Why businesses need to think beyond the logo and tagline

By: Steve Cuno

Re-brands are fashionable these days.

No, that’s not quite correct. What’s fashionable is reworking the logo and tagline and calling the result a re-brand.
When will marketers learn?

Your brand isn’t what you say. It’s what your products and behavior show. If you want to re-brand, strengthen your values and make sure you deliver on them at every point of contact.

Consider a certain major hamburger chain. Over the years, their logo has been updated. Their tagline has morphed, morphed and morphed again. Their menu has broadened. But the chain has not referred to such changes as re-brands. Good thing, for their fundamental brand values remain unchanged: fast, inexpensive, sufficiently palatable precooked food under a heat lamp, a clean kitchen and a place you can take the kids.

Ironically, a major retailer that really is attempting a re-brand isn’t calling it that. The once-thriving department store hopes for a comeback as the young consumer’s place for affordable fashion. Rather than insult the market with token changes like an updated logo and a new tagline that says, “We’re not your penny-pinching bagperson’s store any more,” this retailer has made substantive inventory changes, replacing its once-dowdy offering with fashions associated with highbrow, with-it stores. Whether young consumers respond remains to be seen, but the marketer deserves credit for making real, not just cosmetic, change and for allowing the advertising to follow. That’s how you do a real re-brand.

In the direct mail business, we’ve known about branding all along. It’s just that we give it other names. Clearly defined target markets, compelling benefits, irresistible offers, a generous return policy and courteous customer service are brand values. When those values are solidly in place, a direct mail package can (and often does) look like hell and still sell like crazy.

Not to say that the look is unimportant. A well-designed logo with consistent graphic standards can help customers instantly recognize a company whose products and policies they trust. A pleasing, accessible layout can help customers easily navigate their way to salient information. But these are the trappings of a brand, not the brand itself. No logo or tagline can save a company without the substance to back them.

Steve Cuno is the chairman of RESPONSE Prospecting & Loyalty Strategies, Inc. in Utah.

The author of a new book criticizing “gut-driven” marketing explains why relying on intuition over intelligence is just plain dumb

By: Steve Cuno

With the possible exception of abstaining from chocolate to ward off acne, some erroneous beliefs are arguably harmless. But many are not. It’s one thing to wear a silly golf hat to improve your game. It’s another to stake millions in marketing dollars on a campaign that “feels right,” or to reject one that doesn’t.

Yet every day, marketers make big decisions using naught but “gut intuition” as their guide. Then, to ensure all are duly impressed with the higher authority of their lower halves, they justify their decisions with, “…and my gut” - pause for effect - “is never wrong.”

There would be nothing objectionable about what I refer to as “gut-driven” marketing if guts were always, or even usually, right. They are neither. At best, the ratio of correct to incorrect gut-driven decisions is 50/50.

Here’s why: For every gut that turns out to be right, another necessarily turns out to be wrong. For instance, the founder of a major shipping company felt in his gut that his business model would succeed, but his college professor’s gut disagreed. The producer of what arguably became the world’s most popular rock group was rejected by a record executive whose gut prompted him to turn the band down. The first man to mass-produce cars had a gut that said Americans wanted affordable automobiles, but his early partners’ guts didn’t.

I don’t find 50 percent odds encouraging, but if you do, I must confess that your gut’s odds are really much lower. The above examples are based on successful ventures. Consider the number that bomb: failed products like “New” Coke, deserted retail outlets, movies no one sees and bankrupt entrepreneurs, to name a few. More ideas flop than fly, yet behind every flop was a gut that assured a believer, “It’ll work.”

Then what about guts that predict failure? Aren’t they right most of the time?

Killing ideas ensures avoiding failures, but it also precludes breakthroughs. Thus the inventor of the incandescent light bulb missed out on alternating current. The man whose gut rightly told him that mass-producing cheap cars would succeed lost ground by not offering color choices. And the founders of what became a large chain of coffee houses rejected an opportunity to sell brewed coffee by the cup. So declining opportunities is risky, too. With the number of ideas that never make it to market, there is no way of knowing how many early-abandoned plans might have turned out to be big hits. (Click here to learn four common reasons why marketers mistakenly think their guts are infallible)

Trading guts for brains

Of course, this raises the question, What exactly should you bet your marketing budget on? Didn’t you work your way into your job using your skills, experience and judgment?

