In 1975 Bill Samuels, Sr., decided that Bill Samuels, Jr., was to become president. His only advice – “Don’t screw up the whisky.” It seems this counsel nearly failed to reach his grandson, and current Marker’s Mark COO, Rob Samuels.

Maker’s Mark recently announced that they were altering the recipe of their popular bourbon, reducing the alcohol content from 45% to 42% ABV, in order to cope with the increasing demand. By lowering the proof, they’re able to get more bottles out of the same number of barrels, simply by adding more water; an economical solution for a company that prides itself on its age-old inefficiencies and traditions, like manual barrel rotation and a recipe that took years to perfect.

Needless to say, this news was not greeted with enthusiasm by fans of the brand. After meeting with strong opposition on twitter, facebook and various blogs – including many promises never to drink Marker’s Mark again – the brand has reversed its decision with the amiable, goodwill seeking statement: “You spoke. We listened. Here’s proof.” With the amendment garnering over 27,000 likes and over 8,000 shares on Facebook, this is looking like a nice and tidy, win-win situation: If there was no outcry, then they could have proceeded with the change, reducing costs and increasing production. As that was not the case, they’ve reversed the decision and shown themselves to be a company that not only listens, but responds to consumer opinion. The product that was bottled and shipped at 42% ABV has gone from corporate blunder to collectible rarity; and Maker’s Mark literally has written consent from thousands of customers to raise the price of their product, just so long as they don’t tamper with it.

And that is how over-demand and die-hard fans, which are a pretty good problems to have in the first place, become a great opportunity.

In John Nosta’s Thinkology blog post, “The Fundamental Marketing Dilemma: Language is a Lie,” he discusses books like Malcom Gladwell’s Blink and Tor Norretranders’s The User Illusion, which explore the ideas of how we perceive things. These authors assert that our first impressions are processed not by conscious thought and language, but by much faster processes that are rooted in our reptilian and mammalian brains.

Nosta’s take is that language is really “a corrupted surrogate for what’s REALLY happening.” He says that maybe we shouldn’t be asking our customers what they’re thinking. Maybe we would get more and/or better information by trying to measure direct neural function such as eye tracking, facial coding and other biometrics.

What about surveys and focus groups? Bunk! According to Nosta, people’s thought processes pollute their first impressions about a product or service to the point that the language expression we get in response to asking a question isn’t reliable—and yet 90% of market research focuses on verbal communication, while verbal accounts for only 23% of most communication.

So what’s a marketer to do?

Now while I didn’t really like Blink, and still think Gladwell, no matter how brilliant, was just cashing in on the success of Tipping Point, I get the whole “first impression” thing and how it can shape your interactions going forward. In fact, I think that’s why images are so very important, and why a site like Pinterest is taking the social media world by storm, and why Facebook paid a cool $1Billion for Instagram.

This power of visual medium is much more evident in social, where reaction is faster (and often more visceral) than in traditional marketing. That’s the reason more people hit the “like” button than actually take the time to comment or even share a post. It can be done in that “blink” period—rather than taking the time to process through language centers.

Think about it. Why is YouTube the second largest search engine? Why do people react more on Facebook to images and videos than any other type of post? It’s pretty simple… we connect more in the “blink” of an eye to what we see rather than what we read. It stays with us longer and allows us to process in so many ways. That is also why creating short memes or one-liners of 140 characters or less (yes Tweets) can be so powerful… easy for people to process, remember, and share.

So as a marketer, how can you turn that to your advantage? What visual or auditory tools could you use to get people to connect and react on a subconscious level—rather than the need for them to “process” first and then take an action? I find this fascinating and think there is so much opportunity for this in in the social realm.

A lot of companies are springing up in the “Neuromarketing” field that use biometric tools to help businesses get a better sense of how people react to advertisements and other marketing stimulus (before language kicks in). However, I think you could get started in the right direction by reading books like Roger Dooley’s Brainfluence to get a better handle on it.

In the meantime, and within the petri dish we all have at our fingertips, experiment with various ways to use images, video and short one-liners in your social communications. Pay attention and see how people respond. Do they get more interaction than standard posts? What kind of interaction? Do you see any patterns over time? Start using Pinterest, Instagram and any other visual tools your consumers fancy… and try all different things.

Visual is powerful and how consumers relate to, share, and think about what they have seen can open a whole new world to marketers… but it‘s scary and hard to control. Are you ready?

