I attended Silicon Valley Brand Forum on social media late last week…perhaps my tenth such conference. This one was different. The keynote was Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter Group, a guy who really knows this space, and the panel was made up of roll-up-your-sleeves practioners from EBay, Electronic Arts, and Cisco. Steve Farnsworth provided a tutorial on setting up a listening dashboard that turned out to be very easy to execute. I came away with some new thoughts and have already put some of them into practice.

Some of the notions worth sharing from the panel discussion:

-Much to the chagrin of most senior managers, social media is not free. You must have an organization to execute the programs–Jaap Tuinman, EA

-One tweet can ignite a crisis. the key is not to panic–Jeanette Gibson, Cisco

-Your corporate website is irrelevant. 95% of the conversation about your brand and products takes place outside your control–Steve Farndsworth, Jolt Media

-Get you legal department involved in your social media strategy early–Jeremiah Owyang

-Video is where the action is in Social Media–Jeanette Gibson

What struck me most about this particular social media panel discussion was how these companies were actively engaged in social media and had been for some time. EBay and Electronic Arts have been dependant upon communities to drive their business models for some time. And they have taken it to a new level as they integrate new outlets and access their customers in ways they could not a couple of years ago.

As a brand strategist, my eyes were opened to some new thoughts. At the same time, I was struck by how much of the emphasis in Social Media is still PR-oriented. there has been much discussion about building brand value in Social Media. The practices are being invented right now and I intend to be part of the conversation.

After living and breathing the economic downturn these past 15 months or so, I developed a summary of this situation and some new rules for marketers to live by to keep their brand valuable and viable through the tough times and beyond. The complete whitepaper can be dowloaded here.

My overall point-of-view is that we are seeing a permanent shift in attitudes towards spending and buying behavior. And, because the spending habits of the next generation are being formed in the current crucible, the impact on how we position and market brands will last well beyond the date that the Federal Government declares the recession over.

My initial thoughts focus on consumer brands. However, I recently participated in a panel discussion on brand marketing in a down economy at a Techcoire conference. The majority of the audience were business-to-business marketers who were somewhat skeptical of looking at their customers through the lens of the consumer. I agree that B-to-B has different challenges, but strongly encouraged the group to look at their business customers as “people” first. To ignore how their personal values have changed toward spending leaves out the emotional side of the purchasing decision. In other words, a purchasing manager who is concerned about his job/family/mortgage is going to think very differently than a secure, well paid one.

In understanding how to keep your brand relevant in the Age of Frugality, perhaps the most important thing to come to grips with is that we are experiencing a fundamental, permanent shift in values and buying behavior. It is a change that will be good for your customers, the country and the global economy. To be successful, your brand must take into account the challenges your customers face and become empathetic with their emerging values.

Now, building brand value is wholly dependent upon understanding how your customers values have evolved. Getting it right is essential for both short-term survival and long-term growth.

I attended the Silicon Valley Brand Forum’s session on cause marketing this week. Given the sea change in America against major brands, I was looking for some insights into how some of the big technology brands were thinking about cause marketing and corproate responsibility as a whole.

The session opened with an updated presentation on the psychology of giving, with implications for how doing good can dramatically improve brand value. The presentation, by Jennifer Aaker of Stanford, gave me the title of this post. Most interesting to me was the ability to see into the future by understanding the importance of social responsibility to Millennials. Looking forward, it will be critical for companies to Do Good if they expect to employ, do commerce with, or gain investment from Millennials–this generation has caring in its DNA.

The panel, moderated by Melissa Dyrdahl of Bring Light, was made up of two brand directors, Susan Space of Sun Microsystems and Cheryl Sawyer of Cisco, Alicia Sieger of Terrapass, and Jamie Hartman of the Taproot Foundation. The discussion focused on what Cisco and Sun were doing, how they evaluate cause marketing sponsorships and what the future might hold from a budget perspective for future efforts. Overall, these companies do a lot of good; they provide opportunities for their employees to participate, and they don’t go out of their way to over-commercialize their efforts.

