Today someone might use Google to search for a solution your company provides and see your website content well positioned within the results. They’ll click on the link and land on a landing page to learn more about how your company addresses their particular problem. But next year they might just search Facebook instead, and they’ll see that a friend of a friend had a similar need for that solution and went with Company X. This will be more valuable because they can connect directly with this friend via their friend’s connection and discover more about their personal experience with the company. They might also see a post on Company X’s Facebook page within the results discussing this particular solution, further solidifying Company X as a solutions provider candidate.

Facebook’s new search functionality begins to deliver on this scenario by leveraging their like button that they launched in April (like the one on the bottom of this post). The advent of the like button was seen as a sign that Facebook was about to open the floodgates in their war with Google. This new search functionality is the floodgates opening. Here’s how this functionality works, as described by Facebook (via Allfacebook):

“We launched the ability to see articles shared by your direct friends in the search typeahead. For instance, if your friend is on a news site and clicks ‘Like’ under one of the articles (which will then go into News Feed), when you go to search for that article on Facebook, it will [appear] in the dropdown.” Most significant is that the content displayed “is only available for articles shared by your direct friends (not globally to all users on Facebook).” Additionally, “[results are] not [shown] to you based solely on number of ‘Likes’ for the article.”

Google, not to be outdone, held a press event today about their latest effort in the search game, Google Instant. While this new functionality is important (and is actually similar to Facebook’s new search since it also instantly returns results as you type), it’s just an interface update. This announcement today certainly wasn’t an effective block of Facebook’s social search punch [nor was it necessarily meant to be]. While Google has moved forward in integrating social into search, today’s event amounts to them taking Facebook’s punch.

Google still faces a serious challenge in staving off Facebook’s social salvo: Facebook is a closed ecosystem, impenetrable to Google (except as Facebook allows), they are effectively their own “web” (also see The Great Wall of Facebook). The closed ecosystem of Facebook, combined with their massive success, is one of the reasons why Wired recently (and controversially) declared “The Web is Dead.” Clearly Facebook has changed the way the world uses the Internet and now they are rolling out a new way for us to search.

As Facebook rolls out this new search solution they will drive even more traffic to sites. Brand’s can ride this wave by embracing social search, participating in the open graph and enabling themselves to be visible in Facebook’s new social search engine. Need help doing that? Give us a call- we’d love to review your social efforts to date and a discuss how you can ride this emerging social-search wave.

South by Southwest (SXSW) is one of the largest music, film and interactive conferences in the world and it takes place every March in Austin, Texas. SXSW is a hot-spot for emerging technology (Foursquare launched there in 2009, for example) and MicroArts has teamed up with Foursquare Day (check out the press release) to propose a panel for SXSW 2011 where we’d get the opportunity to speak. Panel ideas are put to a public vote and are judged by the SXSW staff and their advisory board. We’re excited about the panel we’ve proposed, here are the details:

Foursquare Day: Realizing the Location-Based Services Revolution

Location-based services are here and are revolutionizing the way people experience the world. Events like Foursquare Day 2010 fueled the growth of this revolution, but we haven’t fully realized the future of what location-based services have to offer. See what the future holds for location-based services. Examine how Foursquare Day went from idea to grassroots international movement in 1 month and what its effects were on the growth of location-based services. Learn how to supercharge the growth of location-based services and realize their future by bringing Foursquare Day to your town or city on 4/16/11, Foursquare Day 2011.

If you’d like to vote for our panel (and we hope you do), here’s how to vote – note that voting ends Friday, August 27th!

1. Go to http://panelpicker.sxsw.com
2. Click “Create an account” at the top of the page. (You are required to create an account in order to vote or comment on sessions.)
3. They will send you a confirmation email, check your email and click the link to confirm your account.
4. Go to our panel’s voting page
6. Vote by clicking on the thumbs up icon.
7. Spread the word, share this blog post!

Thanks for your support!

By Peter L. Getman
sophisticated man about town

The Holy Grail in brand ubiquity is when your brand name symbolizes an entire market category. Only then can your brand also become a verb.

Xerox it. FedEx it. Google it.

Fax it?

Alexander Bain patented the basis of what would become the fax machine in 1843. During the 1980s, the facsimile machine became a billion dollar market place. Yet what brand owns the concept and the word “fax?”

It’s a shame.

Today, the latest craze in water sports is stand up paddle boarding, commonly know as SUP or going SUPing. Originating in Hawaii from Beach Boy Surfing, the modern day SUP market is still fairly unclaimed. In fact, Google (there’s that verb again) “stand up paddle boarding” and you’ll get entries for:
• Standup paddleboarding
• Stand up paddle boarding
• Stand-up paddleboarding
• Stand-up paddle boarding
• Stand-up paddle surfing
• SUP surfing
• Paddlesurfing
• Paddle surfing

The market can’t even decide how it wants to spell itself. So until someone catches that wave, we’ll have to go SUPing. Twitter when you’re going; maybe we can Skype to arrange an outing! (See what I just did there?)

