August 2008

As I watch the Democratic National Convention I can’t help viewing the up coming election as a marketer.  Most pundits say that given President Bush’s low approval ratings this election is the Democrats and Obama’s to lose.  However, I think they just might be on the road to a disappointing defeat.  The Democratic Party does not have a strong brand or unique selling proposition.  They are not clearly articulating what they stand for and their brand promise to voters.  During the primaries Barack Obama got away with a general message of “Hope and Change” and it lasted for a while.  However, it now seems that his weak finish in the primaries (Hillary won 9 of the last 14, some by large margins) was a foreshadowing of his current malaise.  He actually dropped a few points after naming Joe Biden his VP pick.  It will be fascinating to see where the tracking polls have him after his acceptance speech Thursday night and McCain’s VP announcement on Friday afternoon.

Listening to speaker after speaker you would think we are in the midst of another great depression. Sure, we are in an economic slowdown, but it not even an official recession.  In fact, the economy just grew 3.3% in the second quarter.  Based on what I have been hearing you expect to find long lines of people stretching for blocks waiting for free soup and apples.  Not to mention charming hobos with bags at the end of sticks singing “Brother Can You Spare a Dime”.  The Democrats have declared the American Dream is dead, thanks to one George W. Bush.  I don’t think doom and gloom marketing works very well.  By the way, I didn’t hear a single mention of 9/11 or terrorism, and how the Obama plans to keep Americans safe.  Bet you will next week when the Republicans get together.

So, what’s the Democratic brand?  Higher taxes for “the rich” and business and cuts for others, out of Iraq, kind of, sort of socialized healthcare, but not really, no drilling for more oil and pro choice.  What ties it all together, and what do they really stand for?  It is all nuance and nothing you can put on a bumper sticker or a sign.  Nuance is great at cocktail parties and in the faculty lounge, but it makes for a lousy marketing campaign.  They could argue that they are for “working people”, but how?  Where the specifics and what is on Obama’s resume that tells us he can get the job done?  Democrats are always afraid to come out and say anything strong for fear of offending one of the many interest groups who make up the party.  The Democratic Party has become a coalition of special interests and ethnic identity groups rather than a party held together with core beliefs.

Even their attacks on McCain are weak and half-hearted.  They are pinning their hopes on tying him to Bush over and over again.  However, he is not Bush, and in fact McCain is famously independent and known for going against his party on the environment, immigration and campaign finance.  Do they think everyone has forgotten that Bush and McCain were at one time bitter rivals, and McCain was the administration’s loudest critic on tax cuts and the execution of the Iraq war?

In contrast, the Republicans understand core beliefs, brand simplicity and message discipline better than anyone.  What is a Republican?  A free market/low tax person who believes in strong defense, law and order and traditional values.  That’s it in a nutshell.  Everyone understands it and that is the brand promise.  When you vote Republican you know what you are getting – take it or leave it.  There is a reason they have won 7 of the last 10 Presidential elections – they are master marketers. Even their message against Obama is simple and effective, and you will hear it a thousand times between now and November:  He is too inexperienced to be Commander in Chief, he will raise your taxes, and his Ivy League values are too liberal for mainstream Americans.  They will pound him with this all day and everyday.  And throw in a sprinkle of “Hillary got screwed and should have been the nominee” to get the ladies riled up.  Check out this new ad from McCain – it is a powerful use of actual news footage and past statements from prominent Democrats to cast fear, doubt and uncertainty on the experience of Barack Obama.

A lot can happen between now and Election Day, but it is becoming clear that the Democrats have brand identity issues while McCain and the Republicans are finding their voice and hitting their stride.  It is not enough for the Democrats just to be for “change” and complain about President Bush.  They need to tell their customers and prospects in clear, strong and specific language how they plan to make their lives better.  A little too early for a final prediction, but if I were Michele Obama, I would make a few inquiries to see if that $300,000 per year “public service” job she left is still available.

SEO (search engine optimization) has become one of the most important responsibilities of any marketing director/brand manager.  Google is the starting point for two-third of all web searches so you have to play strong in that game.  As most people know there are dozens of methods to getting ranked high by the all knowing Google algorithm. It is worthwhile to hire or talk to one of the many consultants who specialize in SEO.  If you go that route make sure they have a proven track record.  However, it is critical that as a brand marketer it is your responsibility to make sure the SEO tactics align with your marketing and business goals.  While the consultants can help you with the “black box” aspects of SEO, it is up to you to understand how your customers will be looking for your company or product.  Not every company can afford a consultant or to have a specialist on staff.  As the steward of your brand you really need to own this function.  And, once you start excelling in organic search, you can cut back your SEM/Adword expenditures, but that is a whole other topic.

