Use Graffiti to Draft Your Marketing Plan!

Whether I’m working with an individual client or a business team, I’ve always found that having an annual game plan — in my case, a marketing plan — is essential. With Memorial Day recently behind us, it means that in the corporate environment you have about three months before your 2013 brand plan is due (prior to fourth-quarter number crunching, you know), so now’s a great time to start strategizing.
 
Over the years, I’ve gotten into the habit of building these plans on a whiteboard or a bulletin board. Really, any place where I can step back to take a comprehensive look, and where my volunteers, clients, or co-workers can get a gander and give their input as well.
 
Here are six good reasons why you should build your brand’s annual plan on a wall, just like graffiti, where everyone can see it.

1. A strong marketing plan directs your focus and your team’s focus. It keeps you all on a clearly defined path that ensures that you make the most of the effort and the budget.
2. A strong marketing plan forces you to articulate concrete, measurable objectives so you and the decision makers who make staffing and budget decisions know what you are working towards and make the right decisions on how to get there.
3. A strong marketing plan provides a definitive means of tracking everyone’s progress against stated objectives.
4. A strong marketing plan is an all-organization responsibility, but to engage your colleagues and leaders, you need to be able to show them where you’re headed, what you’re doing, and why.
5. A strong marketing plan makes it easy to draft your day-by-day work plan. By breaking down the big ideas that comprise the master marketing plan into nitty-gritty execution, you clarify each element for the plan and define roles and responsibilities. As a result, you’re able to focus on priorities and capitalize on each member’s skill set.
6. The Graffiti aspect is fun and encourages even shy players to provide input. For that reason I like a large whiteboard with markers in a variety of colors. 

Do yourself and your organization a favor. Take these simple steps to heart and make time to develop a marketing plan. As you’re building it, post it on a wall (virtual or not). The input you receive from staff and leadership and the results ($) will be worth it!

 

What’s In Your Mobile Wallet?

I’ll admit it. I’m fascinated but anxious about using my smartphone as a wallet. Of course that hasn’t stopped me from checking my bank balance or looking for an ATM. I love the portability and the convenience but to go cashless, well — I’d need to be threatened with something like having my hair set on fire. Evidently I’m not alone. This month MasterCard WorldWide released a study that shows that the world’s consumers aren’t quite ready for mobile payments to become mainstream. 

The study examines the adoption of mobile payments globally. It produces a formula that indexes the technology preparedness of the country with their population’s eagerness to use it. They call this index the Mobile Payments Readiness Index (MPRI). This clever MPRI runs on a scale of zero to 100, with 100 representing complete replacement of your favorite plastic cards with your mobile phone.
 
The research sets a Mobile Readiness score of 60 as the point at which mobile devices account for an appreciable share of the payment types defined in the study. Think of it as the “hot and ready to adopt” number. Of the 34 countries that were indexed, not one received even a score of 50. In fact, the average of all 34 scores was 33.2. So according to this data, our world is not yet ready for mobile wallet prime time. But there are some interesting takeaways.
 
In terms of consumer readiness, 9 of the top 10 top scoring countries are located in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, with Kenya the top scorer of all of the 34 countries evaluated. This is attributed to Kenyan consumers’ extremely high levels of familiarity with and frequent usage of mobile payments, a result of few physical banks and the success of M-Pesa.
 
Of the 34 countries, the United States received the highest score in the environment component. This component measures economic, technological, and demographic elements such as a market’s per capita income and consumer access to the internet. The high score was a result of the household expenditure per capita in this country of three times the index average ($33k vs. $11k). This translates into we-can-afford-it, I believe.
 
Singapore took the top ranking in the infrastructure (can you hear me now?) component, as 100% of the population is covered by a mobile network, compared to the overall 94% index average. Within Europe, UK consumers demonstrated the highest levels of familiarity with and willingness to use mobile payments.
 
Why should you care? The mobile wallet represents the first major change in how customers can pay at stores since the credit card was introduced in the 1960s, and this study by MasterCard helps define those countries with the most promise for rapid adoption. Someone is going to get rich. The proof is that participation in building this digital venue continues to gain momentum and the players are some of the biggest names in technology, finance, and retail, like MasterCard, Google, Wal-Mart, AT&T, Visa, and PayPal, to name just a few. 
 
