By Contributing {grow} Columnist “Social Steve” Goldner

Creating an emotional connection between customers and a brand is probably the Holy Grail of marketing.  Most often, brands strive for this by being the pinnacle of something and then reinforcing that position at every touchpoint.

Maybe the easiest brand to think of in this sense is Apple.  Apple is cool, the hipster of technology.  And they have achieved a level of fanatiscm with their customers by being the pinnacle of innovation and design and then continually reinforcing this message.

Emotional branding goes beyond loyalty and almost creates this “I-am-with-<brand-name>-no-matter-what” mentality.  Recently I was reminded of the awesome power and massive strength of emotional branding.  And this story has nothing to do with a brand you might find in a store.  It involves well-educated, smart people acting in what I consider to be an irrational manner … all for the their love of a brand.  The people I am talking about are my friends (hopefully still my friends after this article) and family.

The brand I am referring to is Joe Paterno, the beloved, long-time head coach of Penn State University’s football team – up until the time he was fired under a cloud of child sexual abuse scandals.  No, Paterno was not charged with sex abuse.  But after a long career of being an icon of integrity, he was ultimately vilified because he had not alerted law enforcement officers about the horrific events when he knew of them.

Joe Paterno was the Penn State University brand.  The passion and emotion of alumni toward Paterno is unbelievable.  Many of these alumni are people from my own network – tons of friends and family that are so emotionally tied to PSU and Paterno, that they refuse to let the scandal tarnish the brand.  This is the acme of emotional branding — a bond so strong that even the most heinous blunder cannot deter the support, love, and admiration for the brand.  I am not emotionally tied to the Paterno or PSU brand and I cannot fathom how bright, intelligent people refuse to move from this irrational, emotional connection. But there it is.

And while the example I highlighted above consists of repulsive allegations, it does represent a situation brands would legitimately want to aspire to – establishing such a bond with your audience that they will stand by you, and defend you, no matter what.

So are there any positive lessons about emotional marketing that we can learn from the Paterno case?  Create brands where winning is a shared experience and then reinforce it.  How does your ideal customer win with your brand?  Incorporate this ideal into every aspect of your product or service.  When building emotion into your brand, think about leading your customer through a continuum:

Emotional Stage 1 – How you get someone interested?

Emotional Stage 2 – How do you get someone to consider a purchase?

Emotional Stage 3 – How do you continually reinforce that their purchase decision was absolutely the right decision, the “winning” decision?

Emotional Stage 4 – How do you create a loyal customer such that they want to continue to buy your product and/or are most receptive to cross selling and value add purchases?

Emotional Stage 5 – How do you create a brand ritual (www.brandrituals.net) so that your brand becomes part of your customer’s life?

Emotional Stage 6 – How do you get your audience to be your cheerleader?

You could literally create a blog post on every single one of these steps and it would certainly be a fascinating concept to explore. But on the social web, where consumer emotions can turn on a dime, doesn’t it make sense to start building loyalty in a truly emotional way?

Steve Goldner is the Senior Director at MediaWhiz where he leads the social media practice. Steve has been a marketing executive for the past 20+ years and engaged in social media for the last 4 years. You can follow him on Twitter @SocialSteve and visit his own blog at http://socialsteve.wordpress.com .

I had a very interesting question come across my desk from {grow} community member John Bethune:

In the minds of most people, journalism and marketing were once diametrically opposed. Has that changed in the social media era?

A great question!  And, in fact, I think the social web has brought these disciplines together in a number of surprising ways.

The ideal of journalism is a quest for truth. Marketing is the quest for a product’s “truth.” By that I mean the best marketers are on a journey to know how their company’s goods and services exist in the hearts and minds of their customers. Then, their job is to express that consumer truth to the best of their ability.  So in this way, the disciplines are unexpectedly similar, although the end product is quite different!

But the social web has created an important shift for both disciplines.  What does it even mean to be a journalist today? Through blogging and technology like smartphone video cameras, journalism has been democratized.  Anybody can report, anybody can publish.  Jeff Jarvis of City University of New York recently defined a reporter today as simply somebody who can say, “I was there and you weren’t.”

