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The Face-to-Face Book: Why

Real Relationships Rule in the


Digital Marketplace
2 COMMENTS

A review by Russell Reich, Sr. VP Creative Strategy, MC2

The social network


If youre born a giraffe, you have about an hour from your moment of birth to
learn how to get up on your own four spindly legs, high enough to get yourself
some nourishment from mom. If you arent born with the natural inclination or
capacity to do that, you cant expect a lot of social support to help you out. Its
stand on your own, or else.
For us humans, though, it takes about 15 to 20 years for our brains to fully
develop to the point where we can, theoretically, become responsible for our own
survival. During those first couple of decades, then, we find ourselves dependent
on others, and that dependency speaks directly to our identity as social beings.
Our survival as a species, write Ed Keller and Brad Fay, the co-authors of The
Face-to-Face Book (Free Press, April 2012), has depended not merely on our

being the strongest or most aggressive, but on being collaborativeour


evolutionary history has given us highly effective tools for reading the emotions
and opinions of other people and for adapting to them.
With that bit of biological anthropology in mind, Keller and Fay suggest that, as
social animals, the messages we get are usually received within social contexts
in which people share with each other what they see and hear [they] compare
experiences and opinions, and then make collective choices. Keller and Fays
studies, and the evidence they collected from other sources, suggest that
exploiting the massive opportunity presented by social contexts and behavior is
imperative to business success.

Beware shiny objects


More than 90% of the conversations about products, services, and brands that
take place every day in America happen offline.
Its easy to be distracted in this quest by shiny objects like online social media
sites, and Keller and Fay caution businesses against overly investing in
technology instead of people. They assert that people flock to sites like Facebook
not because theyre the source of social opportunities but the result of our
underlying need for interaction with others, a need that transcends social media
channels. After all, their research shows, More than 90% of the conversations
about products, services, and brands that take place every day in America
happen offline. (Emphasis added.)
With a ratio of offline to online conversations like that, Keller and Fay are most
interested in identifying how marketers can encourage the live conversations and
face-to-face sharing and engagements that influence brand attachments and
buying behaviors.
Their thesis is this: Good marketing starts conversations, and chiefly because of
those conversations people make decisions that ultimately determine which
brands are successful and which fail.

What works. What doesnt.


So what starts those productive and lucrative conversations? What makes a
brand talkworthy?
Its not what you might think, as Keller and Fay use their data to debunk some
major marketing myths. Contrary to, say, Seth Godin, who believes that a Purple
Cow (a wildly differentiated product that stands out in a crowded market) is the
trigger to better WOM (word-of-mouth, to those in the know), the data show that
the latest thing, the innovative or the cool is not particularly talkworthy in the long
run.

Neither are outrageous ads, public stunts and giveaways. Instead, the authors
found the leading motivations for engaging WOM include:

Learning about the latest products.


Being one of the first people to know about a new product.
Sharing new products and ideas with friends and family.
Giving feedback to the manufacturers of the products.

Seemingly unexciting products and brands can ignite powerful and abundant
conversationsno extra pizzazz or coolness factor required.
While newness animates conversational interest in three of these four
motivations, its not the newness itself but the engagement, the verbslearning,
being, sharing, givingthat matter most to people. Instead of the old marketing
line, Sell the sizzle not the steak, Keller and Fay propose, the steakthe
productis the sizzle. And the steak need not come from a purple cow.
Seemingly unexciting products and brands can ignite powerful and abundant
conversationsno extra pizzazz or coolness factor required. As examples, the
authors cite data that show the most talked about brands include Walmart,
Verizon, Coca-Cola and McDonalds.

Selling the Steak


The Face-to-Face Book provides a number of techniques and case studies that
demonstrate how product-centric stories can be effectively built to trigger WOM.
Here are some examples:

Blue Moon beer, its companys CMO explains, is presented in a tall Blue
Moon glass with a garnish of orangenot [so] that people say, Hey,
check out my Blue Moon, but its that people see it and ask the bartender
or drinker, Hey, what is that? which is a version of WOM strategy:
creating an interesting retail theater, which helps drive discovery and
conversation. The story behind the orange is that the product contains
orange and coriander, but the slice not only brings out the flavor, it sparks
the talk.

The same company uses cold-activated cans for its Coors brand. If you
want people to talk about your product, youve got to give them something
to talk about, says the same CMO, [and] Id rather that they talk about
my product than my commercial. To that end, the cans turn color when
theyre cold: When these Mountains turn blue, your beer is as cold as the
Rockies is written on the can. As vernacular for My beer is cold, he
says, youve got My mountains are blue, which reinforces and
dramatizes the idea of Rocky Mountain cold refreshment.
Apples white ear buds were designed to be noticeable in crowds, to hit
consumers with a bit of peer pressure.

The iconic glowing Apple logo on the lid of a MacBook is upside down if
you are the user preparing to open your computer. Why? The logo is
designed for other people nearby to see once the laptop is open: the logo
is a conversation prompt, a cue for social influence. (The authors are
perhaps unaware that the logo on early Mac Powerbooks was the other
way around, so Im a bit skeptical that the change was made with the
deliberate social influencing intent the authors ascribe. Apple may just
have been queasy when they realized that, for years, they had been
representing their own logo upside down when seen publicly.)

Aside from these insightful examples, the scientific nature of Keller and Fays
research also provides some juicy statistics to help justify the investment in faceto-face marketing and deflate the online social media bubble.
90 percent of brand conversations take place offline.
71 percent of 1.2 billion tweets studied produced no response, suggesting they
fell on deaf ears.
The remaining 23 percent did get a reply (but generally just one).
Only 6 percent of tweets are retweeted.
Twitter, Keller and Fay conclude, has great potential to be viral, but most of the
time it just doesnt work that way.
(I cant wait to pull out some of these numbers the next time Im told I have to
tweet more or create another product Facebook page. I may do it, but I wont be
under the misperception that its worth more than it is.)

Bottom line
How else can we apply the data, stories and insights from this book to the
exhibits and events business?
Heres my suggestion. At MC, our output, our product, comprises exhibit
structures, meetings, events and environments. We are responsible for the
physical contexts in which peoples social behavior plays out. One way to think of
what we do is that we design and build containers. Their purpose is to contain
(that is, prompt, maintain and enhance) conversations about a brand and its
products. Whether were planning an event, an environment or an exhibit, we
need to start from the product story and create the context from there. Our test is
how effectively we enable the learning, sharing, being and giving that people
naturally want to engage in anyway, and enable those social activities around the
product and the brand.
The Face-to-Face Book provides a number of valuable insights that not only can
inform your exhibit design and event planning, but can also stimulate the
conversations about why exhibits are designed and planned the way they are.

After all, whenever you are able to explain how, for example, structures and
visual cues can be scientifically applied to drive the conversations that bring
about proven brand results, you elevate your value to your company. And thats
worth talking about.

Russell Reich, MC Senior Vice President Creative


Strategy
Russell Reich directs creative strategy for new and
existing business at MC. He has 20 years of experience
as a senior creative and marketing communications
strategist for an array of Fortune 50 clients. Reich has
developed numerous interactive simulations for engaging
and enhancing visitor experiences on trade show floors
and at corporate events. His writing and creative credits include museum and
trade show exhibits, product launches, video scripts and a wide variety of
communications for such clients as IBM, Pfizer, Deloitte and other leaders in the
technology, pharmaceutical and financial industries as well as in the non-profit
field. Webmaster magazine called him [one of] the people who could see far
enough into the future to create it. He is the author of numerous books and
articles. Reich graduated with a bachelors degree from Colgate University and a
master of fine arts degree from Columbia University.

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