Being conversation-worthy on every brand level.

Being conversation-worthy, having consumers and clients talk about you: that’s pretty high on the agenda of most brands and organisations. Being conversation-worthy isn’t only about remarkable ads (hey, advertising still works), it’s also about acts. It isn’t only about a smart activation campaign on a social network, it’s also about really integrating conversations in everything you do as a company.

Over the last couple of months, we’ve worked hard to implement conversation thinking in several companies, ranging from Unilever to Telenet and KLM to Puratos. Some takeaways:

• Brands with a purpose (a commitment to something that adds value to people’s everyday lives) have more potential to build long-term relationships and fuel a year-round conversation. E.g. Dove’s commitment to real beauty is more easily translated into a long-term conversation than a random cleaning product.
• Being conversation-worthy is about paying careful attention to earned, owned AND paid media. No earned media without a decent owned presence. No reach without a smart use of paid media.
• Martin Kloos introduced me to the concept of a ‘social media voice’, a translation of the brand or company values into an online persona or voice. It’s a simple concept but helps companies define the right tone of voice and actions within the social media space.
• In every consumer interaction, think about how this interaction could lead to the consumer telling someone else, whether offline or online via social media. E.g. the Il Giglio d’Oro bed & breakfast in Firenze encourages every customer to write a testimonial on TripAdvisor.com.

We have translated our learnings into a first draft of our model for being conversation-worthy on every brand level. Let me know what you think.

Written in 2011, left as it was. Where I took it later: Acts, not ads.

Original: Being conversation-worthy on every brand level, 24 May 2011. Historical links may no longer work.