What You Don’t Know About One-Night Stands

If you’re reading this text, clearly I’ve captured your attention. I’m sorry to say this isn’t an article about one-night stands.

At some point in recent years, many of us have likely clicked on what we thought would be an interesting article only to discover that it was a paid advertisement in editorial guise. Content marketing is not a new concept, but it’s becoming an increasingly popular strategy for media companies and brands to team up on new ways to drive revenue. According to Pew Research Center, sponsored content increased by 56% in 2011 and is still on the rise.

Edelman’s Chief Content Officer Steve Rubel stresses that sponsored “content is no longer optional. It’s imperative.” At BRITE ’13 Rubel explains, “It’s hard now to amass large audiences the way you used to. And that means money problems for everyone.” He notes, however, that “out of economic disruption come great opportunities.” Rubel says that display advertising has become less lucrative in recent years, and can even drive down CPM. Content marketing, on the other hand, is a fraction of the cost with the potential for greater results.

Linda Boff, executive director of global digital marketing at GE, explains that it’s more Consider Wine Enthusiast magazine. Sure it’s a media company, but it’s also a brand. By incorporating custom content, Wine Enthusiast successfully increased site traffic by 154% and boosted monthly email opt-ins by 50%. Director of Internet Marketing Erika Strum tells MarketingSherpa:

We put time into creating… content that helps people either make a buying decision or entertains them. Even if they aren’t making that purchase in the moment, we feel that they will come back to us as a… source of information.

Rubel has identified three ways that brands are partnering with media companies—syndication, integration, and co-creation. These partnerships borrow from traditional marketing models like paid media and product placement, but they now overlap with owned and earned media as an additional driver of revenue.

• Syndication: Rubel describes this method as “advertorial reinvented.” Sometimes the sponsor scripts the content, sometimes the publisher assumes this role, and sometimes they work together to design content.
• Integration: Similar to syndication, integration stems from product placement. But rather than placing a product within eyeline (think Wayne’s World) the brand becomes part of the narrative (think Mad Men).
• Co-creation: The primary difference with co-creation is that the sponsor provides the funding, but the media company takes responsibility for the content. Rubel likens this to a sports stadium. Gillette bought the naming rights to the home stadium of the New England Patriots, but Kraft Sports Group, which owns and operates the venue, is responsible for the action on the field. Okay, okay, “action” may not be what non-New Englanders would call it. But you get the point.

While many media companies have embraced sponsored content, some are still resistant. Google for one refers to this as “commerce journalism” and explicitly states on its website:

Stick to the news–we mean it! Google News is not a marketing service…. [If] we find non-news content mixed with news content, we may exclude your entire publication from Google News.

As with anything, there are associated risks. It can offer control of content, data and measurement, and opportunities for innovation. But there is the potential for backlash. You may recall this past January The Atlantic issued an apology for posting a content piece from the Church of Scientology. Readers complained that it resembled a traditional editorial, not clearly identifying that it was a sponsored article. “We screwed up,” were the words of The Atlantic‘s media relations team.

Rubel emphasizes, though, that sponsored content isn’t going away, at least not any time soon. He advises businesses to adapt to this marketing model. “You have to put a content engine inside your company. If it’s not there already, you have to think about how to get it in there.”

What do you think?

Watch Rubel’s BRITE ’13 talk to learn more about the benefits, and the risks, of these new media-brand relationships.

By Allie Abodeely

Case Study: Woori’s OneDo Strategy to Become a Top Asian Bank

Much is now written on the rise of “brand South Korea,” but the country’s financial institutions are still lagging. Chairman and CEO Pal-Seung Lee of the Woori Financial Group wants to change that. “Woori must become one of the top 10 financial institutions in Asia over the next decade.” This is a place that no South Korean company has yet held.

In a new case study released by the Columbia’s Center on Global Brand Leadership, Professors Hun-Joon Park, Dong-il Jung and Bernd Schmitt explore how South Korea’s Woori Finance Holdings Co. developed a strategy to cut costs, increase customer service quality and empower employees throughout the organization. This resulted in increased revenue production and lower overhead costs, helping drive Chairman Lee’s goal for Woori to be one of Asia’s top 10 financial institutes.

