Learning the art of promotional ‘conversation’

LOIS KELLY spoke about a new advertising strategy called 'conversational marketing' at the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce's Business Expo 2007. /
LOIS KELLY spoke about a new advertising strategy called 'conversational marketing' at the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce's Business Expo 2007. /

To illustrate a new form of marketing that Lois Kelly calls “conversational marketing,” she showed a Kleenex commercial.
The commercial pictured a woman sitting across from a man in a park. She was talking about how Hurricane Katrina has impacted her life. Her words moved her to tears, so the man offered her a tissue. And the only signal of the Kleenex brand was one flash screen at the end.
The commercial successfully illustrates conversational marketing not because it shows a conversation between two people, but because it releases a point of view that is relevant to the consumer, Kelly said. It shows that the marketers at Kleenex are listening to their consumers and what affects them. And it gives consumers something to talk about.
Kelly was one of several expert speakers at the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce’s Business Expo 2007 last week at the R.I. Convention Center. Her presentation on conversational marketing was sponsored by the Business Innovation Factory.
“A few things make conversation more important today than in the past,” Kelly told the audience. “One is that [people] don’t trust companies. [People] trust people but don’t trust companies.”
In addition, she said, people have so much information coming at them that they’re overwhelmed. They need conversations to help them make sense of it, she said. And there are so many new ways to communicate, including blogs and online communities such as myspace.com.
“They don’t want to be just sold to anymore,” Kelly said. “They want to have a say in what companies are delivering to them.”
Kelly encouraged companies to engage with consumers on blogs and online communities and to use them as tools in developing marketing campaigns. She said companies can use them for product development and to test advertising, but also to listen to what people are talking about.
Listening is the first of three steps that lead to a successful conversational marketing campaign, said Kelly, who is the founder of Foghound, a Marblehead, Mass.-based communications consulting firm that specializes in branding.
The second step is having a point of view, one that connects to consumers and spurs dialogue between them. Kelly said companies can find their point of view by asking themselves new questions.
“The biggest question you can ask in your organization is: What do we passionately believe?” she said. “Often what drives that belief is that you are giving value to your customers in ways that no one else can.”
Kelly compared Nivea’s marketing campaign to Dove’s in order to illustrate point of view. She said Nivea uses simple messaging that suggests if consumers use the product, their skin will look better. Dove, on the other hand, uses messaging that has a point of view about what defines women’s beauty. The company’s advertisements reflect women of all sizes, shapes and ages to illustrate the company’s point of view on beauty.
“You begin to love this company,” she said. “[And those] emotional connections are really important … as we start making decisions based on how we feel about a company.”
The third step to a successful conversational marketing campaign, Kelly said, is to use “real” talk as opposed to “corporate” or “communications” talk to reach consumers. Otherwise people will tune it out because it doesn’t reflect how people actually speak with one another.
These concepts may be simple and obvious, Kelly said, but companies face some significant obstacles when trying to implement them. That’s because conversational marketing requires talking about the company’s point of view in a real way as opposed to a contrived way. And it requires some amount of participation in consumer-generated media such as blogs.
Those aspects are hard for companies to accept, she said, because it requires giving up control. Companies can no longer control what people say about their company on blogs and other media sites. What is possible is for companies to join the conversation.
“In this conversational world we don’t have control, but we can participate and listen,” Kelly said.

No posts to display