The Viral Series I: The Ideal Target Audience

Let me first describe what is not considered a good target audience for a viral service such as a social network: Think of an online community for women, aged 18 to 55. Why is it not good? I will give you 3 reasons:

1- The more you define and limit your niche, the easier you will be able to address their needs and come up with a differentiated and relevant service. An example? LinkedIn: a social network for professionals. Another one? InMobile.org: a social network for mobile executives. If you are trying to please all demographics at once, you will end up not pleasing any of them and having an obsolete service.

2- The principle of targeted ads is defeated in the example above. If you put yourself in the shoes of the advertisers, wouldn’t you rather have more information about your target audience instead of shooting aimlessly to all directions?

3- The Millennium Generation is the target audience that has been the early adopter of social networks such as MySpace, Facebook, etc. The mobile phone and the internet are an intrinsic part of their social life. But beware, the Millennium Generation is also the toughest audience to please and we will analyze this later, when we talk about technology, GUI and branding.

So what we see in the first place is that segmentation is key. In other words, you need to have a well defined target audience and your service must be honestly relevant for them.

Would you like to add anything to this list and share your opinion? Feel free to click on the comments link and voice your thoughts!

The Viral Series

I have been working with viral based communities, online and mobile applications since the 90s and viral marketing is definitely one of the areas that I feel definitely very passionate for.

One of the most frequent questions that I get regards to reaching a critical mass when providing a service or application which is dependable on user adoption.

In plain words, how can you develop a website or a service (like YouTube or FaceBook), spread the word, and get a huge amount of users when offering a service?

It takes a seasoned marketing professional to do the job and I decided to share some ideas in this blog. Since it is a broad subject, I will write a series of posts on viral marketing.

Here are the items that I will be talking about in the next posts:

1- The ideal target audience and the millennium generation
2- The importance of branding in viral marketing
3- The interface (also called GUI and UI). GUI stands for Graphic user interface and UI for User Interface.
4- Personalization
5- Peer and interest groups
6- Must-have features
7- Number of clicks
8- Internet, cell phones and convergence
9- Virtual popularity
10- Unique user X Registered user


Please feel free to contact me and suggest other topics that you would like me to comment on.

And before I forget: If you wish to contact me for consulting purposes or speaking engagements, please feel free to write to kgoldrajch@gmail.com.

Also, if you wish you share your opinion with me and our readers, you can do so by clicking on the comments link and voicing your thoughts.

Global Branding and Ries’ 22 Immutable Rules

I am often hired as a consultant to companies that need to create and implement global branding strategies to increase their presence as well as expand their market share. These are different challenges, but most of the times, they come together with a very similar set of questions. Most companies are looking for a cost effective formula to launch products and services and acquire a loyal user base that grows exponentially (virally).

Let’s face it: Branding is crucial. If you are looking for basic branding rules, I suggest reading Al Ries’ 22 immutable Laws of Branding. When working with global branding, remember to prioritize your demographics and adapt the rules regionally, without losing the brand identity.

Here is one excellent example: In order to expand to Israel, McDonald's needed respect the local culture and as a result modify some of its key characteristics (such as menu items) without losing its brand consistency. Besides changing its menu to offer 100% kosher beef and non-dairy products (including no cheeseburgers), they decided to also close on Saturdays and religious holidays. In addition to that, their commitment to give back to the local communities is kept as they donate hundreds of thousands of NIS to charities which benefit children such as The Shnider Hospital for Children; Make a Wish Association; The Fighting Cancer Association, and etc.

If you wish to learn more about global branding, please click here to read a previous post.

To share your opinion with me and International Communications’ readers, please click on the comments link.

The Fear Factor: Public Speaking

Marketing, PR and Communication professionals are often expected not only to create powerful and persuasive Marketing collateral such as sell sheets and PowerPoint presentations, but also to be articulate speakers.

Public speaking is a learned skill, just like playing the piano or the trumpet. It takes time and practice. There are several courses and even orators groups, such as Toastmasters Internationals where you can practice in a friendly, supportive and encouraging environment while receiving the guidance you need.

Here are 10 tips for Public Speaking from the Toastmasters International website:

1. Know your material. Pick a topic you are interested in. Know more about it than you include in your speech. Use humor, personal stories and conversational language – that way you won’t easily forget what to say.

2. Practice. Practice. Practice! Rehearse out loud with all equipment you plan on using. Revise as necessary. Work to control filler words; Practice, pause and breathe. Practice with a timer and allow time for the unexpected.

3. Know the audience. Greet some of the audience members as they arrive. It’s easier to speak to a group of friends than to strangers.

4. Know the room. Arrive early, walk around the speaking area and practice using the microphone and any visual aids.

5. Relax. Begin by addressing the audience. It buys you time and calms your nerves. Pause, smile and count to three before saying anything. ("One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand. Pause. Begin.). Transform nervous energy into enthusiasm.

6. Visualize yourself giving your speech. Imagine yourself speaking, your voice loud, clear and confident. Visualize the audience clapping – it will boost your confidence.

7. Realize that people want you to succeed. Audiences want you to be interesting, stimulating, informative and entertaining. They’re rooting for you.

8. Don’t apologize for any nervousness or problem – the audience probably never noticed it.

9. Concentrate on the message – not the medium. Focus your attention away from your own anxieties and concentrate on your message and your audience.

10. Gain experience. Mainly, your speech should represent you — as an authority and as a person. Experience builds confidence, which is the key to effective speaking. A Toastmasters club can provide the experience you need in a safe and friendly environment

For additional information on Toastmasters International, click here to visit their website and look for a club close to your work or home.

