In a hyper-connected, over-communicative world, the simplest ideas are often the most compelling, which GoTime.Com discovered with a website that began as an online event, club and restaurant directory.

The happy hour tab, initially a minor aspect of the site, quickly became the most popular section—no surprise given the economic climate at the time.  And the creators quickly saw and acted on that trend in the right way by taking happy hours to the nth degree and making it the site’s focus.

Thus, an ingenious happy hour directory was born (accessible via the web or iPhone/Android app) that puts the city’s drinking deals at your fingertips.  Check it out and you’ll find all the happy hours within your geographic radius with detailed info regarding prices, times, reviews, and additional features like “water view” or “cute staff.”  And, it’s just been launched nationwide in 35 cities and counting.

But the best part? Their brand’s key strength lies in how they’ve thought critically about deepening their user relationship well beyond their level of technological prowess. “Some people ask us why we don’t charge for our app, but that feels like an oxymoron.  It’s our mission to save people money and it just doesn’t feel right to charge $2 for an app when people are on a budget. We’d rather you take that money and put it toward buying another round,” says co-founder Jeff Khadavi.

It’s clear these guys are serious about putting the “happy” in happy hour, but how do they go about delivering on that goal?

1. By looking at what’s happening in the market and responding to it in their unique way.
2. Getting focused.  Like GoTime.com learned, it’s better to excel at the one thing people care most about, versus being mediocre at a lot of things that aren’t relevant.
3. Making it simple. If it’s not simple, it won’t stick.
4. Being flexible.  As Jeff Khadavi puts it, “Early stage companies have to adapt to navigate the waters and make something out of whatever arises.”

- Bianca Abate

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Life as a Facebook fan page master can be tough. Learning the functionality and navigating many application choices requires a great deal of patience and gumption because there’s no right or wrong way to manage your page.

There are tons of helpful blogs out there that list helpful apps and tips, but this is not one of them. Instead, I offer help in answering a tougher question that we face:

“If I’m the voice of my organization, what the heck do I post and say?”

The answer lies in:

1. Understanding your audience
2. Using your brand as a filter

Understanding your audience means you know what they like, don’t like and how to add value to them. What makes social media enticing is that it requires people to run it—it can’t be automated. Understanding their needs informs your interactions and builds a human connection behind the corporate entity. How to start? Just listen. Tap into the areas online where your customers and prospects are already hanging out and look for mentions of your org with free tools such as Google Alerts and Addict-o-matic. By listening, you can learn about relevant topics and turn what’s hot into ways people can connect with you.

Using your brand as a filter means that before posting or tagging anything, you weigh its content to make sure it aligns with the brand you’ve created offline. In an ideal world, you already know the whats, hows and whys behind your brand—this is your playbook. Capturing the spirit of your org consistently over time demonstrates your authenticity and builds relationships. An easy way to do this is to think of your org as a person. Does the tone or content match something she would post?

Good luck to all the Facebook fan page masters out there and if you need any help, leave a comment. And for an example, check out www.Facebook.com/ParkerLePla.

- Bianca Abate

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Social networking is, of course, the hot button topic in online marketing.  Low cost / high traffic platforms like Facebook are extremely attractive to brand owners after years of paying for search optimization or fancy media buys.  But Tweeting alone does not an online brand make.  Instead, look at social networking as a part of your larger strategy to acquire and retain customers.

Of course, the first step in social marketing (or really any pursuit) is knowledge:  know your company and how it interacts, and know your customers and how they buy.  If you sell hardware in a residential neighborhood, your networking strategies will be very different from an owner who sells vintage clothing near the university.  Both brick-and-mortars are seeking to drive sales and awareness but their customer demographics, technographics, and buying patterns are widely different.  Consider also that a vintage clothes enthusiast might be more likely than a hammer buyer to see their purchase as making them a part of the store’s community and thus be more inclined to include the business as a part of their online network.

Given that you know who you are and who you serve, the challenge is then to tailor your online presence to build and strengthen your customer relationships not only by providing an integrated brand experience to reiterate your key differentiators but also by creating and delivering greater value for the customer:

In the end, remember that today’s consumers demand authenticity.  Social networking adds an additional level of challenge to that requirement because, online, customers interact directly with your business as if it were one of their Friends.  They are not simply looking for a product or service but instead an experience – and only those businesses that provide such will succeed as social marketers.

