Return on Intention

 

 Return On Intention Episode 14 - Bad Ads and Dieing Facebooks part 3 of 3 [56:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Return On Intention Episode 14 – Bad Ads and Dieing Facebooks part 3 of 3

In this episode Daniel Lyons, programmer and all around smart guy talks with Reid Givens about:

Running Time: 56 minutes 52 seconds.

Comment email - comments {at} reidgivens {dot} com

As more companies become familiar with the existence of social media and the success stories given at just about every conference held, it has become very common to hear “I would use Facebook / Twitter / Whatever, but I just never know what to say.” This problem was the cause for so many people posting “I like pickles” or “I had eggs for breakfast” on Twitter in the early days as they tried to figure out what to say. Often this lack of knowing what to post is a symptom of something bigger than understanding a new medium. Often its based on the organization not really understanding their uniqueness or their brand promise and how it fits into its customers lives. To put it another way, they don’t really understand where they fit into their market. If you make English Muffins, a product that hasn’t really changed in decades, what could you possibly have to post on Facebook? Plenty.

First – a little back story. I have this terrible habit of working late into the night… or morning… depending on how you look at it. After working past midnight a few times, getting up in the morning becomes a bit harder, so you sleep an extra hour to make up for the one that you worked through the night before. Now that you get up an hour later, you don’t get tired and go to bed when you used to and you have to wait an extra hour before you can go to sleep. Follow this path for a while and pretty soon you work until 3 or 4 in the morning and get up at 10:00.  This has been my life off and on for the past few years. This caused me to not eat breakfast anymore because after getting showered, dressed and ready for the day it was nearly lunch time. On days when I had meetings in the mornings and had to get up at a normal time I still couldn’t eat breakfast because it would make me feel ill, so I hadn’t had breakfast in years.

Recently I have been working to switch my waking hours back to a schedule that more closely resembles normal human times. Now, after being awake for a few hours, its breakfast time, not lunch time. This has presented me with the joy of breakfast food shopping and tasting, which has probably been way more fun than it really should have been. So now, after about a month of testing I have decided that English Muffins are better than bagels. Why? The nooks and crannies.

The crumb of an English Muffin are airy and full of little pockets that hold flavor. Every bite is a bit different as some of the little pockets are filled with butter, and others with raspberry jam. A bagel with cream cheese pretty much tastes the same in each bite, but an English Muffin is just a bit different. Bagels don’t have nooks and crannies. The crumb of a bagel is pretty smooth, which makes it more like most other breads. You can make interesting sandwiches with a bagel, but you can make all the same sandwiches with any other bread. The biggest difference between the English Muffin and just about all other breads you would eat for breakfast is the pocket filled crumb. This key differentiator not only makes the English Muffin a unique looking morning snack, but it also makes the taste and experience of the Muffin a unique one with the butter or jam that fills up the pockets. The point is that the English Muffin is not just about the English Muffin, but is part of my morning experience that works in concert with other factors to bring me satisfaction. When brands can stand back and see how their products and services fit into the bigger picture of their customers lives they can see how their unique features stretch beyond themselves and influence the user. With this data, the brand can start to see a bigger picture, and thats when the ideas for what kind of conversation to have with their market start to perk up like a pot of fresh coffee.