Finally, there's a video excerpt of my keynote speech for Forrester's Marketing Forum in Los Angeles (April 8-9, 2008). The theme of the entire conference was based on my report, Marketing's New Key Metric: Engagement. I was the opening keynote on the first day of the conference. The title of my speech was Engagement: A New Approach To Understanding Your Customers.

It was pretty exciting once I got on stage, but it certainly was stressful in the preparation and rehearsal phase. It's admittedly difficult to find time with all of the other analyst responsibilities on my plate. Regardless, the keynote was a hit.

I opened with a fascinating story about Jen, an IKEA fan from Ohio. I told her story about attempting to encourage IKEA to open a store near her in Cincinnati. She did this using her fan blog, OHIKEA.com.

Then I debunked the marketing funnel (one of my favorite things to do), introduced my Engagement framework, and aligned it with the buying process. Then I told a story of Laura, who is an engaged user of Glaxo Smith Klein Consumer Healthcare's alli weight loss product. My good friends at Communispace were kind enough to connect me with Laura and share the sucesses of their online community for GSK.

I closed by recommending how to measure engagement. I'll follow up with another post including the details of my speech, but overall the experience was fantastic, I received lots of positive feedback, and it was certainly fun. Kerry was the keynote on day two, discussing Designing For Engagement — and she rocked it as well.

Every good marketing school will teach you to value the brand. But when do you let go of a brand rather than force it into an identity that just isn't true to it's personality? I've seen more and more brands of yesteryear try to reposition themselves -- with little success. Take Oldsmobile for example. The heritage of this brand spans back 111 years. Founded by Ransom E. Olds in 1897, it was acquired by General Motors in 1908 and lived a successful life. In the 1990s, GM tried repositioning the brand as an upscale brand to battle imports, but it never fully escaped it's 'old' image. After several unsuccessful attempts, GM decided to put the brand to rest.

Recently, I've seen the Old Spice brand desperately struggling to maintain it's market share amid several new youthful entrants into the space, namely Axe. Axe has its brand positioning down cold -- edgy, sex-crazed, and in your face -- the perfect fit for frat boys looking to get laid (and for older frat boys to feel young again, and perhaps get laid). Enter Old Spice. The new campaign tries to fend off the Axe brand. But come on, are people really buying this. Now, the 'Olds' in Oldsmobile doesn't come from the word 'old' -- it's actually the name of the founder, Ransome E. Olds. Unfortunate perhaps, considering the evolving edginess of modern culture. The Old Spice brand was initially based on a colonial nautical theme. Again, unfortunate, but clinging to this brand for the youthful products seems questionable (I'm not suggesting they do away with the brand, just consider a different identity for the more youthful products).

My question is this: when should you just let go of the brand? Why doesn't Old Spice take all of it's core competencies, manufacturing resources, distribution capabilities, and retail relationships and create a new brand to fend off Axe? I know the MBA/Brand Management philosophy is basically to go in as a brand manager and just simply try not to fuck it up. But if a company isn't willing to take a risk, how viable is a brand that claims to be something it isn't?

This is yet another example of the marketing discipline falling woefully short of understanding the new dynamics of the marketplace. And it's only a matter of time (hopefully soon) that the marketplace will consistently punish this lack of insight. Either that, or I'll be completely wrong as I fork over $500 for Apple's new iOlds.

Marketing is too short term. People demand more control over their interactions (with each other, with brands, and with media), and for the most part they get what they ask for. But to effectively engage people, especially in an environment socially charged by technology, the only way companies can realistically communicate with individuals is to do so over a longer time frame. But that significantly changes how agencies and marketers use their staff and keep the creative juices flowing. Everything is geared to the campaign — a set of marketing activities created to achieve a goal within a specified (often short) period of time, and then the activities cease.