Woori Finance Holdings Co., Ltd. was formed in April 2001 when Hanvit Bank merged with several other smaller banks. It was the first and largest holdings group in South Korea, Woori Finance Holdings immediately realized that a more customer-centric business mindset was needed, but at the same time, cost savings were critical to success. In 2009, the global financial crisis pushed these priorities to the forefront of Woori Finance Holdings’ concerns, and so OneDo was born.

What began as a strategic cost reduction program quickly evolved into a way of thinking that soon embedded itself into the culture of Woori. OneDo was conceived to build the Woori Group into a “Strong Organization through Low Cost and High Efficiency.” The name OneDo encapsulates everything the initiative stands for. “One” emphasizes that the organization is one family, and is striving to be the top player in the industry. “Do” conveys a proactive and creative attitude; employees are encouraged to take responsibility and take action.

OneDo was created with four main principles that have driven growth within the company over the last four years:

• Ask questions — Find waste in day-to-day operations
• Change perspectives — Find causes of problems through shifting paradigms
• Gather ideas — Collect wisdom to solve problems
• Eliminate waste — Remove non-value-added work

Read the full study (.pdf) to learn more about how Woori’s Chairman & CEO, Mr. Pal-Seung Lee, used OneDo to harness the energy of his employees to drive Woori’s evolution into a global player in the finance industry.

BY MATTHEW QUINT AND ALENA CHIANG

A Culture of Experimentation: More Innovation, Less Spend

In the world of marketing, there’s not always one right answer. Kaaren Hanson, Vice President of Design Innovation for Intuit, has applied this thinking to product development at Intuit.

At last month’s BRITE ’13 conference, Hanson discussed how rapid experimentation enhanced Intuit’s product innovation process enabling them to find better solutions, cut costs and drive employee engagement. The focus at Intuit is no longer weighted on finding the correct answer, as traditional thinking dictates. “Often you spend time in a room discussing and debating that answer… there are so many politics,” explains Hanson. Instead, the folks at Intuit have shifted focus to what Hanson describes as a culture of experimentation.

Hanson elaborates, “There are many right answers with so many different possible right answers… it behooves those teams to come up with potentially varied solutions. And then rapidly experiment.” In this phase, Intuit places trust in the customer before launching the product. “Let the customer decide, through their behaviors, what works and what doesn’t…. We build the users up before we make the decision to actually build it out. ”

Cycle time is much shorter and total spend is much lower, enabling them to reallocate those savings to product development. “Our hit rate… from the old way to the new way is not necessarily significantly different.” Because the process now takes less time and money, Intuit runs 50 different ideas in the same time and resources it used to take to run three.

To truly benefit from rapid experimentation, Hanson emphasizes the following:

• Fall in love with the problem, not the solution: having several solutions will enable more objective judgment.
• Scrappy doesn’t mean crappy: rapid prototypes must not sacrifice quality.
• Get started: to see results, start small and work up to developing a culture of rapid experimentation across the entire organization.

Watch Hanson’s talk at BRITE ’13 to learn more about Intuit’s implementation of rapid experimentation.

BY ALENA CHIANG AND ALLIE ABODEELY

Executing a Global Strategy, Locally: Lessons from The World’s Local Bank

If you are an international traveler, you’ve probably noticed HSBC’s advertising in jet bridges, baggage claim areas, and pretty much everywhere else in over 45 airports around the world. What makes this global campaign truly distinctive is the brilliant implementation of a “glocalized” strategy–keeping a consistent execution across multiple countries, while maintaining a local flavor in its message at each airport.

Images of Macchu Picchu in Peru, soccer in Spain, renaissance sculptures in Italy, beauty queens in Venezuela,  French delicacies in Paris, chili peppers in Mexico, and Mehndi art in India welcome travelers from around the world, with an colorful take on local culture and values.