Another example is a former client, Incentive Systems. Guess what they did? They made—surprise!—”incentive systems for large sales enterprises,” which is fine until a competitor’s tagline becomes, advanced incentive systems or proven incentive systems.

Arguably, Incentive Systems invented the category; so we recommended they change their brand name and logotype to:

MicroArts also crafted and supported the market position as the people who invented incentive systems—reinforcing their position as a recognized educational leader within their domain.

Until it changed its name, the company marketed the entire market category and not their unique value within it. As a result, you could put the company name, Incentive Systems, as a tagline under their top three competitors’ logos and have it be a true statement.

That’s perhaps the biggest bummer a brand can have—a competitor stealing your thunder.

On the other hand, the right name and the right brand can be lightening in a bottle. If you want to try to capture that, zap me an email.

By Peter Getman

I enjoy picturing our clients’ competitors totally miffed and wondering, “How do I tell my CEO this one?“

That’s what you’re really after, isn’t it? You want to beat the snot out of your competition. And so do we.

It’s this competitive charge, this legal high, that can differentiate a branding agency’s creative. To me, the difference between sound strategic creative and game-changing creative starts with an intense competitive spirit.  

Both start with the intellectual curiosity to understand the DNA of a market category, emerging with a kernel of an idea that creates a brand’s value promise.  Both attempt to create a brand position and supporting creative so clear and concise that, in one or two sentences, it

• Recognizes a consumer need
• Addresses that need with a superior offer of value
• Differentiates its offer from competitor offers
• Entices the purchase

But what can make creative work game-changing is when it does all this, while simultaneously repositioning all other brands in your market category ¾again, ideally in one sentence. 

For example, cat litter is estimated to be a $1 billion industry in the U.S. … and growing. The number one reason consumers buy cat litter is for odor control.  Our client, World’s Best Cat Litter™ truly does control odor the best.  The name is already a tagline. So we positioned the brand with the slogan:

Buy the Best. Or Smell the Rest.™

Here’s one big idea—one single line—that repositions the rest of the market category as inferior. Plus, its cadence has phonic stopping power, significantly aiding consumer recall.

No doubt, it is this competitive spirit that keeps us pushing past strategically sound creative to somehow find game-changing creative. In the case of World’s Best Cat Litter™, we not only wanted to beat the snot out of our competition, we wanted to beat the crap out of them. (By the way, the brand’s market share has doubled in less than two years.)

I had a good healthy childhood. Despite my many endeavors, sports and personal ambitions, my parents were always proud of me for trying my hardest. Like many parents, their mantra was “doing your best is all that matters.”

As a result, I grew up ready to try anything. (And still am.)

However, parents are not clients. And effort is not synonymous with results.

• Customers demand results.
• CEOs demand results.
• Brand managers demand results.
• Shareholders demand results.
• Wall Street demands results.

All these people will more likely recognize effort but reward results. And they won’t confuse the two for long.

Now apply this mindset to your big idea driving your brand ubiquity strategy and everything in between. Is it working too hard and not getting any results? Or rather, do your customers have to work too hard to get it?

Sometimes, the best big idea can be the most obvious when you stop to think about it. So work hard to figure out what that is. For example, we have a client, Ignite, who offers a variety of transforming motivational and training programs that can propel individuals and organization to successes. Now, I suppose we could have developed a big idea brand about “organizational strategies, executive coaching, management training” and the myriad other programs they offer. Or we can simply say:

Learn something. Spark everything.™

Your brand is better than the competition for some reason. Say it. Is that the big idea?

Your brand offers your customers something special. Articulate it. Is that the big idea?

Brand it right. Brand it tight. And the results will come.

Ninety-nine percent of all brand communications boils down to a single primary objective—drive new revenues.

So get to the point.

Leverage this common sense brand strategy into your brand development.

Answer these nine simple questions:
1. What business is your brand in?
2. What is your brand’s difference?
3. Why should your consumer or client care about this difference?
4. How do you ensure the flawless delivery of this superior value?
5. Will this superior value move the masses to buy your brand over the competitive brand?
6. Which brand will suffer the most market share loss as a result?
7. Is this superior value proposition sustainable over time?
8. Does anyone in your foxhole disagree with these answers?
9. Are you sure?

The answers will strip away the noise in your company, leaving you free to be creative, focused, unified and certain.

Then, once you develop a big idea strategy, vet it against these nine questions—again and again. This self-analysis is vital in fending off intoxicating creative that may not move the masses.

Trust the Nine. One hundred percent.

We only have one life to live?
Not me.
I’ve lived many lives, in many very different cultures.
I believe to entice someone to buy your brand; you must really live in his or her shoes.

