my door that says,  “I’ve gone fishing” it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m idle. It may mean I’m figuring out how to get you more qualified leads and manage your relationship with customers and prospects.

As always, if you have your own thoughts or want to let me know what you think, feel free to reach out to me at mtinati@kineticsmarcom.com

Yep, email. That’s the answer to the question: “What communications channel reaches the broadest swath of audiences?” 

Check out this chart from a study conducted in 2021.While every communication channel seems to reach only a fragment of most audiences, sitting right there is good ol’ email.  Who knew that it had such high appeal to virtually every demographic? 

You can see that email is the choice of every age group, from Gen Z to Millennials, from Gen X and Baby boomers. We suspected as much because we’ve seen that over the last two years email open rates have been creeping up. And, more importantly emails are generating more than a one-day bump in web site activity. Looking at results from 2018 for instance, open rates for an email campaign, whether using Constant Contact or Survey Monkey, spiked the first four or five hours after an email was sent. Then there may have been a small uptick a couple hours later towards the end of the day and evening.  And that was it – not much happened beyond Day One. 

Now, however, aside from the higher overall open rates, we’ve noticed that recipients are opening the emails on Day Two and Day Three. It’s certainly not at the same open rates as on Day One, but maybe 50% – 75% of Day One results.  We’ve seen this type of general activity with two clients in different fields over the past 6 months, so we don’t think that this is just an aberration.   

But before you go off and start doubling the number of your emails, be mindful that freshness and relevance of content is important to generate “opens” and engagement. In general, I still adhere to creating “an unforgettable conversation with a friend” especially in today’s congested communication landscape.  The best way to increase your email activity in a meaningful way is, frankly, to listen to your audience and discover what they seem to be looking for. Chances are, there is something they want to know, and if you’ve established a trust with them, they will be open to hearing from you. The operative word is “trust.” And just like in any relationship, you don’t want to abuse it.

As always, if you have your own thoughts or want to let me know what you think, feel free to reach out to me at mtinati@kineticsmarcom.com

Ah yes, Bob Dylan lyrics from the ‘60s . . . and appropriate for today. Since the beginning of the year, we’ve seen more organizations, of all sizes, openly acknowledge that they are facing a new set of challenges. We at Kinetics are engaged in two strategic planning projects, and we are experiencing this rethinking firsthand. As we go through our discovery processes and reach out to these clients’ stakeholders, they too say they are reconsidering their planning strategies.

Some of this can be attributed to the Pandemic. More than 8 billion people had to dramatically change the way they lived, loved, and learned, changing the world in the process. And it’s not just the result of rapid adoption of technology – from telemedicine, to remote working to online shopping. It also includes a reevaluation by employees on how they want to work, and by employers on how they want their employees to work for them. The traditional 9-to-5 model is no longer applicable and appropriate for all industries and organizations – Huzzah to that.

But there is more: It’s the ascendency of Gen Xers and Millennials as the major drivers of today’s economy, and the waning influence of the more consumerist Baby Boom generation. We’re looking at a ton of new research that shows how Gen Xers and Millennials have different priorities than Boomers – they are more into experiences vs. possessions; more inclined to consume brands that reflect their views on social justice and the environment; and put more trust in what peers say vs. institutions. For example, we recently came across a study by 5WPR, in which 73 percent of those surveyed between the ages of 35 and 54 said: “It’s important to me that companies I buy from align with my values.”

All this is against a backdrop of the evolution of social media. While there are many positive attributes to social media, its widespread use has fostered a new type of conversation that up to now was frowned upon. Social media has normalized the outrageous. It has tapped into our psyche, and it triggers a dopamine buzz that very few of us can quit. (And, if you are under the age of 30, there is a good chance you have at some point tried to figure out how to get a million views and a thousand likes.) It makes it very challenging for a brand to push out messaging in a media that resembles the Tower of Babel.

