2012 Xerox Corporation – All rights reserved.

As the Xerox mistress of TEDMED last month, I learned a few lessons about how a strong communication platform can help create a distinctive brand voice that delivers a consistent brand message. The Xerox TEDMED 2012 program advertisement (shown here, since it only appeared in print during the conference) had one simple objective: convey our support, in a thoughtful sponsorship message, for the event and its purpose. 

While creating a “proud sponsor of” message may sound easy enough to accomplish, several other communication objectives come into play when deciding exactly how this ad should look and what it should say. The ad also illustrates what a solid communication platform can do to inform a campaign and why communication platforms are an important prerequisite to any marketing program.  A bit of background may be helpful before sharing what I learned from working with the Xerox team and our agency on this ad.

“Ready for Real Business” is what we call the Xerox master brand communication platform. It’s not a tagline, but a platform that tells customers what we do and what we provide – technology and services that help you manage your business functions better so you can focus on what you do best, your core business. It defines the rational or emotional territory that the brand intends to own over time. It forms the foundation for how we act, sound, and look in all internal and external communications. It frames how we do this in a consistent manner while providing the flexibility for each product and field marketing function to accomplish its goals.

While this simplifies the process a bit, to activate the platform you must answer three key questions:

• What do customers do? What is truly core to their business?
• How does Xerox help our customers do this?
• How do our customers benefit as a result?

How well does the TEDMED 2012 ad accomplish this and meet the requirements of the communication platform? Pretty well, I think.  (Special thanks to Jason Bartlett here at Xerox, and the Roberts Communication team, for all their hard work that really hit the mark on this ad.) Here’s how I see it address each of the three key questions:

1) What’s core to the business of healthcare? — “Caring for people is the real business of health care.”
2) How do we help do this? — “…by working behind the scenes to free up resources and simplify the way people work.”
3) How do customers benefit? — “… ensure they have more freedom to deliver the level of care that everyone deserves.” (The last question/answer also supports the key TEDMED theme of exploring how to make the future of health and medicine happen today.)

Through the image and headline, the ad also creates a connection between a diverse audience of practitioners, medical students, entrepreneurs, public officials, educators, researchers, and administrators and Xerox, a company with a serious commitment to the healthcare industry. Rather than stethoscopes and scrubs, we picked an image that is medical but ambiguous — he could be a physician, researcher or other healthcare professional. However, he is someone intent on his activity and serious about what he is doing. Alignment between audience and message was really key here and hard to do when you bring other factors — like art selection with unlimited rights at a reasonable cost — into play. The headline is straightforward in its attempt to connect Xerox to the TEDMED audience by saying “Just like you, we’re here to make things better.”

The key lesson for me is about using language and imagery to evoke an emotional response, and how to do this while getting a message across that fits the parameters of a very specific communication platform — one intent on preserving the integrity of the Xerox brand. I have to confess, I’m an old product marketer. I’m all about the facts and getting straight to the point.  Isn’t that what B2B marketing is all about?

Who needs emotion to do that?

I think the ad demonstrates a beautiful answer to the question. It shows how you can deliver a message (Xerox is proud to sponsor TEDMED with a passionate commitment to the healthcare industry) in a simple, elegant manner that creates a warm, human bond with the reader. It’s a lot for one little ad to accomplish, and it think it does it quite nicely. I also think its a lesson more B2B marketers could learn: how to connect with prospects and buyers in a way that goes beyond jargon and hype to show how you really can help customers improve their business.

From “A World Made Simpler” – all rights reserved Xerox Corporation.

What happens when a globally recognized brand needs to change what it means?

This is the fantastic challenge facing our CMO, Christa Carone, as Xerox evolves from “the copier company” into something more – a company dedicated to providing simple answers to complex business problems.  Last week, Xerox introduced a new video that highlights how where the company has been shapes where it is today and where it will go tomorrow.

Through advertising agency Y&R, Xerox teamed with visual storytelling studio, Psyop, and production company, Blacklist, to produce “A World Made Simpler… by Xerox” – a 2-minute video that uses printer paper, stop-motion photography, and a bit of computer-generated graphics to tell Xerox’s story. I think you will be surprised to learn what the copier company does to help doctors monitor patients and deliver better care, set up call centers during natural disasters, provide tamper-proof drug packaging, and make public transportation easier.

