Georgia Tech MBA

My Video Game Week

The week from November 9 – 15 was a video game week. Woohoo! The Georgia Tech MBA marketing club decided last week to create a video game for a competition entry. I applied for an amazing associate brand manager position at Activision. And then - I worked on a team that built and launched a Facebook game in a weekend! That’s a pretty great week if you ask me. Now that I’m all hyped up about it, I want to work with the resident video game expert in my class to create a Guitar Hero video of me and take it viral! (It’s probably not cool to talk about taking something viral, is it? Just do it.) This sort of viral, guerrilla marketing reminds me a little bit of that girl who made www.twittershouldhireme.com website. Oh – anyone want to help make the video?

We’re still working on the GT MBA marketing club game. There’s not a lot of time to get it done, but we’ve got a great team and a killer offering. I’ll keep you updated on the progress with that. Some key messaging for Georgia Tech MBA marketers has already come out of the project and I can use that to really push the idea to come to GT for fantastic marketing talent.

Now, the Facebook app – it’s actually up and running. Go – sign up today!! (I’m training my team while writing this.) About 100 people got together Friday night and pitched 60 ideas for new startups @ ASW3. Teams were formed and started working on about 15 different ideas. On Sunday night, 12 teams presented and about 8 groups had alpha or even beta products to demo! How cool is that?!? Todaysbrackets.com, gomodo.me, Voicify, xpensetrack.com, FanTrendz, FlexSeats, Moody Tweets, Fake Whale, EventTank. Really great stuff. I worked on a team that was full of awesome talent, cooperative attitudes and a strong work ethic. The game looks sharp and is fun to play even at its basic level. I’m pretty sure the team will keep working on it. The marketing group (including me!) created Twitter, Facebook, a blog, a name, a URL…Touchdown Nation! We tweeted about it, invited friends, posted videos, showed screen shots and built excitement for the release. And it worked! Over 80 users signed up yesterday and the number continues to grow. It was a great experience about feature creep, statistics, Ruby on Rails, Facebook games, revenue models, target markets, key word advertising. Oh, there was also great food (thanks John!) and entertainment (thanks Lance!). Pretty great weekend.

Back to training my team.

And making that Guitar Hero video.

More Metrics: Build a Business Case for Social Media

I should be studying for the Brand Management midterm I have tomorrow morning, but what I just read in one of the chapters got me thinking. Yesterday I read a great blog post on the relevance of social media in business and - finally - there is someone calling for metrics! Today I read about Brand Value Creation and how marketers can evaluate and measure the value created by brands. Combine the two: what role does social media play in brand value creation - so that social media efforts can be measured?

Here's the Brand Value Chain (from Kevin Lane Keller's Strategic Brand Management book):

The value chain starts with the assumption that the brand ultimately resides with the consumer and and the value creation process begins when the firm invests in a marketing program targeting actual or potential customers.

Price premium, price elasticities, market share, cost structure, and profitability are all objective measurements. So are stock prices, P/E ratio and market cap! Compare these metrics before the marketing program and then again after implementation. It may not be 100% correlated, but taking market place conditions and investor sentiment into consideration should allow marketers to attribute come of the favorable growth to the brand contribution.

Relating this to social media and the blog post I read yesterday, Tom Webber believes that in order for social media to be really effective, it needs to have a strategy that goes beyond the marketing department and allow "rank-and-file employee to be a real human, to stop the assembly line (like a Toyota factory employee can) and communicate transparently with customers and prospects". This feels like that Employee line under Marketing Program Investment.One of the big reasons why the Starbucks brand is so strong - with little to no national advertising btw - is because of the people and the service you receive at Starbucks. Social media is kind of a way that other non-retail companies can make employees be a part of the brand. That seems like a very strong association to me. (I think I have drifted from my initial thoughts on metrics.)

Back to the point, social media, when used not just as a marketing tool, but also as a way to establish a real connection with followers, can greatly affect the consumer mindset. Social media probably doesn't do a whole lot around Awareness and could play a little in Associations and Attitudes. But I bet that social media can go gang-buster for growing brand Attachment and brand Activity. Attachment: the consumer's resistance to change and the ability of a brand to withstand bad news (a.k.a. - price elasticities). Activity: extent to which customers use the brand, talk to others about the brand, seek out brand information. Yeah, sounds like social media to me: re-tweet, blog about, comment, fan on Facebook... Could be market share, price elasticities, and extension success. 

Another block to the case. Thoughts?

