There is a constant conversation taking place between marketers, strategists, creatives, and brands about the differences between branding for B2B and branding for B2C. There is the debate about color palette. (When in doubt, go blue!) What colors feel safe? What tone feels “business-y”? Is it okay to be serious and be clever?

To us, the truth lies in answering a question different from whether you’re a B2B company or a B2C company, but rather one that focuses on the individuals comprising the Bs and the Cs. Chris has often been heard remarking about the “magic consumer transition” that we sometimes believe takes place while commuting from home to work. The underlying consideration there is whether we truly do think that a CEO thinks or responds differently to words and visuals whether he’s behind a mahogany desk or taking a call from his (or her) deck on a sunny Saturday.

Focus for a moment on social media and the effect it’s had on the formality of our communication. There are no longer ivory towers or hallowed halls, and the businesses who continue to subscribe to this method of engagement (or lack of) are quickly losing share. As people we value warmth and competency as much in our business interactions as we do in our more colloquial, consumer lives. You may be drawn to the stability of specific bank, insurance company, or institution, but your experience is determined by the individuals you encounter within that organization, whether it be a teller, mortgage broker, financial planner, teacher, professor, or administrator. Individually they may present as buttoned-up business people, but behind the pleats and tweeds they are human beings who have a significant impact on the image and engagement of a brand.

Increasingly, we find that consumer loyalty and advocacy is built upon the relationships to individuals within an organization. Restaurants provide good food and a charming ambiance, but it’s the chef who stops by or the bar tender who chats with you while you wait for your dinner date who create that experience. There is no aspect of big M marketing that isn’t influenced by the blurred line between B and C. The way you position, message, and iterate product should focus on the one thing we all share: being human. Creating value for customers– both in communication and product– hinges upon understanding human nature above the nature of business.

There is no debate as to whether the rules are more stringent when you cross into B2B, but it has less to do with how people make decisions and more to do with red tape and legal constraints. The brand emerges when you find the humanity within your audience and then craft a story that appeals to them and passes the “business appropriate” test. It’s then the job of the organization to empower employees to embrace this balance and create experiences that are at once true to the brand and relevant to the customer.

Anecdotally, I live around the corner from one of the finest hotel chains in the world, the Taj. The brand stands for luxury and unparalleled experience. And while for guests this manifests in exquisite amenities and superb customer service, it’s adapted to meet the needs of the friends and neighbors of the hotel, as well. There’s no caviar offered as I pass by, but on a rainy day the staff is always ready with an umbrella, or a bottle of water when I jog by after working out. And this morning, after trying fruitlessly to hail a cab, it was a ride to work in their car service. So while I may not have the opportunity to lay my head upon those delightful pillows, or experience the luxury of tubs the size of my apartment, the luxury is tailored for me by a staff who knows my life and does everything they can to make it that much more luxurious.

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It was a 101-type session, reinforcing the fundamentals of social media for business:

• It’s about building relationships,
• It starts with the delivery of content worthy of your target’s attention,
• It continues with an effort to help and connect people,
• Doing so builds social equity,
• That same social equity becomes an asset you can leverage in ways that deliver tangible business results.

Some entertaining tidbits and anecdotes were shared along the way, conducted beautifully by the masterful and golden voiced Anthony Silva.

Click below for video of the event, and please let me know what you think.

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Let us know what you think, and what you’d like to see more of.

It was good advice. Advice that taught generations of us to dig a little deeper and find out more about everything from books to jobs and people. And now that advice is bunk. It’s been thrown by the wayside with everything else that social media has massacred: traditional advertising, old school marketing, and human dignity and discretion.

These days, you judge a book by it’s Facebook page. And if you were thinking that recruiters and HR entities were turning a blind eye to the information so readily available via the interwebs, you would be mistaken.

In their new book, The Web 2.0 Job Finder, Brenda Greene and Coleen Byrne offer insights and recommendations from recruiters and HR departments on how to leverage social media to help find new opportunity, not kill it. They’ve called upon experts and insiders to give sage advice to those looking to navigate the market and build a fruitful network in this expressive and boundary-less new world.

And you’ll never guess which social media man they tapped… Our very own Mike Troiano.

Seeing as how Mike doesn’t even know where HR sits around here, he is able to bring a fresh and human perspective to the book:

“Invest some time in your profile. Upload a picture, for God’s sake. Add a bio. Create some content to give people a sense of who you are, what you can contribute, what you’ll be looking for. Then start to reach out to the people you know. Connect with them, and start the dialogue.”

It sounds so simple, but it seems that when creating our “professional” persona, we freeze up, certain that any modicum of personality or individualism will raise a red flag. But it’s our belief that now is the time that who you are and what you’re about is what gives you an edge. We’re marketing ourselves in an age of full disclosure. By providing too little, you’re polarizing. Too much and you’re a liability. You need to find a balance, and from there you need to leverage your online presence to build a network that brings opportunities to you, while starting conversations that leave a lingering impression on those with whom you’re connected. That’s just what this book is about.

The Web 2.0 Job Finder will be available April 15th. You can preorder from Amazon.com here.

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Introduces Best of Boston iPhone App

Boston, MA (August 2010) – With the introduction of its innovative Best of Boston iPhone app for Boston magazine comes the formal launch of Holland-Mark’s Venture Branding practice. Led by agency principal Mike Troiano, the Venture Branding unit will focus on identifying, developing, and launching new consumer brands and product ideas with partners. “As an agency we are very focused on having measurable impact and seeing the tangible fruits of our creativity,” shares Troiano. “We created the Venture Branding practice to be able to put some skin in the game, to realize some of our own innovative ideas, and simply to work with smart people who want to build something with us.”

