Tribes in Today’s Marketing

What is a tribe?

Simply put, a tribe is a group of people that connect around a common goal. Tribes can exist anywhere and can be based upon any shared interest, no matter how specific. In fact, you are most likely a member of a tribe or even multiple tribes. You may even lead one. Behind every major movement and successful marketing engine there is a tribe. Behind every major movement and successful marketing engine there is a tribe. Barack Obama leads one in which he can raise millions of dollars in a single day. Steve Jobs leads a tribe comprised of a cult-like following of brand evangelists who hang on his every word during his two-hour product launch event and then go out and do Apple’s marketing for them. Tribes are not always large. Some don’t want to be big. In fact, many are exclusive. The common element around which most tribes form is actually quite narrowly-defined. These tribes are not just for golf, but for those afflicted with a natural slice in their swing; not just for personal finance, but for those obsessed with maximizing the energy efficiency of their homes; not just for shoes, but for those infatuated with handcrafted Italian leather stilettos. Balloon artists, amateur photographers, collectors of exotic southwestern jewelry, Ford Mustang enthusiasts, avid Mac users, city managers engaged in innovative economic development – all of these are tribes that gather. For their members, their interest is an intrinsic part of their identity, and their association with their peers is a point of pride. Anytime people make connections based on a shared passion, similarities in background or a common need for solutions to improve their lives, a tribe is born.

What’s changed

Tribes have always been around. Before the days of the Web, smartphones and Facebook, communities would form based on commonalities and gather face-to-face. Naturally, these tribes were geographically-based, and their numbers were fewer and limited to the most popular interests. Today’s tribes are different. The advent of the Information Age tore down geographical barriers by introducing platforms of persistent conversation and information sharing. Online message boards, which have been around for decades, overcame the limitations of locality and allowed for a tidal wave of tribes to be formed – not just big tribes, but ones that were small and highly specialized. People now had the tools they needed to find others with a shared passion and make an instant connection in the absence of physical proximity. As technology continued to evolve, the Web provided a more robust platform for these communities to take form. Smarter and more relevant searching allowed people to find outlets for their passions through 200 million websites. Website creation tools became more accessible, allowing those with limited technical know-how to create online hubs where their tribes could gather. Add to this new tools for scheduling, collaboration, coordination and real-time communication as well as wifi and the mobile Web, and you have fertile ground for tribes to flourish around any and every common goal and interest.

New types of tribes

In the past few years, the evolution of social media has allowed people to connect in ways that are not based solely on common interests but also on commonality in relationships and geography. When communities form around who their members are, where they live and how they relate to each other, a new dynamic is introduced. The tribe concept becomes even more powerful and pervasive as people forge ties around commonplace goals in their daily lives. For geographically-based tribes, the day-to-day problems of life – from finding the best deli in town to getting a recommendation for a good mechanic to obtaining a reference for a trustworthy electrician – are solved through the formation of tribes based on members’ inherent commonalities. Tribes can form around many different types of relationships. Whether it’s families bound together in a social network or colleagues that develop a web of connections on LinkedIn, the common thread that ties all these communities together is the relationship of their members to one another. in a world ruled by tribes, word-of-mouth is king Communication travels quickly through these organic networks, in most cases crossing over to other networks. Something as seemingly simple as a recommendation for TurboTax software during tax season spreads virally via word-of-mouth advertising from tribe to tribe, as members seek to solve problems in ways that enhance their own lives, the lives of others they care about and the environments in which they live. Thus, in a world ruled by tribes, word-of-mouth is king. Trust is not only essential; it is required.

The old system of marketing

Before the economy was overtaken by tribes of highly interconnected and informed consumers, success in marketing was achieved by the companies with the largest budgets and the greatest capacities to pummel the public into purchasing their brands. If you were selling a product 10 years ago, you would have run expensive advertising campaigns based on interruption, hitting the consumer over the head with your message as forcefully and as often as possible. The objectives driving this type of intellectual spamming were to raise brand awareness, create demand for more product, obtain wider distribution and ultimately apply those profits to more ads in order to fuel this vicious cycle. In what’s left of mass media, this wasteful practice still goes on. Arby’s invested more than $85 million interrupting everyone with an oven mitt to sell sandwiches. Progressive and Geico spend a fortune flashing their brands in any and all media and markets. Nike poured hundreds of millions into endorsements and marketing to sell more Tiger Woods-branded products simply because they could command higher prices. National brands aren’t the only ones guilty of still marketing by interruption and spamming. From law firms to home builders to car dealerships, local businesses in every town dump truckloads of money into carpet bombing the public with ads in local magazines, newspapers and television, shouting their claims that they’re the best, they’ve discounted everything yet again, they have too much inventory and everything must go.