Smart businessmen will use this research to design solutions to make banking and the retail purchase process effortless in promising countries while creating profits for themselves and their companies. Success will be based on timing and innovation that addresses this MPRI, accurately gauging the consumers’ and their countries’ readiness. So what will you and I do? Perhaps try to build on this lucrative technology while it is still evolving? Anyone besides me need the threat of a hairbrush and a match?

 

LinkedIn Saddles A Dark Horse

A “dark horse” refers to a little-known person or thing that emerges to prominence, especially in a competition. This year’s Kentucky Derby winner, I’ll Have Another, is a perfect example. Sold for a paltry $11,000, ridden by a rookie jockey hardly anyone knew, and stuck in an outside post, this chestnut colt blazed past the favorite, Bodemeister, to win the Derby by 1 and 1/2 lengths. It seems last week was a week for dark horses, because in addition to the surprise Derby winner, LinkedIn announced plans to acquire SlideShare, sometimes known as the “dark horse of B2B marketing.”

Well, it does fit the definition. SlideShare lacks the size of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn, and its growth isn’t anything as remarkable as Pinterest. Certainly SlideShare’s typical content of corporate PowerPoint presentations isn’t capturing the imagination of the popular culture. So why has Mountain View, California-based business networking giant, LinkedIn, decided to shell out $118.8 million in a deal to buy this San Francisco-based company?

The answer, I think, lies in SlideShare’s unique attributes that make it so popular with B2B marketers. First, it’s the users. SlideShare users have uploaded more than nine million presentations since it was founded in 2006. According to comScore, in March, SlideShare had nearly 29 million unique visitors. But it isn’t the number of visitors that’s the real differentiator, it’s the type. SlideShare gets roughly three times the traffic from business owners as is received by other social media sites, and it gets about 40% more traffic from C-level executives than LinkedIn. This means that SlideShare is the most heavily trafficked site for professional content and enjoys a unique demographic compared to the rest of the social Web.

Then there’s the content. Moving away from boring slide decks, today’s presenters are influenced by their peers to prepare presentations that tell a story that educates and engages. As a result, this content-hosting platform, considered the world’s largest, is gaining credibility as a third-party provider of information. Here the opinion leader, like a journalist, for example, is willing to embed the SlideShare presentation into an article versus embedding the exact same presentation sourced from the business’s web address.

Perhaps the most significant attribute is SlideShare’s premium services. These provide B2B marketers with the ability to view analytics on their visitors while building an online presence. For example, premium users can embed lead capture forms with customized fields within their presentations and then import those leads directly into their own customer relationship management (CRM) systems. This includes integration with third-party marketing automation tools like Eloqua and Salesforce.com.

So we can see that as B2B’s dark horse, SlideShare is all about capturing a unique audience of users, specifically business owners and C-level executives. It offers the ability to upload and host video, customer design, and branding tools. It also facilitates lead capture, detailed analytics, and software integration, which means that SlideShare delivers one thing other social media sites struggle to provide — a solid return on investment. But how will LinkedIn utilize SlideShare to expand current capabilities? Will it transform or be transformed by this union? Do you love SlideShare or hate it? How do you use it? I’d love to hear what you think.

 

Is That Dick Tracy’s Watch?

In a world where smartphones and even feature phones do everything from tell the time to the weather and your location, fewer and fewer people see the need for a watch. No surprise, then, that the global sale of watches has been steadily declining since 2005. But Eric Migicovsky and his team at Allerta may recently have changed all that. They’ve developed a watch reminiscent of Dick Tracy’s infamous two-way wrist radio that’s designed to be the best companion to your smartphone. It’s called the Pebble. You wear this attractive device just like a wristwatch and it connects by Bluetooth discreetly to your smartphone alerting you to incoming SMS, email, and phone alerts.