The Venture Branding model provides two entry points: The agency offers its ideas to partners and together they go to market, or partners approach the agency with their ideas and Holland-Mark provides the support. The Best of Boston iPhone app is an example of the former, with Holland-Mark executives proposing the idea to Boston magazine’s leadership in March 2010. Holland-Mark developed the software and interface and licenses the content from Boston magazine. With the early success of the Best of Boston app, the Venture Branding team has already begun working on the Best of Philadelphia offering, another property of Boston magazine publisher Metrocorp. The second Venture Branding partnership type is reflected in the agency’s work with Chris Lohring, CEO and owner of Notch Session Ales. “Chris came to us in the fall of 2009 with an interesting idea for a new category of ale,” said Troiano. “We worked with him on everything, from the recipe and name to the distribution strategy. The Notch brand launched in May. We went from an informal conversation to barrels going out the door in six months. That’s pretty cool.”

“Holland-Mark and the Venture Branding practice brings it all together,” said Chris Lohring, Notch CEO. “Strategic sensibility, real marketing expertise, creative horsepower, and a focus on delivering a brand and business model that works. As a one-person start-up it would have taken me another year to get where we got in six months. And the demand for Notch is incredible.”

Holland-Mark is in talks with several potential Venture Branding partners and plans for a portfolio of five to ten brands by the end of 2011.

****

Holland-Mark is a strategic marketing firm focused on creating imperative brands. Clients include ACIS, BodyScapes, Boston magazine, Chelsea Clock, Corning, Harvard, Himmel Hospitality Group, IHRSA, MassMutual, Mercer, Notch Brewing, Pearson Education, and World Energy.

The project was delivered by our partner Mark Edwards, with great skill and insight. Bravo, Mark.

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These are challenging times among marketing folk. I’m convinced most are still hoping this social stuff is going to just blow over at some point, but even those who “get it” often seem not quite sure what to do with it.

There are a set of ideas accepted as metaphysical certainties among the social branding blogerati, almost all of which are anathema to people who’ve successfully built brands through broadcast media. Among them:

• The user is in control now
• Great marketing is distributed, not centralized
• Target engagement trumps message control
• The future belongs to free content
• Advertising is dead.

There’s truth in each of these ideas, and nonsense as well.

The struggle to get beyond the black-and-white view, highlight the nuances, and act on them in ways that make sense for a particular brand at a particular point in time are daunting, to say the least. In doing so progressive brand managers need to overcome both the inertia of entrenched old-media diehards, and the relentless castigation of social marketing jihadis. It’s a real challenge, to say the least, and a recurring theme in the day-to-day lives of camp-straddlers like Edward and myself.

Perhaps the first step toward a productive middle way is the try-and-frame-the-problem-in-a-more-nuanced-way. Reflecting on our conversation, I’ve come up with this:

Social/Content/Inbound/New Marketing is hard because adopting it requires cognitive change on 3 levels.

First we must learn what we don’t know. We have gurus for this, fortunately… Chris Brogan, David Meerman Scott, Louis Gray, and others. These people are the front line of the revolution, and although the risks are great out there, it’s a lot of fun on the days you don’t get shot.

But learning what is new is not enough. The second level is a bunch of stuff we need to re-learn… the fundamental truths of branding, communications, and media, which evolve within the speed limits of behavioral rather than digital change. There are a handful of real bloggers with the depth of experience required to advance this position. For me Tom Cunniff is in this camp, along with people like Joe Jaffe and Steve Rubell.

But even that is not enough. There’s a third leg of the New Marketing adoption stool: that which must be un-learned in order to succeed. The unlearning domain includes a whole bunch of established, structural stuff that needs to be turned on its head: organizational structures, business processes, financial incentives, competitive dynamics, and operational metrics. These may be among the most challenging things to change, and they are almost certainly among the last to be tackled by the subset of people who are serious about business results.

I hope to spend some time tackling these issues in one of the FutureM sessions, and hope you’ll join us for it. In the meantime… does this framework shed any light on things for you?

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It got us thinking — along with our friends and colleagues at MITX — that there had to be a way to stage a meeting of the marketing minds that would go beyond talk.  And so, between cocktails and panels and whiteboards, FutureM was born.  Slated for October 4-8th, FutureM is a week-long collaborative conference on the vision for marketing in Massachusetts through an intersection of people and ideas and inspiration.  It’s a chance to hear about the latest in marketing, technology, and design– together.  And if the thought of nonstop keynotes scares you as much as it scares us, fear not: FutureM includes panels, roundtables, summits, parties, meet-ups, and more, because the best ideas rarely get created around a podium.  We can’t wait.  Check out the rumblings of the future here.

In the meantime, we wanted to share the opportunity to be a part of FutureM.  If you have a topic, technology, team, or even a question that can help define what’s next for marketing, submit an event idea.  So get creative and join us at the future here.

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• It’s Time to Tackle the Unlearning Challenge (scalableintimacy.com)

And yet…

I find it interesting that humble brands – local restaurants, obscure b-to-b specialists, retailers like this one – seem able to embrace the “Content Marketing” ethos more readily than their advertising-addicted counterparts.

I look at this primitive execution – unfocused, horribly designed, e-mail based, etc. – and can’t help but admire the way it’s rooted in the belief that the best way to sell is to inform and empower.

And you know what? This stuff works. It’s arguably the best of two worlds, combining pull-worthy content with push-enabled reach. That would certainly explain Constant Contact’s lofty growth and impressive market cap.

While I of course believe that a dose of “professional marketing” could make something like this a lot more effective, I think there’s much to be learned from it by me and my fellow Big-Time Brand Folk.

Look again. What do you see?