This all may seem depressing at first, but I don’t think we are in a “doom or gloom” scenario. In fact, now is a great time for an organization to make significant changes to their product and service offerings, brand image, and service delivery. A mentor said to me once, “you can’t make money in stagnant market.” Well, if you ascribe to that theory, then it’s surely worth taking advantage of these turbulent times. If everything is changing, then you can make changes as well. You can leapfrog the competition, or enter new markets, and appeal to a different set of audiences.

I certainly don’t think that going back to a pre-pandemic model makes good business sense. As Dylan wrote at the end of the song:

The order is rapidly fadin’

And the first one now

Will later be last

For the times they are a-changin’.

Facebook has been in the news a lot lately, and not for positive reasons. The European Union found the company guilty of violating users’ privacy. Various social media titans, including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, have gone to Capitol Hill to testify in front of Congress and been grilled on breaches in private data and its use.

All of this puts us marketers in a pretty interesting place. Under normal circumstances, we would back away from a media outlet with swirling clouds of controversies – the way advertisers pull dollars from TV programs that have fumbled a social issue – but recent Facebook ad campaigns we’ve initiated on behalf of several clients have performed very well. Next to Google AdSearch campaigns, Facebook has generated the highest returns and done so with great efficiency and very high conversion rates. There is no doubt that Facebook is an effective channel.

But what about that privacy issue? And the controversies around it?

Pew Research conducted a study on this, asking a sample of Facebook users how much they knew about how Facebook categorizes them and how it targets ads to them. Interestingly, 74 percent of users surveyed say they were unaware of the categories that Facebook uses. On one hand, that is an alarmingly high number. Basically, it says 3 out of 4 people at best had a vague notion of what Facebook did with the data collected on them. But wait, there is more:

When directed to the “ad preferences” page, the large majority of Facebook users (88%) found that the site had generated some material for them. A majority of users (59%) say these categories reflect their real-life interests, while 27% say they are not very or not at all accurate in describing them. And once shown how the platform classifies their interests, roughly half of Facebook users (51%) say they are not comfortable that the company created such a list.

So, what does this say to us?

The first thing that jumps out at me is that about a quarter of the people surveyed say the information Facebook has on them isn’t accurate. That means you can assume that a quarter of your Facebook allocation is being spent on people who don’t have the interests you think they do. Compared with traditional media, that is a pretty good number, but still a quarter is a quarter. So, as Big Brother-ish as it is, Facebook still hasn’t perfected its targeting capabilities. And that suggests that Facebook is going to continue to collect information on its users so as to make sure it has correctly categorized 100 percent of its users.

The second thing is the “creep” factor. About half – and I am going to assume that the number is a little exaggerated – are creeped out by the fact that Facebook has lumped them into a category. The reality is that all marketers categorize their clients and customers one way or another: frequent shoppers, low revenue generators, loyal customers etc. There should be no surprise either at the fact that most media for decades have ascribed characteristics to their users. Do you recall the psychographic VALs (values, attitudes and lifestyles) categorizations pioneered by Daniel Yankelovich? This is just a natural evolution of the concept of getting to know your customers and prospects. Now you know more – and that inherently shouldn’t be creepy. But that is a judgment call you need to make on your own.

How do we respond? Do we avoid all this and strike Facebook from our media mix because we are offended by its aggregation of data and categorization algorithms? Or do we use it, assuming – if Pew’s research is accurate – that most Facebook users will continue to be active on the platform regardless of its information collection and categorization efforts?

If you are comfortable with how the social media companies operate, use it to its full advantage. There is a whole host of data and information you can glean from your campaigns beyond just the campaign stats, such as Click-Thru-Rates (CTRs), Cost-Per-Clicks (CPCs) and conversion goals. A lot of that data can be found in Google Analytics, and the rest of it can be found in the reports for the major social media companies, including Facebook and Instagram. (If you need help finding and interpreting them, we’d be happy to help.)