Xerox also published a “behind the scenes” look into how Y&R, Psyop, Blacklist and the Xerox team produced this video.  As you watch both the original and the background versions, I think there are a few key lessons B2B marketers can learn about storytelling and why video is such a compelling medium in B2B communication:

1) History matters – so stick with it. Chester Carlson invented xerography almost 75 years ago for one simple reason: finding an easier way to replicate and share information. Xerox embraces this legacy by using what people know us for — paper — to tell a story about what most don’t know us for — providing services that make business simpler. Many will look at the video and say “it’s all about the paper” — which is exactly the point. Having a strong sense of who you are as a company helps you to remain true to your brand identity even as that identity changes. And it also makes for a mesmerizing experience as you watch to see what the paper will unfold to reveal next.

2) Video illustrates intangibles. The value of IT services — and why a company would outsource parts of its business to another — is sometimes difficult to understand. Rather than bury the message in meaningless techie jargon or hyperbole, the video uses concrete examples of ways Xerox solves customer problems (without specifically naming names) to show how we’ve moved beyond our technology roots.

3) Emotion and B2B marketing are not mutually exclusive. The production of ”A World Made Simpler” is inspiring and surprising without being overbearing or maudlin. It evokes an emotional response to some very important problems that we relate to easily.  

If I have any criticism, I wish that the behind-the-scenes explained more about the motivation behind developing the spot.  Xerox bought Affiliated Computer Services in 2010 to expand business opportunity beyond its document reproduction origins, but now faces the challenge of communicating the new Xerox without losing the old. That’s the business problem behind a story worth telling.  A bit more transparency into that challenge would make the “inside view” video more interesting to me than watching technical details about the production. Alas, a fascination with technology is something Xerox will never leave behind, and the how-we-did-it video remains true to this cultural quirk.

Video also represents a great opportunity to receive peer recognition.  Congratulations to Barbara Basney and team for winning AdWeek’s coveted “Ad of the Day” for A World Made Simpler. Watch both and let me know if you agree — it’s the right step toward writing a new chapter in the Xerox brand story.

While taking a little time off from Xerox here in the sunny, southern California desert, I took note of something that I rarely, if ever, pay attention to in the Bay Area – billboards.

Maybe it’s the monotony of the drive along interstate 10, the stark contrast with the arid landscape, or the sheer number of them, but billboards seem to stick out here in the desert. The vast majority target consumers with messages inviting them to gamble at local casinos, stay at swanky resorts, shop at outlet stores in Cabazon, invest in gold, refinance mortgages, and avoid bankruptcy problems.

One set of billboards piqued my interest. Rather than demands to buy a particular brand or service, these billboards feature an interesting, sometimes historical figure – ranging from the Dali Lama, Jackie Robinson, and Kermit the Frog – and an inspirational message like “Live Your Dreams”, “Courage”, or “Work for Peace.” The only message is to “Pass It On,” along with a nondescript reference to a Web site called www.values.com

I wondered what this was all about. Who would spend tens of thousands of dollars on physical advertising to simply extol the virtues of, well, virtues? So I looked up the site and found the homepage for the Foundation for a Better Life, which is (according to Wikipedia) an organization founded in 2000 to promote positive behavioral values.

Funded through a trust established by billionaire Phillip Anschutz, this foundation creates public service campaigns to communicate values such as honesty, caring, optimism, hard work, and helping others. It does this through television, outdoor advertising, theatre, radio, and the Internet. It focuses exclusively on public service media and all media is donated (hence no one spends thousands, as I first thought.)

Why do they do this? Their Web site simply says, “We want the stories we share about the positive actions and values of others to serve as inspiration for someone to do one thing a little better, and then pass on that inspiration. A few individuals living values-based lives will collectively make the world a better place.”

I thought this was a lovely and relevant sentiment during the holidays, so I wanted to pass it along to you. I think values.com should also give B2B marketers inspiration to think about corporate responsibility and how you can help to pass the positive aspects of your corporate culture and mission onto your clients, partners, and community.

Peace on earth, everyone.

On June 13, in its inaugural Top Digital Marketers special report, BtoB magazine recognized 25 B2B marketers doing “exceptional” interactive work. If you look through the list at the bottom, you will see my name.  BtoB explains, “The winners were selected by BtoB staff, based on criteria including strong interactive vision and strategy as part of their overall marketing efforts; innovative use of digital technologies; and proven results.”  Wow, that’s quite an honor! And one I would like to share with my team and coworkers because I am never alone in these endeavors.

