So you haven’t paid attention to your marketing for a while and it’s starting to show in your bottom line. Time to ramp up?
Ready for some self analysis?
Marketing isn’t something you can easily turn on and off. If you don’t make it part of your everyday routine, constantly thinking of how to better serve and interact with your customers, and constantly monitoring your competition, you put yourself at a huge, ongoing disadvantage.
Where do you start to catch up? Before you do anything else: analyze your situation. Do it yourself, or pay someone with an outside perspective – you’d be amazed at how liberating this can be. In any case, here are three things you need to truly understand: Continue reading
Would you believe that a story about Netflix v. Amazon is really a lesson for your much smaller business?
Yesterday Amazon greeted visitors with a wonderful announcement: Members of Amazon Prime ($79 for a year’s worth of free shipping) now get streaming video of 5,000 TV and film titles to your computer or TV at no extra charge.
That made my day because I’m a Prime subscriber. But it wasn’t about to make me end my $96 per year relationship with Netflix. Continue reading
Marketing in the digital era can confuse and frustrate the heck out of people – clients, agency managers, 20-something interactive whiz kids.
About two months ago a longtime ad-agency pal asked me, “What in the world has happened to our industry?” I tried to answer. Teressa Iezzi, editor of Creativity, explains it a whole lot better in her book, The Idea Writers. Continue reading
This is not a photo of Hayes Barnard of Paramount Equity Mortgage, who was fined $400,000
You’ll notice I didn’t write “Hayes Barnard and Paramount Equity Lie.” No, I parsed the language (quite cleverly, if I say so myself). It leads you to believe something a bit different than what’s actually written.
It’s kind of like the radio commercials of Hayes Barnard and Paramount Equity Mortgage. Continue reading
Maybe your small business can’t run an ad campaign during the Super Bowl. But you can take lessons from a couple of big brands that did – and in doing so, offended the environmental community, all of Brazil, a huge chunk of the black community and anyone who is sympathetic to the Dali Lama. Continue reading
Maybe your small business can’t create a huge, beloved hit TV and social media campaign like Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” and “The Response Campaign.” But you take some valuable lessons from it.
In Creativity Online’s case study (below), the client/agency team learned that women control half the purchase decisions for men’s body wash. So their strategy: Unlike competitors such as Axe, find ways to appeal to men and women at the same time. This applies to media choices, and even more important, message development.
Lesson: Study the buying habits of your customers/brand community. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a tiny business or Procter & Gamble. You’ll discover valuable clues about how to engage and connect.
How has a particular insight helped your campaign?
Post a comment below. Or email me directly.
Best ebook ever. Best free ebook ever. Click image to download.
The Cluetrain Manifesto first slapped me in the face in 2002. I ran across this quote again just yesterday. It still stings:
The question is whether, as a company, you can afford to have more than an advertising-jingle persona. Can you put yourself out there: say what you think in your own voice, present who you really are, show what your really care about? Do you have any genuine passion to share? Can you deal with such honesty? Such exposure? Human beings are often magnificent in this regard, while companies, frankly, tend to suck. For most large corporations, even considering these questions – and they’re being forced to do so by both Internet and intranet – is about as exciting as the offer of an experimental brain transplant.”
It still rings true, doesn’t it – especially so soon after watching and re-watching so many Super Bowl commercials. Replace the bit about “intranet” with “social media,” and you can see how timely Locke’s message still is today.
If you catch yourself thinking or writing in the conventions of traditional marketing, I highly recommend you read or re-read it. (Oh go on, it’s free!)
Did the Manifesto affect the way you looked at marketing? Please comment at the end of this post.
The Manifesto had been picking up steam for a couple years…
There’s a brand that’s in trouble. It’s been making shoddy products for years. It was (and maybe still is) at the brink of failure. It needs not just a Hail Mary, but a succession of them.
Wieden + Kennedy may have answered at least one of those prayers with its work for Chrysler, the first-ever 2-minute Super Bowl commercial.
A Super Bowl commercial must work much like any other marketing communication. It has to speak to the right people, on a matter that’s relevant, in terms they understand, and be compelling. It has to address a need in the client’s sales process, or sales funnel.
Do you think another Super Bowl spot worked better than Chrysler’s? Please comment at the end of this post. Or email me directly.
But the Super Bowl comes with extra burdens: It creates more pressure to make impact than any other venue in the world of advertising. Everyone’s watching. Even if they’re not watching the game, they’re watching online. They’re FB’ing, Tweeting and emailing. They’re even blogging. You mess up, you’ve done more than waste time, money and opportunity. You can embarrass your brand.
An interesting column in at ForeignPolicy.com says this of the Egyptian uprising:
Harder than ever to control the message
“It underscores the new reality facing Arab regimes: They no long control the message.” Competing messages gets out via satellite and digital technologies. The days command and control dwindle. (see: The Al Jazeera Revolution)
Yesterday Amazon greeted visitors with a wonderful announcement: Members of Amazon Prime ($79 for a year’s worth of free shipping) now get streaming video of 5,000 TV and film titles to your computer or TV at no extra charge.
Hi, I'm Barrett Rossie. If you want stronger marketing messages, send me a message through the contact tab above.