Advertising

Blog inspiration: Find it in your playlist

Posted by renee on January 11th, 2011

Trying to attract more people to your blog but facing writer’s block, or worse can’t think of what to write about? Consider turning to your iTunes play list for a little inspiration.

I was on a flight back from Canada and was racking my brain for ideas to blog about.  I felt the ‘social media’ topics were saturated, that Infographics were over done, and SEO was too advanced and boring to write about. I was stuck, so I opened up my iTunes to get some music pumping with hopes of being inspired.  And then it occurred to me. Here is a detailed list of over 600 song titles. I could easily play around with them to help me generate ideas for a post.  It turned out to be a little fun, but more so hilarious.

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Posted in Advertising, Blog, Marketing, small business tips | 3 Comments »

Are engagement and UX the new art and copy?

Posted by renee on January 2nd, 2011

The exponential rise in internet use has led to fundamental changes in the advertising and marketing world with no end in sight: if anything, the rate of change is only accelerating. While some argue that the internet is merely another advertising medium, albeit with an unprecedented audience and reach, others point to a fundamental shift in the way that companies now interact with their customers. So this begs the question: Is having the right copy and artwork still enough? With the rise of affordable technology available today both could be replaced with the use of Photoshop and someone savvy enough to use it. Even with a website, your online presence must consist of more than merely loading all available information about your product and hoping for the best. Today you need to be aware of the new relationship between media, technology and user communities. To engage the internet consumer you need to provide a compelling user experience (UX).

There is a great scene in an episode of Mad Men where Don Draper delivers a pitch for a Kodak product, The Carousel. The way that he invokes nostalgia and family to sell what is simply a slide projector is a great example of user experience by deftly merging the associated sentimentality and emotion with the product. It is a vivid example of how user experience encompasses all aspects of the customer’s interaction with a company, its services and products.  But how have things shifted since?  Are Engagement and UX the new art and copy? How could Don Draper possibly pitch that product today?

Technology is a glittering lure, but there is the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash, if they have a sentimental bond with the product.

A website, therefore, is not only a medium for providing information but must also have a clean, elegant and to-the-point design that anticipates a user’s needs and addresses them in an efficient, entertaining and comprehensive way. It needs to engage the customer by providing an interactive ‘digital experience’. In addition, this now occurs in the context of massive online communities where there is an ongoing dialogue between consumers. The community of Facebook users alone, for example, is over 500 million strong. Try to imagine a magazine with that sort of circulation! Your product can reach an undreamed of level of user awareness through the right ‘tweets’ or ‘likes’ but, make a mis-step, and your reputation can just as easily be destroyed overnight.

In this brave new world you cannot engage the fickle internet customer simply by creating the right copy and artwork (although you need these as well), instead it is vital to know your customer and his or her needs. This requires knowing and interacting with your customer at a significantly more sophisticated level than in traditional advertising. Customers now say ‘I will allow your product into my consciousness, but only so long as you do so in a way that entertains me and that is relevant to what I want’.

‘I will allow your product into my consciousness, but only so long as you do so in a way that entertains me and that is relevant to what I want’

For more tips on UX see the presentations from the WarmGun conference on Slideshare.

(Thumbnail image from catalystresources.com)

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Posted in Advertising, Blog, Marketing, Social media for small business | No Comments »

13 Things Glee Can Teach you About Social Media

Posted by renee on November 30th, 2010

Social Media basically involves people who choose the online world alongside the real one to interact and socialize with friends, strangers, and businesses. When social media first hit the scene, no one really took it seriously. All the new apps and platforms popping up where thought to be the next ‘ICQ’ or forum.  Many thought it was just a bunch of kids goofing around on the Internet. Ha! These days, if a business or organization does not have a Facebook page or Twitter account, they are considered behind the times.

The Fox television show Glee demonstrates how effective social media is as a way of achieving fame, popularity, fortune, and maybe some marketing success to boot. The plot of the show is simple: a high school teacher attempts to rebuild the glee club to its former glorious heights and recruits a motley crew of students to achieve his goal. The success of this show can teach us all a thing or two, whether we are using social media for small business purposes or to make a play at world domination.

1. You can make it big on YouTube. Every episode of Glee is made to be broken up into small segments, perfect in length for YouTube.

2. You don’t have to be “cool” to go viral. The Glee song and dance numbers are full of joy and happiness and performed by the school’s stereotypical misfits and nerds! They aren’t ‘cool’ , but hey anything goes.

3. People crave a little of that joy – songs from the Glee soundtrack consistently top the charts on iTunes.

4. Spread your social media net wide. Like peanut butter, just spread it.

5. One blog or website is not enough. Glee is on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, iTunes, blogs, and forums. Keep it consistant and focused, but do use more than one platform.

6.  Integrate your media net. Glee has song clips that link up to the iTunes store, audio and video clips that link to where you can purchase the full episode, and the great big gift-wrap bow that ties it all together: advertising.

7. Build anticipation. Glee’s pilot aired in the spring, leaving fans a whole summer to look forward to the next installment.