The democratization of marketing

To a great extent, marketing has been democratized, too. Remember last year when Gap changed their logo and there was such an outcry? I felt empathy for the company because they are probably good marketers who followed a traditional protocol — work with graphic designers, test it, get feedback, and roll.  That system has worked for decades and changing a logo is not an easy or flippant decision for a consumer product company to make. I’m sure they had done their homework … or at least they thought so.

But a few vocal people thought the new logo was stupid (perhaps people who were not even customers!). Through Twitter and Facebook, they created an anti-logo movement. and suddenly it became an embarrassing meme. I can imagine the Gap marketers waking up to this one morning and thinking “Wait … what?”

So something as important as an adjustment to your brand image may not even be in the hands of marketers any more. The Gap’s marketing strategy had essentially been crowd-sourced!  Like journalism it seems, marketing has also been democratized.

Content as power

The production of content has also been an output of the marketing process, usually in the form of advertisements. But now content is at the very centerpiece of many strategies as companies fight to attract attention on the crowded social web.  The journalism schools are full of new applicants. Why? Because content is big business now and the new media channels have an insatiable need for it.  Companies need story-tellers as much as marketing graduates.

I have recently been working with the president of one of my B2B customers on a blog and a series of how-to videos to demonstrate their new robotic technologies. I’ll bet five years ago he never would have dreamed he would be in the publishing business!

So this idea of content and storytelling is another way that journalism and marketing have been brought together.  For both fields, content that moves virally through the social web represents success and power.

Truth as a strategy

I think expectations of “truth” and transparency is another way the social web have brought journalism and marketing together.  For a brand to have integrity and to be successful, it can’t be spinning the truth around any more. There are a million watch dogs out there now and any one of them can sniff out a fake.

A few weeks ago, I was working with some marketers for a hotel chain and we were discussing negative hotel reviews. “We don’t mind them,” they told me. “It makes us more real.”

Interesting. Truth as a marketing strategy.

My hunch is that a few years ago, that is not necessarily what their reaction would have been.  In marketing, truth is the new black.

Maybe journalism and marketing are getting closer than we thought?  What do you think?

Note: John Bethune’s full interview with me can be found here: “Content is Power: A Q&A with Mark W. Schaefer.”

I saw some beautiful ads on TV promoting tourism for the U.S. Gulf Coast.  But after the heart strings were sufficiently plucked, who is identified as the sponsor?  BP — the company that caused the mess in the first place!  This really pissed me off.

Luckily I was in Memphis at the time and had the chance to have PR Expert Amy Howell calm me down, as you will see in this short video discussion.

Did BP do the right thing with these ads?  What were the alternatives?  Am I right to be venting over this?

I think you’ll enjoy the conversation and hope you’ll add your views on the subject in the comment section! Thanks!

P.S.  You know what else pisses me off?  If you “Google” BP tourism ads, all you get is BP PR fluffy stuff.  They have their SEO machine working overtime, don’t they?

P.P.S.  Grrrrr.

Facebook is like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you’re going to get.  And sometimes, it’s not even sweet.

While most social media advisers are bullish on Facebook as a marketing channel — and certainly there are some amazing success stories — in my classes I teach a more holistic view of the opportunities and the PERILS of what you might get into.

I use the screen shot above as a way to illustrate the dark side of exposing your brand on the social web. Let’s take a look at what’s going on here.

The first wall comment is from a guy who is using a cute little girl as his avatar. I’m guessing this is simply a proud papa, but without careful observation, or taken out of context, you might make the conclusion that this is a perversion or that this cherubic girl is thanking Budweiser for participating in an alcohol-related promotion in Kansas City.

Curiously, the next avatar is also from a Bieber-like child who is clearly below the drinking age. This little boy is thanking Budweiser for supporting LGBT issues. This stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transsexual. While Anheuser-Busch may very well support this demographic, it certainly is not reflected in its advertising or core brand promise. Bud is known as the King of Beers, not the Queen of Beers.

In any event, a casual observer would be thinking, why are these two little kids posting on Budweiser’s Facebook page?

Finally, Joe Doyle thinks this photo is so funny he posted it TWICE. Remember the Southwest airline attendant who got fed up with his job and abandoned his flight?  Yup that’s him. Joe goes on to suggest a Facebook site encouraging Bud to feature the wayward flight attendant in an advertisement.

