5 Questions with….Gennefer Snowfield – @gennefer

Gennefer Snowfield of Acclimedia and Jelly Labs

Q: In your bio on the Acclimedia website, it says “Gennefer knows how to innovate, resuscitate and ignite stale thinking, brands and campaigns with an eye on creativity, results and profitability.” Can you give us an example of how you can objectively look at your business to help yourself accomplish these things in some small way if you cannot afford an organization to help right now?

A: Absolutely. Contrary to what a myriad of vendors with the titles of ‘guru’ and ‘expert’ out there will tell you, there is a lot that you can do to elevate your brand marketing efforts without bringing in pricey consultants. While calling on certain competencies that you may not possess is important for developing a holistic strategy that works synergistically across disciplines, in most cases, you are the closest person to your brand (and hopefully, your customers) to be able to make changes that generate results.

Past is Prelude: One of the biggest mistakes most marketers make is changing their brand too often. While it’s important to evolve with the market, and be fluid in your messaging, your core values must remain steadfast. I often recommend to clients that they retrace the history of their brand, and revive some of the elements that worked successfully in the past, and that have gotten them to where they are today. Sometimes, the ‘latest and greatest’ isn’t the answer and new isn’t always better. A brand should make an emotional connection with the customer, and often, reinforcing your original brand position allows them to re-connect and shows that you stand for something. Your design doesn’t need to stagnate as a result of returning to basics, but the intrinsic values that your visuals connote, evoke and communicate should should be consistent. Brands are living, breathing representations of your values, and adoption of that brand is the outward expression of customer support for those shared values. In the end, [brand] substance always trumps sexiness.

Mind the Experience: All too often, marketers scramble to launch a glitzy new campaign without matching up their activities to back end brand interaction and engagement. I continually try to reinforce to my clients the importance of building a logistics and customer service strategy directly into the brand strategy. If there’s a customer-facing touch point, it must be aligned with a corresponding organizational activity — whether it be a well-staffed call center to manage response, an integrated web component or even timely product replenishment and fulfillment. Building a brand extends beyond just marketing, and special care must be taken to pull your call to action through every aspect of the business to ensure a positive — and seamless — customer experience. Ultimately, it will be that experience that connects users with the brand and develops affinity. Even the most creative, well designed ad can’t make up for the lack of it.

Make Friends with Your Data: For me, the most disheartening of all branding blunders is overlooking data, and not defining metrics for success at the onset of a campaign. It’s critical to set clear objectives for each initiative and track corresponding data to measure how you’re performing against those objectives. The beauty of online initiatives, in particular, is that you’re afforded a wealth of data around how users interact with your communications. From open and click through rates to interactions on social networks, and even site activity, those behaviors are very telling. Watching — and understanding — what creative/messaging or calls to action resonate best with your customers will allow you to scale those activities to produce the desired results. A strong brand delivers on what the customer wants, not what the brand manager thinks the consumer wants. And keeping a close eye on behavior will allow you to craft the right message, create the right context and deliver relevancy that drives repeatable action.

Most importantly, iterate and optimize often. A well established brand can weather a few creative missteps; the key is to stay on the pulse of the market, and in tune with your customers, so that you are poised to act quickly — and relevantly.

Q: Jelly Labs appears to me to be your branding for “testing the total package.” Can you describe the concept of Jelly as you relate it to marketing?

A: Marketers — especially interactive marketers — are continually striving for ‘stickiness,’ or ways to keep their brand top-of-mind, promote ongoing consumption of their products or services, and encourage return site visits. In order to achieve those things, your creative must be aligned with your strategy, your communications must work congruently across platforms, and above all, you must speak ‘user-ese’ to formulate compelling, resonant messaging. I built Jelly Labs as a creative development and research hub focused solely on user behavior/interaction and brand stickiness to cement relationships and campaigns. What I affectionately term ‘social scientists’ monitor brand activity, test campaign efficacy, trend watch, isolate key behaviors and take an empirical approach to evaluating the marketing efforts we employ. And very often, additional tactics are added to the mix as a result of their findings, creating a continuous loop of actionable activity around a measurable goal. It also serves as an effective means of developing best practices in offering evidence-based solutions for clients.

Q: I have read over at triplepundit.com that “Gennefer’s commitment to green living, sustainability and social change is at the core of all of her initiatives – both professionally and personally.” Why did you make the decision to have an ecological impact in your plan, and what types of things do you do to support it?

A: I believe in giving back, not only to preserve and sustain the planet on which we live, but to help others benefit from the success that I have been fortunate enough to have. I aspire for social good and subscribe to a pay-it-forward philosophy that allows for knowledge sharing and keeps the greater good in focus. As such, my business practices are centered not only on minimzing adverse affects on the environment and reducing my carbon footprint, but creating ongoing opportunities for social change. I give a percentage of revenue from all client campaigns to the charitable organization of their choosing, so that they feel a personal connection to the cause, and utilize my network to coordinate volunteer opportunities for associations lacking sufficient resources. I also offer pro bono strategic services and tactical planning for nonprofits. In addition, I am in the process of launching a few philanthropically-motivated start ups, one of which is called Philanthrofoodie™, a charitable venture designed to spark social change through shared food experiences. Through the collective power of conscious entrepreneurs and companies committed to social change, the potential impact that we could make on important issues facing our world are vast and significant. I want to be part of that change and am dedicated to championing this mindset and encouraging a paradigm shift toward social responsibility among enterprise to help make a tangible difference in the world. My two series for Triple Pundit, ‘Conversations in Cause Marketing’ and ‘Philanthropy in Five’ are also both aimed at doing that by spotlighting socially responsible companies who are effectively engaging in cause marketing and employing conscious strategies as a blueprint for others in making this the standard way of conducting business.

Q: You are a brilliant writer, tell us how you developed those skills and what this article’s readers can do to improve there own.

A: I’ve been writing since I was a small child. I’ve just always been drawn to words, and the inspiration and emotion that a series of intricately woven phrases can elicit and convey. I find language intoxicating, so writing is a natural extension of that. I fine tuned my skills by doing a lot of reading, and just by writing itself. I think to be proficient at anything, it takes practice — and persistence. Not all of us are Mozart, and can compose a symphony on the first attempt. If you resolve to be good at something, you need to invest the time and effort to cultivate those skills. Being the grammar nerd that I am, those seeking to improve the mechanics of their writing must read Strunk & White’s ‘Elements of Style’ and I highly recommend Stephen King’s ‘On Writing,’ a surprisingly touching and witty autobiography-slash-guide-for-aspiring novelists that has a wealth of vivid and thought-provoking content for any writer. But above all, the best thing you can do to improve your writing is to be real, and share a piece of yourself with your reader — whether it’s a blog post or a business plan. Passion always trumps a series of superlatives and crafty words on a page, so always be sure there’s substance behind them.

Q: Enough business, What does Gennefer do for fun?

A: As an entrepreneur and principal partner of several companies with a few start ups in the works as well, ‘fun’ is definitely at a premium. But I’m fortunate in that I absolutely love what I do, and for the most part, the round-the-clock hours, 7 days a week doesn’t feel like work. Any free time that I do have is spent with my family, which is my number one priority, although I have been known to end a particularly grueling day with a rigorous game of Wii Tennis!

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 2nd, 2009 at 8:35 am and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.