Other attempts at similar technologies in the past date back to 2004 when Microsoft introduced their Smart Watch, which retrieved weather, messages, reminders, and stock quotes. The watches transmitted over an unused portion of the FM radio band and users needed an MSN Direct subscription to download data. Well-known watch manufacturers Fossil, Tissot, and Swatch were involved in the production. The watches were discontinued in 2008.

More recently, other smart watches including the InPulse, the WiMM One, and I’m Watch have been reviewed, but as Chris Taylor explains in his recent Mashable article, “They were all powered by Android, or connected to Android smartphones only.  iPhone owners were out of luck until …the Pebble. It’s the first smart watch that can form a meaningful, long-lasting relationship with your iOS device, as well as Android.”  

Besides being unique among smart watches because of its compatibility with iPhone and Android, Pebble has other noteworthy features. If your smartphone is lost in the sofa cushions or hiding in a junk drawer, you can use your Pebble to locate it. For those of us who’ve struggled with screen glare on sunny days, Pebble hosts a high resolution e-paper display that is readable outdoors. 

 
Pebble’s wrist-location makes it possible to glance at that text message or check to see who’s calling while still unpacking the groceries or holding onto your squirming toddler. It’s also water resistant. You can go swimming and run in the rain with it. And speaking of running, there are apps built in to the watch that allow you to track how many miles you’ve run (thanks to the built-in 3-axis accelerometer), control your phone’s music, and check the weather.
 
There’s also the Pebble watch app store, which will let you send watch-specific apps the company and third-party developers make to the watch. At its core, Pebble is a hands-free solution to determine why your pocket or purse is vibrating without having to dig out your phone. No wonder it’s become an overnight sensation. 
 
Of course the development has been longer than just overnight. Before turning to Kickstarter for funding to provide the dollars they needed for manufacturing, the Allerta team of high-energy entrepreneurs spent four years working on iterations. In Kit Eaton’s Fast Company article, Migicovsky compliments his industrial designer, Steve Johns. “(Steve) spent a lot of time looking at what people wear on their wrists, and how we could make something that could be customizable and beautiful, small and sleek.”    Here’s the Kickstarter video where Migicovsky succinctly explains the Pebble.

Next up on the horizon? People who choose not to go with the smart watch will soon have another option: a pair of Google-made glasses that will be able to stream information to the wearer’s eyeballs in real time. Stay tuned!

 

DRTV Gets Social

I’m sitting in my favorite chair in front of the best screen in my house watching a show. A commercial comes on. It’s a preview for the movie “Chimpanzee.” I want to know more, so I grab my smartphone and I’m typing in the search, when, all of a sudden, it occurs to me that all TV ads now can be DRTV ads.

If you aren’t familiar, DRTV stands for direct response television and this is by no means a hot new marketing tool. This form of advertising has been around at least since the 1980s. There are two types. The short version, which is 30 seconds to two minutes, and a longer half-hour variety that you know as an infomercial. A DRTV commercial includes a bona-fide offer for a product or service and a method (like phone, text, or website) for the consumer to contact the advertiser directly. Advertising that satisfies these two criteria is defined as DRTV and also qualifies for a lower media rate.

Much like shopping at Nordstrom’s Rack, DRTV advertisers can purchase unsold advertising inventory from stations and networks at rates off rate-card prices. To be successful, you need some experience selecting the right mix of rate, schedule, and timing; depending on your strategy, you’ll need a call center that’s open when the commercial is aired, and don’t forget about order fulfillment. Also, because the real value in DRTV is the ability to track responses, who’s buying from which spot and when, you’ll need math competency and a method for capturing these results.

This is why there are professional DRTV agencies like Hawthorne or Euro RSCG, and, perhaps you, who are rolling their eyes at my Eureka moment in front of the TV, but honestly, the technology surprised me and made me wonder if having another device handy has changed other consumers’ viewing behavior as well.

Luckily Nielsen has just published a survey of connected-device owners and discovered that watching TV while using a tablet or smartphone, to check email, or to look up program or product information, is fairly common. In the U.S., 41% of smartphone owners confessed to using their phone at least once a day while tuned in to their TV. Also, 45% of tablet owners admitted that they used that device while watching TV at least once a day.