Ted Rubin

Ted Rubin, Chief Social Marketing Officer of Collective Bias, is a leading social marketing strategist. He coined the term ROR: Return on Relationship™… a concept he believes is the cornerstone for building an engaged multi-million member database, many of whom are vocal advocates for the brand, like the one he built for e.l.f. Cosmetics as the CMO between 2008 and 2010, and for OpenSky where he was CSMO until the end of April.

We started our exploration of the Internet of things with a Twitter-Powered Gumball Machine – a project that began as a way to learn about a new technology called Arduino. As we began to develop the project, it became clear that creating a new catalyst to drop a gumball wasn’t the real point of the experiment. Instead, it was more about the people we were able to connect to and how they interacted with us.

Over the next few months I will discuss in 3 blog posts how the Internet of Things (IoT) will change how we interact with not only the products, but the marketing for those products.  The Internet of Things will be more than an iPhone-controlled beer cannon but an entire digital experience that will shape your everyday life.

Source: Iobridge http://connect.iobridge.com/projects/#iPhone_Controlled_Beer_Cannon

Part 1: Why the Internet of Things?

The Internet of things (IoT) is best defined on Wikipedia as: “A world where physical objects are seamlessly integrated into the information network and where the physical objects can become active participants in the business and human processes. ” For short IoT is summed up as a machine communicating with another machine.

view video: http://vimeo.com/49498254

So why does this matter?

Let’s forget about a fridge that determines when your milk is low or the socks with RFID. Imagine a fridge that determines what’s inside it and then chooses your next meal, creates a poll on facebook to gather reviews from your family members, orders the food through an online supermarket, syncs with your personal calendar to schedule delivery and provides you with the recipe when you walk in the door from the office.

IoT is removing the small tasks that you don’t want to do daily and leaving them in the hands of the professionals… machines.

It’s already possible to have a simple home automation system set up that allows you to turn off lights, control your thermostat and see who is outside your door all from an app anywhere in the world.

This technology is valuable not for technology’s sake, but for the value it provides to the homeowner. Connecting your home to the Internet, in this case, provides time-savings, peace of mind and cost savings through energy efficiency. Consumer are not interested in the IoT for the technology, but rather for what the technology can do for them.  The monitoring, data, remote management and connectivity to everything will simply allow us to do what we currently do faster, cheaper and better.

What does this mean for businesses?

I had the privilege to work with EllisDon on a marketing campaign for 18 York Street in Toronto. The building was the first commercial building collaboration between EllisDon and Cisco and was designed so management would be able to control heating, ventilation, cooling, lighting, conference rooms, window blinds and audio-visual components all through the convenience of their phone. The connected building allows building management to monitor and improve performance more efficiently and save energy like never before.

This example proves that the IoT will change how we do business not just because it will change the process in how we collect data, but it will allow us to do something meaningful with that data.  Most importantly the IoT will allow business to monitor the products and services in their entire lifecycle making sure that every element is used to its maximum performance.

What does this mean for consumers?

With connected products consumers will benefit from the information that each item carries.  A simple orange that contains a small Near-Field Communications (NFC) sticker, will inform a consumer; when the product was harvested, where it traveled from, what temperature it maintained and if there are any food warnings.

More importantly each retailer can adjust the price of the product in real time based on how fresh it is. The future fruit aisle will be made up of electronic shelf labels that will display updated price information, allowing the customer to have complete control over the items they purchase.

A connected product will be a connected brand

The gumball machine that gives out candy for a tweet is personified through the actions of each customer, and when the gumball machine is associated with a brand the gumball machine becomes part of the entire experience.  Here is an example of how TweetaTweat interacted with each customer and could be used by a brand to engage in-store.

Message to the gumball machine from customer: “@TweetaTweat give me a #candy”

Message from the gumball machine to the customer: “@customer hope you enjoyed the candy, be sure to follow us @tweetatweat”

The interaction between the customer and the machine is just as important as the customer receiving the gumball.  The lesson from Tweet a Tweat is that each person who mentioned the gumball machine also received a response back from the machine, creating an experience of enjoyment. Each customer who tweeted the machine gained an emotional connection with it and will continue to engage with it moving forward.