As mentioned earlier, they still have room to improve their targeting abilities. If you haven’t noticed, more data tracking is occurring outside of what you do on your computer. For example, audio computing – I’m talking about the Alexas, Siris and Cortinas of the world – will continue to eavesdrop on your conversations and will, soon, begin to deliver promotional messages. (Every time you say out loud, “I’m hungry” or “Gosh, chicken again,” Alexa is going to chime in with, “What about a Domino’s pizza?”) And as time goes on, you will be able to go beyond just demographics, psychographics and interests. So, you need to be thinking in parallel with the advances these media channels are making as well – in particular when it comes to the timing of your message. In other words, in an overly communicated world, when is the best, most opportune time for you to be in front of your desirable target audience?

We are truly in the midst of a brave, new world, and there is a lot for us to learn. Not only about how we can take advantage of these new tools but also how exactly they operate. Make sure your conscience is clear and that you have no issues with how these media companies provide you with solutions. And, again, if you have no issues, take full advantage of all the insights they can provide you.

As always, if you have questions or want to discuss this topic further, feel free to reach out to me at mtinati@kineticsmarcom.com.

I happened to be walking through a school the other day, and overheard a teacher talking to her students about Noah’s Ark. As you recall, Noah and his wife invited two representatives of each species to enter the Ark. This got me thinking. Was Kinetics a shining example within our sector; a strong enough representative of our species, to warrant an invite from Noah and his wife? If Noah and his wife judged us against our competition, would they deem us Ark-worthy?

Albeit every organization is a bit different from their competitor, simply because the people who work there are different and its processes might be different. But “a bit” is a key word here. There is a baseline of services and attributes every organization has to have to qualify to compete for customers. Sometimes those services and attributes have to be adjusted to reflect a new competitor, new technology or new consumer preferences. Regardless, there will always be a minimum set of attributes that all organizations have to exhibit to catch the attention of consumers – our Noahs, if you will. Now the question – is the “bit” that is different important to our Noahs and does it set us apart from our competitors for a spot on the Ark? In some cases that “bit” is superior performance around the baseline attributes. In other cases it is the price/value proposition. And, finally, there is that something else – an added feature – that makes an offering stand out. The key is that whatever that difference is, it needs to be significant enough to be noticed, appreciated and judged to be Ark-worthy.

As you head off for summer vacation, when you are inclined, give that question a thought. It’s a big question, because it not only challenges your communication efforts, but also your core value proposition. More changes are coming to the marketplace – the emergence of Millennials as our main audience and the continued incursion of technology into more corners of our lives. Even if you couldn’t get an invitation now, you might be able to earn one down the road.

The following piece was inspired by a conversation I had with Doug Walker, Director of Integrated Marketing and Communications at Washington Adventist University. We were discussing the challenges a smaller institution faces especially in the increasingly competitive world of higher education and what his thoughts were on how they move forward. He put it in such compelling context, I asked him if I could share it with our friends. So, here it is in his own words. Enjoy.

As one school year or fiscal year draws to a close, it’s not too early to start planning for the next. I lead marketing at a small university facing some big competition. See below for the four lessons from the story of David and Goliath I’m thinking about.

Knowledge is Power
David was in the right place at the right time because his father sent him on an errand to deliver a care package to his older brothers and their commanding officer. Having left the food with the quartermaster, he wandered down to the front to pick up the latest buzz.

It’s always good to keep up with the state of play in your industry or market.

You Do You
After accepting Goliath’s challenge to single combat, King Saul offered David his own tunic and armor, which David dutifully donned. After walking around in it a bit, he took it off. It was too big, and he was unaccustomed to it.

Be yourself. Find your niche. As Simon Sinek stresses, “Start with Why.” Be very clear about why you do what you do.

Be prepared
As he descended into the Valley of Elah with slingshot in hand, David stopped at the stream, and selected five smooth stones.

If you’re going to war, go armed and dangerous. That might mean brushing up on a subject you should know, but could know better. It could mean doing more research for an upcoming negotiation. It may be time for that market research you’ve been putting off.

Move Forward
Finally, at the moment of truth, “As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him.” 1 Sam. 17:48 (NIV)

This is no time to shrink back. Meet your challenges head-on!

Doug Walker is Vice President for Integrated Marketing and Communication at Washington Adventist University in Takoma Park, MD.