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Mr and Mrs Marketeer: how difficult is your job if your brand is…well…not sexy?

Forrester analyst, Josh Bernoff, writing on Groundswell reckons that anyone in marketing responsible for “boring brands” is really earning their keep, as “you are trying to get people interested in something they don’t really care about”.

Having worked in B2B public relations for more than a decade, I can testify to the sector having more than its fair share of companies that the world at large may call “boring”. It’s a totally subjective problem; where cable ties and ball bearings may be as effective as counting sheep to some, they are rock and roll personifed to someone else.

But back to Bernoff and the challenge of making the “boring” interesting…

Believe it or not, he sees social media as a thoroughly relevant way of bringing brands - that you wouldn’t automatically think of as social - to life.  

The point is, talking about your brand or company may be inherently dull to the customer, but talking about their problems isn’t. Bernoff calls this “borrowed relevance” - generating talk about things your audience really cares about. And the examples he cites show how coming at your company’s marketing from a lateral point of view (our sister company, TBWA Manchester, would call it “disruptive”) can achieve something that has significance for the customer and banishes the boring tag.

Especially with B2B organisations - where their overall customer base is unlikely to be on the same scale as consumer brands -creating a buzz about what you do and making it relevant to the people who matter is essential. And social media is another way of finding those people, keeping them interested and relishing just how beautifully boring your business is. 

Minutes ago, Forrester analyst, Jeremiah Owyang, (pictured) concluded his presentation at the Dutch social media conference, CSN 09, leaving no-one in doubt about the future of social media.

And though I wasn’t lucky enough to be in Amsterdam myself,  through the magic of Twitter and the tweeting fingers of various attendees, we can all share (in an oh-so-social media fashion) some of the insights that Jeremiah gained from the recent research project, The Future of the Social Web.

Points picked up at the conference included:

- Social is inevitable: everything will be social

- The needs of the (online) community must come first - brand second

- Put the most popular part of your corporate website on social networks where they can become social

- Products and services will be rated by online communities, like it or not

- Make your online content social and aim to share it on the right platforms (yes - that means “fishing where the fish are”)

- When selling social media to your company, focus on the C-word: customers

- Communities take the driving seat when it comes to buying

- (Imposing) registration online is for one thing only - to allow marketeers to bug you and bug you again 

(Thanks to Tweeps for the Tweets: @marcvanderput, @AmazingPR, @RobertLommers, @csnconference, @evr)

Twitter turned three years old this weekend and those who are now converts/addicts must wonder how we ever lived without it. And while Marshall Kirkpatrick over at ReadWriteWeb has taken the time to hail its significance to social media, Forrester analyst, Jeremiah Owyang, is describing how companies are starting to ask questions about Twitter that suggest it’s now considered a serious business tool.

But how is it working for companies and their customers in the UK?

Travel writer, Mark Hodson, has been tasked by the Times to vet the Twitter performance of various travel companies , and interesting reading it makes.

And taking the example of each travel company in turn provides a handy illustration of some of the better principles of using Twitter. So…

Easy Jet - A real human being makes good customer service accessible and fixes problems.

Lonely Planet - Gathers useful/interesting travel tips from real people and makes them easily searchable via a hash tag.

Brittany Ferries - Shares good deals with its Twitter followers.

Mr & Mrs Smith - Is responsive to customer queries.

Black Tomato - Is conversational rather than salesy and drives people to other content online.

Visit Britain - Shares useful ideas.

Thomson Holidays - Communicates to customers’ concerns in a crisis (in this case, flights to places affected by Swine Flu).

Hodson also takes a look at some travel Twitter feeds distinctly underperforming - namely Virgin Atlantic and London City Airport - which share a similar problem: seemingly having no clear idea of what to do on Twitter or why. 

But his appraisal of Butlins’ Twitter feed seems a bit harsh. After all, it provides offers; monitors and responds to discussion of its brand (including Hodson’s piece in the Times); finds and re-uses positive, third party mentions of Butlins; provides teasers for new openings; directs followers to other content online and handles customer complaints openly and sympathetically. Maybe Mr Hodson just doesn’t like Butlins; or maybe I’m still overwhelmed by my 1975 visit to Butlins at Bognor Regis that’s never been bettered.

OK, I exaggerate…

(Thanks to @adrian_johnson for bringing the original article to our attention)