So quit making excuses and do it

“The ROI is hard to measure.”

That’s a common objection we hear from direct marketers to using the new class of online social media tools - blogs, user-generated video and digital networks - to supplement campaigns involving mail, TV and other channels. Measurement enthusiasts fret that social media programs don’t fit neatly into the metrics they’ve grown to know and love.

Well, we contend that they’re missing a big opportunity.

The ROI objection overlooks the value of engaging customers in meaningful dialogue, the kind that creates customer evangelists.

It also discounts the fact that the “I” (”investment”) side of the social media equation is trivial. In fact, the real ROI of social networks may be “risk of inaction.” In a recent survey of senior marketing officials, more than three-quarters said social media marketing could give them a competitive edge. Someone’s figuring this out. Shouldn’t it be you?

Instead, though, too often we see marketers who are afraid to push for hard numbers in new frontiers and who, as a result, often miss lucrative opportunities to spread their brand message. We say take the plunge: Learn to properly wield modern measurement tools and the potential payoff can be huge, whether that return translates into building more robust direct mail lists, enlisting more customer advocates or tapping into the opinions of what are essentially built-in focus groups.

Consider, for instance, basic Web analytics, which identify the pages people visit on your Web site, where these visitors come from, how long they spend with you and when they leave. And then there’s the realm of consumer-generated content, blogs, discussion groups, commentary among members of online social hubs. All of these permit you simple ways to measure who’s coming to your site, what they have to say and what they want. And blended with direct mail and other channels, these tools allow you to extend not just your measuring stick, but your message, too.

Once you’ve used these tactics to identify your most enthusiastic customers, you can engage them to help guide your own campaign efforts. They can even to do some marketing for you. Some companies are now starting online user groups or holding regular meetings in virtual worlds to talk with customers and get their feedback.

Speed is always essential, and utilizing high-end measurement tools gains valuable input from a group of savvy customers in a matter of hours. What’s the ROI on that?

Your most enthusiastic customers can even become deputy sales agents. Some marketers are using widgets that enthusiasts can display on their blogs and profile pages. Each click that results in a sale generates a commission for the site owner - at no expense to you.

These tactics are all fast, inexpensive and effective at enhancing the quality and efficiency of direct-mail campaigns. For the first time, it’s possible to measure returns according to what people say about you, rather than just whether they call you. Maybe the better metric would be Return on Engagement.

What catalogers are doing to preserve the planet

By: Aaron Dalton

Sustainability often presents a quandary for outdoor outfitter Patagonia.

On one hand, the company has dedicated itself fully to preserving the planet, its environmental and conservation goals defining everything from its mission statement to its product line.

But there’s another type of sustainability that Patagonia officials have to bear in mind that of their own business.

So when executives at the company talk about the environmental impact on forests of their successful catalog program, they do so knowing full well that, as much as big businesses may want to help the planet, they sometimes can’t help doing as much harm as good.

“We need to be profitable or we will not be sustainable, and the catalog is a successful sales driver for the company,” says Angela Weidmann, Patagonia’s catalog print production manager. “We cannot walk away from producing a catalog, so we strive to lessen the impact by committing to several things.”

And Patagonia is not alone in its efforts. From clothing companies to home furnishing manufacturers, retailers are taking a variety of steps to minimize the environmental impact of their catalog operations for the sake of the planet and also to retain the loyalty of the growing ranks of green consumers. (For more information about how direct mailers are “greening” their campaigns, please read “Fit to Print” and “Green Means Grow.”)

Take, for instance, outdoor apparel and equipment maker L.L. Bean, which ships 250 million catalogs annually. At L.L. Bean, steps toward sustainability include enforcing a policy that specifies suppliers who are third-party certified by organizations, such as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), as practicing sustainable forestry. Despite the slight cost increase, L.L. Bean has also begun stepping up the use of recycled content in its catalogs.

The company also claims to maintain one of the cleanest mailing lists in the industry, which makes economic and environmental sense. Sending catalogs to people who don’t want or need them wastes paper, production and mailing costs.

