Don't Call Us Mascots!

Hello everyone,

I’m Diana. I’m an ant.

Technically, I’m a fighter ant. Or rather, I’m supposed to be one. But that only happens when something’s happening and I have to grab the weapon. If not, when I’m not fighting, I’m training. When I’m not training, I’m sleeping. When I’m not sleeping, I’m dancing.

Don’t laugh! I’m a pretty okay dancer. *giggles*

 

You guys know that there’s a workshop called “Dancing with Diana” that’ will be happening at this hotel at Cuscaden Road.

If you’re attending it, thank you and I’ll look forward to see you. If you’ve not but you’re thinking about it, hey, why hesitate? Don’t worry, you and I are not going to literally dance around the room. (The tech guys tell me they’ll need to create a 3D model of you, put lots of balls around you and import into my world if you want to dance with me.)

So now you’re wondering, then why is the workshop called such? Because, guys, you’re going to create a character of your own who will dance with me. Yup, you read it right. Whoever it is you create will be my dance partner- for the day.

Just one thing though, guys. Please don’t call the character you create a MASCOT. It hurts his or her feelings. You know why? Because your character can feel pain. I am NOT a mascot either. If I were one, I wouldn’t be a fighter ant. I wouldn’t be able to dance and I certainly would not be having a one-sided conversation with you right here, right now.

You might insist, “But Diana, you ARE one!”

Okay, let’s have a simplified theory about what mascots are from one of the most easily accessible online resources in your world- Wikipedia.

“A mascot is any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name. Mascots are also used as fictional, representative spokespeople for consumer products, such as the rabbit used in advertising and marketing for the General Mills brand of breakfast cereal, Trix.” 

See the last line there? See where it says, “…fictional, representative spokespeople for consumer products...”

That’s the major difference between me- an anthropomorphic character- and a mascot. A mascot is the product’s spokesperson, which means it talks well about your product, uses it, celebrates it, endorses it. But the mascot does not have a history of its own. Humans call this history part mythology. There’s no myth in a mascot. A mascot doesn’t have thoughts, doesn’t have feelings, doesn’t have a backstory. It’s just… there.

I know the wizards who created me could go into lengthy discussions and drop names and brands all over the place but there’s just a single difference between a mascot and a character. Well, actually, there’re two differences. One is Value. The other is Emotional Connection.

If you’re still raring to dispute it all, let’s just talk about someone that I admire. Born in 1974, she hails from Japan and is a white Japanese bobtail cat with a red bow. Okay! Now you know who I’m talking about.

Yup, Hello Kitty. Forty years old and she’s going strong. Two years ago, she was valued at $7 billion a year on rights alone. That’s Value. Why? Because she’s bright, she’s kind-hearted, she’s close with Mimmy, she loves homemade apple pie. She’s got a father, mother, grandfather and grandmother. She IS the mascot of friendship, no doubt, but do I love her for the fact that she represents friendship? Nope. I love her for the fact that she loves homemade apple pie. I’ve never tried that before. (We don’t get apple pies very much in the tree house…) So, in the same way, when you humans fall in love with Hello Kitty, are you falling in love with what she represents (if she was a mascot in the first place) or are you attracted because she’s not a human, but not quite a cat either? That’s Emotional Connection.

It’s hard, I know, to separate the differences between a representative and a character. But let me put it this way, if Hello Kitty were the spokesperson for a pen and that was it, she’d be way less iconic today. But she’s in such great commercial demand, and that’s because she was never created to be for a single product or a single service or to serve a targeted marketing campaign. She was created to be a character; an anthropomorphic character. Just like me.

So, like I said, coming to this workshop is to enable you to create a character of your own. With what, you ask, and isn’t that animation but this isn’t an animation workshop! I know. With your own product or service, you’ll create your character. And whoever it is, do remember, make him or her internalize your product’s attributes and abilities into themselves.

Go....Going......Gone!

Winter 2015.

A client came to Lauric to request our assistance to launch and market his service. We recommended the following:

“You have to build up you community, and continually engage them.

This is best achieved through a digital brand character.

We will do a demonstration of his services through a simulation in a mall, with his digital brand character interacting with all his users.

If proven successful, we will extend it to other areas” 

Spring 2016.

We worked with the client. But they didn’t really understand what we were saying. They went along with the digital brand character part. But they didn’t get the community part. They didn’t get what it was all about and why it was necessary and why without this character engaging the community there would be nothing to go on. Neither did they comprehend the importance of this digital brand character demonstrating what their service was about.

Strangely they weren’t the only ones.