8.  Give freebies. The pilot for Glee was available free online all summer long.

9.  Keep tabs on traffic. Where are people coming from and where are they going?

10. Use what you find to your advantage. Searches for Glee spike after every episode — make sure all those searches have lots of good results to choose from.

11. Toot your own horn. As Glee’s cheerleading coach said, “I have to put in a call to the Ohio Secretary of State notifying them that I will no longer be carrying photo ID. You know why? People should know who I am.”

“I have to put in a call to the Ohio Secretary of State notifying them that I will no longer be carrying photo ID. You know why? People should know who I am.”

12.  Make your own catchphrase. Glee fans call themselves “Gleeks” and are proud of it.

13.  Look to the past for inspiration. Glee’s success is partly due to the modern social media craze, but no one can dismiss the nostalgic element of the actual glee club!

Oh, Hell to the no! Look, I’m not down with all this background singing nonsense. I’m Beyoncé, I ain’t no Kelly Rowland! – Mercedes Jones

Don’t be a backup singer with your social media. Be the Prima Donna, the first one on the stage and the one who gets all the attention.

What Glee-esk things are you doing to leverage social media?

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Posted in Advertising, Blog, Marketing, Social media for small business | 5 Comments »

Now Recruiting: Hipsters

Posted by renee on November 15th, 2010

OK, so you’ve got this product that you need to market this so that it’s ‘cool’, so that it takes off like all those other hip items that you just had to have, the iPad, iPod, tablet, etc..  I mean look at the iPod, it’s just a music player, yet for a time everybody had to have one, it became de rigueur to the max. And then you look at that Steve Jobs fellow and you think, yeah he’s got it. Went up against the might of Microsoft with a closed operating system, with a box that continues to be twice as expensive as anything else and yet he’s making a killing.

So you’re looking at your marketing guys and you’re thinking, maybe I should dress them up in some naff looking skivvy or polo neck jumper (in black, of course) like Jobs. But you know that won’t work. So, you realize you need to hire someone a little different, someone with an edge, someone like…an authentic hipster  - to infuse a counter culture in your marketing department.

Here’s the first lesson of being hip, or a hipster if you must: it means going against the current trend, it means being self-consciously anti- whatever it is that’s happening.

When they asked James Dean what he was rebelling against he replied ‘What have you got?’

That means, paradoxically, whoever’s a hipster today ain’t gonna be tomorrow. Gonna be hard to write that wanted ad isn’t it? A hipster, according to some sources, is someone who is young, middle-class with interests in non-mainstream styles, tastes and behaviors. And hiring one is a very conscious choice: they’re going to be wearing clothes that were in fashion fifty years ago, glasses you once wouldn’t be seen dead in, and with tastes that are intentionally obscure (if everyone’s into it then it’s no longer hip). But, get this, they know it’s uncool – there’s this complicity – like it’s really bad taste, and we know that, ha ha!

I think that in a society that’s increasingly homogenized, marketed to the point of saturation, largely in agreement with its own values and tastes, the hipster credo becomes a necessary antidote. It’s no surprise that these people came into being around the 1950′s, after we had won the war and saw a wave of prosperity that seemed to promise everything and in the end seemed empty, devoid of meaning and delivered nothing. We’re looking for something real to fill that void, and if we can’t find it at least we’ll look cool disparaging everything else.

The hipster credo becomes a necessary antidote

Anyway here are your tips for hipster startup employees:

You definitely need a hipster. You need someone who’s going to be the absolute early adopter with the (potentially) current trend in consumer products; all those endless gadgets we think we have to have now; your hipster will tell you what we need tomorrow. (As he would have already cracked open the products to dissect it’s inside)  Whatever product you’re creating should be different then the current trend: think miniature (like wristwatch) HD TV or social networking site where you never actually connect with anyone else or where the goal is to be really unpopular (except with the other really unpopular people). It must be simple yet technologically of-the-moment: these people aren’t entirely vapid and foolish, particularly when it comes to shiny accessories.

It’s a style thing, but there’ll be no particular style which you can point at. Rather they’ll have adopted whatever countercultural style has existed for the past 50 years while at the same time discarding whatever it stood for. Who is Che Guevara anyway – a t-shirt manufacturer? What does punk and grunge mean in an age when you can record, in perfect digital fidelity, noise?

Don’t expect too much work from your hipster employee. In fact, I wouldn’t even set up that cubicle. You want them out and about in the world soaking up fashion and trends so that they can reject them in a humorous and ironic fashion. This is where you need to take note. Call them in once a year: carefully examine what they’re wearing, using and doing. Don’t listen to them just take note of the main elements of their ‘style’. Move fast and base your product on this analysis. And then hire another hipster – cause after that they’ll be hopelessly out of the loop.  [I am kidding about the don't expect too much work from them. The idea is that they will work, and hard for that matter, but WON'T punch in 9-5pm. They are going to work when they want. So let them]

Anyway, in all this, the bottom line is that a hipster is someone who can bring a dynamic perspective to your team. Their counterculteral views can be a the magical potion you need to take the market by storm.

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Posted in Advertising, Blog, Marketing | 7 Comments »

Daily deals, mobile, hyper local offers. We Want More!