“Customers have an expectation of companies like ours. We sell outdoor goods and apparel so people can enjoy the outdoors, therefore we feel we have responsibility to maintain and protect the outdoors,” says L.L. Bean spokeswoman Carolyn Beem. “We think our customers are more attuned to issues surrounding paper, catalog production and environmental standards. While there is more than one way to green a business and achieve environmental best practices, most companies should assume that their customers will be paying attention.”

Many of the other big-name catalog retailers have taken steps to mitigate the environmental impact of their catalog operations in recent years. Limited Brands, the parent company of Victoria’s Secret, no longer accepts paper sourced from endangered forests of Canada’s Boreal Region. The company has also dedicated $1 million to research and advocacy for the protection of endangered forests.

New loyalty cards reveal more than ever about customers

By: Lara Jensen

Like a guy in a bar trying to get a girl’s telephone number, loyalty programs are increasingly chatting up customers with personalized messages that, in effect, say, “Haven’t we met somewhere before?”

While the use of a customer’s name and other top-level personal information has become commonplace, a few marketers are pushing the envelope and offering members unprecedented personalization. In some instances, these marketers represent industries building on loyalty programs that have been successful for decades - such as grocery-chain programs - while others are phasing out old efforts altogether in the face of new technology.

Last year, for instance, Virgin Megastores replaced a frequency-card program with a cutting-edge effort that the entertainment conglomerate tagged its “VIP” (short for “Virgin Important Person”) loyalty program. In addition to backstage concert passes, invitations to exclusive events and regular direct mail and e-mail communications, Virgin VIP members receive a card that is instantly rewriteable 500 times at the point of sale.

The advantage? A value-added “feedback loop”: the customer provides a marketer with information, the marketer targets a message to that customer and, in return, the customer provides the marketer with even more personal information, says Kelly Hlavinka, director at Colloquy, a loyalty marketing, consulting and publishing firm in Cincinnati. “Once you get the customer to provide insight that isn’t readily available in the marketplace, you are starting to build a competitive advantage,” she says.

In the Megastores’ case, the cards are designed to recognize a wide range of profiles and to display assorted advertising messages based on those profiles. There’s even an insert-media-like component, as the messages often carry promotional offers from other brands. As a result, Virgin Megastores knows more about its customers than it did a year ago and is constantly learning more, says Dee McLaughlin, vice president of marketing at Virgin Entertainment Group, North America. “The relationship with our customer is definitely different,” McLaughlin says.

The magnetic strip on the back of the card records details of purchases, so Virgin Megastores learns what kind of music or movie someone is buying and which format it’s in (CD, DVD, etc.). The front of the card displays highly targeted offers, relevant perks and special promotions for products that can be matched to member profiles by media type, genre and other categories. So if a member’s purchases suggest that, say, jazz is his or her music of choice, the VIP card can let that customer know about the newest offering from Branford Marsalis or a discount on the latest Miles Davis compilation.

Customers sign up for the VIP program in-store for free and receive their card instantly. So far, about 170,000 customers have joined.

Looking for ways to make your marketing efforts more eco-friendly? Our green “audit” just might help.

It’s getting easier every day to convince your CEO and CFO of the marketing benefits, and ultimately the bottom-line impact, of creating sustainable business processes. So the next time you champion some green marketing initiatives, you’re far more likely to get buy-in from the C-level types as well as your board of directors.

But once you’ve got the higher-ups on board, how do you get started? Experts agree that the best way to start is by taking stock: Exactly how green are you right now? What follows is a checklist of some of the eco-minded efforts espoused by sources in our recent green marketing issue. It’s by no means comprehensive, but it should give you a good idea of where your company stands right now - and how far you need to go.

In recent memory, which of the following green efforts have occurred within your organization? (Check all that apply. Score one point for each “yes” response.)