Influencers and non-believers questioned the whole concept and laid down the assumption that this concept would not work because of… whatever. Doing this would drain the battery life, they said. Oh, no one will use this service since it doesn’t really contain the action. Oh, why would you need to engage customers with Entertainment because entertainment is entertainment and you know, we’re totally into hardware… They said.

Summer 2016

No one is questioning why Entertainment, hardware and services are now ONE. No one is questioning this very famous IP that got resurrected after a long, long time why they’re doing all the above.

They’re just totally into it now. And not only are they into it, they’re suddenly experts who can micro-analyze why it’s so successful now (like it wasn’t successful before?!) and what this will mean for businesses in the future. And do they talk convincingly, like they have went to the future and saw it.

 

Learn from the "best" Karate Expert

 

I bet they wish they could speak to those who saw this through from its development phase and know the product's roadmap. But those guys aren’t talking. It doesn’t matter whether you ask them or not. They’ll tell you that they don’t really know what the future will be and they’ll tell you in all honesty that even if they did, there’s this thing called a Non-Disclosure Agreement and so they can’t mention what’s gonna happen at all, and certainly not what this company or that company will be doing. Uh uh. Zilch.  

But what they can tell you… and that’s if you’re really, really keen, is

 

"it is possible for a tie-up if your product or service is a good fit."

We’re saying the same thing too. Because we’re an Entertainment Content Strategy Consultancy. We know entertainment. We know the opportunities that exist and we’re pretty sure that for the future of your business, you won’t want to lose out this opportunity.

After all, it’s what you’ve not seen and yet debuted it to success is what makes you a market leader. If you’ve seen it, that opportunity’s long gone.

Don’t you think so? Its not too late, as there will be other opportunities.  As long as Entertainment Content continue to exist, it will continue to drive change Its time to move beyond small content, and learn how to utilize Entertainment Content in your business.

Where Is The Human In The Age Of Data?

Numbers are a great attraction.

The core of nearly every business function is data, and nowhere more so when it comes to Marketing, Finance and Product R&D. Without the numbers, no way are we going to get our reports done. Without the numbers we don’t know where to align our financial budget for the year. Without specific consumer behavioral data, we run the risk of squirreling precious dollars down the drain researching and manufacturing a product that benefits no one. That’s why we pay agencies to work through the methodologies of obtaining the necessary information. Traditional media, social media, online, offline, one-to-one customer surveys and so on, it is all done.

All that information is valuable, make no mistake about that.

It does get easy to focus our attention to the overwhelming amount of numbers, figures, statements and conclusions. When that happens, the information is nothing more than a spreadsheet if the centre of all that is lost.

I’m referring to the Consumer.

The Consumer has to be at the heart of all the data you’ve accumulated. Because that’s what your business is really about, isn’t it? Your Consumer. Your Customer. It leads us to this next question- How then, does one marry the two together whilst achieving the required outcomes?

Through Content.

To me, Content is what drives behaviors. Content is what attracts your audience in the very first place and then makes them your prospects before becoming your customers and your evangelist eventually. Content is what keeps them with you every step of the way as they progress through the funnel.

When it comes to data collection, Content drives response- and this response- however it is, negative, positive, etc.) is in fact what consumer behavior exhibits. With audience-specific content, consumer behavior becomes predictable. Yes, predictable.

Content ---> à Response ---> à Behavior Pattern ---> à Data

Let’s say you’ve got a product that you’re about to launch and you have to know how well it is going to do in the market. You create audience-specific content based on your understanding of your customer, or as some will put it, demographic-specific content that will evoke a response.

 

From the historical data you can predict whether they will buy your current and future product, whether they will not. You can predict who will buy it, when they will buy it, why they buy it and whether they will tell others about it. You can predict how more of your product they will want to own or if they will never use it again. With these data, you know where to allocate the budget and what kind of content is required to trigger the desired response. All these predictions will translate into actual behaviors, and those behaviors will confirm the data if you release the correct content. In other words, data becomes nothing more than a tool to guide and tell the companies what kind of content the consumer is demanding, and the confirmation to the BIG data is what the consumer buying behaviors exhibit.

It’s a cyclical thing. Well-known products often go through the data mill as a form of check and balance pretty frequently too. After all, buying patterns disappear, demographics do change, buyers change their minds, whatever. You can do all the psychological and sociological predictions and there will always be an anomaly somewhere. There will always be new preferences. All of which formulates new data, which then creates further need for product development and content creation.

It is vital for brands not to over rely on the science of numbers alone though. Despite what might appear to be an overwhelming confirmation of a certain behavior, a balance between those figures and your own instinct has to be achieved. Hollywood studio executives do this from time to time. Occasionally a character in fact gets scripted in halfway during production or the movie goes for reshoots after filming completed because fans demand for it, despite the fact that the big data predictions report on the executives’ table may say its very well positioned otherwise.