It seems that there’s a growing trend of using a second screen. And although you may not want to craft a traditional DRTV spot, I think it may pay for us to keep some of those techniques in mind. After all, the consumer is sitting right there with a phone in their lap.

So here’s what I’m thinking for my next commercial:

1. Before the viewer is up and off for a snack, mention what I’m selling in the first 10 seconds or at least provide a search term or web address throughout the ad so it’s easy for the consumer to find the offer later and to share it.
2. Connect the commercial to a landing page. It should reinforce the offer and provide a familiar framework (experience recall) for the viewer.
3. Whether I’m using unique phone numbers and a call center or not, I want to track clicks to correlate viewers’ search activities on the website with the media schedule and combine with web analytics to get insights.
4. Use the other screen. Maximizing this effort and expense of production by repurposing the content in other channels is a way to gain more sales and should lower my cost per acquisition. Examples:
   1. Run longer versions of the commercial on the website and YouTube;
   2. Blog about the production around an embedded version, show outtakes, use production stills;
   3. Share a video of an influencer speaking about the product’s benefits;
   4. Point to the content on other social sites (like Facebook and Twitter).

Before the advent of the second screen, DRTV marketers were attempting to compel you out of your chair to that phone hanging on your kitchen wall. Now that consumers are sitting with a phone in their pockets, they can engage when and where the buying urge hits them. So if they are intrigued by your offer on TV, be prepared to provide them with the answers they seek. Like me searching on my smartphone for #MeetOscar, we just need to put ourselves in our customers’ places to uncover the opportunities. What’s up next with Social TV or Interactive TV? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

 

5 Ways the New Facebook Builds Brands

On March 30, brand pages on Facebook that have not made the change to the new Timeline format will automatically be converted. This means that if you haven’t updated your company’s page by Friday, Facebook will do it for you. The impetus behind the new format is that Facebook wants businesses to act and interact like people.  Steering away from a “buy now” approach, they’ve incorporated strong visuals, fan loyalty techniques, and storytelling to encourage brand interaction. They’re imposing some guidelines too.  Facebook’s design lead Sam Lessin explains: “The key with cover photos is storytelling and expression. We want to create a good experience for everyone, and we think these guidelines really help brands…They’re encouraging people to create engaging content that people want to come back to.”

When you start to examine the new format, you’ll quickly see that there are five major modifications in these Facebook brand pages. First, like a cover photo on a magazine, there’s a widescreen image at the top of the page. This is your brand’s first impression to attract your audience. And to ensure that you keep it inviting, Facebook has imposed image guidelines that exclude your using this space as a billboard for website addresses, contact information, or promotions.

Second, placed vertically on the right is the historical timeline. This is an opportunity to showcase your brand’s stories. Different from the old format, here companies are able to add past events that don’t necessarily tie into the date on which they joined Facebook, i.e. a company’s founding or other milestone. This is a great method for humanizing your brand and showcasing your credibility through strong engaging content.

Third, to help you drive traffic to key areas, Facebook has introduced the ability to make selected content “sticky” for seven days. The new Timeline format gives brands the option to “pin” key information to the top of the page so you can highlight important content like that hot promotional offer or the free white paper.

Fourth, there are also some handy new admin capabilities for page managers built into the Timeline so you’ll be able to view metrics about your page performance, edit content, and respond to messages from every day users. In addition, your consumers will be able to message your brand directly and you, in turn, will be able to provide tailored responses to specific questions or comments. Also, instead of deleting posts, you can curate your content, hiding comments that are out of date or inappropriate.

Finally, in addition to these aesthetic and functional changes, this new format will be an impetus for brands to develop their own custom apps that build on Facebook’s new social applications. It will promote the development of “Open Graph” apps, which have their data tapped for ad targeting, an area of business focus for Facebook. Timeline is a sophisticated evolution of the Facebook experience; it’s one that’s grown to gain a more comprehensive and detailed picture of the user’s interactions. It will influence the way companies deliver their Facebook strategies. These new capabilities will require more time and attention but are something your business will want to maximize. What are your thoughts on this new format? I’d love to read your comments.