1. Decreased the thickness of your paper stock
2. Reduced the trim size on a mailer or catalog
3. Used recycled or “groundwood” paper rather than virgin stock
4. Used chlorine-free paper
5. Used soy- or water-based inks
6. Used such alternate energy sources as solar- or wind-generated electricity
7. Donated money to green initiatives to offset the cost of environmentally harmful business practices
8. Cleaned your mailing lists of duplicated or non-active recipients
9. Asked customers to specify how frequently they’d like to hear from you
10. Opted for printing processes that produce less waste, such as rotogravure
11. Offered customers print-on-demand technology
12. Sent customers online for follow-up information
13. Sent out larger print pieces on CD
14. Printed marketing materials on both sides of the paper
15. Chose vendors based on their use of renewable energy
16. Provide encouragement, incentives or opportunities for customers to use renewable energy
17. Engaged a third-party organization to perform an audit of your environmental practices
18. Benchmarked your environmental efficiency against local and national standards
19. Communicated your green efforts to your customer base
20. Shared an environmental innovation with one or more of your competitors

IF YOU SCORED:

15 to 20 points: Congrats! You’re about as green as they come. But don’t stop there! Keep up the good work, and continue to spread the word to all of your stakeholders.

10 to 14 points: Yeah, you’re green, all right. You’ve done a lot of great stuff, but there’s a lot more you can do.

5 to 9 points: Kudos for making the effort, but you’ve got a bit of a way to go before you could truly be considered “green.”

0 to 4 points: So, uh, what’s the holdup, friend? Being green is no longer a luxury: It’s a price of doing business. It’s time to get the green ball rolling.

Outdoor apparel-maker attracts customers with innovative approaches to green

Riding the wave of inconvenient truths about an increasingly toxic and hotter planet, popular outdoor apparel-maker Nau, based in Portland, Ore., has tapped into a sprawling market of consumers who’re hungry for environmentally friendly products and businesses that put sustainability front and center. With four stores that opened this year, 15 more slated for 2008 and a thriving Web site, Nau (which means “welcome” in Maori) has also taken concern for everything from sourcing to worker rights to unprecedented levels. Ian Yolles, the vice president of brand communications for Nau, sat down to explain the company’s new business model.

DELIVER: How does the unusual nature of Nau become part of its marketing?
YOLLES: Our experience suggests that great brands are built from the inside out. A lot of people think about branding from outside in - a tag line, a logo, some kind of advertising, which is superficial. We had a unique opportunity to build a company from scratch and align all the internal workings of the company to be congruent with the customer-facing interactions to make it authentic. We believe that our values-based proposition is going to be deeply resonant with a large group of people. We had a design philosophy predicated first on performance and function for people who live an active life. Second was not negatively impacting the environment. Third, we wanted a beautiful product.

The dominant design paradigm has been that if you tried to integrate all three of those characteristics in a single product you’d end up with a compromised end result. We felt it was a question of innovation, particularly from a fabric development point of view. In our spring product line, there are about 100 styles made from 30 fabrics - 27 of which required very significant work to commercialize, the reason being that the fabrics that met our criteria simply didn’t exist. For example, all of our two- and three-layer shell garments are made from recycled polyester, which comes from soda pop bottles and has been turned into this waterproof and breathable fabric with an aesthetic look that is very different from anything else in the outdoor business.

DELIVER: Nau is donating 5 percent of all sales to nonprofits, an uncommonly large amount. Why so much?
YOLLES: It certainly gets the customer’s attention. We can do this because we are working in an industry that has been primarily operating within a wholesale model of third-party distribution. We distribute our products through our own channels, our stores and Web site, which gives us significant margin advantage. Much more interesting is that we invite the customers to directly participate in the giving process. For each purchase, we give you a menu of 10 nonprofit organizations that work locally, nationally or internationally - and you choose where we should direct the donation.

DELIVER: How do you get customers into the stores?
YOLLES: We’ve done some advertising in weekly papers and on the radio, but we relied predominantly on word of mouth, which is far more credible. By way of example, we identified people in the community who had interesting stories that related to the sensibilities of our brand and invited them to join us for an evening of storytelling and conversation at three events for each store in the first month. We produced these beautiful invitations on paper stock that had seeds embedded in it, and you could literally bury the invitation and a poppy would grow out of it. These evenings were called “See[d] Change.” We mailed a package of these with postage-paid envelopes to everyone we knew and asked them to send them to friends. We had about 50 people turn out at each event, which is what we were aiming for in our 2,200-square-foot stores.