At King Fish we try to practice what we preach, so SEO is one of the most important things we do for our own custom media company and more importantly for our clients.  Here are a few of the lessons learned from a marketing/brand perspective.

Focus on your key words – you can’t be all things to all people, so decided where you want to “win”.  We decided that Custom Media would be our stake in the ground.  Once we focused, we moved from #57 to #9 on the “custom media” key word search in a few months.  We are now consistently on page one or two of Google.  This is single most important aspect to your strategy.  Think about how your target audience will search to find you, and take into consideration the competition.  How are they defining themselves?  Can you beat them at their own game?

Key word density – once you decide on the key word you have to use it often in your site copy, especially on your home page.  It does not always make for great writing, but it works.

Web site structure and URL - make liberal use of your key search terms.

Page headline – once again, keep the focus on your key words.
Fresh relevant content – nothing is more important to keep up your rankings.  This is where a blog can be critical to have a venue for new and relevant content.  Also, you can post news, press releases, white papers and other content rich material that is relevant to your keywords.

Links in to your site – these are easier said than done, but think about relevant partners.  Using services like PR Newswire can work wonders with your releases.  They have a SEO tool that we use often to get our URL out to dozens of sites.

The bottom line is SEO has to become part of everything you do from a marketing perspective with both focus and discipline.  Marketers who don’t put SEO at the top of their agenda do so at their own peril. 

I had the opportunity to contribute another article to Chief Marketer.com.  I wrote about how you can use market research as part of a private custom media program.  For best practices, you should survey your customers and prospects to find out how they like to be communicated with in terms of content and format.  Click here to read how it can help you drive up your marketing ROI.

Last week I was out of action with a nasty case of pneumonia which seems like an odd thing to get in August, but there I was on my couch gasping for breath and watching TV.  I thought I would catch up the Olympics, but in the afternoons you get lots of team handball, bad baseball, women soccer and other stuff that does not make the prime time cut. So, I ended up flipping back and forth between MSNBC and Fox News to watch the run up to Obama’s VP pick.  The big story was how the Obama campaign was going to text message his supporters the pick before releasing it to the media.  As ideas go, it is an excellent one taking advantage of all the benefits of private media channels.  It helps them build their donor list, has a viral nature and allows them to tell the message directly to their “customers”.  It fits in with the younger demo of his supporters for whom texting is part of their everyday life.  And, it makes supporters feel that they are special and in the know.  However, great ideas need great execution and this is where they fell down.  My biggest gripe with the way they handled it was that it dragged out for days.  On Thursday, Obama announced he made a decision and teased it to reporters, and the campaign announced a joint campaign appearance on Sat afternoon in Illinois.

A story hungry press was in a frenzy trying to figure out who it was and why they were waiting so long to announce it.  You can argue that by dragging it out they received a ton of press coverage and owned the news cycle.  That was the take on MSNBC and it a legitimate benefit.  I would argue that by taking so long they made the choice of Joe Biden seem very anti-climatic and played into the fact it was a very conventional choice for a candidate that was all about newness and change – a bit of brand disconnect.  If the choice was Hillary Clinton or someone out of left field the build up would have worked.  The payoff to the suspense was a bit of a dud when Mr. Change picks a 65 year old white man who has been in the Senate since 1973.  Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC was one of many reporters who accurately reported on Thursday that Biden was the choice.  I don’t know what value was gained by waiting until 3am on Sat. morning after the press had already confirm it.  It turns out they had to send it at 3am because no one had checked to see if it was technically possible to send a few million text messages at the same time from the same source.  It was a great idea and fair execution, but huge kudos to the campaign for embracing private media channels and building an affinity relationship with their supporters.

The amusing part of the story was watching the reactions of the two cable news networks.  I think MSNBC has decided to become the liberal version of Fox News, but without the humor.  At this point, the Obama campaign should be paying part of Keith Olberman’s salary.  The Fox anchors led by the very funny Shepard Smith and Neal Cavuto reported on the text message strategy and VP choice in a somewhat mocking satirical manner while still reporting what facts there were to report.  Shepard Smith called it the most important text message in history and Cavuto said texting was for geeks and hoped the whole thing bombs.