From a traditional marketing standpoint, this is a mess.  Everything you do, and everything you don’t do, communicates about your brand.  What is being communicated by these community comments and how does this reflect on the most powerful beer brand in the world?

While social media represents a true opportunity for connection, listening and service, a wacky page like this seems to overwhelm those positive opportunities, doesn’t it? 

I had the privilege of working with Anheuser-Busch senior execs for four years and I know the extreme pressure on brand managers.  After viewing this page, if I were Bud’s marketing director, I might be thinking “WTF … Who talked me into being on Facebook?”

I’m not necessarily suggesting that they shouldn’t be on Facebook, but I’m making a point that in an era when many ”gurus” think every marketing problem can be solved with a Facebook page, you better be prepared for all possible consequences.

Marketing on Facebook is hard work … as we see by this example. Considering that a brand like Budweiser is probably going to consistently attract “diverse” and unusual comments like these, how do you weigh the benefit versus expense of a high-maintenance page like this? 

Is this a case where a brand has to be there or be conspicuously absent?  Is Facebook like your industry trade show – you just have to go or people will notice if you’re not?

Or, does Facebook represent an opportunity to legitimately inform, engage, and communicate in exciting new ways in a case like this, or is this a daily nightmare for an important brand?

Let’s get down to basics.  Is a Facebook page going to help Budweiser sell more beer?  How does it fit into an integrated strategy?  What do you think?

Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery. I doubt he would be on Twitter. Or would he, baby?

Even if you were not caught up in the Royal Wedding frenzy, if you were a breathing human being you couldn’t help but catch a glimpse of the event this week.

In a world of connection, transparency, ubiquitous communication, and an emphasis on being “humanized,” isn’t it interesting that at least for a week, the world’s biggest brand was characterized by being aloof, detached, and elite? This struck me as I watched a demonstration on the various nuances of the royal curtsy.

I think there is something to be said for mystery.   Apple falls into this regal category too, don’t they? No social media presence, an operation cloaked in secrecy, dominated by a black-clad leader who is not exactly an open book.  Seems to work for them.

For many premium products, a social connection might even work against the brand.  I would probably fall over if I walked into a Maserati showroom and saw “follow me on Twitter” pasted to the car.

I am probably the anti-mystery man. The other day, somebody said to me “You seem to be everywhere.”

This is not an intentional, proactive strategy on my part, but when somebody asks me for an interview or a blog contribution, my attitude is “what the heck?” And I have been doing a lot of interviews! So maybe I am on the brink of over-exposure and a back-lash?

At the end of the day, it gets back to strategy doesn’t it? It would be very uncomfortable for me to switch direction and be inaccessible, elitist, and aloof. It’s inconsistent with my personality, and by extension, my brand. I’m helpful. I’m accessible. That’s the way I was before the social web and the way I will be after the social web.

But there is a place for scarcity and mystery, isn’t there?   I wonder … is having an air of mystery and participation in the social web mutually exclusive? What do you think? Are there any exclusive or “mysterious brands” that work on the web? What about you and your brand? Do you even think about this subject of exposure?

By Sidneyeve Matrix, Contributing {grow} Columnist

We know that people prefer to connect with other people, not brands. Not too long ago, Mark wrote about how one of the biggest mistakes you can make in online branding is using a logo instead of a headshot photo in your Twitter profile. Coming out from behind your logo is a big step toward humanizing your brand, so too is using humor to engage, and giving your network a peek behind the curtain of your official brand message. Here’s a roundup of four other creative communication strategies you might try to increase the emotional and personal engagement factors in your online messaging.

1. Lifecasting. A new study from communications scholars at Elizabethtown College published in The Chronicle of Higher Education confirms what we already knew to be true — being human sets thought leaders apart. The study found that professors who post tweets about their personal lives earn higher credibility rankings in student teaching assessments of their professional capabilities. The researchers concluded that those tweeters who appear to  “go beyond knowledge transfer” to include personal updates in their microblogging streams seem more caring and engaged. There’s no equation for us to use in determining the right mix of personal and professional updates, but try adding personal touches to your stream.

