Building #Brand Equity: Re-Defined. With a Dividend Kicker:# Loyal3

Were it not for Holman Jenkins over at WSJ, this former securities markets brand marketer might have missed the evolving story of Silicon Vallyey start-up "Loyal3" until their ads started appearing during Superbowl XLVII (47). From this viewer's vantage point, Loyal3 is on track to blend the most important elements that drive brand loyalty for big companies by giving those corporates a marcom strategy that simply makes sense.

Loyal3 has found a nice blue ocean for itself, even if the WSJ article is portending high probability that its likely to become polluted by spills from Wall Street pools. Whatever. I really like what Loyal3 is developing, even if the primary reason is that the platform allows my child to buy a stake in a company that she loves with the limited money that she has.

But the real story is that Loyal3 strikes at the heart of brand marketing and its a fast-paced vehicle for enhancing customer loyalty. Its Disruptive ( particularly to Squids on The Street who have likely placed listening devices and inserted sniffers on this company's network), its [mostly] Innovative, and it could be the exact Elixir needed to drive retail investors back into the stock market. Its also got a solid slogan that they somehow managed to get trade marked. If only I could get the premium merchandise concession for the T's, totes and caps!
What's with the subliminal, coded message above? Loyal3's memo To The Competition: DIE
Their slogan is soft and sweet...appealing to everyone!

WSJ's opinion piece (entirety can be read by clicking on the title link) 

NBC Reflects on "What is the Internet??"

Courtesy of NBC Talking Head (not to mention Great Legs..) Jane Wells's blog..

6 Things That Social Media Can Predict

The new game of predicting what social media can predict is percolating. Neuroscientists, spies, pollsters, product promoters, news publishers, and stock market savants are all on the bandwagon. This week's "shocking" disclosure that the F.B.I. is recruiting talent from M.I.T. for its initiative to scrape social media and root out evil-doers is hardly a surprise will certainly open Pandora's Privacy Box, but most would argue that horse left the barn long ago.

In any case, the smarter of the new generation of PR pundits and advertorial alchemists who work hand-in-hand with CMOs are not far behind. One of the more interesting take-aways from this posting's title link story is predicting what people will read. The study referenced in the article found the most important predictor was who published the article, followed by its subject category. Credibility is King, and its easier every day to quickly figure out what's topical, and what's not.

Seeing (and) Hearing Is Believing-Print News Media Embraces Video: Attn:Corporate Communicators

"Boo Ya" to Brian Stelter over at the NYT for today's piece profiling a topic I've been pounding the tables about for as long as I've been writing this blog: leveraging video. Stelter's article focused on the burgeoning growth of live videocasting by the once traditional news outlets (you know, those people with print smudges on their finger tips, as well as the computer-pounding Carpel Tunnel crowd and card-carrying members of   "WOC", aka Writers that Occupy Cyberspace.

Live (and canned/programmed) video content is where its at. Why/How/Where?

1. The cost of programming can be peanuts (get yourself a few high end video cams, good backdrops and retain a video programmer/editor from your local high school),
2. The cost to deliver (bandwidth) is benefiting from the race to zero.
3. Mobile Devices continue to command increasing hours of mind share--that said--pushing ads through mobile remains challenging--an issue that Facebook is particularly familiar with..
4. The ocean of Content is virtually limitless.
Lets take it one step further--to the corporate cubicles. We're here to say that those businesses that embrace the bullets above will bet on board--by producing live segments populated with a broad range of infotaining content targeting customers, vendors, partners and the like.

You read it here first :)

Data Mining, Marcom and Overcoming Analysis Paralysis; The Last Mile

Narrative Science, the Chicago-based start-up that specializes in converting mines of data into understandable objective commentary and narrative is on to something big.

Data mining and extracting metrics for analysis is integral to just about every business; its fair to guess that most enterprises allocate increasing amounts to algorithms that sort and parse data so that decision makers can draw conclusions based on an ever broadening spectrum of inputs--much of it courtesy of the Internet.

Metric analysis is as mainstream as vanilla ice cream; its long been a practice area extending across among other sectors, manufacturing, procurement, sales forecasting, political campaigning, sports, and more recently, the world of advertising.

But..the other side to this coin is commonly known as "analysis paralysis"--too much of anything is no good..and more importantly, without being able to crisply articulate the conclusions drawn from factual findings, the entire exercise becomes, well, an entire exercise.
Below white paper courtesy of Narrative Science points to an important imperative; the science of casting data interpretation into easy-to-read and easy-to understand narrative. Kudos to this group, one that is arguably positioned to upend the traditional publishing industry by introducing automated editorial applications..

Data Mining, Marcomm & The Last Mile