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Dancing with Codes

You’ve seen them, these intricately marked Rorschach-like squares, next to merchandise in stores and on business cards, posters, or brochures. They’re called QR codes. The QR stands for “quick response.” More powerful than traditional bar codes, these mobile tagging devices, when scanned with a smartphone, provide you with links, geo-coordinates, text; they’re like a magic doorway to more information in a digital world. Developed in Japan for use in vehicle manufacturing, specifically inventory and supply chain management, QR codes initially gained rapid popularity in Europe and the U.S. But their adoption into the main stream while steady hasn’t been frenetic, for a couple of reasons. 
 
First, not everyone has a smartphone. Consider stats released on March 6 by comScore for mobile usage. One of the notable data points from the report is that for the three-month average period ending January 2012, over 100 million U.S. mobile subscribers used smartphones out of a total of 234 million Americans using mobile devices in general. That’s about 57% that can’t scan QR codes with their mobile device even if they want to. That certainly would slow use.
 
A second reason for slow adoption is that there are some other cooler, more sophisticated technologies out there like near field communication (NFC) and mobile visual search (MVS). With MVS, you use your smartphone’s camera to shoot a picture. Within seconds, the MVS application captures the image and provides information or the opportunity to purchase. MVS is still in its early days, so, in addition to requiring your smartphone, it works best with landmarks, books, wine, DVDs, and artwork. To get more detail, check out Jon Barocas’ February article in Mashable on Why QR Codes Won’t Last.
 
The other technology seen encroaching on QR codes is near field communication. NFC establishes a set of standards to enable radio communication between smartphones by touching the phones together or bringing them into close proximity. As I understand it,Google Wallet is an example. This financial transaction capability makes NFC more multifaceted and is a key differentiator from QR codes. This short video shows you how NFC works.  
 
The big difference is that you can’t make these technologies (NFC or MVS) easily at home, where with QR codes you can. In fact, you can make your own QR code right now at QRStuff.com and create an offer for whatever your heart desires. For the small business person this generates some great sales opportunities. For example, you can display your personalize QR code in your storefront windows, advertise different incentives for customers like a free latte with purchase, promote a free home evaluation on your business card, or design an icing message atop those cupcakes. Think of your QR codes as an interactive device that intrigues and then engages your smartphone customers, increasing the chance that they’ll remember your product and buy. If QR codes don’t last it really doesn’t matter, as you’re not looking at a huge investment; you’re just having some fun today and making some money. 
 
Look at what happened when Heineken recently used QR codes at a music festival where everybody attending could have their own code printed on a sticker and wear it. These QR stickers carried personal messages that ultimately helped people break the ice during the event (asking a stranger for a scan does break the ice). The interactivity continued afterwards as festival goers uploaded photos of themselves and their codes to Facebook and connected with friends they’d just met. Here’s how it all unfolded. Check out “almost flying man.”

 

Is Your Phone Dumb?

There’s certainly a lot of hype surrounding the growth of smartphones and especially Apple iPhones, but before you are charmed into spending precious marketing dollars on either, here’s a reality check. Of mobile phones sold worldwide in 2011 as reported by mobiThinking, 94% were not made by Apple, and as reported by comScore, 56% were not smartphones. They were “dumb” phones.

Dumb phones are feature phones, a generic term, according to Wikipedia, that’s applied to all mobile handsets that aren’t smartphones. Feature phones address the market for customers who don’t want or can’t afford a smartphone. Also, what might have been considered a smartphone a few years ago could be a feature phone today. Obviously because of the rapidly evolving technology, phone features are changing fast. As I understand it, a feature phone might have a personal digital assistant (PDA) or a portable media player, and include some “smart” features like a camera, touchscreen, GPS, or Wi-Fi access. Sounds pretty smart to me. (Does anyone else hear the crunching sound of products converging?)

ComScore reports that 44% of all mobile subscribers (42% in the U.S.) now use smartphones. This means that 56% of all mobile subscribers are using feature phones. So it appears that the real competition in the bid for your marketing dollars is between smart phones and feature phones with the pivotal moment happening when smartphone sales overtake feature phone sales. Hope you’re patient, because we’re not seeing that event any time soon.