2. Storytelling. Whether in video, audio, text or snapshots—everyone seems to agree that great stories are what make brands (and people) more emotionally compelling and human. But if you’re like me, stories don’t just appear on cue when I most need them. A bit of help from books and podcasts and even filmmakers can inspire and provide a blueprint for structuring stories. Using carefully selected personal stories is an essential part of many entrepreneurial branding initiatives (think Ralph Lauren, Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart) and you’ll notice that celebrities follow a few classic storylines when narrating their life lessons, adventures, and accomplishments.

3. Video. A step up from still snapshots, video blogging adds personality faster than any multimedia format — pictures tell a thousand words, but moving pictures have an immediacy like none other. A Flip camcorder is an inexpensive way to take the video plunge. Up the ante on your videos with some relatively inexpensive editing software (I’m using Camtasia for Mac right now) and intro and outro music (take a listen at to royalty-free tracks at AudioJungle but be warned, there’s so much amazing sound there you might get caught up in endless sampling). YouTube is the obvious choice for uploads, but check out Vimeo too, where the vibe is a little more creative than commercial. Looking for ideas for videos that are not adverts? Profile your employees—testimonial videos are not just for recruitment pages. More ideas here.

4. Audio. Add your voice to your website and you’ll instantly become more personable. Podcasts don’t have to be elaborate productions, in fact experts agree that shorter is better-and it’s easier to be concise if you’re working from a script. Obviously in podcasting, top quality audio matters, so you might want to invest in a professional digital recorder. I use an Edirol R-09HR. For editing, Audacity is a free download that’s easy to use. Need inspiration for your podcasts? Check out the ever-expanding range of themes and formats on iTunes.

The recipe for a humanized online brand is composed of 1 part personality, 1 part emotionality, and a generous measure of creativity!

How are you humanizing your brand on the social web?  What brands are doing a great job?

Sidneyeve Matrix is Assistant Professor of Media at Queen’s University, consults at MatrixMediaFX and blogs at CyberPop.

Illustration by kprogram

This week I was sitting in a crowded cafe off of a hotel lobby in New York City.  The cafe offered free coffee for the hotel guests and I helped myself to the delicious hot drink. I am not a coffee elitist. In fact, the more my coffee tastes like a milkshake, the happier I am.

A group sitting next to me had another idea.  They scoffed at the free coffee and sent a scouting party across the street — in the freezing sleet and rain — to round-up four coffees from Starbucks.  Probably paid $4.50 apiece for them.

I couldn’t help but draw a parallel between me — taking the convenient ‘free content” — versus the alternate group willing to go out of their way and pay for their content. As marketers and bloggers, isn’t that really our goal?  To be so unique, so insanely great, to be able to summon a powerful emotional connection that would drive people out into the sleet to find us!

That’s awesome. That’s what I want to be when I grow up. Or {grow} up as the case may be. I don’t intend to charge for blog content but I do want to provide that kind of value to readers. A few people have told me — “I would pay for your blog.” I think that is the highest compliment possible!

How about you? What would it take for people to want to PAY to read your blog? Are you up to that big of a challenge? If you reached for a goal like that, what would you be changing right now about your blog, your career, your team, or your company?

In a recent #MMchat session, I referred to McDonald’s as a social media best practice and said they should give me some free fries for the reference. In a tribute to the way McDonald’s is “tuned in” to its audience, Rick Wion, the company’s director of social media, responded to one of my tweets and said that he would indeed buy me some fries.

What resulted was even better … a lengthy discussion and a short video interview when I got to meet him live at SXSW. Talk about the business benefits of Twitter!

How does a global icon like McDonald’s — one of the world’s most important brands — engage with millions of customers? Well here’s the answer in this video. I think you’re going to love this interview. We touch on some very significant topics about the research that went into their effort, humanizing a brand, staffing up for an initiative like this, and where it will lead.

Would love to hear your comments about this. We may even be able to get Rick to answer a few questions.

I’ve used this example in many of my classes and the answer is usually unanimous — Megan Parker at GE.  It’s disarming isn’t it?  A massive multi-national B2B company represented by the welcoming and smiling face of Megan. But I think that’s just what makes this a best practice.