Tell Me A Story

I feel like we're heading back to using stories as a way to communicate cultural norms, goals, and truths.  Maybe it's because we're in the middle of an time that we've never experienced before and we're trying to figure out how to explain how it makes us feel, what it makes us think and worry about.  I would think that stories are a good way to work through all of that.  I also believe songs can be stories that help us get our arms around our reality.   

In the Change This newsletter this week was a manifesto titled Stories, Story-Telling, and Story-Selling in Business that started my thinking on the subject.  The author, Tom Nies suggests that there are two types of stories that have an impact in our lives - truth stories and true stories.  Truth stories are more like fables where it doesn't matter if the story is necessarily true because the overarching themes and lessons in the story are true.  True stories can share the same characteristics of truth stories, except that the events described in the story are actually true.  This is the case with history - and how many lessons can be applied from a study of those who have gone before us?  Endless.  Nies implores businesses to use stories to inspire employees and to encourage.  Times have been tough before and we survived.  We can do it again.  People remember the stories when they may not remember what's been codified in the employee handbook.

A cursory search about stories uncovered a research paper from the Learning Institute Laboratory at Harvard University about storytelling In organizations.  Stories in organizations serve many tasks including: sharing norms and values, building trust and commitment, spreading tacit knowledge, facilitating unlearning and creating emotional connections.  The authors also forewarn business leaders to watch out for a few key issues with storytelling.  Make sure that your purpose is clear, keep it simple, try more than one medium, and be aware of the audience reaction. 

I want to try to use stories more often when I'm explaining a concept or feeling.  I think I need to find time to read more and amass more stories.  Since I don't really have time to read anything besides text books and cases, maybe this is too much of a strech goal for right now.  :)  In the meantime,  I could try to keep a journal of stories that I run across in interactions with my friends and discussions in class.  Anyone have a really good story that has maybe changed your life?

Be A Valuable Resource

Last Saturday, I attended SoCon09 - an unconference about the social media community.  Check out Twitter (#SoCon09) for notes on the event.  One of the breakout sessions I attended was a discussion on how people are using social media in the B2B environment.  Jon Gatrell from Spatially Relevant mediated the session.  While I had some difficulty imagining the scenario that the small business owners and consultants were discussing in the relams of a behemoth corporation, I was reminded of a very important lesson:  Be a valuable resource to your customers and prospects.  This good word comes from Jeffrey Gittomer, author of the Little Red Book of Selling.  And true to form, Gittomer sent the following reminder out in his e-Newsletter this morning.  (Notice: personal branding is in his list too!)

MAJOR QUESTION: Why aren’t you focusing on bigger issues so that sales come to you from prospects and customers that want to buy? The bigger issues are:
• Value messages – that can impact your worth to the customer. Worth is more powerful than price.
• Impact speeches – at trade associations that establish your reputation as a knowledgeable leader and thinker.
• Top-tier networking – to get to know the people that count in your customer base, your industry, and your career.
• Industry positioning – to become better known. Get involved in the associations and impact organizations of your marketplace.
• Consistent writing and publishing – a monthly article in your trade publication will raise everyone’s awareness of your ideas and capabilities.
• Personal branding – combining your words and deeds with your reputation to create the law of attraction.

Any thoughts on these bigger issues?  I feel like social media can really help with many of these issues. 

Who Am I Really?

This Saturday I will be immersing myself in the social media/connection culture at SoCon 2009. I think I'm going to have trouble narrowing down my selection of break-out topics, but this is what I'm initially interested in:

• Using social networking for social change
• Social media for B2B
• Return on Investment for social media
• Build your own personal brand

It's the last one that I'm thinking about tonight. A personal brand. With regards to job searching, I have heard this multiple times and, as a marketer, you'd think that I would have a brand already established. And, wow. A Google search on social media personal brand return a lot of hits.

This one is interesting: Success here is simple. I followed the Disney model. I built a content franchise and leveraged it across every community and channel I participate in, including traditional ones like PR and speaking. Anyone can emulate this approach - including brands that want to maximize their use of social media. (from a blog by Steve Rubel) I like this because it is what I would do with my marketing campaigns in the business. I would decide on a theme and a target message and then everything from graphics to emails, invites, signage, and promotional items would match the theme and messaging. It looked awesome and was very effective. Jonathan Gessinger at Twin Engine Creative helped me with a bunch of themes. The guys at TEC do terrific graphic work if you need some help. Maybe I should hit them up for a personal brand.

So in between class, work, group projects, the VCIC competition and trying to find an internship for the summer, I'll be working on my personal brand. Think I'll start with that list I made a while ago of all the things I like and things I like doing. Any ideas or suggestions? Any really good personal brands out there you can recommend?