The first post in this two-part series reflected on a shifting landscape that is moving away from simply trying to grab consumers’ attention, and instead focuses on becoming relevant and responsive to the demand of their lives. The Economy of Relevance is one where the brand with the most useful, helpful or pertinent marketing wins. But that takes a brand willing to get responsive and agile.

Here are just a few recent, stellar examples of responsive advertising that dominates the Economy of Relevance:

1. Ad agency SK+G of Las Vegas recently competed on AMCTV’s “The Pitch” against The Ad Store of New York City. In the days following the show, SK+G knew that viewers would be using search engines to find out more about the agencies that participated, but the agency went beyond ensuring that it could be found.

SK+G took the competitive spirit off the air and into search by buying up paid search ads that appeared when users searched for The Ad Store, effectively diverting traffic and demonstrating its search engine marketing prowess. Smart. Responsive. Relevant.

2. Etch-a-Sketch landed into the national political conversation with a thud when a senior aide for Mitt Romney, Eric Fehrnstrom, called the Romney campaign “almost like an Etch-a-Sketch” that could be “rebooted” for the general election campaign against President Obama. The next week, the company released a series of light-hearted responsive ads that were hyper-relevant to a news cycle still at its height. The kicker? Etch-a-Sketch saw a sales jump during its historically slow season:

3. Febreze launched a popular series of broadcast TV spots, where it put unsuspecting participants in hideously dirty and odious environments that had been sprayed with the product. Their reactions were gloriously positive, as the envisioned themselves in the middle of flowery fields or and breezy days.

Click here to view the embedded video.

When the public started to question whether or not the broadcast commercials were real, the brand reacted with a experiential activation in New York City and an online video to spread its proof.

Click here to view the embedded video.

4. The national dialogue around and ultimate rejection of “pink slime” spiraled out of control and threatened the livelihood of the hamburger industry in the United States. Wendy’s, which didn’t use the substance, risked being swallowed up by the controversy along with the rest of the meat manufacturers and retailers if it didn’t respond. A full-page ad set the record straight and was highly relevant to readers’ lives. Placing it in the newspaper ensured the context supported the message.

Is your brand ready to get responsive? What situations could require it? How could your brand get nimble and jump into activation in a compressed time period (i.e. 24 hours)?

Have you ever stopped to wonder how much time is spent trying to think of the “Big Idea” within agencies and marketing departments the world over? How many drafts of “The Message” have you looked at and edited over and over? What if the future of effective advertising isn’t about any of those things at all?

While there will certainly always be a place for and significant value to be derived from stellar concepts and amazing creative, consumers are becoming increasingly skilled at tuning out overwrought ideas and messaging completely. If your brand doesn’t have big media dollars to forcefully saturate the market (or if that’s just not your brand’s nature), it might be time to start thinking about the new Economy of Relevance.

In the Economy of Relevance, consumers don’t care how emotional or clever messages are, nor do they care how big an idea is. They are looking for relevant things to pull into their lives, while ruthlessly rejecting intruding forces they consider irrelevant or untrustworthy.

So what do they find relevant? Marketing that is responsive to the lives they are already living. As advertising channels continue to proliferate and diversify, the opportunity to create an oasis of relevance only increases for the savviest marketers.

Some brands have taken this call for relevance very literally. Social media-centric triage centers, where brands respond with a moment’s notice, have begun to pop up. Shining examples include Dell’s Social Media Listening and Response Center and Gatorade’s Social Media Command Center. But as that model grows commoditized, brands should be looking outside social media for ways to be more relevant.

If your brand is ready to win the Economy of Relevance, here are a few basic ways, beyond social media listening and responding, to start the journey:

1. Support with Search: If you’re already engaging in a large event, sponsorship or mass media activation (or a competitor is), it’s likely there will be a spike in search activity around the keywords involved. Launch a highly efficient paid search campaign to capitalize on consumers’ interest.
2. Enter a Larger Dialogue: Is there a broader cultural trend that would make sense for your brand to enter? If so, consider authentic and relevant ways to become part of a larger dialogue already underway.
3. Prepare for Crisis: Under what situations will your brand have no choice but to be responsive and relevant? Are there risks that could cause it to be under attack? Consider what medium would be most believable and meaningful to consumers in times of crisis for your brand or industry.

The second post in this series profiles brands that have begun to embrace responsive advertising to bolster their relevance to consumers. Are you ready to make the move?

