I developed this story about building social strategies around four fundamental human needs. This deck was used as an executive talk-track and sales enablement piece for our enterprise sales team.

1. HUMANS FIRST:
4 Rules to Simplify
Your Marketing Strategy
Deck by James Mulvey. Design by Jocelyn Aarnoutse.

2. Let’s start with a travel story.

4. So what’s Airbnb’s secret?

5. It isn’t just better tech.
Personalization
Expensive technology—
but pretty standard for a
company with lots of
money. It’s not
distinctive.

6. Or (more) brilliant content.
Personalization
Expensive technology—
but pretty standard for a
company with lots of
money. It’s not
distinctive.
Neighborhood
Guide Books
This is content marketing
101. You can find
thousands of articles on
Paris, Rome, London.

7. Or innovative products.
Personalization
Expensive technology—
but standard for a
company with lots of
money. This is not what
sets Airbnb apart.
Neighborhood
Guide Books
This is content marketing
101. You can find
thousands of articles on
Paris, Rome, London.
Local
Experiences
Tour guides have been
around since 1758. It’s
not groundbreaking to
offer this to guests.

9. Over the years, they’ve kept their focus
on solving human-centered problems.

10. In fact, while Airbnb’s website and
technology has evolved over the years.

11. Their human-centered story
remains the same.
In fact, while Airbnb’s website and
technology has evolved over the years.

12. 2008 2010 2017

13. Why are organizations still struggling
with digital transformation?
Rewiring legacy ways
of doing things.
Focus on short-term results,
rather than long-term vision.
Lots of strategic choices:
AI, big data, chatbots,
personalization.

14. The good news...

15. If you put humans first,
the technology side of things
will fall into place.

16. Follow these 4 simple rules.
Put humans first, always.
Humanity isn’t a trend.
Embrace social evolution.
Fall in love with customer
problems, not tech solutions.
1
2
3
4

17. You’ll have a set of
principles to orientate
strategic plans.
These rules will simplify your strategy
You’ll ask smarter
questions, focused on
true customer needs.
You’ll gain clear metrics
to prove the ROI of social
to your boss.

19. Customers want to talk to people, not brands.
Source: Altimeter “Social Media Employee Advocacy 2016”
Of brands surveyed
by Altimeter have
plans to pursue
employee advocacy
strategies in 2017.
Of consumers we
surveyed trust
recommendations from
families and friends.
Of consumers report
“liking” employee
posts—far higher than
the average brand post
or social ad.
Of salespeople who
incorporated social
media into their
process outperformed
their colleagues.

20. The dominance of peer-driven media
2 of the top 3 most-used sources of news and information are peer-influenced media
Based on the general population, 28-country global total
71
69
67
45
28
32
General
Population

21. Don’t overthink this.

23. But winning strategies focus on
four universal customer needs.

24. Human motivations don’t change.

25. Universal
Customer
Motivations
Make these the pillars
of your marketing strategy.
2.
RELATIONSHIPS
CUSTOMER
3.
SOCIAL BELONGING
& COMMUNITY
4.
TRUST &
SECURITY
1.
LISTENING
& EMPATHY

26. Let’s walk through a few examples
of brands using these 4 universal human
needs in their marketing.

27. 1. LISTENING & EMPATHY

28. It’s easy to forget: Wendy’s needed to listen to
thousands of tweets before they found this one.

29. Hootsuite

30. 2. RELATIONSHIPS

32. 1. Digital transformation requires rewiring
old ways of doing things.
2. But technology only gets us half-way.
3. If you don’t focus build a humans-first
strategy, technology will (paradoxically)
alienate customers, rather than
connecting them to our brand.

33. 3. SOCIAL BELONGING & COMMUNITY

34. Mikey Scott
Global marketing director at Herschel

36. Human nature stays constant.
But the way we communicate does change.

37. We’re moving away from intent-based marketing.
In the last decade, it was about winning the robot hearts of Google bots.

38. And moving towards social discovery.
The brands that win the next decade will focus on winning the social feed.
37% of internet users who turn to social networks to carry out research on brands or products

39. Source: GlobalWebIndex
58%
30%
60%
34%
54%
57%
60%
64%
46%
38%
Search Engines vs.
Social Media in the
Online Purchase Journey
LATAM leads for social product research.
Consumers are skipping search engines and going straight to social.

40. We’re shifting
away from big idea
campaigns.
The brands that won before focused on
key messages, promotion, and big ideas.

41. And moving towards
experiences and
relationships.
Brands are turning to the
relationship-building platforms
of Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Kik,
Slack, Snapchat, WhatsApp.

43. 4. TRUST & SECURITY

44. To sell things, you need to build trust.
But the old tricks aren’t fooling people anymore...

45. The erosion of public trust
Only 37% of the
public trust CEOs.
Only 29% trust
government officials.
And 85% of the public
lack faith in the
entire system.
Government Media Business NGOs
Trust in Institutions
Declines
Percent trust in the four institutions of
government, business, media, and NGOs,
2016 vs. 2017
Media declines the most
2016
2017

46. With the old institutions failing them,
people are turning to a familiar source:
each other.

47. Peers are now as credible as experts
Government
official
Board of directors CEO NGO
rep
Financial industry
analyst
Employee A person like you Academic expert Technical export
Percent who rate
each spokesperson as
extremely/very credible 2017

48. Businesses that succeed put their
people—employees, advocates, customer
communities, and online influencers—at
the center of their marketing strategy.

49. Brands like Hubspot, Moz, Buffer have a
strong and unified company vision for
inbound. They know what inbound does
well—and what should be avoided.

50. How to rebuild trust
Build employee
advocacy into
your strategy.
Get your CEO on
social, lead from
the top.
Listen and talk
to customers in
real-time.

52. Technology needs to serve people.
Solve concrete customer problems.

54. Challenge for you

55. 1. Customers have changed. They’ve moved from Facebook to private
messaging apps like WhatsApp.
2. This makes it harder to track social ROI.
3. And the metrics you used in the past—like clicks on a YouTube ad or
traffic from TV ads—don’t reveal customer behavior anymore.
How would you solve this problem?

56. We could solve this problem by...
Buying better analytics to
track dark social.
Paying influencers to
promote your ad
campaigns in WhatsApp.
Keep buying TV ads and
hope this stupid dark social
thing goes away.

57. But they took a much different
approach to solving this problem.

58. GOAL

59. Adidas follows
one-to-one
conversations
● See their fans moving to Whatsapp
● Builds micro-communities on
Whatsapp
● Members get news and invites to
events before anyone else
● ROI metrics shift: they track
individual conversations rather than
pageviews.

60. “Adidas wants to be the most
personal brand, so we need to
know and understand our
consumer in order to have a
meaningful relationship. We
can reward advocacy with
personalised approaches like
inviting consumers into a
dialogue with Adidas stars.”
Florian Alt
Senior director of global brand communications Adidas as
quoted in the Drum

61. What can we learn
from Adidas?
● Your company’s problems (it’s hard to
track messaging apps) are not your
customer’s problems.
● Don’t resist trends—Adidas was proactive
and took a research approach rather than
waiting for a final answer.
● Shift your metrics to match new behaviors
(i.e. tracking individual interactions rather
than pageviews).

62. Final takeaways

63. Put humans first, always.
Humanity isn’t a trend.
Embrace social evolution.
Fall in love with customer
problems, not tech solutions.
Follow these 4 simple rules.
And everything else will fall into place.
1
2
3
4

64. Hootsuite can help...

65. Thank-you!