Tweet a Tweat could be used in a retail store to give incentive for customers to check-in, like or share a tweet. Rather than gumballs, coupons could be rewarded and shared with the customer that likes a fan page on Facebook. The cost of a Facebook like is as little as $3.60 and as much as $22.93 (pcworld.com), so creating a value for each coupon would be very simple. Most importantly, the engagement the shopper has in-store would outweigh any offline experience and create a relationship between the Gumball Machine – The Brand – and that specific location.  This is why it is important for brands to use the IoT as a model for both customer loyalty, advertising and product development.

In the next post I will discus how the IoT will be the digital connection between the customer and the products. I will also explore the value of a product having a digital identity.

Let’s connect your products! Contact Philter Communications today. Click Here

How to make mo’ money with names that work

By Andris Pone | President, Coin Branding | www.coinbranding.com

November is upon us, and with it the brilliance of Movember – possibly the world’s only charitable campaign so ingenious that it isn’t just impossible to miss, it’s impossible to avoid.  Launched only nine years ago, last year Movember campaigns were held in 14 countries and raised $125 million.  Run in this country by Prostate Cancer Canada, its principal genius is that when we look at someone – which we tend to do several to thousands of times every day – we can instantly identify participants.  It doesn’t matter if the person we’re looking at is two feet away, or, via a computer or TV screen, across the planet.

Movember is in your face like no other charitable cause in existence.  And so we, the general public, are highly likely to gain awareness of the Movember cause, and even be inspired to participate ourselves (which in this case looks to be a lot of fun), donate money or simply spread the word.

Yet there is another vital dimension to the incredible success and spread of Movember – its name.  Despite the genius of Movember’s core idea, if instead of Movember it was called Passion for Moustaches, or Grow a Moustache Month, it would be more difficult to generate excitement, participation, awareness – and revenue.

But what makes Movember, as a name, make money?  All they did was replace the N with an M, right?  Well, yes – but for me as a naming practitioner, the talent underlying this minimalistic solution conjures the dictum of French writer Saint-Exupery:  “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”  Also, and counterintuitive to this elegance, Movember works because it is so highly utilitarian.  In other words, it does the jobs that are the hallmarks of profit-maximizing names.

First, Movember is “remark-able,” or worthy of word-of-mouth.  We are attacked by thousands of marketing messages every day, and we can only absorb so much.  Clever names like Movember catch our precious attention and inspire us to share the name with others – for altruistic reasons, certainly, but also so others might validate our intelligence.  The bargain for charitable organizations is that word-of-mouth, turbo-charged by social media, is vastly less expensive and more effective than paid communications.

Second, Movember crisply communicates the essence – growing a moustache in November – of the charitable initiative it represents.  As it happens, a positive side effect of including the name of the month in the campaign name is that it focuses the minds of potential participants, donors and the media on the time of year in which action must be taken.  Moreover, Mo is slang for “moustache,” a facial accessory practically synonymous with manhood – and what could be more manly than a man with the balls to take responsibility for one of the other key anatomical features exclusive to the man, the prostate?  Perhaps only parading down the street in high heels, as the exceptionally meaningful Walk A Mile In Her Shoes does to raise awareness of sexualized violence against women.

The levity of Mo also communicates the humour that is absolutely integral to Movember’s success, considering that many men deliberately grow a ridiculous-looking moustache and that many others have no choice but to grow a ridiculous-looking moustache.

Just as booby in Booby Ball begat Camp Booby (both of Rethink Breast Cancer), Mo performs the further role of linchpin in a unique Movember vocabulary, setting off a network effect in which every Mo-inspired term makes every other Mo-inspired term more reinforcing of the Movember brand.  For example, Mo Bros are the moustache-growing participants and Mo Sistas are the women who support them.  Every Mo Bro gets a Mo Space on the Movember website, where Mo Bros and Mo Sistas share Mo Photos, Mo Tweets and Mo Stories. Movember even has the Moscars, the awards for the best homemade Movember videos shot by Mo Bros and Mo Sistas.

Another pivotal job done well by Movember is that it’s distinct – especially from other charity brands and also from the greater universe of well-known brands that vie for our daily attention.  Movember’s chief point of distinctiveness is that it’s only one word – highly unusual in the world of fundraising campaigns and events.  A distinct name by definition avoids fads, such as using -licious as a suffix.  The –licious craze began creatively enough with names like Winterlicious, Summerlicious and Beyonce’s Bootylicious, but long ago became a hallmark of laziness and creative bankruptcy shared by Jerseylicious, Yumilicious, Paint-a-licious and other copycats.

