C.C. Chapman, Creative Director at New York City-based Campfire, discusses engagement marketing with video and how B2B marketing can benefit from the influence of B2C marketing strategy. Matthew asks C.C.'s opinion on the best ways to utilize new marketing and social media for not only brand awareness activities, but also the best ways to attract the right kinds of inbound leads that result in more sales and not just "tire-kickers" looking for some content. C.C. also shares the story behind the creation and growth of The Advance Guard and the recent acqusition of the firm by Campfire.
[00:00]
Matthew: Hello and welcome everybody. Today is October 22nd, 2009 and you're watching Visible Gains Live. [applauds]
[audience applauds and cheers]
[00:10].
Matthew: Thank you, thank you, thank you. My name is Matthew Mamet. I am at 'msmamet' on Twitter and with me today CC Chapman, Creative Director at New York based Campfire, a full service Marketing agency.
[00:22]
CC: That's us.
[00:23]
Matthew: Welcome to the show.
[00:24]
CC: Thanks for having me man.
[00:25]
Matthew: Thanks for being on the show. Really excited to have you to probe your brain, about marketing, about sales, about engagements, about social media.
[00:33]
CC: Cool.
[00:34]
Matthew: CC has been kind of running ragged lately from Inbound Marketing Summit and beyond.
[00:39]
CC: It's been crazy. It's been, uh, it's one of those things. I mean, you know, if you ever speak, summer happens, there's no conferences. And then all of a sudden it's back to school, they pause, and then all of a sudden everyone rushes to get everything done before the holidays. So, you know, it's one thing last week. I'm going to be headed to L.A. next week. You know.
[00:56]
Matthew: Tell us a little about your itinerary. Where have you been and where are you going?
[00:59]
CC: Where have I been? Last week I was in, so, ok, Inbound Marketing Summit started everything at Gillette Stadium. That was great, down the street from my house. Every conference should be held there. I wish. Then it was on to Blog World in Las Vegas, which was last week, which was a really good time. And I’m off this week. I’m here. No, I’m here. I’m not off. I’m here.
[01:16]
Matthew: (laughs)
[01:16]
CC: And then next week is L.A. for the One Forty Conference.
[01:19]
Matthew: Ok.
[01:19]
CC: And then I come back, New York, for the Audience Conference, which is a brand new one. I’m really excited about the Audience Conference. It’s a different conference focused on the importance of the audience. Where it’s going to have art mixed with social media and performances.
[01:33]
Matthew: Cool.
[01:34]
CC: Kind of, you know, like Mike Arrington and then a hip hop band, and then Jason Calacanis and then a puppet. You know, who knows what’s going on. So I can’t wait for that. Then it’s Web 2.0 in New York. So, and then I think I’m done. I think. Something else might come up. So, that’s the current schedule.
[01:47]
Matthew: Well thank you for taking time out to squeeze in our little half hour appearance.
[01:51]
CC: It’s awesome to be here. I mean, you know, I have to take care of the other Boston people. Boston people take care of each other.
[01:58]
Matthew: I had the opportunity to be down at the Inbound Marketing Summit and I heard some of the panels that you were on.
[02:01]
CC: One of them you hosted. Yeah. (laughs)
[02:05]
Matthew: VisibleGains is actually working with awareness and Mike Lewis who was moderating the panel that you were on, which was pretty cool I thought.
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CC: It was fun. It was different, yeah. Next time we’ll get a woman on it, right?
[02:17]
Matthew: That’s right. Cause Chris Brogan had a kind of unique way of pointing out …
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CC: Yeah, we’ll leave the counting,
[02:24]
Matthew: … the chromosome count.
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CC: We’ll leave the counting to everyone else.
[02:26]
Matthew: So you can check that out on our blog as well as the Awareness blog as well as probably a million other blogs.
[02:31]
CC: Yep.
[02:32]
Matthew: That panel but, I want to talk a little bit today about some similar topics but the first thing I wanted to bring to everyone’s attention is that you, as I mentioned, are Creative Director at Campfire, which is a new role for you because you recently had an agency that was acquired. Tell us a little bit about that.
[02:50]
CC: So, yeah, the Advance Guard was an agency that was started in 2007 with me, myself and Steve Colson, my business partner. And we worked with Campfire from day one. I mean, we leased office space from them. We knew these guys. We worked with them on a variety of projects. And what was interesting was over the summer we just kind of got together and had this conversation and it came up, you know, well what if we acquire you. And it was interesting. It was the first time I’d ever sold a business to somebody and everyone was what happened to Advance Guard, you know, what are you doing now, you’re living on the beach, living large. I’m like, no. I’m still working my tail off. I mean we all came over to Campfire just to, it was a, it was a, it made, it made sense. It was a nice continuation where we could continue working with the clients we’d already worked with and we’d done stuff on Horizon 5 (?), HBO, Shark Week, a lot of things, and then now all of a sudden we can do it together. And so it’s really nice. It’s exciting where we’ve got a really cool team in New York. I'm here in Boston. And I'm excited about it. Campfirenyc.com if you want to find out more about what we do and who we are. It's been kind of fun, we've been sweeping up awards lately. I'm not much of an awards show guy but it's kind of cool.
