Like you, I do my marketing homework.  I keep up with industry pubs, must-attend seminars, über-hip “expert” ad execs, cool school, Gladwell, Bob Garfield, Bob’s blog, your blog, etc.  The plethora of expert supposition/opinion/fact is enlightening, it really is, but who can keep up with it all?  In an effort to simplify our lives as experiential marketers, brand stewards and idea-generators, I’d like to propose an experiment of sorts.

I contend that everything we need to know about marketing, branding, and getting to great ideas has already been surmised by two people born over a century apart but united by their mutual distaste for monotony, monogamy and prison. Oscar Wilde and Paris Hilton have done a damned good job of generating axioms about life that are applicable to marketing – and easier to digest than the next must-read Fast Company book-of-the-month.

So here’s what I propose: skip reading What The Dog Saw and Baked.  It’s okay, people.  Really.  Let’s take a short break – a Nestea plunge if you will – from all the marketing intelligence surrounding us.  It will all be waiting for us tomorrow.

Today let’s run our marketing efforts through the WildeParis Experiment.  Sound kinky?  Here’s how it works:  simply see if the idea you are thinking about pitching or buying fulfills upon all or most of the following list of quotes – marketing axioms, as I like to call them.

The following lines are quotes from Oscar Wilde and Paris Hilton. Have fun guessing who said what (click on the quote to see who said it), but that’s not the point of the experiment.  The point is to take a break from the plethora of expert supposition/opinion/fact, and simplify what you need to know to deem an idea great.  Here we go.

“There is no sin worse in life than being boring.”

Go ahead; be honest with yourself when assessing your work.  Do you like the idea? Love the idea?  Are you passionate about it? You know if it’s boring. If you don’t…you’re boring.

“I can resist everything except temptation.”

That’s what we do for a living; we tempt.  Is your idea irresistible?  Is your story tempting?

“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

Look, there’s a lot of money being wasted on marketing shit nobody cares about, notices or talks about. There are many, many examples, and I don’t want to be cruel, but consider this.  Almost every brand seems to believe they need a website, right?  And I agree, most brands do. But have you ever visited the black, depressing, corporate, empty, pointless hole that is macys.com, walmart.com, century21.com, aa.com? AA.com is American Airlines, not Alcoholics Anonymous; their site, aa.org, is pretty good.  Anyway, the list of grotesquely expensive, meaningless, never-talked-about marketing goes on and on.  And it is the worst thing in the world.

“There’s nobody in the world like me. I think every decade has an iconic blonde – like Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana – and right now, I’m that icon.”

Homogeneity abounds.  Brands and marketers alike are too often risk-averse, and without risk — intelligent risk — there is no innovation.  I give out Failure Awards at the agency to recognize those who embrace risk to achieve something great, truly creative and original.  Without risk, your brand is just another pair of khaki pants in a button down shirt, hiding behind a laminated desk, waiting for the clock to strike 5 so it can rush home in its minivan to a plastic house in the suburbs.  But if your brand is consistently taking inspired risks and sometimes failing, you become something original or, on rare occasions, iconic.

“When people agree with me, I always feel that I must be wrong.”

Embrace a culture of friction and passionate discourse.  Never hire your doppelganger. Fire every “yes” man in your organization.  If you don’t, you’ll never have a great idea.

“I don’t have sex unless I’m in a relationship. I’m old-fashioned when it comes to that. I really am!”

Consumers want to have relationships with real, committed brands like Mountain Dew, not blowup dolls like (insert your favorite poseur brand).  Know what your brand is.  Know what it isn’t. Commit to it.  Not everyone needs to like your brand, and your brand doesn’t need to sleep with everyone; we’re not in high school.

To get a consumer into bed you need to know them.  Know who they really are.  Love them.  Eat fast food with them.  Play Halo with them.  Ride scooters, walk dogs, go shopping at Wal-Mart (yes you, go to Wal-Mart), watch obscure movies, eat fish heads, wear latex body suits…do whatever your demo does.  Here’s why: if you commit to what you are, you’ll never be a part of another lifeless brand and you’ll never garner lifeless results.  You’ll be in the hottest, sexiest relationship of your life.

“Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

To support this point, I’ll break with consistency in the WildeParis Experiment, and take a look at what Seth Godin, the maestro of expert supposition/opinion/fact, has to say about consistency.  Or is it inconsistency?

Consistency
How can someone:
… be opposed to euthanasia but in favor of the death penalty?
… be in favor of the impeachment of Bill Clinton but not of George Bush?
… be worried about global warming but fly in a big private plane?
… be in favor of the impeachment of George Bush but not of Bill Clinton?
… be opposed to amnesty for illegal aliens but in favor of a pardon for Scooter Libby?
… be in favor of military intervention in Darfur but not in Iraq?
… be opposed to big government but want the government to control public speech?
… be in favor of banning medical marijuana but opposed to government regulation of cigarettes?
… be opposed to judicial meddling except in cases where you disagree with the current laws?

Easy. Because people aren’t consistent. Sure, you say, each of the above examples isn’t fair. They don’t match. They don’t line up. [Smart people are lucky: they can hold seemingly contradictory ideas in their head while they look more deeply into the facts and make good decisions... it’s called nuance.]

We don’t eat dessert because we’re on a diet but we put blue cheese dressing on our salad. We don’t pay extra for first class but we refuse to give up a seat to get bumped from a flight, even though the reward is a thousand dollars. We curse the spam that clutters our e-mail boxes but turn around and authorize millions of pieces of junk mail to go out to support our new business.
The local hardware store owner curses the existence of Home Depot but buys his family’s clothes at Wal-Mart. The vegetarian wears a leather belt…

Everything is a special situation; everything begs for inconsistency. If all we did was market to computers, life would be a lot simpler, but a lot less interesting.

So, there it is: the WildeParis Experiment.  It may not be perfect but it’s certainly a reprieve from all the expert supposition, opinion and fact.  Give it a try and let me know how it turns out!

As I sift through volumes of recent data and insight regarding social media (SM) and ROI, I am transported back in time. Long before Twitter and other SM platforms existed, we in the experiential marketing space faced the same brand team doubts and ROI questions:

• “How in the world can this expense be justified?”
• “How do we know if we got our money’s worth?”
• “Can you compare it to TV? We understand TV!”

A decade later, experiential marketing is an accepted entity while the “new kid on the block,” social media, is taking the brunt of industry skepticism. We experiential marketers must push for (and facilitate) the understanding of ROI in social media because we are inextricably linked by our disciplines’ abilities to significantly affect consumer mindset and – subsequently – consumer behavior. Our best practices bring out the best ROI in each other.

Experiential marketing is the epicenter, the nexus, the place where groupthink – or whatever you want to name it – happens. It’s where shared experience drives the sharing of the experience. It’s where the brand connects with the consumer, and the consumer becomes the conduit to their social network.

Because of social media, the energy of the brand experience is more easily broadcast to like-minded consumers. Engaged consumers at an event like Bacardi B-LIVE will share the experience with simpaticos in person and via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc. The digital ripple that emanates from the event is mighty, and it is measurable.

One tangible outcome of a powerful engagement such as B-LIVE is enhanced search engine optimization (SEO). A brand can climb the list in organic search by virtue of consumers blogging and driving traffic through comments on Twitter, Facebook, etc.. Give consumers a rich, sustained experiential and social media campaign experience to talk about, and they will do so. The more they mention the brand, the better the search results ultimately become.

It’s a finely knit garment, this blend of experiential marketing, social media, and SEO…but it’s real, it’s tangible, and it can be measured. It creates profound brand affinity and likelihood-to-purchase shifts in the consumer mindset.

For additional information about the ROI of social media, you may find the articles below helpful:

• HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI
• 8 Predictions for SEO in 2010
• The Only Social Media Metric that Matters