DELIVER: How do you integrate the store experience and your Web site?
YOLLES: When e-commerce first emerged in 1997, there was a lot of hype about the Internet fundamentally transforming the bricks-and-mortar shopping experience. Shoppers have changed their behavior; they move back and forth between these two channels - they’ll start researching online and then go in a store to try a product on, go home and compare prices on the Internet. But for retailers, these channels still exist parallel to each other. Nobody has connected the dots structurally in a way that is meaningful to the consumer.

When you come into our stores, each style is merchandised, and you can shop the store just like a traditional apparel store. You can try the product on, decide to buy it and sales associates will process your transaction at a (point-of-sale) terminal. However, we merchandise every single product with a corresponding card that has a bar code on it. If you want to learn about the product prior to purchase you can ask a sales associate, or you can take the card to interactive devices we call product trees, scan the bar code, and it will bring up the product detail page from our Web site, which contains all the detailed information about that specific style. You can also take the card to other interactive devices to initiate the transactional experience. When you scan the bar code it calls up the product detail page associated with that specific style. We prompt you to choose the color, size and quantity you want, then we ask if you’re ready to check out. If you are willing to wait a few days to have the product shipped to you at no charge, you get a 10 percent discount on the purchase price. During our first year of operation, we expected only 30 percent of our customers to opt for this “ship to you” methodology given there would be a customer learning and adoption curve. To date 50 percent of our customers have been choosing this approach.

DELIVER: How do you send the clothing to the customer?
YOLLES: We ship it in what looks like a feedstock bag - 50 percent post-consumer recycled paper and you can use it to return the product, if necessary, or you reuse it other ways. So wherever we use paper of any sort - or mailing - we’ve definitely thought about how to do it in the most sustainable way.

To learn more about Nau, its practices and its business philosophy, visit nau.com.

In an age when information about a product - good and bad - is just a mouse-click away, marketers are learning to value openness.

Talking openly is not the stalwart of most marketers. We tend to migrate more toward providing hype instead of help.

So imagine the fear that must be prevalent in some corners of our universe as consumers begin to want - no, demand - an open, straightforward relationship with the brands and products they consume.

It’s all in the name of “transparency,” the idea that you should provide an open window (or maybe door) into the soul of your company’s decision-making process. Sarbanes-Oxley mandates it on the financial side, but now consumers are demanding it as well, insisting that companies open up, talk about their business and, basically, come clean.

So what’s so scary about that? Well, if you’re a marketer used to telling consumers what to think about your product, plenty. But even getting beyond that, talking openly requires that you have something to say - something beyond the perceived benefits and advantages of your product line.

That’s what has many marketers in a tizzy. Listening, responding thoughtfully - that’s not really our strong suit. It’s hard to fake sincerity, and that’s cause for alarm with those of us too used to “spinning” what we say about our brand.

Not that you really have a choice, of course. In an age when your customer service nightmares show up on video-sharing Web sites and your management decisions are critiqued in the blogosphere, you don’t always have the option of spinning the story the way you want.

So, here’s the goal: Find a way to engage customers. Add value to their relationship with your brand. Let them in on new product ideas, talk about why you create what you do or, better yet, connect your passions with theirs - community involvement, environmental concerns, whatever. Your brand stands for something - talk about what that is.

And, if your brand doesn’t represent something - well, sounds like you have bigger issues than worrying about transparency.

Put down that spreadsheet. Throw away that calculator. Demonstrating ROI for your marketing efforts could be a calculation so simple you can just as easily do it in your head.

As marketers, we often think of customer satisfaction as a very complicated issue, with varied factors and “touch points” influencing the way customers regard our brands. But measuring return could be as simple as asking, “Would you recommend this business to a friend?”

That’s the radically basic question that author Fred Reichheld poses in his recent bestseller, The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth.

Performance pressures, he argues, have led businesspeople to conclude that all profit is good profit, but Reichheld takes serious exception to that notion. Some profits are indeed “bad profits,” namely those that the company achieves while disappointing, or even outright angering, its customers. Such “bad” profits might look great in the short term, Reichheld writes, but ultimately they prevent longer-term profit growth. The key to generating “good profits,” he says, is a single-minded focus on customer satisfaction.

