The All Inbound Blog

A pleasant surprise from my airline experience last week: This modest little Coca-Cola cocktail napkin delivers one of the nicest, most pitch-perfect marketing messages that I’ve seen in a while. Check it out, front and back:

Front

back

Why is Coke’s message so smart?

Strategically: It reflects everything the Coke brand tries to stand for: friendliness to all, “real thing” authenticity, and a distinctive taste in a world of wannabes.

Tactically: It delivers the message to a captive audience that has a free sample the product right in front of it. The message is completely appropriate and relevant. It’s beautifully written and designed, and as engaging as a napkin can possibly be. The right message, to the right people, at the right time. Perfect.

Three lessons for all marketers

1. Work on your key (strategic) messages.
If you think this message was simple and easy to produce — well, Coke and their marketing partners are so good at messaging that it only seems easy. Can you state your value proposition so easily? Does your company have a consistent voice and personality? These elements are central to your effective messages. Work on them and reinforce them — now, and constantly. A week or two before your trade show, or the day before your press release is due, is way too late.

2. Anytime, anywhere your company or brand interacts with your customers, there’s a profound opportunity.
Never take “small” touchpoints for granted. How easy it would be for Coke just to put a logo on the napkin, with an inane slogan. (I don’t believe “Open Happiness” is inane in any way, shape or form, but feel free to disagree.) This is powerful messaging where you’d least expect it. What are some small touchpoints that you’ve overlooked?

3. It’s harder than it looks to maintain market leadership in a commoditized category.
Coke has a hard job compared smaller brands that talk to more focused segments. Yet Coke still hit home runs. Think about it: Red Bull and Mountain Dew have created their own sub-categories. With much more focused audiences, their job of creating relevant communication is relatively easy. (Red Bull and Mountain Dew are tremendously successful, that’s part of the lesson.) But Coke must connect with 12-year-olds as well as their great grandparents, and they do a great job.

(Coke seems to be moving from “most liked” to “beloved” with their current efforts. Contrast this to the sad state of affairs over at Pepsi — their Super Bowl commercials, in particular). If Coke can rise to this challenge, how about you — whether you’re a market leader, or a challenger?

What do you think?

Do you agree that this example from Coke is a particularly strong bit of marketing? What lessons do you take from it?

A lesson for marketers from the business that made marketing famous.

I was walking to the LaunchPadINW office yesterday when I stopped to wait for one of downtown Spokane’s interminable red lights.

A 30-ish man walked up beside me with what appeared to be a rental tuxedo in clear suit bag, slung over his shoulder. I said, “I hope it’s going to be a good party.”

He turned to me, completely beaming: “I won a contest! The circus is in town and I got chosen to be the assistant ringmaster! My kids will be in the front row while I’m in the main ring!”  (A few hours later, I drove by the big top. Yep, the circus was in town.)

I won’t soon forget how excited this full-grown man was about going to the circus. Heck, I’m excited for him.

And I won’t forget the brilliance of the El Katif Shrine Circus‘s promotion.

The promotion ties in perfectly with everything we imagine the circus to be. Equal parts wonderment, fantasy and childhood magic. It cost the circus little, other than the expenditure of some imagination and empathy.

Do your company promotions have nearly this much emotional power?

Maybe you’re thinking – “That’s easy for a circus, I have a home heating company. I can’t match that!” Perhaps. But what a lesson:

Put yourself in the shoes of your customers before you even begin to look for that magical connection.

(I don’t know if the circus will be able to get coverage in the press, what an angle it would make, don’t you think? “Ringmaster For A Day – Man’s Children Look On In Amazement!”)

So don’t take the easy way out, and run a typical promotion for your next trade show or event – like giving away an iPad that has nothing to do with your business. Take some inspiration from the man in the main ring, who gets to be the center of his kids’ world in a whole new way. Run a promotion that people will talk about. (Or blog about.)

For your next promotion, how will you capture the essence of your brand, and make some magic for your customers?

How do you respond to misleading information spread by your competitors? This video provides one simple example.

I like how they’re not angry or obnoxious (as I’d be tempted to be). They use a low-key approach with disarming good nature to nail the message. Sure, the presentation could be better, and I wish they could have taken Paramount Equity Mortgage to task more directly. But I give the two young mortgage brokers a lot a credit for standing up for themselves.

[By the way, here's my post on the misleading advertising they refer to from Paramount Equity Mortgage. Here's more information from the Washington Dept. of Financial Institutions.]

Does one video posted to YouTube solve the problem of  competitors who mislead the public? Of course not. Some people will always weigh the pros and cons of playing dirty. They’ll figure out how much they can get away with and go just that far. As social media continues to empower consumers and small competitors, the unscrupulous will look for new and creative ways to cheat. So while I applaud the video, there has to be more.

Imagine if every honest company, small and large alike, policed their own industry like Brandon and Cliff tried to do on their own. Imagine if an entire confederation of honest companies cooperated in showing customers how to recognize and deal with questionable sales tactics. Eventually, I think that will be rule, rather than the exception – and it will be a lot harder for the bad guys to win by cheating. I sure hope so.

Maybe I’m wrong. (I don’t think so!) What about you – do you think companies should respond when they find competitors lying to their customers? If so, how?

Note: from the looks of things, Revolution Financial seems to have gone out of business. But I have a feeling Brandon and Cliff will do well in the long run if they keep using the same instincts that led them to post that video.

If you’ve crafted a tight and compelling company/brand story, exuberant fans will spread it for you. Your employees will work harder to play their part in the story. Here are a few videos, created by raving fans, that remind us that if you get your story straight, customers have unprecedented means of spreading it. The videos:  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

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.

(For smoother video, use this link to bypass YouTube and view direct from Creativity Online.)

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.

For some great insight into Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne’s decision to go with the Wieden + Kennedy concept for the Super Bowl ad, check out this great post by Forbes auto industry blogger Joann Muller.

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.

Continue reading

From 25 years ago, the words of David Kennedy, co-founder of Wieden + Kennedy: ”We’re really not in the business of making ads. Our job is to make a connection.”  Today you could add websites, Facebook pages, YouTube channels, email and much more to his list of stuff we’re not really in the business of making. It’s always about the connection.

Sometimes you can tell right away if the marketing effort connects. It hits you in the gut.

Other times, you can only tell something about the quality of the design and writing.

And yet well-written, well-designed work often misses the mark. Sometimes terribly. (Just look at two-thirds of Super Bowl commercials, and four-fifths of all websites.) So for each of these samples from my portfolio, I’ve given some context. To view the work, click the images above or the links on the left.