Unless you’ve been living under a meme-repellant rock for the past week, you’ve probably heard the rising buzz and fandom surrounding Texts from Hillary. The most recent in a string of photo meme Tumblrs that have been popping up, this one was good for enough laughing to get your abs one step closer to beach-ready status. But today, Texts from Hillary became much more when something radical happened: Hillary Clinton jumped on board.

The site generally pairs photos of celebrities with a photo of Hillary Clinton text messaging, which was taken by Time photographer Diana Walker. In bold, white text over each photo is what the creator imagines the two icons might be texting each other.

Today, the creators of the site, Washington D.C. communications professionals Adam Smith and Stacy Lambe, were invited to the White House by Hillary Clinton’s staff. According to reports, she came out and greeted the creators; telling them how much fun she thought the site was and how many people were telling her about it. In almost anti-political good-natured style, Clinton had created her own contribution to the site featuring photos of the creators and presented them with a signed copy.

Beyond being an amazing story, this rapidly developing meme and Hillary Clinton’s response constitutes a new standard in social media for politics. Barack Obama may have been the first to show politicians the power of social media as a broadcast and activation platform, but Hillary Clinton’s actions are the first to demonstrate true engagement and genuine heart (in fact, John Stewart just blasted Obama’s communications for being too canned). Clinton’s staff could have spent time worrying about whether the meme would mar her image, ignored it or (probably) worked with Time to claim copyright infringement. But instead, it showed that the Secretary is human.

From here on out, politicians better be willing to do more than broadcast messages. They will need to listen carefully, react quickly and admit they’re too holy to have a little fun. But that’s what brands need to do too. The bottom line? If the Secretary of State can be responsive and agile enough to engage the creators of a meme mocking her, then participate in the mocking herself, your brand can get relevant too.

The old adage goes, “I know half my advertising dollars are wasted – I just don’t know which half.” If you and your brand are ready to get a better idea, get ready to embrace Big Data. Slated to grow into a $50 billion industry (annual compounding rate of 58%) between now and 2017, Big Data represents the, sometimes unwieldy, mass of data available to businesses from existing and emerging channels.

Gartner now projects that by 2017; chief marketing officers will spend more money on information technology than chief information officers. But what will marketers spend that money on? As marketing channels continue to proliferate and we have the ability to know about our consumers more than ever, resources will be allocated to agencies, platforms and data scientists who can make mounds of data into actionable insights.

By its very nature, Big Data is extraordinarily complex. Its sheer size, time sensitivity and variety make it impossible to manage casually or by hand. But we see Big Data as a competitive advantage across industries that we can help our clients realize. At Jack Morton, we’re working with our clients to derive benefit from Big Data an a few major ways in 2012, but we’re convinced this is only the beginning:

• Personalize to Profit: Leveraging Big Data to create personalized brand experiences that compel because they delight and are highly relevant.
• Accurate Multichannel Analytics: Measuring the right metrics to engage in multivariate analysis that can drive towards optimizing marketing spends and return on investment (ROI).
• Predictive Analysis: The ability to know what customers are likely to buy before they buy it can let loose a number of organizational changes, ranging from lower distribution costs to better lead nurturing.

Next Steps
The first step to taking on Big Data is asking your organization some serious questions. Does your company have a Big Data strategy in place? Are you leveraging the data you already have to its full potential? Is your marketing department collaborating actively with your CIO or CTO to ensure you are capturing the data you need to be competitive in the future?

Facebook has undeniably changed the way we communicate with and relate to other humans. As Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said in her keynote during today’s Facebook Marketing Conference, “For the first time, technology is powering us… and who we are.” On its path to reshape our lives as individuals (and yes, make a profit), Facebook (and social media in general) has also begun to change the way brands communicate with consumers. Today, Facebook’s release of its new Timeline layout for brands has once again changed the game for brands big and small.

The focus is no longer on how brands communicate, but rather on how they relate. I believe brands relate best to consumers through brand experiences. I also believe that brand experiences are most meaningful when consumers are surrounded by their social connections.

Facebook has given brands a platform to listen, comment, ask, answer, converse, innovate and, yes, even sell while users are surrounded by their social context. Facebook’s Timeline puts social brand experience at the platform’s center. No longer will users experience brands in isolation or with a few other (often random) users 
on message board-style Pages, but rather, users will be prompted to experience brands and their heritage through their closest — and most trusted — social connections.

Is your brand ready to make the most of Facebook’s Timeline for brand Pages?