Terrapass is a company that enables others to do good by offsetting their carbon footprint. They are in the Doing Good for the Environment business. It was interesting to note that, while Cisco and Sun managed their cause marketing programs through their corporate or brand marketing teams, Terrapass is working with other groups in their customer companies, creating a much more institutionalized way of Doing Good.

Taproot brought the facilitation role to the table, helping companies select and manage how they get involved with causes. One of the most interesting comments from Jamie Hartman of Taproot, was that companies can kill a charity by trying to help it. We were asked to consider the situation of 100 employee of a company descending on a school or shelter for several hours of volunteer work. The same shelter gets a similar offer from another company a month later. The charitable organization is not going to say “no.” On the other hand, you can only paint the same wall so many times. The point being: if a company really wants to have an impact, a more thoughtful, strategic approach to doing good is required.

From my perspective, “cause marketing” is a topic that is going to go through some changes over the next several years, much the same way that “green marketing” has. It is not going to be enough for companies to participate in causes via their marketing groups and employee events. To be authentic, companies are going to have to make “Doing Good” part of their culture and part of what their brand stands for.

The benefits are easy to see. A company that makes Doing Good part of their brand will see benefits in terms of the customers they get and how long they keep them, the employees they attract, how hard they work and how long they stay with the company, and even the amount of investment they can get in their company. That seems like a good definition for Doing Well by Doing Good.

I’ve done work for a number of clean technlogy companies–companies that truly are providing goods or services that will contribute to increased recycling rates, reduced power usage and an overall smaller carbon footprint for their customers. In doing the work, which meant looking at their business practices, the competition and other so called “green” companies, it became clear that it is not that simple to communicate green-ness in a credible manner.

Everyone wants to be green, and as a result consumers are confused and becoming more and more skeptical. Business-to-business brands in clean technology must find ways to differentiate their technology and its benefits credibly. I wrote a whitepaper with some key benefits on being CLEAN. Check it out and let me know what you think.

A big part of our business is developing insights for our clients. Insights into their customers, into what the competition is up to, into where the category is headed; even insights into how their organization feels about their brand.

We do get to some very good insights. Like for Regus, the world’s largest operator of on-demand office space, it wasn’t about having an office it was about the feeling that you had a real business. Having an office legitimized the business. For IRI, our insight was that information—or data—had become commoditized, but insights were highly valuable. As a result of our insight, IRI went on to refocus their considerable business on analytics to get to deeper insights. For SunPower, a large maker of PV solar panels for residential application, we thought the insight would be about going green. It turned out that their customers needed to understand the financial implications before they could rationalize the considerable expense on the basis of environmental responsibility.

What qualified the examples above as insights were three factors. First, the insight provided new understanding about a customer need. Second, the insight had the ability to change the way the company did business, and finally, the insight could be sourced from a fact-base. Since a real insight should have the potential to positively impact the business, a basis in fact is critical to build the case for investment.

What concerns me about the insight business is that there seems to be a lot of faux insights out there. I would label any insight that is based on “different”, “change” or “better” as a cop-out. I was really disappointed to see a display in the Apple store this weekend that said: “The App Store: this changes everything”. Besides being a bit unimaginative, it’s also a bit of an over-promise. From an insight perspective, change doesn’t really connote a positive benefit. It’s just…change.

Developing an insight is grueling work. It requires the requisite situational assessment, perhaps conducting hours of in-depth interviews or other qualitative research, iterating on themes with whoever will listen; associates, friends, clients. And then bringing it altogether in such a way that a group of people understand it and fall in love with it. It’s a tall order, but getting to a true insight is what it’s all about.

Thanks for visiting our new website and (if you made it this far) my blog. If you came in directly to the blog, please have a look at the website and let me know what you think.

You’ll see we’re in reinvention mode as we seek to grow ourselves. The big news, and benefit for our clients, is that we now have the ability to integrate highly sophisticated strategy with world-class design. For brands looking for the level of talent found at Landor, Segal & Gale and Prophet, we provide comparable experience and expertise in a more intimate and affordable package.

In this blog I’ll be posting my observations about brand strategy and brand marketing based both on my observations and experiences within engagements. Please add a comment, good or bad. It all helps.

Greg