Nothing replaces paying close attention to your prospects and following your instinct. Making business decisions based entirely on the numbers leaves the human element out, and with that, the experience and emotional resonance you need with your consumers themselves.

After all, if the machine after gaining self-awareness can shed tears, your customer is really, just human?

IS BIGGER BETTER?

The timeless question that everyone gets all heated up about. Some will tell you that yeah, bigger’s definitely better. It’s more impressive. It draws attention. It shows that you’ve got stuff that lots and lots of people know- and want to know. We hear numbers that can be totally mind-boggling- and frankly, they can make our mind go wow.

10,000. 100,000. 1 million, 2 million.

Whoa. That’s a lot. And it is really very impressive.

But ask them how many have joined in the last 90 days- and the answer can leave you out in the cold. Community engagement is a consistent one. It is a process that involves frequent new views, frequent likes, frequent additional members. We send them emails for primarily two reasons:

1. To serve them with content, promotions, news, updates, etc. that they want
2. To affect some greater number (sales, revenue etc.)

We want them to be excited about receiving the update. We want them to be thrilled by the fact that there IS news, that there IS something happening. When there’re no updates or content, we want them to wonder why there’s nothing happening and wait eagerly for the next news that pops up on their screen.

And if you’re finding that amongst your gargantuan community numbers there’s only a teeny weeny portion that’s reacting to your news, then it’s time to shake off that indecisiveness (cos’ we know you’d seriously thought about it before but changed your mind) and bring the chopper to the numbers. That means cleaning up the mailing list and putting aside the inactive ones.

Wait, what, you say, if I do that, I’ll be left with a pathetic few! How will I survive then? And what about those that I’ve tossed away?

Well, firstly, there are more important things than the size of your email marketing list. Yes, seriously. A smaller, higher-quality email list works better than flinging your news into the abyss. It’s not news if no one reads it. It’s not news if no one gives a shit about it. Segment your email list and provide them specific content that will engage them and you’ll find that the response is more effective than a one-way communication.

Yes, it can be a very scary thought when you compare your now-very-tiny numbers to the other small content marketer who has hundreds and thousands on his list. But not all battles are won with large armies. I love Entertainment, and since I think Entertainment Content is fantastic for illustrations, let’s look at the movie 300. (You know, that movie with the “THIS IS SPARTAAAA!!!!” line and the other famous one, “TONIGHT WE DINE IN HELLLL!!!”) 300 is based on a true story about an army of 300 Spartan soldiers that fought against a million-strong Persian army. And like all true stories of ancient warfare, we see this small VS big victory legacy repeated in Alexandre The Great and Genghis Khan.

And it’s not your fault either that the list has *painfully* shrunk. This is part of what community building and community engagement and reengagement is about. If people can break up and fall out of love, if people can get married and settle down with three kids, if people can change email providers or change jobs or move from one place to another, for a million over reasons they can stop reading your email marketing or stop getting interested in your updates.

What then, you now ask, do I do with those that I’ve chopped away?

Run a win-back campaign. Study why they left. Figure out why they ignored your email newsletters. Did they grow out of a phase? Did they discover new interests? Did they have so much else to look at that they deleted yours without even looking? Why did they stop being loyal? Did they forget you entirely?

This is the time to convince them. This is the time to reach out to the inactive ones and re-engage them with compelling content that meets their current lifestyle needs and fire up their lost love for you. (And if they don’t re-engage, well, clean the list again and stop mailing to them entirely.)

How then, you ask now, do I go about it? Here’re some questions to help it along.

1.     How many new subscribers have you had in the last 30 days?

2.    How many have joined beyond 30 days and opened an email from you in the past 90 days?

3.     How many have joined between 30-90 days and have not opened your email since they subscribed?

4.    How many have joined beyond 90 days and have not opened your email in the past 90 days?

5.    How many have joined beyond 180 days and have not opened your email in the past 180 days?

Rather technical and number-crunching, isn’t it? But so, so necessary.

Because the content to win back each of the five groups above differs from each other. Content to engage new subscribers in the last 30 days will differ (even slightly) from content to re-engage those that were your subscribers more than 180 days ago but haven’t cared about a single update of yours since.

It is all about the emotional connection with each of them. If your current content isn’t touching their hearts, you’ll have to go beyond small content marketing and pump in content that sparks off the fire at every stage as they move through the funnel.

If not, it’s no use punishing your generals either. You’ll still be, you know, dead.