Yet distinctiveness is apparently not a job of importance to the multitude of charitable organizations using the word “walk” in their campaign names, and not in a way that ties uniquely to their cause.  Even more unfortunate is a generic name like The Grape Escape, so plain it’s in simultaneous use by Edmonton Meals on Wheels, the MS Bike Tour, The Running Room, Saint Monica House and still others operating charitable events, not to mention the several private organizations using it for non-charitable purposes.

Distinctiveness helps make a name more memorable, the final key job performed well by Movember.  Which names are you more likely to recall tomorrow:  the generic Passions or the bold Booby Ball?  Walk for Smiles or Walk a Mile In Her Shoes?

Someone’s life may, quite literally, depend on it.

After spending an afternoon at Retail Council of Canada luncheon: Reaching Today’s Value Driven Consumer, it became clear: the retail world has changed, forever. Statistics and information about the ever evolving technology of purchasing continually fill up the newsstands and our inboxes. We cannot turn a corner without hearing more information about the importance of apps, smart phones and social media. There is a new reality; this is now our new retail world. Alongside all of these technological evolutions are new buyer behaviours that are shaping purchasing decisions.

The New Retail. The New Reality.

Companies need to not only understand what the new technologies are but also learn about the best way to use them to reach their consumers. On the other hand, continuous economic doubt, rising household debt and unstable employment patterns are causing consumers to be very careful with their dollars. Now combine this with the technology and information that is available at your fingertips and you have a market of value-driven and savvy consumers. People have always loved a great deal, but in today’s market value can no longer been viewed as a promotional tactic – it must also be a positioning strategy.

Shared Values.

Value-driven consumerism is not a new concept by any stretch of the imagination, what is new is the importance and proportion of consumers that swear by it! In 2011 TLC began regularly airing a show about coupon-savvy consumers, Extreme Couponing. Deal of the day group buying websites such as Groupon gained momentum and many other mediums were all pointing towards one trend – people want more value in every dollar they spend.

Discount Shopping Shapes Canada.

Insights from Nielsen’s online global consumer survey in May of 2012 confirm these trends, the survey results show an increase of 6% in coupon use from the previous year in Canada. We also see increases in the number of people searching for coupons, looking through flyers on a regular basis and even using new technology to price shop.  During this period 35% of all dollars spent were on products sold with a price cut from a discount or coupon. While most companies are struggling to meet bottom lines in today’s economy, there was actually a 50% growth among discount retailers in Ontario alone. The concept of value is driving change in market positioning as retailers are forced into the premium or discount sectors leaving middle positioning strategies, just like the middle class, to slowly disappear.

The Real Value of a Dollar.

Economic instability is taking confidence out of Canadians; many believe that we are still in a recession with females in particular showing little consumer confidence. When considering that Statistics Canada claims that the ratio of debt-to-personal disposable income to be 152%, it is not surprising that consumers want more value for each dollar. To look at this in another way, Canadians owe $1.52 for every dollar they earn, so it makes sense that a high perceived value is placed on that $1.00. For a retailer to capture this consumer, the value coming out of each price tag has to be higher than the dollar amount requested.  This creates a great opportunity for retailers. Using technology and new tools, retailers can reach out to their customers and explain the value behind their products.

Looking for a New Outlet.

Value motivators are fueling discount sector growth. No patterns of this slowing down are on the horizon; especially with discount retail giant Target entering the Canadian market in 2013 and twelve additional outlet malls set to open in Canada in 2013. Growth is inevitable here and as these discount retailers compete for customers, data points to value-driven marketing messages as the differentiator. Retailers have a great opportunity to capture value-driven consumers in today’s world. As 2013 comes along it will be interesting to see all of the new loyalty, promotional and sales tactics aimed at creating the perception of value, and off course, which retail giant will end up getting it right.

Written by Agnes Koc koca at mars-philter dot ca

Incredulous though it may seem, not everyone likes beer, which is perhaps best illustrated by the popularity of Coors Light (zing!) However, no one can deny the allure of a cold bottle of beer, dripping with condensation on a hot day, the hiss of escaping carbonation when you open a bottle, or the cold, refreshing taste of beer as it washes away the lingering taste of the predictable minutia of the everyday (note to reader: alcohol should not be used to escape from reality). But, not everyone likes beer.

