Today's FT carries an interesting spread on the difficulties large brands face when their reputation is somehow besmirched by public perceptions of accidents (BP's oil spill and safety record), financial impropriety (Goldman Sachs paying huge bonuses after being bailed out) or just getting too big for your boots (Starbucks global expansion). An article by Morgen Witzel and Ravi Mattu looks at perceptions of leading brands and the difficulties of Asian brands like Tata to transcend local boundaries.

There are a lot of people talking about content marketing these days - and so they should be. But amongst all the talk about how content marketing is perfect in principle for the modern business world, it's nice to see some concrete examples.

That was one of the ideas behind the Great Content Marketing Experiment, conducted on 19th May this year in London. To put the principles of content marketing to the test by doing a campaign in a day. To create and distribute useful content and to measure its effect within a targeted audience.

The whole experiment has now been summarised in the document below. If you are considering using content marketing, it is a fascinating insight into how it can work in practice - albeit in a 24-hour period! Please feel free to download and distribute - if you find it useful content, that's what it's all about after all.

Download the full story here >> content_marketing_experiment.pdf

I'm lucky to be surrounded by a lot of smart people in my work, be they clients or colleagues. So it makes it all the more amazing when I see examples of complete lack of vision when it comes to marketing - in this case, nurturing customer loyalty.

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE COPY NOW

Everyone's talking social media. But are buyers really listening? The Base One B2B Marketing Buyersphere Report - launched today - lifts the lid on the channels that different buyers really use for information and what this means for B2B marketers.

The impact of the digital revolution and the rapid proliferation of marketing channels, tools and techniques is having a profound impact on how B2B brands talk to their audiences. But whilst the likes of blogging, social media, online video etc. are very exciting opportunities to potentially engage your customers, how much do buyers really use them? And how does this compare with more traditional forms of media?

These are amongst the questions that the Buyersphere Report, developed by Base One and B2B Marketing, set out to establish.
 
The report - which can be downloaded here - is based on a survey of 503 business buyers who have been involved in a purchase worth at least £20,000 in the last 12 months. The survey was carried out by Toluna, with analysis of the results by Base One, McCallum Layton and B2B Marketing.

The report maps the influence and frequency of use of key information channels at three different stages of the buying process: need definition, supplier identification and supplier selection. In doing so, it has unearthed some key patterns that will help marketers plan more effective buyer communications...

There is a lot of talk about orangutans and Nestlé, these days. Most of it on Facebook. If you have been living in a tropical forest for the last week and have missed it, it concerns Nestlé's alleged deforestation of Indonesia in order to grow more palm oil to make Kitkats [please forgive the over-simplification].

People started complaining via the Facebook fan page [oh, the irony...] and the poor moderator had to deal with a deluge of hateposts.

It's not about orangutans, it's about brands

Now, the environmental issue itself is well documented. But of equal interest from a marketing perspective is how this illustrates the weakened power of brands, and the impossible job of the brand guardian - in this case, the Facebook page moderator.

Not only is he fighting on very shaky moral ground in trying to defend the indefensible, but he is also fighting against the might of the social media movement.

There is a belief that social media has liberated the masses to rise against the oppression of the big brands, who used to control the flow of information. So any brand that dares to try to wrest back that control is going to die the death of a thousand electronic cuts as social media users shriek in outrage.

A schoolboy error by Nestlé

The Facebook moderator got it horribly wrong of course. He began by suggesting those commenters with avatars based on the Nestlé logo were infringing copyright by doing so. He was right, of course, but this wasn't the right thing to say. When challenged, he simply got a bit angry and ended up insulting them and resorting to control tactics, ie threatening to delete posts that don't confirm. This is the social media equivalent of taking your football home if you're not allowed to play centre-forward.

So what are brand guardians to do? Social media is all about open communications, so do you just have to sit there and get shot at? Of course not, but brands - especially those who give people lots of reasons to dislike them - really have to think hard about how [and why] they expose themselves, as well as how they will defend themselves.

Thoughtful, reasoned discourse is the only way. But how much resource does this take up? Can Nestlé's lead environmental consultant really spend 8 hours a day online? Clearly not, but there has to be a better way than railing against users.

The rise of social media has changed the habitat for big brands. They are the dinosaurs, ill-equipped to deal with the new landscape, outmanoeuvred by small, furry, online users. The metaphor ends there, but the problems for brands like Nestlé will continue...

Does anyone have a solution?

What will 2009 be remembered for in the world of B2B marketing?

From our point of view, it was the year that B2B went beyond business as usual. What do we mean? Maybe this is best illustrated by a brief track back through the Base One Beyond blog and flagging up the most read posts. After all, we can think what we like but the acid test is what attracts the most readers. If the people don't get it, it's not working.

One of 2009's most used words was 'social media' and it dawned on many B2B marketers in 2009 that this was something to take notice of. This then spawned the term 'Buyersphere', which we have been quoting ever since we first blogged about it in March.

The following month saw a great example of how social media makes people tell the truth. Or rather how it exposes people when they don't, with the story of Damian McBride and his smear emails.

But the realisation of how B2B marketers needed to change what they were doing - and change how they were thinking - came to the fore during the summer. Our take on these developments was summarised by an interesting chance encounter with a traditional magazine editor (one of a dying breed in 2009), and by the fascinating debate over who exactly should be talking for your brand out there in the Brave New World of social media.

Whose job is it anyway? Your PR dept? Your marketing guys? Your CEO? How about - just possibly - it might be everyone's job. One of the realisations of 200 was that, as marketers, our job is perhaps not so much to do it as to enable it.

