mobileYouth®

Following on from my earlier post “Content is Dead, Long Live Context” – here are the Top 10 Context Brands you requested:

1) Monster Energy Drinks
2) Pure Digital Flip
3) Jet Blue
4) Threadless
5) BeingGirl
6) Toyota Scion
7) Ford Fiesta (Movement)
8) Boost Mobile RockCorps
9) Nike 6.0
10) Red Bull

Now, the point is… if you’re still committing most of your budget to TV or some “big idea” then I’m afraid to say – you’re boring. Take a quick fix for your moho by looking at these examples of brands that market context not content – connecting customers not selling to them. Not only are they redefining their markets by leading them, they make that “old advertising” stuff, the Britney Spears thing, look just so done…

Apart from all focusing on CONTEXT not CONTENT each approach is backed by someone taking a brave decision – someone who broke a few eggshells. These are the products of a a marketer who overcame the voices , the inherent corporate resistance and marcomms rigidity (riga mortis).

I’d be interested to know how much came from the mind of a brilliant marketer and how much from the mind of an MBA.

Here’s the list in full:

1) Permission Assets not Adverts: Hansen/Monster Energy Drinks: Zero advertising can make you more profitable per employee than Apple. That doesn’t mean do nothing, it means you haven’t divested your creativity to some clever agency – it starts with you and your product values. Simply focusing on Beachheads (micro segments) and committing your 100% to that 10%. It’s too easy to go long and capture the whole market. Staying focused means realizing your farm is big and your bag of grain small, keep it concentrated. As Al Ries says – don’t tinker with the brand…stay focused. Clarity is Power. Hansen could have so easily opted for the celebrity root to big up their product – like these guys – but they decided not to, spending 12 years constructing an organic brand around a passionate grass roots support. This is true tribal management in the 21st Century as opposed to the 20th Century of brand management. Now then…who needs a “Big Idea” when your product is the Big Idea.

Here’s a flavor of the drink more profitable than Apple (by a customer)

2) Product Development is Marketing: Pure Digital Flip Video: $200 million is sales of the mini video camera the Flip. Most haven’t even heard of it yet – that’s because they’re focused purely on one problem and one type of customer – young users who want to share their video content quickly as opposed to pros who want the highest resolutions. Their crowdsourced program received over 8,000 design suggestions.

This is a Flip…”Most People Just Want to Record Video and DL it to their PC”

3) Sell the Context not the Product: JetBlue - in a category be-set by rising costs and the economic squeeze, JetBlue rides out the storm as the most profitable in class. Unlike its competitors JB focuses on the younger traveller, students in particular who have traditionally been overlooked due to lack of funds. However, JB understands by engaging bloggers, a passion for customer service and a focus on the broader context of air travel – this service brand can redefine its market through relationships as opposed to transactions. These inputs all combine to form a brand customers feel an affiliation with. Customer service is good marketing… do we really need data to justify this? Surely, we understand that if you treat your customers well, customers will come back. Why do customers love JetBlue? Is it because they aren’t afraid to go on record saying “I’m Sorry” when so many large brands do everything but utter those two important words. Maybe it’s just because they get the basics right…as detailed here. It’s an experience worth talking about…remarkable.

Jet Blue customers talk about the experience

4) Sell Community: Threadless. I’ve blogged plenty of times about these guys before. In fact, being such a fan, I went out to Chicago to meet the founder & CEO to get the skinny on what makes them tick. And, as with Jet Blue, a sense of fun pervades this brand. But, its customer foundations are not built on the purely whimsical. Threadless’s customers are the brand. Customers love Threadless because of good old recriprocity – Threadless loves its Customers.  This isn’t about Customer Loyalty, this is about Loyalty to Customers. And it’s a brand grossing $40+million in revenues with a 30%+ profit margin. They also have over a million followers on Twitter. It’s a great model and it’s one many are trying to emulate, even Nike. What they sell is not T-Shirts but the whole community that encompasses the product. The T-Shirt is one tool in the wider context of design, significance and belonging. Here’s a good summary of why they are who they are.

