Transcript: Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices

This transcript is from a PodTech.net podcast at:
http://www.PodTech.net/?p=533

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices

John Furrier: Welcome back to PodTech.net podcast, the info talk series, with Jennifer Jones, the famous marketer with 25 years experience. I think you are famous because Regis McKenna has been a premiere company that has a lot of history with the Macintosh and you have worked with clients like Apple and Steve Jobs and, obviously, podcasting is Steve's next big thing, he said.

Jennifer Jones: I feel so lucky because, even though I consider myself old in this business at this point, but I have to tell you the way that I feel about Steve Jobs at Apple is just so heartfelt, and I love the guy and I love the fact that he is so successful, and my sons both have iPods and they're the ones that first taught me about podcasting, so I just came to you to say, what is it, Nino? Where are we and what's it all about and I see it really affecting marketing today. So let's get into it.

John Furrier: Let's talk about a conversation on that in particular. I get questioned all the time from marketing pros and I'm glad that you're here because you are a marketing pro. The benefits of podcasting, I think there are a lot of benefits to podcasting. From your perspective, you have years of experience working with successful people, successful companies, through all kinds of lifecycles, technology change. You worked with the original Macintosh Apple launches and marketing campaigns. What do you see is the big benefit to blogs? I know you are not a guru on the super technical details but from a high level what do you see is happening?

Jennifer Jones: Well, first of all, marketing to me has always been building relationships with your customers, whether it's Apple trying to build relationships or Tandem in the old days or DEST or any of these smaller companies that I work with at Regis, that's really what they were trying to do was sell a product and build a relationship so that people liked it. Today, in all the work I do, I'm actually working with just service firms, I'm working with venture guys and attorneys and that's really about building relationships because it's a professional services firm. There no tangible product per se, and people have to understand how to take a customer and really make them want to work with this person, and it really makes it hard but bottom line is, its relationship building so to me what I find so sexy about blogs first and then podcasting is that there's content to both of them, personal content that people can get into and then ultimately that content allows somebody to build a stronger relationship with whomever it was that put the podcast together or the blog, so for all of my clients today I'm really trying to encourage them to actually put out content-rich blogs in order to ensure that they build some sort of relationship with the people that they are hoping are reading them, and definitely with the people that are part of their portfolio in the case of venture capitalists, or in the case of product companies, their actual customers who say, let me find out what Steve Jobs thinks about certain things he's going to be doing in the future with Apple.

John Furrier: So you were, obviously, the story was, Apple was huge and your big client back in the 80's. Now you are working with venture capitalists, service firms you mentioned, you mentioned venture capitalist, lawyers, law firms and others service firms. How they build relationships really is through credibility, right? They have to basically put out information so their whole issue is credibility. Now with the whole blog world and the blogosphere, it's not so much a product marketing issue anymore, it's really about that kind of information relationship, and we have seen all kinds of things happen successfully and not so successfully where a product company's marketing strategy is all information based so that's why I'm interested in talking with you because I see in my vision that the info talk show that I'm doing becomes an open microphone for people to get their voice heard. Do you see value in that, and how would I, help me explain that to another marketing person because I have to do this all the time and I'm not a pro like you?

Jennifer Jones: Well, first of all, the marketing person has to understand that getting the word out about a relationship and ensuring that they connect with the customer is a primary thing so what this kind of thing allows them to do is, it allows them to have a conversation that's a real conversation and it's not something that they have to make up and sort of package as corporate speak, but it really does allow them to speak out on what they really believe. I think that the biggest fear probably a lot of marketers have about podcasting potentially is that it's not very controlled and that they actually can't package the information and they want to be able to package it more, and so I think you really need to do is ensure they understand there is a lot of honesty and a lot of personality to something like a blog or something like a podcast that is ultimately is the way of the future. You look at reality shows today, I was watching Jerry Springer with my son this morning.

John Furrier: Is he still around?

Jennifer Jones: Yes and it was amazing because here is my six year old son talking about connecting to Jerry Springer and all these people on the show because it's a real show and there is a lot of personality there and I'm not just jetting off here into another discussion but the point is, the personal connection and the fact that these are people that are real and that's what all of this allows people to do, is really build a connection.

John Furrier: The digital marketing plan really for a marketer is to go away from the single format paper to an interactive rich environment where this conversation is real, it's not some corporate speak machine message and people value that.

Jennifer Jones: Well, I know, and I think that's what a lot of marketing people would have to believe, that they would have to feel like a way to communicate with other people is this kind of communication vehicle, and it's scary. There's a lot of, so much reality to it and so much real time and not ability to control the message at least right now, I would imagine that podcasting especially is going to get to a point where it is all packaged totally and people wont put anything out that's not very real.