But there was also a wonderful feeling of goodwill around in 2009 - which is odd considering the economic climate. The awareness that peer-to-peer information sharing was increasing - the fact that buyers were talking to buyers - convinced many a gnarly old marketer that we could no longer talk at our customers. It was all about sharing and, well, being nice. Etiquette was big news in 2009 as it became clear that brands needed to give something of value if they were to receive the valuable attention of their target audience. A popular metaphor was that we were all invited to the world's biggest cocktail party - and we had to behave accordingly.  

But where was the proof that all of this was working? As proponents of the 'new way of working' we were keen to flag up a good success story when we saw it, and May showed us why it was more important than ever to listen to customers!

The following months, the discussions continued, with pieces on the problems with data capture, the true meaning of viral marketing and how to spot spammers. (I've also learned not to include the word 'spammer' in a blog post - search engines don't like it...)

As if to prove that going beyond business as usual was not limited to the business of social media, we then introduced a little culture into proceedings with B2Beat poetry - an anthology of inspiring verse from our very own poet laureate, Noel Ponthieux.  This obviously struck a chord with marketers around the world as the modest print run that we produced quickly sold out.

We chose scandal for our next topic, with the outrageous story of how Pepsi endorsed casual sexism in its social media marketing. This was followed by Jamie-Lee Wallace's excellent lesson in selectivity, before we then segued effortlessly into a comparison of Star Trek and B2B marketing. Trust me, the link is highly logical.

So in summary, it has been a year to remember for B2B marketing, and one for which we were proud to provide a commentary here on the Base One Beyond blog.

As an aside, it was also the year when someone pointed out that the words 'gold' and 'blog' are mirror images of each other. This makes 'blog gold' at the same time a palindrome, an excuse for a logo (see below) and a great name for the award we give to our best blogs.



And for 2009, I can think of no one who has boldly gone further than Ms Ponthieux with her Star Trek piece.

Thank you all for reading - see you next year.

OK, picture the scene. You are a male in your mid-20s. You're in a bar packed with beautiful women, and you have one thing on your mind. How do you increase your chances of 'success'? That's right: turn to family brand Pepsi, who have sanctioned an incredible piece of social media marketing, built around an iPhone app.

The application - available now free from an AppStore near you - offers advice on how to 'score' by way of promoting its spin-off beverage, Amp. "Amp up before you score" is the line behind this amazingly insensitive marketing idea.

It's a classic conversation we've all witnessed at some point:

SEO Expert: Here's the list of keywords you need to focus on when writing the copy for the web site.

Copywriter: What do you mean? These don't fit at all with the way the brand communicates.

SEO Expert: Well in that case, people searching for the brand and its products just won't find them!

SO THERE! That told them...

Well, maybe, but there's a reason for the way a brand communicates, and its the result of weeks, months, even years of research and acquired knowledge. An 'upstart' like search can't just come and shoot all of this down with one pesky list of keywords...

Maybe not, but surely the way people search for your products is relevant to the way you should present and sell them? What it you're selling courgettes, but your customers are searching for zucchini? Or maybe they ARE searching for courgettes, but those with the largest potential orders are specifically searching for 'soft-skinned courgettes', when you're busy selling them as 'green and white courgettes' because this was the key message you decided on when you last looked at the way you communicate. In this case, they are less likely to find you, and you are potentially missing an important sales opportunity.

Search may be a relative newcomer in the marketing timeline, but it can provide you with vital information on the way customers perceive brands, as can the shiny new arrival, Social Media.  From a B2B perspective especially, they both represent the voice of the Buyersphere - what people are actually saying and thinking rather than what you believe they are saying and thinking. Whilst they are not the 'be all and end all' as some fans will have you believe, any wise marketer should add them to their toolbox and use them whenever possible.

And as for the branding question? If you have an established brand and a well-tried approach to your communication, of course you shouldn't rip up the rule book to accommodate keywords. To quote a favourite search mantra: build for the users and not for the search engines - in other words, take the keywords into account, but make sure that they fit the copy and not vice versa. If, however, you are at the start of a branding or a re-branding process, Search and Social media are invaluable, powerful and free research tools that can provide you with crucial feedback on how the Buyersphere searches for and talks about your brand, and I would recommend combining them in every case with the more established tools - surveys, round-tables, focus groups, etc.

So, in a way, the keywords do come first, but not in importance, just in order.

Yes - your B2B brand can be stronger, fitter and altogether more gorgeous. And it takes just a few minutes. Allow me to explain and invite you all to join in an experiment.

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post that postulated the three fundamental questions that a B2B company needed to answer if it was to succeed in social media.

I chatted to a few people about this afterwards and we thought that distilling complex issues down to a few basic questions was incredibly liberating. Forget the detail, just look at the topline. So why not apply the same principle to the issue of assessing your brand strength?

I believe there are just ten questions you need to ask in order to get a top-level idea of how strong your brand is (or your client's brand). Naturally, I'm ignoring the details here - but then that's where the devil is - so this is not the basis for a five-year branding strategy. But just ten questions should give you a revealing snapshot of your brand fitness, and highlight the areas you need to work on - thus giving you an opportunity to make your brand stronger.

But what are the ten key questions? And how can you do this in 3 minutes?

Is your marketing outside-in? Or inside-out? Which is better and why should B2B marketers care?
 
I was wondering this as I took my seat yesterday at an event yesterday entitled "Outside-in v inside-out: the great debate" hosted by Experian and ABBA (the Association of Business-to-Business Agencies, not the Swedish power-pop combo).

The answer is that we should definitely care - and we should understand the merits of the different approaches. The speakers for and against the motion put forward some excellent arguments, which I have tried to summarise below (whilst adding a little editorial opinion while I'm at it, of course). Read the following descriptions and work out for yourself whether inside-out or outside-in works for you.