Tag Archives: Valeria Maltoni

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5 Takeaways from Valeria Maltoni: Rethinking Business in the Age of the Social Consumer

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Number 5

Ben Smith, the leader of Social IRL, is one of the most valuable and generous members of the Kansas City Social Media Community.  His hard work and dedication delivers outstanding and valuable educational content via hosting social media conferences in our region.

Ben attracts and brings globally-recognized social media thought leaders to Kansas City (that's no understatement).  On February 9th, Social IRL hosted Valeria Maltoni, a foremost digital media authority and author of Conversation Agent (one of the the most consistently ranked top 30 global marketing blogs on the Ad Age Power 150).

Important Note: You can access my unformatted Google Docs notes from the February 9th Social IRL conference by clicking this weblink.   Please inform me in the comments or tweet me if you have access problems.

Here are my five (5) takeaways from Valeria's outstanding and thought-provoking presentation.

1. Understand and Determine the Organizational Focus 

Start With Your Organizational Focus.  You have to pick the organizational capability or competence that will drive and differentiate your company's brand and business outcomes:

  • Apple: Innovation
  • Virgin: People
  • Procter & Gamble: Research and Development 
  • Coca Cola: Distribution

Valeria demonstrated how organizational focus impacted each company's share price.  And, the data showed how executing that focus is linked to long-term financial performance.

2. Focus on Your Brand Promise

Valeria defines a brand as:


"The sum of promises, promises kept, and the unbounded expectations market."

Delivering and Executing the Brand Promise are Crucial.  Why?  The stock price represents public trust / confidence in your brand.  And, that public trust / public confidence determines the discount or premium to "trade" with individual consumers.  Higher consumer trust / confidence means a higher premium for your company's goods and services.

Or, it can reflect a lack of trust / confidence.  See the stock price performance of Yahoo, Microsoft, or Eastman Kodak.

3. Prioritize and Focus on the Differentiating Brand Asset(s) Driving Your Consumer Trades

Brand Assets are Your Unique Consumer Trade Currency. The digital age redefines the brand assets most valuable to individual consumers before, during, and after the point-of-sale.  The Internet's real-time speed coupled with one or more of following brand assets is a killer combination:

  • Reputation
  • Knowledge / Information / Data
  • Relationships
  • Influence

Ticketmaster Prioritized Knowledge / Information / Data.   Therefore, organizations need to pick the brand asset they will focus on for their unique trades with individual consumers.  For example, Ticketmaster focused on knowledge / information / data to better inform consumer decisions (i.e., local-centric information, fan reviews, personal buying history suggestions, etc.) by making that brand asset easy to share (i.e., Fan Reviews are easily shared with a single-click via Twitter or Facebook).

Financial Outcome:  Each "share of information" results in a $5 increase in incremental revenue.


4. The Unmet Social Media Opportunity: Empowering Individual Consumer Filters and Feedback Loops 

Consumer Filters, Feedback and Intent.  Valeria defines consumer intent as:

  1. Providing the right information at the right time when someone is making a decision (and that decision may or may not be a "buying decision")
  2. The consumer's perception of value inherent with the brand promise
  3. How the consumer defines the "wisdom of the trade" (i.e., was the time spent gathering information / data a worthwhile investment)

Therefore, influencing how the consumer defines the "wisdom of the trade" is vitally important.  This is why brands need to focus on consumer "filters" and "feedback loops":

Consumer Filters:

  • Culture
  • Language
  • Values
  • Beliefs
  • Attitudes
  • Expectations
  • Intentions

Consumer Feedback Loops:

  • Evidence
  • Relevance
  • Consequence
  • Action


5. Ford Motor Company Case Study in Leveraging Brand Assets, Filters and Feedback Loops 

The Ford Case Study.  Valeria believes brands need to do more in making individual consumers more influential.  We still don't do enough here.  

The process for making consumers more influential can be systematically achieved (e.g., there is a process):

* First, prioritize, and focus on the business problems most vital to your organization.  Example: When Scott Monty became head of social media for Ford Motor Company, he focused on corporate reputation.  This brand asset choice was particularly important when the entire auto industry came under fire for receiving government bail-outs.  

Ford leveraged social media to permeate the strategic position that it was the only domestic automaker who chose not to receive receive government financing.  

See this example of how Alan Mulally, CEO, positions Ford as different from other US automakers because Ford is "requesting access to bridge financing just in case something bad happens" versus "receiving direct government assistance."  (see 2:26 to the end of this video).