Your company is not choosing just a picture. You’re choosing a voice for the account, a personality, a strategy!

If you’re like me, it’s extremely difficult to connect to a logo.  I think it puts a company at an immediate disadvantage.  Now I’m making a big assumption here — that your company WANTS to connect. If all you want to do is broadcast press releases, than go ahead and “go logo.” But if you want to create some authentic connection with your audience, I strongly recommend you put a face on the account.

Handling multiple stores/accounts

Here’s an example of how this can work to create brand loyalty, even on a local basis.

A regional manager for Chik-fil-a (a large U.S. restaurant chain) told me she was setting up individual Twitter accounts for her restaurants. She was thinking of putting pictures of the store front as the avatars. Umm … “No,” I said.  How about the iconographic cows used in the restaurant ads?  No again.  Why not feature the store managers who are actually doing the tweeting?  Wouldn’t it be cool to establish a Twitter relationship with a real person and then get to say hi to them when you visit? Wouldn’t this build a connection and loyalty? This seems like such a basic concept but it’s ignored by almost every company. Just puzzles me.

Tweets in transition

A logical next question is, what happens when your Twitter face-to-the-world leaves?

I think this is best answered through a comment from Bert DuMars, Vice President E-Business & Interactive Marketing at Newell Rubbermaid.  A few months ago, I wrote a post about Twitter branding, wondering what would happen when popular Susan Wassel, the wonderfully-entertaining Sharpie Susan on Twitter got a new job?  Here’s how Bert answered this:

“The ID @sharpiesusan is owned by Newell Rubbermaid and the Office Products Division. If Susan were ever to leave Newell Rubbermaid, we would keep that ID and she would be free to re-establish herself on Twitter or any other social network as herself.”

This is happening before our eyes at GE. Yes … Megan has a new job! To my horror, she was replaced on Twitter by:

Sean Gannon GE’s managing editor for digital media explained how they are handling the transition: “Megan is on another team, so we are now ‘tag-teaming’ our Twitter account. On any given day, it may be a different person tweeting. Rather that give the illusion that it’s one person, we went back to a logo until we hand over the Twitter keys to just one person.”

(sigh of relief)

Let’s look at personalization under one more scenario. A company such as Coca-Cola may choose to have one main corporate (and they do). Certainly they’ve earned that right because as one of the world’s great brands, people are interested in their tweets even if it is merely a broadcast of press releases.  One way to personalize is to add the initial of the Tweeter at the end like this:

Whether you’re a person or mega-brand, let’s move away from trying to create a personal connection with a picture of an office building or a truck.  It’s time to get personal.

Do you agree?

As you’ve probably noticed, there have been quite a few changes here at {grow}. I hope you like the new design and features.

Over the next few weeks I’ll continue to add new content and services that I think you’ll really like but I’m kicking things off with a new FREE eBook on corporate blogging.

The first edition of this book was made available in May and it received rave reviews.  Michele Linn of the Content Marketing Institute and Jamie Wallace of Suddenly Marketing recently described this as one of the best eBooks on the web.  The new edition has twice as much content and is jammed with practical tips to get the most from your company blog.

Many thanks to Billy Mitchell and the talented crew at MLT Creative for the exciting design in this publication.

The new blog design comes from Patrick Molter and Clint Barnes of Red Goat Creative.  The first time I saw the “paint splat concept” I wasn’t wild about it, but it grew on me.  I think it represents the content on {grow} pretty well — colorful, edgy and sometimes a little wild. And, it’s obviously a work in progress!  That’s why we’re all here I guess — to push each other and GROW.  I also think it is a fitting symbol that this is a vibrant community and not just about me. There are lots of colorful splashes (your comments) that make this blog and community so cool.

So paint splash it is.

I also hope you like the Gini Dietrich Memorial Comment Section.  Gini has been pushing me to get a state-of the art comment area for months, and specifically to use Livefyre.  This technology is still in beta and frankly took longer than needed to implement but I hope it will be a reliable vessel for the most important part of the blog — your comments.

We’re still working out a few bugs, but I hope you enjoy the new and improved {grow}.  I would value your comments and ideas for further improvement.

Thanks for creating this community with me!