Reichheld, a Bain Fellow, proposes a deceptively simple calculation that he says captures a company’s balance between good and bad profits:

NET PROMOTER SCORE = % of Promoters - % of Detractors

“Promoters” would be those who answer “yes” to the question “Would you recommend this business to a friend?” “Detractors” would be those who answer “no.”

How can such a seemingly simple query even hope to capture such an important business concept? Reichheld says the truth is in the numbers. In a 2003 study of more than 150,000 Bain customers, Reichheld found a very strong correlation between a company’s Net Promoter Scores and its growth relative to its competitors. What’s more, companies that saw sustainable growth over a 10-year period had double the NPS of other companies.

Getting your company to adopt a replacement - or even an additional - ROI measure might take some doing. But at a time when all marketers are feeling the pressure to demonstrate the effectiveness of their efforts, and engaging in massive and complicated statistical analyses to so do, it’s nice to know that at least one expert - as well as a growing number of adherents - thinks the calculation could be as simple as “x minus y.”

As marketers, we’re used to dealing with annoyed customers.

So it will probably come as no surprise that consumers rank unsolicited e-mail messages near the top of the heap of the things that rag them the most.

In a recent study by the University of Georgia, consumers ranked e-mail spam as intrusive and annoying, rating it a 2.46 on a scale where one was worst and seven was best. Comparatively, unsolicited direct mail received a 3.87 ranking.

The researchers also note several other studies that found consumers feel direct mail more often contained useful items, such as coupons and sales promotions, while spam more often contained inappropriate material.

Now we’re not saying that there’s never a reason to employ an e-mail marketing campaign. But the problem you face when you choose to drop your marketing into someone’s inbox is that you’re tainted by association. Sure, your message is legit, but you’re putting it into a channel where you run the risk of being screened out and ignored.

The good news for direct mail is that research shows it enjoys a more positive relationship with consumers. Most sort through it, and spend around 30 minutes reading it daily.

But don’t think for a minute that mail can’t be put into the same position as spam. The old “spray and pray” days are hopefully over, but there are still too many marketers out there with a “dump and run” mentality, and it’s getting noticed by the kinds of folks who can do something about it.

The solution: effective self-regulation. Make sure your mailing lists are highly targeted and receptive to the message; use recycled materials when possible; make it relevant to the recipient.

In other words, stick to the best practices of our industry. And that’s where we can help. At Deliver we bring you some of the smartest thinking in the industry, and that includes making the most effective, most welcomed use of direct mail.

Stand tall, direct marketers: Your time has come.

After years of being kept “below the line,” out of the proverbial front office and VIP suites, direct finally got its ticket to the big game.

Why? Because the owners and managers of marketing have finally come around to your way of thinking. The trade press has been full of news lately about the changes that media of various kinds are making so they can demonstrate measurable results.

Yes, it’s true: Traditional media are finally getting the importance of ROI for their advertiser clients, something that direct marketers have always been adept at doing. Oddly enough, you have your digital colleagues to thank for most of this. By demonstrating how effectively a brand can track and measure the impact of its marketing, digital technology has helped push accountability in advertising.

So we witness the outdoor industry working on a program for 2008 that will provide traffic counts and track eye movements as people drive past billboards. And television, which has long tracked its numbers through logs kept by a few viewers, is ramping up its investment so that it can translate those numbers into product purchases.

What they don’t yet understand, though, is that it’s not so much what we do, but the way we do it. At its heart, direct marketing is about testing and measurement and using the results to improve the next round of execution. ROI isn’t a bell or whistle for direct; it’s the very rationale for the medium.

In a world of client-driven need to demonstrate ROI, direct fits the bill. Whether print or digital, we can be confident we’ll be around for a long time to come.

“Markets are conversations.”

That statement makes complete sense to today’s marketer, who is struggling to figure out his or her digital plan, but when it was first posited in 1999, it rocked the marketing world. You might have recognized that it’s the opening tenet of The Cluetrain Manifesto, an online document that meant to wake up corporate America to how the Internet was changing the landscape of the marketing world.

For example:

“People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.”

