Guest Blogger: Kim Noles
As an EVP/Management Director at Element 79, Kim Noles juggles an inordinate amount of responsibility, overseeing our Cricket and ConAgra businesses and spearheading new business. She’s spent all of her twenty years in advertising in Chicago, working for agencies large and small with a heavy emphasis on foods, beverages and travel. Kim has been a critical part of the agency leadership team, driving our recent digital reinvention. She was instrumental in re-engineering our internal structure to focus on Inciting Interaction and taking a pro-active stance on two-way engagement between brands and consumers. This demanding workload may also explain her equally passionate appreciation of fine wine…
A dear friend once said to me, “You know what confidence looks like? It looks like generosity.” What a lovely thought. A truly confident person doesn’t need to tear others down to build themselves up, or hoard their talents, or refuse to help others. A confident person knows who she is and lends her talents openly and willingly. She is generous with others; with her expertise.
This is true of brands too. As we look across the fragmented media environment and try to help our clients connect with their targets in meaningful ways, it becomes more and more important to find ways to add value to people’s lives. In the old days, we talked about stopping power, disruption, and break through. But today, consumers can find brands when and where they want; you no longer need to stop them in their tracks, but rather encourage them come to you. However, consumer expectations are higher than ever – you better make it worth their while. One of our colleagues at E79, Tom Napper, recently attended a 4A’s Conference on social media in New Orleans and he offered this great observation: “85% of all social media users want to have a conversation with brands. Not only that, but they expect brands to contribute, to give something to the conversation. They are seen as content experts.”
What Can You Offer?
Brands are content experts and consumers expect way more than simply the product or service a brand offers for sale… That’s a profound change. To make it worth their time, consumers now expect brands to share their expertise: to educate or provide expert information, to facilitate community, to support causes, offer valuable tools or simply entertain.
At Element 79, we have always helped our clients define their brand’s mission. But lately, we’ve been having more pointed discussions with our clients about activating those missions in more engaging ways. What is the brand good at? What can it contribute? What else can we offer in exchange for consumer attention and engagement? How much can we afford to give away? And just how comfortable are we with the opinions about the brand out in cyberspace?
Fundamentally, we offer the same advice to marketers as we might to our friends: be generous and confident members of the community. That is, be generous with your expertise; it’s like bringing a hostess gift to a party. Whether it’s a better user experience on a website, a treasure trove of information, or a little mindless playtime, as long as what you offer links back to the brand mission, it adds value and contributes to the community. And that’s helpful because a confident brand, like confident people, attracts others to its cause.
Instead of worrying about things like the changing media environment, losing control of the brand or the cost of sitting on the sidelines, brands should enter the world of social media confidently and generously — offering their unique talents openly and willingly.
In these crazy times, what’s more attractive than a little generosity?
By Kim Noles, EVP/Management Director, Element 79
Collective Thinking 