[03:52]
Matthew: You'll take 'em.
[03:53]
CC: Oh yeah when you go to awards show and you get, you know, you beat Coca-Cola and some other, you know, small brands, it's kind of cool I have to admit
[04:00]
Matthew: Yeah.
[04:01]
CC: So a lot of that's for the work we did, we've been doing on True Blood a year ago. So it's been a fun couple of months for sure. I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to the new clients we've got coming and some of the prospects and stuff that'll, maybe I can come back in a year and we can talk about them.
[04:13]
Matthew: Yeah. I want to talk to a little bit about some of the stuff that you guys are kind of brewing up in the lab, anything you can share with us.
[04:19]
CC: Ok.
[04:19]
Matthew: Well we'll talk about that a little bit later on.
[04:21]
CC: All right.
[04:22]
Matthew: The last thing I wanted to mention about Advance Guard was kind of a cool story about how you got that name. I love that story.
[04:28]
CC: You do!
[04:29]
Matthew: Yeah. I think that's kind of cool. Tell us a little about it.
[04:31]
CC: Ah so it was kind of funny. It was actually the Nutley Diner when we said it. Nutley Diner in New Jersey and me and Steve were trying to figure out what we were going to do for, you know, naming the company and we liked the word vanguard. So we said let's find out more about this. So we started Google-ing and Wikipedia. And we found out the Advance Guard is where vanguard came from. And, you know, it's been used in books and everything. And then we went out and all the names were free. And we went oh, ok we got to do this. It was one of those things. The only other reference is, there's a reference in a Harry Potter book to the Advance Guard. Once. And so we still have Harry Potter fans coming to our website sometimes.
[05:08]
Matthew: Cool.
[05:09]
CC: But it's interesting. But that's what it was. And there's a great Melville quote that we use a lot.
[05:12]
Matthew: That's was, that's was what I was
[05:13]
Matthew and CC: Yeah.
[05:13]
Matthew: The Melville quote.
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CC: The Melville quote's awesome.
[05:14]
Matthew: I was in college back before I realized I had to make money to earn a living. I was. I was an English major.
CC: Ok.
Matthew: And so I had this whole kind of, you know, Hemmingway, Melville kind of thing going, yeah so.
CC: Oh, all right. I couldn't read the whole book, White Jacket, I haven't read it. Is it good?
Matthew: I haven't read that one.
CC: Ok. But still the quote is beautiful.
Matthew: I love the quote.
CC: The quote's pretty cool.
Matthew: Check it out on the Advance Guard website. There's a cool little page that kind of describes the story more.
CC: Yep.
Matthew: More in detail. But let's get back to business.
CC: All right.
Matthew: If you're out there watching a flat make sure that you're tweeting your questions to VisibleGains and we'll see them and we'll get the questions answered online. But the next question I have for you was a subject about engagement versus activation.
CC: Ok.
Matthew: So I was talking Mike Trejano, the President of Hallmark Digital, and his, he was blogging at the time, a couple weeks ago, about this very same topic, which is there's a lot of buzz around engagement marketing, engaging with people using social media and kind of getting your fan base, and
CC: Sure.
Matthew: Get your fans, friends, and followers going. But the next level or the next step is, ok now that you have all these people how do you activate them to do something? And it, and I know that this is something that you guys specialize in. So for those that are out there who are probably at that point. I think, if you think about the grand spectrum of people they
CC: Right.
Matthew: Ok I get that social media's important. I get that I need to be out there. And they've probably created some compelling concept, gotten people who are interested in what they have.
CC: Right. Right.
Matthew: They're prepared to follow them, now what?
CC: So, ok, yeah. So we talk about this all the time where it's funny that so many people are more focused on let's get ten thousand followers, let's get a thousand followers on Twitter or Facebook. Let's get a hundred thousand Facebook fans. That's nice and that's cool and it makes you feel good and you want that community. But then what do you do with them? You know. And we talk about this a lot and one of things that we always preach is the fact that you've got this audience. They're passionate about your brand. They had to have been to some level or they wouldn’t have joined. You've given them a reason to join, become part of your community, whatever the platform. You know, where , I think this holds true whether it's Facebook, Ning, Twitter, or whatever it is. You got to give them something to do. Now I like to talk about using it to educate or entertain them, it can be one or the other. Both, if you get both it's great. But you want to give them something that's going to stimulate them. That they're actually going to want to share, interact, comment back, share, you know, share on their blog, do a like if it's on Facebook. You've got to give them something to do. It could be something as simple as a Facebook application that is right for them. You know, maybe it's something that gets them to interact with each other. Maybe it's getting them, it's a contest to get them to send photos in or maybe win. Whatever it is you've got to ask them to do something and give them some benefit for it. It doesn't have to be a contest necessarily. Sometimes people will do it just for the pure sake of I like this enough much I'm going to do something. You know, I love, it's good to have brand advocates. That they're so passionate about your brand they'll pretty much do anything for you. All you have to do is ask. And I guess sometimes people will kind of forget or are they just doing this. Well it's because you didn't ask them to. And it could be something as simple as, hey tell us about your experience in our store or share the latest piece of clothing you bought or it could, it could be anything.