Enter Cider – beer’s fruity cousin.

The first time I had cider I accidentally mistook it for beer, and thought it was disgusting. But it appears I may be alone in my opinion. This past summer saw an additional 14 ciders hit the market (nielson wire) – perhaps most notably, Alexander Keith’s Original Cider and Somersby Apple Cider by Carlsberg Breweries. Furthermore, cider sales at the LCBO increased an impressive 47 percent as of April 1^st.

And so, in the spirit of discovery, and to see what all the fuss is about, I have decided to try cider again, this time fully aware that it is in fact, cider. The verdict: Cold, crisp, appley – it’s delicious. And it transitions from refreshing summer drink to seasonally appropriate fall drink like a pair of zip-off pants. Of course that’s all beside the point, which is after all, to try and explain the apparent overnight success of cider.

The reason cider has seen such a boost in popularity, is because now that it’s being made by breweries, it’s being marketed like beer, plain and simple. Take a look at Keith’s Original Cider; it comes in cans and six-packs of clear bottles – a departure from the traditional Keith’s brown bottle but rather characteristic of lighter summer brews. And the commercial comes complete with the sound of a bottle opening, a rather sloppy slow motion pour (it’s the one thing that people are worse at in commercials) and clinking glasses at the end.

So, who’s drinking cider?

Men and women, and, in nearly equal numbers. Men now make up about 50% of cider drinkers. Cider has followed fast on the heels, and has capitalized on a few recent trends in the food and beverage industry: Celiac disease (gluten intolerance), and a demand for craft and artisanal products.

Typically made from fermented apples, cider can be a gluten free alternative to beer, usually made from fermented barley or wheat. While it’s estimated that 1 in 133 Canadians are affected by celiac disease, a significant number, it’s not enough to account for the dramatic increase seen this past year.

Arts and Craft.

The other consumer is the craft beer drinker; sales of craft beer have increased by 200% in the past 5 years, Ontario craft beer being the fastest growing segment this past year with a 24% increase in litres. The craft beer consumer is young, adventurous and well educated about beer. They’re looking for a wider range of options and frequently experiment with new styles and brands. This may account for the increase in single can sales, which tripled over the past six years and accounted for 36% of all beer sales last year. Consequently, 75% of cider sales were single cans. While I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s mistakenly bought a can of cider thinking it was beer, it probably doesn’t happen often enough to account for $18 million in sales. However, don’t expect this consumer to be satiated by the current offering of mostly mass produced ciders. In the same way that demand for high volume domestic beer has stagnated in favour of local craft beer, so too will consumers become disillusioned with the current offerings in support of smaller artisanal products. The age of indiscriminate brand loyalty is coming to a close. It’s no longer enough to buy a brand because that’s what your dad bought. Consumers demand brands that stand for something (ideally the same things that they stand for) and eschew disingenuousness. So kudos to the brands that have driven the category thus far and have helped pave the way for the craft ciders that are to come.

Cider. It’s not beer. 

Cider has entered the realm of convenient alcoholic beverages previously dominated by beer. Patrons now have a non-beer option that doesn’t require preparation and comes free of worries about how long that bottle of wine’s been open. And maybe most importantly, cider fits right in with the beer crowd. Though it seems superficial this is probably a genuinely significant factor in the upswing of cider. There are times where everyone is having a beer and there might be some social pressure to conform. But, as established in the first and third sentences, not everyone likes beer. And therein lies the genius of this new wave of cider, it looks like beer, it’s made by a brewery, and it’s delicious.

written by: Mark Ste. Marie. Email him and tell him why you like cider, too. stemariem at mars-philter dot ca

Touch-less payment technology has been the Holy Grail of improved checkouts for a number of years according to Richard McLaughlin, the Senior Vice President of global products at MasterCard. He explains, “We’ve been talking about the smartphone being a loyalty and couponing communication device for probably 10 years. It’s now ready to be a reality.” With over 43% of the population now carrying smartphones, retailers are moving quickly to capitalize on digital spending (June 2011).

As easy as tapping a phone to a scanner, mobile payment makes for a seamless checkout, allowing merchants to move more quickly on to the next shopper. A purchase on a mobile wallet takes only six seconds, two-thirds faster than credit cards, according to Bank of Montreal and MasterCard who launched their touch-less PayPass sticker this past year.