Here’s how I see it: Digital marketing is an essential part of any marketing program today – it should never stand alone. As buyers take more cues from online content, community, and experts, marketers can no longer depend on “interruption marketing” — tactics that try to get in front of prospective customers regardless of the prospect’s level of interest or qualification. B2B marketers must engage with potential buyers, determine their interests, and share useful, relevant information if they want to excel online. Here’s an example of how our industry marketing team approaches digital marketing to illustrate how we translate this perspective into practice.

Earlier this year, we decided to host a webinar featuring a well-recognized vertical industry expert. For those of you who know Ellen Carney, senior analyst at Forrester Research, she is one of the bright lights among the property, casualty, annuity, and life insurance industry luminaries. (And, yes, I adored working with her while at Forrester, so there’s my bias out in the open.) Our goal was to build Xerox Service’s reputation in the insurance industry, demonstrate a thought-leading point of view, and attract prospects to our story.

To do this, we wanted to produce fresh, interesting content that we could repurpose in different ways to drive traffic and interest. Now, to be honest, Forrester is not the cheapest resource with which to partner on this, so we wanted to make sure that the Webinar lived beyond its broadcast date. Here are a few highlights detailing where we focused our effort:

1) Relevance. We learned Ellen planned to publish a new report (not yet available on Forrester’s site) about the key trends shaping the future of the insurance industry. To associate ourselves subtly with what we expected to be ground-breaking research, we introduced Ellen to Gary Cole, who heads up our customer communications line of business for the insurance industry. Ellen liked Gary’s perspectives and decided to interview him to help provide background for her report.

2) Podcasts/audio files generate content — quickly.  We didn’t want to spend a lot of time writing, reviewing, and rewriting new content. Leading up to the webinar, we asked Ellen to talk to Gary about her findings. With Forrester’s consent (and — full disclosure — hired advice) we recorded and published three separate snippets of a Q&A conversation between the two of them, and featured each podcast in a separate blog post.  You can find them here:

Insurance 2020,  Insuring Against a Hole-In-One and Other Calamities, Going Green, Big Brother Evolves into a Risk Manager, and National Dog Bite Prevention Week: CA Tops National Liability List. We started promoting the Webinar in the fourth and fifth post in this series; we didn’t lead with it.  We tried to use catchy, off-beat topics to grab attention. We also tried to steer away from Xerox-centric language — this had to be about the industry, not us.

3) Highly targeted contact list.  This is probably the most important part. We market and sell managed print services contracts valued at multiple millions of dollars and spanning 5 years or more. There is a rather short list of companies that would be interested in this type of outsourced service. Knowing existing customer profiles, we crafted a list of specific accounts from which we generated a refined list of over 5000 contacts using internal databases and external sources.  To B2C folks, this may not sound like many, but for us, this was significant. While we welcome anyone interested in the future of the insurance industry to attend, we wanted to make sure that key folks at companies — like Allstate, the Hartford, New York Life, Prudential, State Farm, Travelers, USAA, and others — had the opportunity to hear from Xerox about Ellen’s new research.

4)  Industry-specific landing page. Nothing fancy, but we wanted one destination to focus our blog and outreach efforts toward that would also serve to tell interested parties a bit more about what we have to offer.  This way we could focus the Webinar content on what is interesting to clients and minimize the sales pitch from Xerox. It was also vital to record the event (again with Forrester’s paid permission) and make it available as a resource to those who couldn’t attend live.

5) A personal touch. We reached out to friends, fans and followers on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. We answered every email inquiry promptly. We sent personal emails to people we knew in the industry and promised to minimize the promotional content. We sent a reminder 30 minutes before the broadcast so that registrants didn’t have to dig through their email to find the links. We crafted separate thank-you notes for attendees and “sorry we missed you” messages for those who couldn’t make it. We made the replay available to everyone and encouraged them to share.