Posted by renee on September 21st, 2010

Still on the fence about location based services, mobile, daily deals and if they’re even worth it?  You shouldn’t be. Here are some case studies that will go down in the history books, and others not so much, of some entertaining and creative mobile and location based campaigns.

Gap

When an e-mail was sent out offering a $50 gift card to the Gap for just $25, more than 440,000 people purchased it. This offer was made through Groupon – a couponing site which provides daily deals in fun and interesting ways.  The Gap deal was Groupon’s first big national promotion.  With such an overwhelming response, it actually stalled the servers. At one point, the site was selling 534 offers a minute. Success?  Yes! The campaign generated $11 million for Groupon.  Wow!

Domino’s

In the UK, Domino’s up’d the ante and began offering free pizzas to mayors on Foursquare. Who can say no to free ZA? They even gave away free side dishes for those who check in and spend more than $14.50.  Ok, wow.  All people had to do was check. Many of the locations weren’t even sit down restaurants, yet the promotion still drove foot traffic. It increased drive pick-up orders and helped eliminate costs associated with delivery.

Best Buy

And back in the news, Best Buy teamed up with Shopkick, an app that turns offline stores into interactive worlds, to roll out the 257 store promotion. No need to ‘check in’ or even press a button, Shopkick automatically recognizes when someone with the app on their phone walks into a store and, boom, deals are sent to them.  An app for the lazy. Though it’s too early to tell if this campaign has been successful in terms of revenue/loyalty generated, it certainly has the media all excited. Why?  Well it made news by taking shopper rewards to entirely new and location-specific levels, literally allowing shoppers to earn rewards simply for moving through specific areas of the store. Who’s next? Macy‘s, American Eagle and Simon Property Group have all jumped on board the bandwagon.

East Coast Aero Club

A lesser known Groupon promotion from a small east coast flight school brought sheer panic to the company, but in a good way. They put together a deal: $69 for an introductory flight lesson, 70% off the regular price. The company expected to maybe sell 200, but was told by Groupon to expect more like 500.  You know what happened?  They sold 2600.  Wow! Needless to say for the following few weeks the flight school instructors were very busy. All this from one little email.

Starbucks

Want to be an honorary barista for a day?  Become a Mayor of Starbucks. Simple if you are an addict.  The person who checks into any individual Starbucks the most becomes the “Honorary Barista” of that Starbucks through an App called Loopt.  Does that come in Venti?  Who knows, but it certainly has more people checking in, whether or not they are buying. Checking in using Foursquare, however, gives you $1 off a Frappucino – now that’s more my cup of tea – or cup of yummy awesomeness. And moving on – there is even another Starbucks mobile loyalty program, their own iPhone loyalty card App, built by mFoundry. Customers collect stars in a cup on their phones every time they make a purchase and get a free drink every 15 visits.  I visit the Bucks two times a day, so that would mean a free drink every week and a half.  I’d do it.

InterContinental Hotels Group

The hotel chain used Gowalla (Another check-in app) to give gift cards and airline miles to loyal customers of its hotels.  Piggy backing off their Hit It Big promotion which offers rewards such as retail gift cards and double air miles to guests who stay multiple nights. The campaign launched at the beginning of summer with the hopes of getting summer tourists checking in like crazy. I haven’t been able to find data on its success but know it ended June 30th.

Pepsi

This ain’t no Britney Spears endorsement. This is geo-location marketing at its best.  Last May Pepsi launched Pepsi Loot, an iPhone App that uses geo-targeting for people to find nearby restaurants that serve Pepsi beverages, including chains like Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Arby’s and Panda Express to individual restaurants that have Pepsi contracts. Power! Customers that check-in to restaurants that sell Pepsi products can begin to earn loyalty ‘loot’ points. These points can be used to get downloadable songs from artists such as Keane, Katherine McPhee and Jamie Cullum. Sha-la-la-la, sing it.

What about charity?! Ok, ok, Shopkick has that covered.

CauseWorld

This is stellar, a free location based app for iPhone, iPod Touch and Android, which allows users to collect “karma points” while shopping, and then convert them into cash donations for charitable causes.  Since it’s inception the app has brought in over $100,000 in donations to the American Red Cross for the victims on Haiti.  This is location based cause giving (LBCG) at its best  .. I just made that acronym up, but it sounds good.

I could go on and on with the many new campaigns popping up each week, but these set some good examples.  Basically this is where it’s at. Marketing dollars are shifting from offline to online to mobile to back offline.  It’s an eclectic mesh of integrating all forms of marketing for the most impact.   Although mobile marketing is very new and under much scrutiny, it is inevitable that demand for LBA will continue to grow far beyond large retailers and into hyper-local shops.

Do you have any good examples of successful mama and papa shop location based marketing?

Posted in Advertising, Blog, Marketing, Mobile Marketing | No Comments »

Worst ad of 2009 [Via BNET]

Posted by renee on December 11th, 2009

BNET News thinks that this is the worst ad of 2009. They describe it is tasteless and irrelevant. I agree.

http://www.youtube.com/v/4s7Qw1abNJE

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Posted in Advertising, Marketing, small business, Social media for small business | 5 Comments »