Starbucks was one of the first brands to roll out their mobile payment program across Canada after launching it in the US about a year prior. Using the My Starbucks App, coffee lovers simply scan their screen to pay via a mobile barcode. Adam Brotman, Senior Vice President of Digital Ventures for Starbucks notes the ripple effect of such easy spending: “You might be willing to pick up a CD or something else at the counter because it’s so easy.”

Grocery giant, Metro Inc. made an announcement in December that they would be rolling out Visa payWave terminals in 600 stores across Canada. “Visa payWave makes the shopping experience quicker and easier, while paving the way for upcoming innovations like mobile payments,” added Mike Bradley, Head of Products for Visa Canada.

Image source one80.ca

Grocery chains are seeing an increase in male shoppers walking down their aisles. “Our store managers are telling us we’re seeing more men than ever before,” says Rob Koss, Vice-President of Marketing at Longo’s. According to a study by NPD Group, Canadian men were the primary grocery shoppers in 25 percent of households in 2010, up from 20 percent in 2006.

Men are making more meals so that they can be a bigger part of family time; “We’re seeing more men doing grocery shopping and more young dads cooking with their kids as a way to bond with them at home., says Supermarket Consultant Phil Lempert.

Brands and retailers should be aware that men who enter the grocery store also bring with them a different shopping style. “We talk to a lot of these single millennial guys about shopping, and the biggest headline is they’re not as structured, not as hurried, much more experimental, more adventurous.” says Barry Calpino, Vice President of Breakthrough Innovation at Kraft Foods. When male shoppers are married they show signs of being more frugal and structured about their trips. According to a recent Men’s Health magazine survey, some 86% of men said they did their homework before heading into a store.

Once in the store, men take the same attitude they do when lost on a road trip. Refusing to stop and ask for directions, men want to accomplish their shopping with total independence. Should he run into any snags on his way, he doesn’t hesitate to ask for backup, with roughly 50% of men saying they call home while out shopping. Sometimes that is to ask, ‘The store is out of your brand of yogurt…what brand should I get instead,’ or ‘Honey, do you need anything else?’ But John Wilkins, Vice President of Strategic Client Development at Atlanta-based Miller Zell points out the question is often to ask where something is located. “That speaks volumes because it suggests that that they have more confidence in someone who is not even in the store and does not work for the store than they do in the retail staff and signage.”

Some men would rather turn to their smartphone than a store clerk to get help if they need it. According to research by New York-based InsightExpress, men between 25 and 34 confirm or justify pricing, get a review on a product, grab a coupon or look up a recipe on their phone. Mobile is shaping to be a very important part of the shopping experience.

1. You’re only as good as your team.
Who is Scooter Braun?
Scooter is everything to Justin. Scooter not only discovered Justin after seeing a YouTube video he quickly realized that the only way Justin could become a star was by surrounding him with great people. Scooter connected Justin with a superstar, a vocal coach, a stylist, a dance crew and a social media director. All of the people around Justin helped to make him this successful.

The takeaway from this: surround yourself with people that are smarter than you. If you’re an A employee, hire an A+ player. Innovation and growth in your company will only happen when you begin to change and challenge the things you do every day. For this to happen you not only need motivation you need a challenge. Justin’s was selling out Madison Square Gardens.

2. Work smarter, work harder.
Whether you’re a brand or an artist to gain success you need to go out and work for it. This was one of the biggest preconceptions that we all had going into the screening of this movie. We believed that Justin’s star rose quickly: from YouTube to contact in mere weeks. Wrong.

Justin attended 143 different venues, going to radio stations, high schools, charity events, water parks and shopping malls. Then after all that he went on tour and did an additional 84 stops, living in a bus. He became a superstar because he and his team were relentless workers who believed in a common goal.

3. Social activation transforms listeners into lovers.
There are numerous times in the movie where you see Justin tweeting and interacting on social media with no guidance. Before watching the movie I thought that there would be more control over the daily things he did online. But instead, Justin is much more authentic and real than many other brands on Twitter. He gets sick, he says mean things and he is going to make mistakes and he’ll say sorry more than once over his career.

Every CEO and every business owner needs to be more social – truly, authentically social. If you were the head of company wouldn’t you want to know what people actually thought of your brand? Wouldn’t you want to engage with them where they are? A connection on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Pinterest, Path, Foursquare or YouTube is worth something to the person you’re connecting with. It means that you’re listening and engaging with them on their terms.