Marketing in a tribe-driven world

Today, trust rules the marketplace. People have many more choices and much less time than ever before. As a result, they invest their time carefully in their passions, in the issues that count and in the things that make a difference in their lives. They have no use for or trust in traditional advertising. Instead, they belong to a tribe, and they follow the movement of its members and leaders. These tribes are formed and move with or without you. Today’s successful marketers bow to the tribe, reforming how they do business, how they develop products and how they grow accordingly. The power and influence you command through the trust you earn from the tribe is unrivaled by any form of advertising. Your membership in the tribe is earned through trust and trust alone. Trust gives you permission to talk about your ideas as well as what you are doing to improve the lives of its members. When you are active and demonstrate honest intentions and selfless motives, you are promoted by the tribe’s leaders. The power and influence you command through the trust you earn from the tribe is unrivaled by any form of advertising. In this way, the tribe is your marketplace.

Getting there

Many companies, particularly local businesses, have a hard time mapping the connection between tribes and their bottom line. In fact, most are challenged to identify where tribes exist or, if they must, start and lead a new tribe. The fact is, any successful act of business creates a solution for a problem or improves people’s lives in some way. Underneath that solution are people who are already talking about all the issues surrounding it every day. Your focus in growing your business should be to identify your tribe and lead it. Weber doesn’t just sell grills; they lead a tribe of grilling enthusiasts. Jeep doesn’t just sell cars and accessories; they lead a tribe of off-roading die-hards. Gary Vaynerchuk doesn’t just market wine; he leads a tribe of a million wine aficionados. Fame Foundry doesn’t just sell marketing and website design; they lead a tribe of entrepreneurs and decision-makers whose passions are focused on business growth. Your passion for your business is your license to lead. You don’t need to be a national brand to be a tribe leader. Your local dentist doesn’t just sell her services; she leads a local tribe of people that care about healthy teeth. She may have only 25 true fans, but when they tweet or post their endorsement for her practice on Facebook, multiplying their actions by the average of 150 connections per fan now gives her instantaneous, powerful and unbiased word-of-mouth advertising to 3,750 people. Eliza Metz applies her life’s passion to leading a massive tribe of yarncrafting fanatics who follow her on her blog, on Plurk, on Facebook and on her podcast. She has earned the trust of its members, who have elevated her to a position of leadership. As a result, when she says she likes something, they listen and move, which translates to sales immediately. Eliza has never bought one piece of advertising; instead, she leads. Your passion for your business is your license to lead. But you can’t just log in, plant your flag and begin selling your products or services. The tribe will banish you right away. The fundamentals of trustcasting prevail in every facet of business growth, and this is no different in leading tribes. In part two of this series, we’ll go beyond the foundational understanding of tribes and cover the steps to identifying, becoming a member of and leading the tribes that are relevant to your business and your bottom line in today’s marketplace.

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Left in the Dark? The Pitfalls of Taco Bell’s #OnlyInTheApp Social Media Stunt

Taco Bell recently unveiled a new mobile app, available for both iOS and for Android, that “gives consumers complete access to every Taco Bell ingredient to create what they want, when they want it – all in the palm of their hand.” The app allows customers in drive-thru or in their dining room to order and pay for items directly on their mobile device. The app itself may be a great idea, but the marketing push behind this new addition from Taco Bell is certainly raising some eyebrows. The company decided to “go dark” on their social media platforms and on their website, replacing their normal content with a black background and a large message that says that “the new way to Taco Bell isn’t on the Internet, it’s #onlyintheapp”, using a hashtag that they have created for this campaign. While I can appreciate the company’s desire to focus heavily on marketing this new feature, doing so at the detriment of all their other messaging and marketing channels is short-sighed. In this article, we will take a look at the possible benefits of this “all in” approach and why Taco Bell may have done this, as well as the pitfalls of this type of campaign and putting all your eggs, or in this case all your tacos, in one basket.