Try it for half a day.
In the last year, as a 43-year-old branding guy, I’ve lived as:

A middle age cat owning female shopping in Petsmart
A VP of Sustainability for Wal-Mart
A hard charging athlete in training
A CFO of a world-famous hospital
A parent of an Olympic hopeful
A world-renowned pathologist
An 18-year-old Kenyan voter
A fashion forward female
A laid-back surfer dude
A dog’s best friend
A cancer patient
A tree hugger

Living in their minds’ eyes, allows me to:

Understand their problems.
Use today’s solutions.

See their opportunities.
Examine their hurdles.

Taste their success.
Feel their fears.

Hope their hopes.
Live their life.

And although their demographics and cultures are drastically different, they all share a common appreciation.

Praise.

Praise for their goals, their resolve, desire to overcome; praise for facing their fears&emdash;their reality.

By Nature Brand gives praise for the love you give your pet in their campaign, “Pet Food as Natural as Your Love”.

Praise resonates.
Praise feels good.
Make it personal.
Make it relevant.

Make it part your next campaign. We’re here to help.

It sometimes takes longer to find and hire a specialist—a bona fide kick-ass specialist. But the benefits far outweigh the instant gratification of hiring just anyone.

As luck would have it I, I hired my first specialist sometime in the early nineties.

My buddies Mike, Barrett and I set out to buy a building. During our price negotiations with the building’s developer, his bank, Bank East, foreclosed on him.

Perplexed, we called my “big brother” Larry, and asked him, “Now what?” He said to hire the lawyer that does the most business with that bank in real estate.

We soon had a P&S agreement ready to be notarized with Bank East for 50% less than our price with the original developer. Before it we inked the agreement, the FDIC comes in and actually closes the bank.

“Now what?” I asked Larry. He said, “Find and hire the real estate lawyer that has the FDIC on speed dial.“

We did. It worked.

Three months later, we bought a business property valued at $1.5M for $180K, 40% less than the agreed price we had with Bank East and 80% less than the price with the original building’s developer.

Unbelievable, I agree. (My mother never did believe me.) But our branding agency still lives in this building today.

If you live in this mindset, your brand will be recognized for it—and profit because of it. Is your brand the specialist your market needs? Could it be? Should it be?

Or does your brand need a specialist? Here’s what the Brand Manager at Waste Management said:

“MicroArts is a special forces team for our brand. They are smart, nimble, well-trained brand launch specialists for your brand.”

It’d be fun to visit when you have a moment.

As a branding agency, perhaps our favorite assignment is to dream up the big idea—the idea that can move the masses to adopt one brand over another.

For me, it’s utterly intoxicating to see this developed idea become the seed of what eventually becomes brand ubiquity. [What’s brand ubiquity?]

Sometime that idea is a campaign theme. Sometimes it’s a go-to-market strategy. And sometimes the big idea is the product itself.

This is the case with the Bamboo Bottle Company brand.

The hip little brand was founded around the idea of creating environmentally friendly, reusable water bottles—clean and safe water bottles that don’t leach chemicals into your drink. And it is quite possibly the best-looking insulated water bottle you’ve ever seen.

Simply put, Bamboo Bottle Company makes a better water bottle—the best reusable water bottle, in fact.  And that’s the only big idea this brand needs right now. 

Our branding agency simply has to seed the brand’s story, straight up—no spin, no magic and no shenanigans.  If we talk about this brand in the most clear and compelling manner possible, the message will resonate tremendous relevance within our target cultures. 

I predict brand ubiquity for Bamboo Bottle Company.  Slam dunk.

I also predict that these unique water bottles will gain the reputation as the Original Bamboo Bottles. Copycats will follow. 

The brand launched August 2010. Follow its ascent on its website and on Facebook. 

If your big idea is the product itself, please tell us all about it.  We’d love to tell its story.

The idea of brand ubiquity evolved from a fascination with brands and the place they reside in our brains.

Every day, we are surrounded by brands that elicit an immediate and visceral response in our heads—and sometimes not always in a good way. But the most successful brands carve out a niche in our zeitgeist. 

They become a part of our universal culture and thus become ubiquitous in our minds (if not in our media).When brand ubiquity occurs, people search and find brands even when they aren’t looking. The brand’s reputation precedes its presence. It garners evangelists online and off. That’s more than marketing gold. That’s marketing Californium-252!

But what were the single decisions that create and extend ubiquity in a market?Can we identify a brand’s Big Bang moments?

Can we trace the strategy back to find where the brand crawled out of the primordial soup of obscurity and developed the legs that carried it toward ubiquity? Can we see when brands evolved?

That’s is what is truly fascinating. 

We wanted to create a single place where we can share proven and yet-to-be-proven successes—slam dunks, trending campaigns and total flyers alike.  Some of the brands discussed here will be as familiar to you as your family. Some may seem distant cousins. And others, no doubt, may come across as long-lost crazy uncles, who may either redeem or doom themselves over time.

But all have a common trait—a conviction in an initiative, decision or moment that became the foundation for their brand position … and a generous predisposition to share that strategy with all of us. 

If you are launching or recently launched a big idea, we’d love to hear about it.  Maybe it belongs in this book.