Global Audiences II: Dove's Ads in Hong Kong

Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty is one of my favorite campaigns. By far one of the best I have seen in the last 5 years, for several reasons. It stands out for its honesty, the strong emotional appeal and the universal theme.

Actually the theme is so universal, that even the version made for the Hong Kong market remains basically the same. Here are the two ads and how they adapted the same message and format to the two different demographics:

More than Words for a Global Audience

I am a big advocate for using as many visual aids as you can in order to convey your message as clearly as possible. You will also find out that humor will be one the best allies you will ever have in order to ensure that your message comes across easily, especially in advertisement. Take this Chinese Menthos ad for example (no need to speak Chinese in order to understand it) :

I also wanted to thank Kare for a previous comment on this blog and bringing up the TBS Very Funny Ads.

If you are interested in watching other Very Funny TBS ads, go to: http://veryfunnyads.com/ads/25650.html

Comments? Suggestions? Other great ads? Do not hesitate sharing your ideas with us. Go ahead and click on the comment link.

This Super Bowl Ad: Neither a Mean Nor an Average Joe

I was raised in beautiful Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and one of the most interesting TV shows I used to watch there while I was growing up was called Intervalo (“commercial break” in Portuguese). The show presented some of the best TV ads around the globe: the funny, the witty, the expensive… Well, today is Super Bowl and once again, it is time to watch the ads.

An interesting ad caught my attention last year because of the cross-pollination of several communication trends such as the user generated content used inside the typical ad structure.

Here is the Reader’s Digest version: PepsiCo’s Doritos issued an ad challenge to consumers in the run up to the Super Bowl as part of a carefully crafted marketing campaign. The result? Two million hits on the challenge microsite, three-quarters of a million unique users, 2 million video views and around a billion page impressions. The ad? Just $12.79 to produce. My opinion? Brilliant! Let's watch it again:






If you wish to opine, go ahead, click on the comments link! I am looking forward to hearing what you have to say.

Global PR: Sell your story, not your products

In terms of Dollars, a good PR campaign may be much more effective than plain advertising or other marketing tactics. When information comes from a reliable source like the press, whatever you sell gains instant credibility.

But how do you get your word out? How do you get the press to comment on your product or service? Do you just pick up the phone and pitch these writers?

Well, that's when a good PR professional is needed. I have worked on both sides of the counter, in a PR agency and leading in-house PR, and I created campaigns for very diverse markets such as numerous European countries, South American regions, segmented demographics here in the US, etc.

There is no list with what is absolutely necessary for you to do in PR, it all depends on a matrix of elements. However, I would suggest avoiding certain things when pitching the press. Yes, your campaign must be innovative and creative, but beware of creating futile and irrelevant buzz. What will draw the attention of the press is neither a full and precise product description nor artificial hooks.

What you need is a good story around your product. Put yourself in the shoes of a journalist. Wouldn’t you be bored to death to copy and paste a product description from a press release into your column? And how would you feel if you had a chance of writing a really juicy story?

If you would like to comment on global PR campaigns, stories, ads, etc, please feel free to. I am eager to hear you opinion.

Visual Identity and color scheme 2.0

When creating or updating your visual identity, one of the most important things is to chose the color scheme that you will be using.

The color scheme you chose will be seen in your logo, your marketing collateral, your website, etc. Before creating your color scheme, I strongly suggest reading as much as possible about color theory, symbolism and psychology. Here’s are two links for you:

1)Wikipedia article on color theory
2) Wikipedia on color symbolism and psychology

Once you chose your color scheme, some of the problems that sooner or later you may face is that your collateral starts looking repetitive, or you may get bored of the color scheme, or even because company and services values shift with time, the color scheme does not reflect the current values anymore. If you want to update your visual identity, remember that you will need to have a significant budget to replace your business cards, marketing handouts and electronic collateral such as your PowerPoint presentations and pdf files.

Here is what Vivo, a Brazilian mobile operator did: they opted for what I call a chameleon logo, or a logo 2.0. That is, the logo remains the same, however, the color changes according to their need, such as packaging, website pages, ad campaigns etc.

I created a slide show where you can see these logos:

So, what do you think about it? Does it defeat the purpose of being recognized easily or is it a better way to adapt your brand to different values and communicate well within various target audiences? I’d be delighted to hear your opinion.

Tutorial 2.0: To acquire and expand a user base

Equally important as branding your products and services to your users is educating them how to use them. If we are talking about web and mobile consumer oriented services the user base acquisition is directly subordinated to how easy it is for these users to understand and use your services, especially if you are counting on viral growth. And if you intend to expand the user base to other countries, translating all of your material is not an option.

Of course the user experience plays a vital role here, in other words, how intuitive and friendly the user interface is, so that users can rapidly adopt your service. But what happens when you have to introduce new features, for example? Or if it’s a brand new app? What happens if there is more to explain? Well, that’s when you need to consider a tutorial.

FAQs offer a limited (and tedious) way to explain features and troubleshoot. Moreover many times the answers are not accurate. I am not saying that you should avoid FAQs, but think about offering visual and audio aids as well: images, audio bits, flash animations that can be interactive, even online reps to answer questions in real time.

I personally prefer using video clips. Here’s a link to a company that created a very innovative, unique and simple way to explain apps, services and products (one of these things that makes me ask myself why I haven’t thought about it…): http://www.commoncraft.com/. They are called Common Craft and here’s one of their tutorial clips:




If you have other clips (and topics) that you would like to suggest, please e-mail me at kgoldrajch@gmail.com or feel free to post a comment.