Matthew: So from what I see, kind of, in my experience, which is, is limited. To say the least. And it's also a little bit more focused on B to B.
CC: Yeah.
Matthew: I think there's kind of two, there's the two ends of that spectrum. There's the folks that have the ten thousand followers and they're afraid to do anything. They're afraid to ask. They're like I don't want to do anything wrong.
CC: Right.
Matthew: Because there are so many people out there telling me how to do it and I don't know who's right and I'm kind of nervous and scared. And then there are the other on the other end of the spectrum is great I got ten thousand people. I'm going to tell them to buy my stuff immediately.
CC: Right.
Matthew: So, what are some examples? Specific examples that you've seen in that middle ground and I heard what you said just now about you have two main choices, educate or entertain.
CC: Entertain, yeah.
Matthew: And I think in B to B kind of, people kind of,
CC: It's more towards the education
Matthew: Education.
CC: Educate, yeah. But if you could entertain them while you're educating them then that's the coup de gras, if you can get it. It ain't easy and it doesn't always work.
Matthew: And it, it's takes, it takes a little bit of risk there too.
CC: Oh yeah.
Matthew: Educate, you know, you're not entertaining.
CC: (laughs)
Matthew: You know, well, we'll table that. So in the education piece I'm thinking about, you know, all these companies out there. VisibleGains is one of them.
CC: Yep.
Matthew: That's creating as much compelling, educational content as we can.
CC: Right.
Matthew: To attract the right people. And then what? You know, so, how do we kind of convert them into?
CC: Well let me ask you, because I don't, I don't know this about your econo-, I mean, I've seen the show. I've seen the content. But do you ever ask, you know, your viewers, either during or after the fact, do you ever ask them hey what could we do better, what question didn't we ask. You know, I don't, it's something as simple as that. I don't know if you're doing it or not. But it's amazing where, if you've got people who are paying attention, even if it's only ten people or a hundred or a thousand. If you say, what did you think of this, what could we have, do, done better. That's a safe question no matter what industry you're in. I'm not saying that people are not scared to ask it cause brands are petrified of what could we do better.
Matthew: Right.
CC: But its such a simple, easy ask and an easy win. Tell us what you thought is another simple, and I know that's scary too. I mean, I say, I talk to clients all the time and they're like what if they say something bad. Yeah some people might say stuff bad.
Matthew: So I am a, as you can probably tell by the questions I just asked you.
CC: Yeah.
Matthew: I am always looking for feedback. I'm always looking for advice. And you can leave that on VisibleGains/itunes. Go in there and give us a rating, whether it's zero stars or five stars and give us your review and give us that feedback. Love to have, um..
CC: So you ask for it on itunes.
Matthew: Yeah, that's how I, uh..
CC: That's very public.
Matthew: Yes.
CC: That's, that's cool. No, no I'm all for it. I'm just, I was expecting you to say, you know, come to our website and leave it on the show. That's great you asking for that public of a forum.
Matthew: You know we also do the Facebook page and all.
CC: Ok.
Matthew: But I think we've seen the most success with itunes.
CC: Well it's a double win for you obviously, because if other people see positive reviews, they subscribe, I mean, it's like, it's a smart strategy.
Matthew: Cool. So asking people what they think.
CC: Ask them what they think. Give them you know, give them something to play with. I mean, I was talking in, uh, don't be afraid of what they're going to say. And I understand it's such a hard concept. I worked with some of the biggest brands in the world and they're nervous too. But I think you'd be amazed if you gave a little bit of a trust in your community, if you have a passionate community, if you trust them a little, even a little bit, they're not going to revolt against you. You know, it's one of, you know, baby steps. Give a little bit of trust, give a little bit more. It won't hurt. I promise. Maybe a little bit at first, but...
Matthew: And you know if you're that transparent and open and honest, they'll help you. They'll protect you.
CC: Yeah.
Matthew: That's one thing that I've learned from personal experience.
CC: Especially because then they become your advocates. They will step up and defend you. Or they will step up, there's nothing better than if someone does say oh I hate this, whatever it is. Some action you took, it's a product, whatever it is. If they step in and say I hate this, if you have a passionate enough community, you don't have to say a thing. Because your advocates are going to step up and say well I had that problem but here's what I did to fix it. Or, yes, but did you see this. Or, that's the one time that they will step up and defend you and if you can get that community so passionate that they'll defend you. That's, that's the goal that you're striving for. Where you can just kind of sit back and jump in where appropriately, where your community takes care of itself. When you get to that point it's a beautiful thing.