Over at MSNBC they did treat the text strategy roll out with the excitement and gravity that the Fox guys were mocking.  The highlight for me was Hardball.  Chris Mathews kept going on and on how the Obama campaign was making a huge mistake if they didn’t announce the VP pick on Thursday night since everyone knows that is the key night.  He went on to explain that Thursday is when the editors of the big papers do their Sunday layouts (on paste up boards, no doubt) and it is the deadline for the Sunday op-ed columns.  Not to mention the fact the Sunday shows are booked on Thursday.  He was mystified that they would miss this golden opportunity to be in the Sunday papers.  His guest was a young reporter from the Washington Post who tried to politely tell Mathews that with the news web site, blogs and smart phones the day of the week doesn’t really matter that much anymore.  Chris just stared right through him and went back to a telling story about Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy.
 

With great fanfare and PR flash, a new search engine was launched this week with the name of Cuil, pronounced “cool”.  They claim to have indexed more sites that Google and will rank the results by content rather than popularity.  Also, the results will be displayed in a unique magazine style layout and have added tabs to lead you to other relevant searches.  Just the thought of taking on Google is a bit daunting.  Two pretty impressive companies (Microsoft and Yahoo) keep falling behind in the race to own search.  Has any other company, product or service become such a big part of our lives and culture as Google in such a short period of time?  Not only has it become a verb, but starting a search on Google has become hard wired into our brains.  Taking on Google would be like taking on Coke with a new start up cola.  Don’t know if I would wager on surpassing Google, but in the tech game the better mousetrap sometimes wins. 

I gave Cuil a try in its first week and I was not all that impressed.  Right off, it does not have the other features of Google such as news, images and maps.  I did a search on Custom Media (the key word we most focus on) and didn’t think the results were anywhere as relevant as on Google.  King Fish Media generally ranks 9 or 10 on page one with Google and we were back on page seven with Cuil.  There were tons of rankings from the same sites listed over and over again.  Many of which had a mere mention of Custom Media rather than being a site about Custom Media. A search on King Fish Media itself turns up the freshest links and most relevant news on Google.  On Cuil it was a hodgepodge of old news and odd links.  I found this general pattern on a number of different key word searches.  However, the strangest thing was the image Cuil puts next to the individual search results.  In the vast majority of cases the images had absolutely nothing to do with the link referenced.  Usually they were random pictures or logos with no relevance to the result.  It was odd to see a link that referred to me personally with other people’s pictures.  Not sure what that’s all about, but it’s not “cuil”

Keep in mind this is just my own testing on week one.  To be fair, they will need time to get in a rhythm and be able to adjust their patterns based on how people actually search the site. Cuil is getting beaten up by the tech trades and bloggers who have a similar impression.  This is a good example of why you do a “soft launch” to work out the kinks.  They launched with a lot of PR which served mostly to have people take a very close look at their technology before it is ready for prime time.

It is worth keeping your eye on their progress, and especially how your sites ranks.  My snap judgment tells me that Cuil has not yet given web searchers a reason to change their behavior away from Google. And, what works for Google SEO will likely not work for Cuil.  The only people who may make out in this deal are the SEO consultants.

Mark your calendars for a Folio Magazine Webinar on managing marketing timelines.  I will be the one of the speakers for the Folio audience of magazine marketing professionals.  The goal of the web cast is to give advice and best practices on how to create awareness and buzz for a comprehensive marketing program.  We will also cover how to create a rollout schedule to your sales reps, press and clients.  It is a topic I know well - I was the Marketing Director for several tech media brands including two of the most successful ones ever – PC Magazine and CRN.  The webinar is on August 14th at 2:00 eastern.  Click here to register.

In addition, I will be speaking at two sessions at this year’s Folio 08 (Sept. 22-24 in Chicago).  I will be covering “Upping Your Marketing Success Quotient” as part of the marketing track.  As part of the events track, I will be speaking at a session called “Models for Event Profitability”.  I will have much more about this as we get closer, so click here to learn more about attending the show.  It is a great networking and learning experience for anyone in B2C or B2B media.