When I met Threadless

5) Don’t Fall in Love with your Product: BeingGirl (Procter & Gamble Tampax) The first thing that impressed me about this site aimed at teen girls (yes, believe it or not I don’t often visit them) is that it wasn’t about the product. How many multi-billion dollar organizations are able to sit back confidently and say, “let’s not sell our product” because there is a guy whose job title says “lead product sales digital”. What does a guy like that do when you start touting “context”? Well, BeingGirl works because it isn’t about Tampax, it’s about the issues faced by teenage girls and then Tampax happens to be the social thread that runs through the platform across which they interact. As P&G say – it’s like “being part of a club“…(context)…The approach works – it’s 4 times more effective than the traditional P&G media approach. Genius, simple.

6) Context helps brand find their Mojo: Toyota Scion. In the days before the motherbrand started to interfere, when Scion was ruling the roost, Jeri Yoshizu said that they neither focused on awareness nor focused on trend spotting. Their work consisted on nurturing their community – artists, DJs, musicians, designers and publishers. Her time would be dedicated to communicating with them, creating and supporting the local Scion meets and giving the owners a voice. Toyota is boring, Scion certainly isn’t. Their input isn’t wholly about the designers, it’s turns the narrative into one about the car owner. When your agency starts telling you that you need to get on Facebook, on twitter or get a new logo, they’re either thinking about Content or winning awards…certainly not winning customers. Context is the difference between a boring yet clever ad campaign and a loved brand. Take a look at any Scion video on Youtube and you’re greeted by Passionistas at work.

Scikotics: Think you can do a better marketing job than your customers?

7) Movements are the Marketing: Ford Fiesta Movement. When Ford tasked itself with bringing an economical model hatched in Europe to US Consumers it had its work cut out. So simply throwing money at the problem through a clever ad campaign wouldn’t solve the issue especially as they were targeting young customers who wouldn’t respond anyway. Ford could have so easily done the Facebook thing – but that’d be New Media but Business as Usual, or as one pundit puts it “lipstick on a pig“. The answer lay in context – the Fiesta Movement - giving 100 lucky customers Ford Fiestas to own, test, blog and record their lives for all to share. The proof will bear out in the long term pudding. Some pundits think that already Ford can pat itself on the back for being ballsy. Ford Claims the movement’s success means their ad budget at launch in 2011 will be 20% lower than originally forecast.

Ford Fiesta Movement: Here’s Your ‘Marketing Department’ at work

8) Create a Legacy not an Ad Campaign: Boost Mobile RockCorps. This I am a big fan of and it’s worked both in the US with Boost and in the UK with Orange. It could have so easily been a high level ad campaign backed with an end-of-season concert “sponsored by…” but luckily the agents of change won out. BMRC was going to be about creating context – a series of volunteer weekends for young people which they would be rewarded for their efforts with tickets to the concert. It’s a project that has earned Boost a 60% repeat rate of volunteers year-on-year, not the kind of figures you’d find on a traditional ad campaign. “You can’t buy a ticket, you can’t win a ticket … you have to earn it”. Right on.

Boost Mobile Rockcorps Volunteers

9) Marketing is a Place: Nike 6.0 – the brand’s diffusion range for surf & skate is pretty innovative. Rather than go long on the ad or digital thing it decided to run one of the most innovative marketing projects of 2009 and I love it. Hire a motel in San Clamente for the Summer and fill it with influential young things – artists, musicians, athletes, DJs and you have there your marketing strategy. Nike knows that customers don’t believe it when they see Tiger endorse Buick. Does he really drive a Buick? Hmmm… Authenticity means a 360 approach – living the lifestyle not just talking it. Nike calls Motel No Tell “the most unique stop along the journey to the world-class wave, Trestles.” So cool it hurts…

Nike 6.0 Motel No Tell

10) You have to be where they are: Red Bull – Gawd, I’ve written so much stuff about my love of Red Bull as a marketing concept that I don’t know where to start. Everything they do is context driven – it’s all about creation not campaigning. A few I’ve spied recently that really merit mention are Rooms of Red Bull in Amsterdam (similar to Nike 6.0 motel no tell idea), Red Bull Music Academy (London 2010) and Red Bull Bedroom Jam Event (cool). This is what you can achieve if you don’t fall in love with your product and focus on the context – these guys are the gold standard of context. Red Bull is a collaborative culture – there’s a distinct focus on stamping out hoarding, marketing decisions are made in the field rather than reliant on HQ’s data. And while official figures are hard to discern as they are privately listed all we know is that this approach works – they only own two F1 teams…go figure.

Rooms of Red Bull

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!