 

 

* Second, after addressing #1, pivot your social media marketing strategy to focus on consumer filters and feedback loops that can grow a product / service:

Increase the Influence and Reputation of Your Influencers (see 1:39 to 2:52 of this video describing Ford's succsssful Ford Fiesta Social Media Campaign):



 

* Third, continue actively demonstrating "we're listening, we're listening, we're listening."  Watch how Scott Monty and Alan Mulally work together in answering and responding to consumer tweets.  It's a brilliant public relations play:



 

 

Conclusion

Hear from Valeria Herself.  A HUGE shout-out to Eric Mellin and Robert Madison of Spiral16 for publishing and sharing this great interview with Valeria on the Spiral16 Blog.




 

 

Other great Social IRL presentation content included:

Ashley Mahoney's SocialIRL Recap.  Check out Ashley Mahoney's blog post, Social: IRL Conference in a Nutshell.  She does a great job summarizing key points from other presentations I didn't address in this post.

Important Note #2: My lack of notes during specific presentations wasn't due to a lack of interest (far from it).  During the conference, I received an important client email requiring immediate action (so I missed some of the presentations).

That meant piecemeal, back-of-the-room listening (i.e., Kevin Magee, Director of Sales at Expion, shared some great insights on the current / future implications of localizing and managing social media marketing efforts but I was unable to take detailed notes).

 

Link to Photo Credit by Paul Downey via flickr

 

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Social Media ReInvention Blog’s Most Popular 2011 Posts

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Top 10 List

 

2011 was an important year for this blog.  A few months ago, I published my 100th post. And, each post represents an opportunity to learn, improve, and experiment.

 

Social Media ReInvention Blog's Most Popular 2011 Posts

1. Public Relations Strategy: Integrating Digital and Traditional Patient Advocacy Tactics

2. 5 Competitive Advantages in Studying Real-Time Marketing PR by David Meerman Scott

3. HubSpot 2011 State of Inbound Marketing: Long Live Blogs!

4. The Business Value Behind Social Media: Part 6 – Disaster Recovery & Crisis Communications

5. Tom Peters' Personal Branding Lessons, Part 1: Why YOUR Blog Matters

6. 8 Takeaways from Mashable's Mondern Media Agency INFOGRAPHIC

7. 7 Reasons to Study Newsjacking by David Meerman Scott

8. LinkedIn Today Personalizes News With Your Social Graph

9. The New York Times: Self-Appointed SEO Police?

10a. LinkedIn's Maps: A Cool Way to Visualize & Understand Your Professional Network

10b. Using LinkedIn to Land on Google's Front Page

This Blog Continues Steadily Building Credibility 

Inbound Links Citing Social Media ReInvention Blog.  Inbound links from high Google authority sites included:

Comments / Citations From Bloggers in the Advertising Age Power 150.  These bloggers included:

Here's a screenshot from Valeria's post: You do That, Too and the tweet cited in her post:

Valeria Maltoni mention 1
Valeria Maltoni tweet 1

A Life Changing Event in August 2012

Juliana Big Smile

And, She Weighed in at a Happy and Healthy 6 Pounds, 9 Ounces. From mid-August to early November 2012, I literally dropped out of sight from any new blog posts or social media participation (you may or may not have noticed).  The birth of my daughter is the reason why.  My wife and I also have another daughter who's seven (7) years old.

Our family grew.  And, we are so blessed.

But, Little Blessings Can Be Mentally and Emotionally Consuming. Fatherhood with a newborn is both humbling and rewarding.  You learn quickly how sleep deprivation makes it difficult to construct a coherent thought or sentence.  

It took four (4) months / early November to start feeling normal, productive, and effective.


The Epiphany: Blogging Really Makes Me Happy


A Newborn Quickly Imposes Prioritization (Whether You Like It or Not).  During that four-month time frame, I realized I couldn't maintain my past routines in working on this blog.  And, that frustrated me a lot.  

I Missed the Process.  I felt something missing.  And, I had to keep reminding myself this sacrifice and setback is temporary.  

I missed everything about the writing and blogging process:

  • doing the research
  • recording ideas / thinking of an inital angle
  • mapping out a post's structure on paper
  • typing / revising the drafts
  • learning what content readers responded to

Putting Things in Perspective.  Valeria Maltoni shared Stephanie Booth's post on Google+ titled: Measuring a Blog's Success: Visitors and Comments Don't Cut It.  After reading this piece, I revaluated why I invest the time and energy into this endeavor:

  • It's to share something I really care about
  • It's a great way to practice writing (which is important in my full-time work)
  • It's introduced me to interesting, smart, like-minded people 
  • It's not to make money (because I make no revenue from blogging)
  • It makes me happy

Yes, It Makes Me Happy.  And, I hope the time you spend reading my blog makes you happy (or makes you feel like it's time well-spent). With each new post, I hope you feel the content is improving.  