Having past experience with ethnographic research, I certainly can attest to the unbelievable value you get from observing people. I'm shocked more companies don't do more of this, but I guess everyone is still bogged down in quantitative data. The problem is, quantitative data tells you 'what' is happening (assuming that you ask the right questions or know what to look for), but what it doesn't do is tell you 'why' people are behaving that way. A deep contextual dive can deliver insights you'd never find elsewhere.

There are a couple new kids on the block that add some interesting flavors to the qualitative research pie. I call it automated ethnography because these techniques enable a constant flow of insight from a larger sample size than you would get from traditional in situ observation.

First, there are recruited online communities. Companies like Communispace or Hive Live recruit several hundred people to join a closed community focused on a brand or subject. The service provider has staff members to maintain the community and administer tasks to learn specific things relevant to the host company. Additionally, the community members can carry on without intervention. According to Communispace, members of their communities are more active that those of open communities.

The second is a category often called Brand Monitoring. Firms include Nielsen BuzzMetrics, Cymfony (TNS Media), MotiveQuest, Umbria, Brandimensions, Visible Technoligies, and Biz360 (interactive agency VML also has a related service called SEER). These services scour online communities, forums, blogs, and other social venues to track conversations about a brand or subject. In some cases, these service providers can detect sentiment (positive, neutral, or negative) or even emotional attributes discovered through text analysis.

I'm in no way advocating that these services replace the need for good old, get your hands dirty, ethnography. On the contrary, I actually feel like they are a fantastic compliment to contextual research. What's unfortunate is that so many companies haven't been enlightened by the insights that can some from this type of research.

We've seen the music industry suffer at the business end of disruptive services like P2P file sharing and the shattering of a business model at the hands of Apple's superior media experience and ecosystem. And, Apple recently took the mobile phone experience and turned it on it's head, leaving the device manufacturers left scratching their heads and the carriers' panties in a wod. The travel industry suffers from transparency thanks to a little site called TripAdvisor. To a lesser degree, the media business has seen some pain and been forced to think hard about their business models, operations, and relevancy. But financial services has gone largely untouched, until now.

I've been paying attention to a number of new players in the financial services space. What sets them apart is that they have little or no affiliation with big financial institutions. What's cool about them is that they use a lot of the new social media technologies and leverage emerging social behaviors — and in many cases they deliver a far superior experience to their elder brethren. There are a handful of them doing different things so I've lumped them into 5 categories.

1. Peer-To-Peer Lending. These services allow people to put up money for loans to other individuals--no banks involved. Default rates are apparently pretty low. Examples include Virgin Money (formerly Circle Lending), Zopa, Prosper, and Kiva
2. Peer-To-Peer Equity (Home). Similar to the P2P lending above, these services allow people to put up a share of the money required to purchase a home, and the actual home buyer borrows from the peer lenders. Examples include Home Equity Share and Shared Spaces (UK).
3. Aggregated Money Management. These bring a new twist to online banking. Essentially they pull in your account information from all of the financial institutions you work with — then they do smart things to help you understand where your money is going. It's very different that than the banking services that only look at the financial products you have from that institution — and the interface/interaction is significantly better in some cases. Examples include expensr, Buxfer, Wesabe, and Mint.
4. Social Investing. This category is a bit more diverse, but essentially they are leveraging social interactions online for investment research or they offer powerful interfaces to online investing &mdash making for a better experience. Examples include bullpoo and Zecco.
5. Micropayments. Last but not least, the ever ellusive micropayment. Financial institutions couldn't figure it out, PayPal didn't quite nail it. Those who have tried typically make the process far too clunky. And many who have tried were left in the wake of complexity. But one new service makes it simple — TipJoy (full disclosure, the founders are good friends of mine and I've been helping them out in a limited way).

I think the most compelling features here are that these services call into question everything we know about how to interact with Financial Services firms. Banks et. al. are used to maintaining control and exclusivity that is bound in complexity, inflexibility, and poor experience. The services I describe above are simple, open, institution agnostic, and delightful experiences. Financial institutions could learn a thing or two — if they're around long enough... ;-)