Yes, it is true that smartphone sales in 2011 grew worldwide at 61.3%, and feature phones started to decline at -2.9%, but there were still well over a billion feature phones sold in 2011, outselling smartphones by more than 2:1. This means that for every person who buys a smartphone, two will buy a feature phone.

As reported by IDC’s Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst, “Feature phones maintain their appeal on the basis of price and ease of use. At the same time, feature phones are fighting to maintain their market share. To meet the challenge, feature phones are becoming more like smartphones, incorporating mobile Internet and third-party applications.” While this may not stem the smartphone tide, according to Llamas, it should “slow down the rate at which smartphones are selected over feature phones.” (I thought that crunching noise wasn’t coming from the blender).

What’s a smart business person to do? My suggestion is that you take a good look at your existing customer base. Maybe a mobile phone survey, even an outbound phone call to a random sample, is a good first step. I know “talking to your customers” is my go-to position but before you allocate dollars to develop an iPhone app, you really should have a handle on how many of your customers have iPhones. If your customers are the salt of the earth, you may find that they’re feature-phone owners, in which case you’ll want to know what mobile manufactures and what features.

My closing thought is that 2011 was a game-changing year for the mobile industry. Smartphones entered the market big time, tablets emerged, and consumers, like you and me, started integrating mobile behaviors into our lives. It’s a new dawn and a new day. But we’re all embracing these different technologies at different rates, so be sure that where and how you’re marketing your products and services is in sync with your customers’ personal and social adoption of these platforms. Otherwise you’ll be wasting money.

 

How Apple’s Chinese Workers are like Oompa-Loompas

In Ronald Dahl’s adventure Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Oompa-Loompas escape from their natural predators in Loompaland by accepting Willy Wonka’s invitation to work at his factory. There, these short-statured, orange-skinned people live happily, free from being eaten by the Whangdoodles, Hornswogglers, and Snozzywangers. They sing songs, make chocolate, and get paid in their favorite food, cacao beans.  I like to pretend that my smartphone is made by Oompa-Loompas in that socially responsible factory. 

But that’s not the case as we discovered in a recent New York Times article in which Apple received a large black eye for manufacturing their iPads and iPhones in China in what was described as troubling working conditions, characterized by low wages and excessive overtime. Of course, Apple isn’t the only manufacturer stooping to these practices and sourcing to low bidders like Foxconn. HP also uses this manufacturer and, in fact, I’m hard pressed to find an electronic device marketed in the U.S. that isn’t made by workers stacked in tech dorms in China. 

So does this mean consumers should stop buying iPads? No, but it does create a hurdle for Apple devotees, who don’t want to disguise their devices or be perceived as loyalists to a big bad company. So what actions will they take? The answer is in the October 2011 Cone/Echo Global CR Opportunity Study, which reported that consumers worldwide (and they surveyed over 10,000 people) are demanding a higher level of social responsibility from the companies they buy from. Many reported using their loyalty and purchasing power to advance these demands. As Apple’s consumers utilize their power to press for the company to evaluate external suppliers like Foxconn, what actions do you think the company will take and how will those actions impact sourcing and manufacturing in China?  We’ll watch and see. 

Corporate responsibility critics complain that the time and money spent “doing good” detracts from the business mission, which is to sell people the products they want and make money doing it. But Doug Guthrie, (no relation), Dean of the George Washington University School of Business, in his Forbes article, Corporate Social Responsibility: Cheaper Than a Pension Fund, provides a historical case for corporations leading the way to the rise of CSR. “They (companies) put the agenda into play in the first place, actively defining the system and what constituted socially responsible corporate behavior.” 

As evidenced by the negative reaction to China’s manufacturing practices, the Cone/Echo survey, and Dr. Guthrie’s educated view, brand marketers (and their CEOs) should realize that CSR does not stand on its own as an act of altruism or as a public relations stunt. CSR is a method of creating and maintaining brand legitimacy and it impacts every aspect of the business even vendor employment practices, as the Apple “incident” has shown. 