Information on demand

We live in world where immediate access to information is now expected. Have a question? You can whip out your phone or open the web browser on your desktop computer and hop over to Google for the answer. The same holds true for the services we use or products we buy, including menu items and locations or contact information for restaurants. Having worked on websites for restaurants in the past, I can tell you from experience that this information, menu and locations/contact, are some of the most heavily requested pages on those sites. Taco Bell’s current marketing approach, and their decision to “take down” their normal website in favor of a marketing message and nothing BUT a marketing message, is not a customer-friendly decision because it runs contrary to the information on demand culture that our customers have come to expect from websites. Now, to be fair, Taco Bell did not actually take down their entire site. If you run a search engine query for “Taco Bell Menu”, you can find those pages still live on the Web, but you have to work for it! Their current homepage, which is where their visitors will likely go, includes no links to the other pages of the site. If a customer needs menu information, or if they are looking for something like a location’s address or phone number, they will have to go out of their way to dig that information out. That is asking a lot of a person and few customers will go to those lengths.

What they want versus what you want

Taco Bell’s current campaign is a perfect example of placing a company’s needs before their customers’ needs. The marketing message that now dominates Taco Bell’s media properties is what they want people to know about. There is nothing wrong with promoting a new service or product, but by removing easy access to the rest of the information their customers may want, they are ignoring their needs in place of their own. What if a customer comes to the site to find nutrition information, only to be greeted by a message to download this new app. Is that a good customer experience? Perhaps they do not have an iPhone or Android device. This message is lost on them and they are at a dead end. This is a lost opportunity. Saying that this information is “not on the Internet” and instead forcing them to download an app is like saying “we don’t care how you want to access this information, we want you to download an app and we won’t give you that information unless you do so.” That may sound harsh, but that is absolutely how this decision comes across. Yes, there is value in putting a marketing campaign front and center in big way like this. Taco Bell’s new app is certainly being talked about, but most of the chatter I am hearing is not about the app itself or how great or convenient it is, it is about the company’s decision to market it in this way, with the rest of their messaging and information absolutely non-existent. A better approach would have been to market this new app in a big way with a bold, prominent placement across all their media channels, but to also include easy links to the normal website and social media content. With that approach, they could still ensure that their message comes across loud and clear, which is what they want, but they would not be ignoring what their customers want because that information would still be easily accessible.

Ignoring the conversation

Another interesting (and not in a good way) aspect of Taco Bell’s “going dark” campaign is what they are doing on social media. Their Facebook page currently includes only 1 post with a message similar to their website about the new app. The Taco Bell logos and everything else have been removed. What this page does have are comments – 1,194 of them as of this writing. If you read through those comments, you will find people complaining about the removal of the website content, the lack of delivery services, and many random slams on Taco Bell in general. Bottom line, there is a lot of negativity on this page, but Taco Bell is nowhere to be found in those comments. Their “going dark” campaign also includes them removing themselves from the conversation. This is not how social media works. Social media is all about engagement and conversations. If you put something out there, especially something like a new service like this, you should be prepared to answer customers’ questions and have those conversations. Taco Bell has yet to do this. Instead, they have “gone dark” and are nowhere to be found.

A better approach

When you have an important message to convey to your audience, you want that message front and center. There may be the temptation to take the same route that Taco Bell did and remove all your other content in favor of that message. Yes, people that visit your site will see it because that is all that there is to see, but is that the end goal? No, you do not want customers to only see your message, you want them to see your message and take action. Preferably, you want them to take the action that this campaign is focused on, but if they cannot do that, you do not want them to hit a dead end. In the case of Taco Bell, someone without a mobile device that can download the app, or someone with no interest in downloading that app, has hit that aforementioned dead-end. There is nowhere else for them to go other than away from Taco Bell. That is a lost opportunity. For your own marketing campaigns, you want to ensure that if you put a message front and center, you also make other paths available for people who that message may be lost on. Bottom line, you do not focus on one message or campaign at the expense of everything else you have to say and offer – and you never take yourself out of the conversation! When customers are talking about your company and what you are doing, that is a golden opportunity to respond and start a conversation. If you instead decide to “go dark”, you miss that opportunity completely.

In closing

I expect that this campaign is a temporary one for Taco Bell. Soon enough, their website and social media will be back to normal, but in the meantime, all I see in this marketing push are missed opportunities and ill-informed decisions. When planning your own campaigns and messages, speak to your marketing team or agency and always ask yourself whether your plans focus too heavily on what you want instead of what your customers need. The key to a successful campaign is finding a way to address both of these needs and tie together your company’s goals and those of your customers.

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