HSBC’s campaign exemplifies how marketing in the financial services sector has come a long way: from assuming that banks are beyond branding to a phase where banks are using branding strategically (think Bank of America, TD Bank, Chase, and most recently the Bank of New Zealand). The economic climate in recent years has taught financial institutions that strong brand equity is becoming more important than ever before.

Although the company is headquartered in the UK, it has a strong Asian heritage, and in the past several years it has taken up a strategy of global retail and wealth management. Branding plays an important role here: HSBC continues to unify how it presents its brand across markets, while maintaining a message of local specialization and specific cultural understanding. This is likely to continue as part of the bank’s strategy to reinforce its business in emerging markets.

In the words of Maitri Kumar, Head of Marketing, HSBC India:

HSBC showed immense strength when other brands in the banking arena, across the globe, faced a real hard time to keep up their image during the global meltdown in 2008. And we believe our slogan, ‘The world’s local bank,’ played a very critical role in the same. HSBC’s global expertise coupled with local relevance finds expression in that tagline.

The driving focus of HSBC’s communications is backed by the strong consumer insight that a large, global bank is intimidating for most consumers, who associate the footprint and size of the bank with a negative experience and condescending treatment.

The bank’s conceptual response to this insight is a classic example of “glocalizing” — a concept that even many consumer goods companies struggle to grasp. Through its “The World’s Local Bank” advertising campaign, HSBC  strives to set itself apart as a bank that, while having many global connections, is still flexible enough to care for the needs of local customers in the ways they prefer.

HSBC’s executes its strategy not only through marketing and advertising, but also by offering a customer experience that lives up to the brand expectation. An example of the brand in action is a recently launched product, HSBC Premier, that allows customers to open accounts in 37 countries and get assistance regardless of location.

Global brands that find value in appealing to local customers can learn a lesson from this glocalized execution. HSBC starts with a strong brand positioning that cascades into local markets through tweaks in communication. It then backs up the promise of the “World’s Local Bank” with products and features that leverage its international footprint matched with a familiar and approachable customer experience. Sounds like a winning formula.

BY MELISSA RENTERIA

Photo by Ewan McIntosh

Encounters in the Global Experience Economy: Matsuhisa Athens

The two blonde hostesses are Greek and well practiced in “Irasshaimase!” I am having a seat at the sushi counter. The sushi chef is Japanese by way of California.

I order an espresso martini. The chef recommends the local sea bass and also the local sea urchin—from Crete, from a special supplier which he personally selected, all natural, without any preservatives, and thus better than the one from Japan. I am asking for both the bass and the urchin as sushi, and also order an eel-and-cucumber roll.

The sushi chef tells me that his daughter just graduated from UC Berkeley. She now lives in LA. He came to Greece two years ago. Not a great time for working at a trendy Japanese restaurant right now. But he says most of the customers are locals, and business is better this year than last.

I am reading excerpts from a new book in German, “Deutschboden.” The section I am reading is about a “Super Kleinstadt,” Oberhavel in Brandenburg, where life still seems local. Where people at the Stammtisch talk about third league soccer and eat Schnitzel and Currywurst.

My main dish tonight is one of those signature “Nobu” dishes: Chilean sea bass with jalapeno sauce. We all know, from the web, that Mr. Matsuhisa grew up in South America where he learned to mix cuisines … I am wondering if this is the endangered species fish for which he got bad press online.

The waitress forgot my water order and when it finally arrives, it is the sushi-chef who comes around the counter to pour me the water. A Japanese way of apologizing, I recognize. He introduces his sous-chef. “Where is he from?”, I ask. “From a special place,” he answers, “Blue Island, Quingdao.” Thus, we converse on Quingdao beer, and Löwenbräu, and Super Dryyyyyyyy.

I am wondering how to finish the meal tonight. Earlier we had talked about how the Japanese drink a lot of coffee. I decide that blueberry and chocolate mochi ice cream may turn out to be a great complement to the espresso martini.

When I exit the restaurant and walk past the bungalows of the resort back to my room, looking up to the trees and the starry night, I feel as if I am in Bali.

BY SCHMITT

This post originally posted by SCHMITT on the MeetSCHMITT blog at: http://meetschmitt.typepad.com