“Companies attempting to “position” themselves need to take a position. Optimally, it should relate to something their market actually cares about.”

“Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.”

Looking at those statements now, it’s easy to take them for granted, but at the time, they were revolutionary. Consumers had yet to sign up for the Do Not Call list or buy DVRs in record numbers or start tuning out the marketing messages that bombarded them.

Even the way the Cluetrain Manifesto was disseminated was revolutionary: Offered free of charge online, the book was actually produced after the Web site took off. Think of it as the first “open source” marketing communication.

Sadly, though, few marketers have grasped what this was all about. Today’s goal isn’t moving product, it’s having “conversations” with consumers, seeding your influence with the communities that count, adding value and honestly having something worth discussing. Yes, you can talk about your product, but only in an open, honest way (that’s not as simple as it sounds).

All of which should bring a smile to the faces of our friends and colleagues who use direct marketing - and who follow best practices for this medium. For when it comes to building relationships with customers by offering something of value, direct has always had an advantage. It’s highly targetable, it’s personal and it provides a channel for ongoing “conversations” that build a relationship over time.

Yes, we’re all now attuned to how the Internet is changing the marketing game, but if you need a refresher course, or just some good strategic ideas, wander over to cluetrain.com. We think you’ll be reminded of just how far we’ve come since 1999 - and you just might find some wisdom on how to cope in the world of 2007.

The marketing world is dominated by news and opinion about the Internet and its impact on marketing - and rightfully so. Heck, you’re reading this on our brand new Web site, after all. The new reality of consumer control is clearly having a major impact on the way marketers engage with their customers.

So, amid the kind of seismic change we’re experiencing, how can traditional advertising continue to succeed? Against the juggernaut of digital technology, does a TV spot carry the same weight it once did? Is a print ad going to deliver the same ROI? And what about direct mail? Surely that’s under threat - it’s not called snail mail for nothing.

Well, not so fast.

Looking at the latest 2007 forecast for U.S. advertising spending, those old-line mediums are holding up pretty well against the online onslaught.

True, Internet marketing will likely see the biggest increase this year - up 15 percent to $10.7 billion - but even at that figure, it represents only 5.5 percent of all the money spent. The major television networks can expect $17.4 billion (8.9 percent of the total spend), the cable networks another $20.3 billion (10.4 percent) and magazines will rake in $14 billion (7.2 percent).

And what about poor direct mail? Well, believe it or not, direct will grow 7.5 percent to $64.4 billion - or roughly a third of all the money spent.

Does that mean Internet marketing is over-hyped? Of course not. But it does mean that in a world that’s increasingly dominated by digital technology, direct mail remains an amazingly relevant and efficient form of marketing. It’s increasing its value in the mix and demonstrating that it has a crucial place in a marketing world that’s gone mad for online social networks, blogs, wikis and all things digital.

Dearly Beloved:

We gather here today to celebrate the life of our old friend “One-to-One Marketing.” I know many of you are thinking, “Didn’t I just have a conversation about him,” or “Wasn’t he just a vital part of my marketing plan a few months ago?”

Sadly, we must realize that life as a dynamic concept in this crazy world of marketing is tenuous. One day you’re an A-List contender, then…poof! You’re flattened by a digital freight train.

How well we remember those glory years when One-to-One was marketing’s darling, seemingly a solution to every marketing problem. We couldn’t get enough of him. We raved about his ability to find and keep loyal customers, even if he could be difficult to understand or hard to integrate with any particular program.

So what happened? In a word and a number, Web 2.0. The tsunami of social media proves that the entire underlying premise of One-to-One - that marketers control the relationship with customers - is not only false, but entirely back-to-front.

The truth is we live in a Many-to-Many world where communities of consumers, millions strong, trust each other way more than any company, and make their purchase decisions based on the myriad insights and experiences of like-minded others. Brands that seek to serve them must navigate a Class-5 rapid of information, opinion and corporate antipathy, and figure out a way to communicate (participate) in the conversation in a more personal, human, responsive way - all the while adding value. Otherwise, they might just as well be talking to themselves.

Today’s challenge is still about building a relationship with customers, but on their terms and in their world. The days of the customer waiting on a brand for direction - if they ever really did - are gone. Rest in peace.