John Furrier: I'm having a hard time, one of the things you can help with right now, I'm having a hard time explaining to marketers the benefits to this and I actually had another marketer tell me, John, it's simple. This is a new area so the metrics issue of having all these metrics is not a big deal right now. He said to me privately, you don't have to be a weatherman to know it's sunny and when it's pouring rain. Smart marketers know that this works. They may not have all the metrics tied in but they know it's working. How can you help me explain that to a marketer? How should I talk to...

Jennifer Jones: Well, I do really think the issue is with strategic marketers. You're going to run into the ROI issue. However, I think that anybody that's an early adopter in marketing which a lot of technology companies would be looking at this and should be looking at this and so I think to get them to focus away from ROI but get them to focus in the conversation and the ability to actually connect to people in a new way that is a real one on one connection and, like I said, blogging to me is that way, too, even though you have no idea who is reading it, you are ultimately communicating as one person to another person and actually having that personal connection through your writing and through the content that you have in the blog.

John Furrier: And as a feedback loop too as well as through the blogs and the comments section and trackbacks and email. Chris Anderson from Wired Magazine talks about how he is writing a new book on the Long Tail and everyone should listen to my podcast with Chris because he did a great job of explaining the whole long tail theory. But he is actually writing a book where he is going to publish it through normal channels but what he is doing is, all the research he is doing for his book he is putting on his blog at thelongtail.com, and what's happening is that he found an amazing impact. He puts out information and shares his ideas openly and what is happening is that people are responding to that and he is actually getting production from people he has never met for his book. So here he is, the writer in the old model, knows his stuff, writes a book publishes it, its sells or it doesn't sell, here he is writing a book but while he is writing it he is actually pushing out his ideas in real time and getting feedback through this conversation that is actually impacting the quality of his book.

Jennifer Jones: That's what I call the personal connection. You are calling it feedback and interaction and I think it's that whole idea that he is connecting with those people and even though those people aren't his customers it's that ability to connect one on one that never was before allowed in a sense by any other medium. Radio came the closest to it when you think about people doing radio interviews the way you and I are sitting now. You could never do it on television except for again the Johnny Carson Show or something like that, but it was always seemingly more superficial, and maybe I'm all wet but I think that people when I read a lot of these blogs, and I read a ton of them, it seems like there is much more of a personal perspective and personal connection trying to be made with the people that are writing them that never heretofore existed, and I think that's a lot of what good marketers would look at and say, well, why should I care about this, and that's what they should care about is the ability to connect in a new vehicle with a new, you know, and to say it's all so cheap, it's really cheap to do but the bottom line is, there's that connection.

John Furrier: Yeah, the cost structures are unbelievably low and I think the effectiveness is high. Look at public companies like Microsoft and Yahoo are great examples, Yahoo in particular has been so open about putting people out there to talk about what Yahoo is working on. They're a public company, I mean most PR firms and PR departments control the corporate messaging, but here you have a company like Yahoo going out and putting out folks like Jeremy out there and blogging. It's wonderful, they are creating a relationship through the conversations.

Jennifer Jones: Right, it's exactly what I said at the top of the show. But the point is there, that's pretty scary to a lot of marketing people, because all of a sudden it gets out that this person is talking and they aren't controlling the message. And so what I hope doesn't happen but I can't believe it wont is that podcasts and other things, even blogging, will get to be to the point where people will control it so much that the message wont be so personal it will be much more manufactured because people will start to say you can't have this message out there.

John Furrier: You can't manufacture anything because you'll get called out on it. That's why I'm calling it transparent marketing, because you have to be transparent. If you put out BS you are going to get called out on it, and that's so effective because what ends up happening is that the information gets stripped down to the raw info and through the dialogues and conversations people weigh in and have conversations about it and the production of quality of content is phenomenal. I need help so maybe we can talk about this on another topic but maybe you can help me host a series for marketing people.

Jennifer Jones: Sure, that would be wonderful, I'd love to do that.

John Furrier: And, because I'd like to get more feedback, I don't know what the answer is, all I know is that I'm working on metrics, I have a great set of metrics coming in, but I know it's working. The sun is shining. I have folks like Barracuda telling me that the effectiveness is high so maybe we can get some guests in, you can help me bring in some real marketing pros to really make sense of how to articulate what's happening, how to use this, how to trial it out, how to experiment, how to get it going.

Jennifer Jones: I agree, and I think the whole measurement factor has to be worked into it at some point but hopefully not in the shorter term but it would be more the longer term, but I'd be happy to help you.

John Furrier: Great, we heard it here, we now have a new series coming out. Jennifer's going to host, going on record saying, ok, we heard it here time shifted live from Palo Alto, we are actually at the Il Fornaio restaurant and Garden Court Hotel in Palo Alto on Friday evening. Than you so much for doing the InfoTalk podcast.

Jennifer Jones: Thank you.