– Dan Liska

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An epiphany is a sudden insight into reality—something you might have known all along, but simply didn’t see. It’s the big “aha!” moment clients have as a result of our work. One of our recent clients described it as, “Wow. It’s the first time I’m hearing it, but it’s like I’ve lived this all my life.”

How does the branding process uncover epiphanies?

Companies get entrenched in their thinking. They lose outsider perspective as cultural norms and groupthink take hold.

Branding, when you start with external research, brings in a new perspective about your organization’s value. There are all sorts of barriers keeping your brand from being its best: an organization’s bureaucracy, negative cultural norms, lack of focus. There’s something very elegant in how we help organizations make simple shifts to set them free.

That’s my favorite part about this job. Lifting the veil and delivering the epiphany to help organizations say, “Wow! That makes sense. A lot of sense.”

- Bianca Abate

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Social media yahta-yahta-yahta. I think the last time that the business world was overtaken so completely by one innovation was when computers started appearing on desktops a couple of decades ago. Social media is just as revolutionary and takes just as much planning to make it work for you. But it’s critical because it’s where brand communities are built. And it’s overwhelming.

Most of us don’t have the resources to pull off intricately orchestrated marketing campaigns like Coca-Cola’s Expedition 206 or for a full-time engager like Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic Social Media Manager .

I say, so what! You can do some Internet research on your own to see what’s going on in your market space and what (if anything) is being said about you. You can start a Facebook page and build it up over time. You can join the throngs on Twitter and tweet when there’s something relevant to say. Start with a goal, create a plan and then stick to it. Be realistic about how much resource you can devote—even if it’s only 2 hours a week.

Why now? Because the world isn’t going to come rushing to your door the minute you get engaged. Just like any new friendship, it’s built in phases. First you meet, then you go out for coffee. If there’s chemistry and they find you interesting enough, your new friend might invite you to meet some of their friends…and so it goes. Brand community-building is the same. One-by-one steps that deepen the relationship.

If you don’t get out there now, your competitors will be out there tempting your customers to have coffee with THEM. You’ll have to dive in at some point—so why wait?

Your friend, Beth Woolley

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Trader Joe’s has carved out a strong niche in the market with their quirky, socially and nutritionally responsible brand that is best described by a fan who said:

“There’s this kind of feeling when you go there that you’re partaking in a sort of secret club.  Like you and the folks that run the store are kind of winking at each other, showing off little treasures found off the beaten path.”

Trader Joe’s delivers on this promise in almost every aspect, creating an atmosphere completely counter to that found in any super-chain grocery store.  Their easy-going spirit paired with their organic products offers an inexpensive choice that their target audiences—the health food segment, environmentally concerned, and the weekend gourmet chef— have been craving.  The perfect formula for creating die-hard brand loyalists.

My beef: Although they’ve mastered nutrition and fair trade, I’m disappointed by their excessive use of plastic and paper packaging.  What’s the purpose of wrapping three zucchinis on a small polystyrene tray and sealing it in plastic? To prevent a veggie coup d’état?

If your brand is based on a commitment to social responsibility, this sort of disconnect will only tarnish what you’ve worked so hard to create.

My New Year’s resolution for Trader Joe’s, and other brands alike, is to create a new standard of packaging that is:

1. Reusable
2. Recyclable
3. Made from recycled materials
4. Biodegradable

Or, just avoid unnecessary packaging altogether.  Happy 2010!

-Bianca Abate

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We’ve handpicked this year’s best brands to bring you a list of our personal favorites—from coffee to the web and everything in between. Please join us as we get to the heart of their value and pick apart what makes them unique.

And to wrap up this series and ring in the New Year, we’ll review the shared commonalities between these brands to gather insight for 2010.

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How often does one market its products by not marketing them? When you are “murketing” them: murkily marketing. Pabst Blue Ribbon does it, Scion does it; even furniture makers are doing it . So is murketing the new viral marketing? Or is it a new beast?

I think it’s different. Murketing can only work a few times before people start looking for it, when it then becomes obvious marketing and loses its luster. Viral marketing, on the other hand, takes creativity or cleverness and uses that as the carrying meme; attention is the currency you pay for hearing the message, versus no message.

-Lynn Parker

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