4. Stay hungry. Stay open.
Justin listened. As we get older and gain more experience we struggle at times to remember how we got there. Sometimes it’s important for us to act more like 16-year-olds and be open to change. Our experience is valuable, but it tends to be coupled with doubt. This is when we hear ourselves say “we’ve tried that before,” or “they’ll never go for that.” Be open. Know that the world is changing so radically that new ideas and innovative problem solving are the best ways to be successful. At the risk of being too punny: Never Say Never.

5. Be human.
Justin makes extra effort to connect with people whether it’s on social networks, at concerts or during his off time. Him and his team give out free tickets to fans before every concert and make an effort to connect with fans one to one as much as possible. He respects the fact that millions of people care for him; therefore he returns the favor and thanks them for their loyalty.

One of the most interesting takeaways from the movie is the notion that he was successful because each fan had a personal connection with him. They believed that they discovered him first – before the record companies and before the marketing machine. He belonged to them. This is the difference between push and pull. This is what forms emotional connections with brands that go beyond reason.

Concluding, I want to end with a quote from Guy Kawasaki who was the first innovation director at Apple. “As a brand ask yourself; do we own the segment that were going after as well as Justin Bieber owns the segment of 9-16 year old girls?”

As the second largest users of loyalty worldwide, Canada has 92% of the population belonging to at least one loyalty program. Over the past 15 years Canadian initiatives have evolved from simple travel rewards to more everyday benefits and Canada is now considered a mature market for loyalty.

Michelle Ubell of Maritz Loyalty delivered proof that it truly influences the types of behaviour that marketers are looking for: 62% of those surveyed indicated that they were more likely to do business with companies that offered rewards and a full 47% would drive past a retailer to go to another with a loyalty program they participated in.

Interestingly, affluent Canadians are more likely to be members of loyalty programs, with an average of 12.3 different memberships per respondent and Quebec strongly under-indexed at 4.4 programs per person. We still lag behind the US average of 15 or more memberships per person.

At the Shopper Marketing conference this week, research was shown that said shoppers would still visit the same stores but less often if they did not have a loyalty program while 44% expressed total indifference to loyalty programs and would shop just as often.

Despite strong membership numbers, there are still reasons why some Canadians don’t join rewards programs, including little perceived value, complicated collection and redemption processes and privacy concerns.

Reward

Smart retailers are working to increase the acceptance of their programs by offering private shopping events and additional discounts through preferred status adoption. Others have offered rewards far beyond dollar values to their most valued customers including front-of-the-line ticket purchase options and special members-only events.

Bryan Pearson, President and CEO of LoyaltyOne, a more-than-frequent flier, shared that one airline helped him avoid an hours-long wait in an airport by calling him and offering the opportunity to move up his travel plans to catch an earlier flight. Now, that’s a perk with real value.

Recognition

The panel agreed that traditional loyalty programs must evolve from “do this, get that” to include rewards for intangible, but extremely valuable, behaviours like making recommendations or signing up friends.

Seeing this need, Philter recently presented to a Canadian retailer where we suggested several ways to encourage all their customers to engage with their brand more than ever and a scoring mechanism to reward those who are most active. For example, a regional test of their digital couponing has allowed them to learn who their biggest influencers are and they are now poised reward those people.

Counting on the direct correlation between advocacy and loyalty, chains like Starbucks are offering innovative ways to reward their customers for engaging with them in the social media space. Starbucks Frappuccino Community invites fans to share their ideas for new flavours of the coffee drinks and then rewards them with exclusive content around topical events such as New York Fashion Week, with exclusive celebrity interviews and back-stage sneak peaks.

Relevance

In order to benefit from the huge pile of data we already have, as marketers, we now need to use that information to create even more dynamic campaigns and to further improve the customer experience in both direct and indirect ways.

Although not everyone chooses to engage in the programs, all shoppers still benefit from the data with store-level improvements and product arrays being directly influenced by the opinions and behaviours of those who are willing to share them.

In turn, we need to speak to customers with properly targeted, personal messages and chose their preferred channels but we must also carefully guard that information in a way to maximally respect customers’ privacy.

Cooking up success in the Loyalty marketing means that we, as marketers, need to:

1. Ensure that we help you recognize your best customers
2. That all communications are relevant and in their preferred space
3. That we use the data collected the right way