As a result, this Webinar enjoyed an 80% attendance rate against registrations. I don’t know about you, but — while at Forrester — I was thrilled to get 30% or more of the registrants to attend Webinars. 50% attendance is exceptional and 80% is out of this world! Also, this was the second highest attended industry-specific Webinar my team conducted so far. (So, for those cynics out there, 80% does not mean 4 out of only 5 individuals attended. We had many more than that participate.) We also generated three “leads” prior to the event — people interested in knowing more — as well as many requests wanting to see if the event would be recorded so they could access it on-demand.

What’s next? Measurement and tracking. We will enter attendee information into our database and track influence the influence of this Webinar and digital content against new opportunities and pipeline.  We will extract key questions, quotes, and other tidbits from the Webinar and use those content chunks to promote the replay. We will create customizable emails — featuring content elements and key talking points from Ellen’s research — for our sales people to use to follow up directly, and personally, with clients using our Business Builder tool. And we will do more – but I can’t give away all my secrets!

While the BtoB award is so appreciated, I hope in sharing this, you can get a glimpse into some of the activity that creates fundamental, straight-forward digital marketing. And I also hope to remain worthy of the recognition. Thank you again BtoB!

Xerox and Ducati Team Up on Print Advertisement

It’s been a long time since I’ve worked at a company large enough to invest in television advertising.  For years, Xerox advertising has been nondescript and unremarkable. You have to go back to the 1976 Superbowl ad to find anything truly memorable.   Until now.

In early September, Xerox launched a new advertising campaign including television, print, outdoor, and multimedia. These new ads reposition Xerox as the market leader of document management AND business process and IT outsourcing, courtesy of the February 2010 ACS acquisition. Using a little subtle humor, the campaign focuses on our customers — which is particulary powerful in business-to-busines marketing — and how we help them solve real business issues.  The campaign also includes an innovative, interactive Web experience. (Click on the pink, “Document Management” link to start.)

My favorite of the group is the commercial featuring the Ducati motorcycle windtunnel test. Xerox has long-sponsored Ducati in the World Superbike Championship, and the partnership has been a good one. I like the ad because it is visually stunning (the bright red motorcycle, the rider’s futuristic equipment, and the thin stream of smoke for testing aerodynamics) yet captures an important, if not a little routine, service Xerox provides for Ducati — user manual translation, global printing, and management.

Take a look and see if you agree: this ad is clever and explains – simply and effectively – that Xerox is now more than just a document printer company.  While you are on Xerox’s YouTube channel, check out the ads for Marriott invoice processing automation, the NY Mets marketing services, and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish battling printing costs as well.  Hope you enjoy!

Whether it be simple email campaigns aimed at attracting registrants for a Webinar, or a more complex, multi-channel affair launching a new product or service, capturing and managing all the steps – and logic rules – required to automate campaign steps can be tedious to build and tricky to debug. At best you end up with a Visio-like process chart covered in a mass of spaghetti links and flows; at worst campaign design becomes a series of impenetrable workflow wizard steps that defy editing and change. A lack of more usable and useful tools is, in my opinion, one of the key issues holding back widespread adoption of marketing automation.

But there is hope on the horizon.

Two days ago, Silverpop announced a new graphical user interface for their campaign design and management software — called Engage B2B (formerly known as Vtrenz) —  that I think could transform the way B2B marketers plan and manage campaigns. Rather than conventional workflow diagramming, Silverpop’s new GUI uses a horizontal storyline metaphor – commonly used in video or TV program editing – to help marketers layout steps in a simple, visual flow.

Silverpop's UI Simplifies B2B Online Campaign Design

Marketers can combine flows of simple tasks, like “register for an event” to create multi-track, multi-point campaigns that run over several weeks or months and help sort out the most engaged buyers from those merely kicking the tires. Silverpop designed the tool to handle the tasks marketing performs when designing campaigns that take action based on how prospects interact with marketing communications, messages, and offers and move leads through the sales pipeline. Visually, it’s clean without being overly simple.  I like it and I think you will too.

So today, my hat goes off to Bryan Brown and his Engage B2B design team. The new UI will certainly help marketers focus on managing demand, not simply generating it. It makes it easier for marketers to build practices that score leads numerically, route top-scoring leads to sales, nurture contacts not yet ready to buy, and use visual tools to engage with sales.  Practices, in our research, shown to not only improve marketing ROI but demonstrate more clearly marketing are impact on the pipeline.

Engage B2B customers, let me know what you think once you’ve had the chance to test drive the new UI. Would love to hear about your first hand experiences.