The moral of the story is to take CSR seriously and examine your company’s actions at every audience touch point. Be prepared to discuss and defend what the public sees and perceives, remembering that customers today are more engaged and knowledgeable than any other time in capitalism’s history. If there’s a weak point, fix it, because the value of that action will pay off in brand credibility…which will mean dollars to the bottom line. 

Also don’t discount Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory as only a child’s story. It is a great example of the benefit of corporate social responsibility because by protecting the Oompa-Loompas in his factory, Willy Wonka achieved three key goals. First, he defined a strong platform for branding the uniqueness of his product, integrating the company identity with his rare employees. Chocolate made exclusively by Oompa-Loompas. Second, his actions portrayed the company as a benefactor and we all know that philanthropy is a “good” thing. And third, he created an exceptional economic advantage, significantly lowering his manufacturing costs and giving him a considerable edge over his competitors. His workers were housed in dormitories on-site and got paid beans. 

 

Brand-Jacked!!

Do you remember Larry, a.k.a. “The Target”? His photograph was taken with his mobster sidekicks, Johnny, “The Face”, and Freddy, “The Fish.” The photos were part of a branding campaign I worked on (a while ago) for the DayGlo Color Corporation. The issue was that their brand was being hijacked.

Brand jacking is what happens when other folks start using your brand’s name for their stuff. For example, Kleenex is both a tissue and a brand. In Europe, when you vacuum your carpet, you’re “Hoover-ing.” In DayGlo’s case, of course, florescent paint was being called “dayglo.”

Linguistic experts thrill at this because it is proof that our language is dynamic as new words and language patterns are forever evolving. But for corporations and causes, with the growing number of social channels, this word metamorphosis is a mixed blessing. Brand jacking can be problematic but also contribute significantly to awareness.

We’ve all read about the negative side, like when a politician or celebrity has had a fake social media account created for them by a malicious fan or their personal accounts hacked. There are web addresses, too, changed ever so slightly from the company’s own address, containing content your mom wouldn’t approve of.

I also read recently how protesters are using Amazon’s open review and tagging model to highlight unpopular products or issues. Probably most common is negative comments on Facebook. Also, see Turnier’s article “When Twitter Hashtags Attack.” These items and more give brand managers insomnia as they seek positive ways to deal with negative images.

The good side of brand jacking is that you’ve definitely cut through the clutter when the consumer sees fit to adopt your product as the name for the thing. You are the brand. You’re what the consumer expects and you influence how they evaluate similar products. That’s brand nirvana in my book.

In DayGlo’s case, the brand has become the word and something pretty unique happened that the company didn’t sanction. Back in 2006 on college campuses in Florida, the world’s largest paint party began. It was called DAYGLOW. Close spelling, same sounding, but not exactly the same moniker as DayGlo Color Corporation. Of course, consumers aren’t paying any attention to the slight spelling change. What’s a “W” anyway, except a way around some legalese (I’m betting)?

It’s still going on today. DAYGLOW, the event, promises high-energy music, art, dance, and PAINT in one mind-blowing performance where dayglo, no I mean, fluorescent paint, is sprayed onto a waiting audience. What a way to engage young consumers in a positive brand experience. The text between two girlfriends would read, “Covered in dayglo and dancing my a– off.”

I sympathize with DayGlo as this scenario is like giving my daughter the car keys. It is difficult to let go of your brand and allow your fans to take control; but in this case, DayGlo the company was never in control. They were completely removed from the equation. The fans were followers of the performance experience, not the paint.

I know these fans aren’t differentiating between any fluorescent paint and the real DayGlo paint, yet I can’t help but believe that their participation and enthusiasm is instrumental in popularizing the paint and the company. And when, during the concert, they’re sprayed with paint, that’s a fun-filled introduction to a product they wouldn’t have thought twice about before. It also makes me consider the power of crowdsourcing in creating awareness. Maybe the lesson here is: Get noticed, and invite your brand to a party. What do you think?

If you’re wondering what happened to Larry, The Target — he met his demise in a shoot-out in his hometown, Cleveland, Ohio. He probably would have been okay if his fashion sense had been better. At the time of the shooting he was wearing a long overcoat. It was DayGlo pink.