And, I hope you'll continue sharing the content with others.  When something I write is shared on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook, I'm always surprised (and humbled). 

Thank You.  Thank you indulging me in sharing a memorable year.  Thank you for subscribing to this blog and sharing its content with your social network connections.  And, thank you for sticking with me when I temporarily dropped out of sight.

 

Here's to a safe, healthy, and happy 2012 for all of us. 

 

Photo Credit via Flickr by Sam Churchill

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Tom Peters’ Personal Branding Lessons, Part 2: YOUR Storytelling Matters

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Storytelling

Why Is Storytelling Important?

It’s A Necessary Business Skill.  Do it well and you’ll surpass your competition.  Tom Peters makes a memorable point about storytelling’s importance especially during senior executive presentations: 

 

MBAs — Become Better Storytellers.  John Byrne published What Business Really Thinks of the MBA in his Poets & Quants Website.  The article summarizes insights from the 2010 book, Rethinking the MBA: Business Education at a Crossroads.

Analytical Smarts Aren’t Enough.  The authors cite storytelling as a necessary skill today’s MBAs lack.  Several executives (aka newly-minted MBAs’ future employers) in the book say MBA presentation skills are a special weakness:

Students need to master the art of storytelling. They must learn to sell their ideas in a powerful, succinct way.

Students fail to deliver the important message up front. I’m often asked to review their five-minute pitch for a business plan, but after the first minute they still haven’t given me a reason to listen for the next four. I’m looking for clarity with accuracy, precision, and conciseness.

Stories Motivate Us For More


Read Valeria Maltoni, Author of Conversation Agent Blog.  Valeria ALWAYS writes thought-provoking, well-researched, passionate posts.  She tells stories brilliantly.

And, she leaves us wanting more. 

Her recent blog post is no exception.  How Content Rules, reviews the fantastic book, Content Rules by Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman.  Check out this killer opening:

She stood next to the podium and started reading from Gustav and the Goldfish, a book written and illustrated by Dr. Seuss in 1950 as part of his long-running series of children stories for redbook. We all sat there in rapt attention — the bigger the fish got, the more we leaned forward in anticipation.

Ann Handley is more than a writer and Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs: She’s a storyteller.

Doesn’t that:

  • Grab your attention from the start
  • Drive you to read more
  • Make the reading experience memorable

Stories Makes Your Message Stick
The SUCCESs Model.  Chip Heath and Dan Heath introduced this framework in their classic book, Made to Stick.  Buy it.  Study it.  Your must-have, business library has a place for it.

Here are their six principles of successful ideas:

S = Simplicity.  Strip an idea down to its core.  Relentlessly prioritize.

U = Unexpectedness.  Be counter-intuitive, use surprise, and generate interest and curiosity.  

C = Concrete.  Paint a mental picture using human actions or sensory information.  

C = Credible.  Cite outside authorities using vivid details (i.e., “Where’s the Beef?”)  

E = Emotional.  Make people feel something.  People care about people, not numbers.   

S = Stories.  Stories drive action through stimulation and inspiration.

Chip Heath explains the principle of simplicity in the following video.  Note: There’s a short advertisement at the start.  

Notice how he uses the SUCCESs principles especially storytelling:  

 

Conclusion

Data, Facts, and Analysis Aren’t Enough.  Peter Guber, former chairman of Sony Pictures and current CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group, published a book earlier this year:  Tell to Win — Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Storytelling.  Fast Company interviewed him in this article, Storytelling Your Way to Success.  

Here’s Guber’s view on how storytelling impacted the successes and failures in his life:

I realized that the secret sauce to success is the ability to take facts, bullet points, and data and orchestrate them into an emotional offering so that your audience metabolizes them and then the information becomes resonant, memorable, and actionable.

The Best Story Wins.  That’s timeless Tom Peters’ wisdom.  Telling a simple story when describing a complex solution is challenging.  It’s a highly sought after skill.  

I work in a professional services firm that addresses complicated problems.  And, the solutions are never easy to execute.  Plus, the solutions contain multiple components that can be difficult to explain.

A Differentiating Opportunity.  Untangling the complexity and simplifying the message are the differentiating opportunity.   That’s how storytelling differentiates your organization.  If you’re the storyteller (or the person charged with creating the story), take advantage of the opportunity to differentiate your personal brand. 

 

 

What’s YOUR story?

 

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Tony Faustino is a marketing and corporate strategist.  He thinks and writes about how The Internet reinvents marketing strategy in his personal blog, Social Media ReInvention. Follow his tweets @tonyfaustino or circle him on Google+.

Photo Credit by Fort Rucker via Flickr