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With the election over we can now take a lesson from the Obama playbook in terms of message. Starting Nov. 5th the approach to selling changes-- hope will sell a product. Goodwill can inspire actions and transactions. And institutional advertising will become a priority.
In that time Barack Obama put together a campaign that inspires videos like this.
If you start tomorrow, can your brand inspire the same inspiration?
Forty years ago the news stand had a pretty limited selection-- Time, Newsweek, People, Good Housekeeping. Those were the magazines that everyone turned to, they covered a variety of topics and the writers were really big fish in a really big pond.
The barrier to entry was incredibly tall.
If you were into kayaking you could write a specific article and chances were it wouldn't get published. Society was into learning a little bit about everything.
Look at Dear Abbey. She could jump from pond to pond and still be big.
Look at a newsstand today. There are hundreds of magazines, with millions of writers and contributors. Each a really big fish in a really small pond-- dare I say puddle.
So what happened? Everything became specialized. Rather than learn a little about everything, each of us has decided to learn a lot about a little.
The barrier to entry is still incredibly tall.
Now there are millions of small ponds each with big fish, when before there were only a few ponds with big fish.
Interestingly enough, there are so many puddles, that a big fish in one pond is a minnow in another. Today there are hundreds of "Dear Abbey's", most newspapers now have their own.
So what's point?
If your a company that wants to be in a certain pond you need to understand the pond before you jump in. You need to a look at the fish in the pond and yourself and ask this all important question-- "If I am going to be a big fish in this pond how do I attain the status without alienating the other fish? And why will people listen to me?"
On July 4th I walked in our parade.
When was the last time you walked in a parade?
What if your company decided to enter a float in this years parade? Could you do it? Sure, you could get a hayrack or some trailer and fancy it up, maybe put a band on it. But is that your company? Is a band what you stand for (unless your a music store)?
Here is my challenge for you: if you had to sum up your company, your motto, your credo, in one float-- could you do it?
(Incidentially, I am in that picture somewhere.)
I recently read this blog posting about an ad agency Modernista! and their website. (I'll wait a second and let you read that post first.)
Ok, done? Good.
So did you Google Modernista!?
Then you saw that the webpage isn't a webpage, its just a nav bar that hangs out while you navigate the web. (No one surfs the web anymore- thats so 1990's)
I love companies that will think outside the box-LOVE IT! I like when they push the boundaries of what something is and what they think it should be. Modernista! does exactly that. Why would someone go to just ONE website, why not have your website easily accessible while they info-snack?
Just one problem. The rest of society is struggling to get caught up on the web. In fact some of the web is struggling to keep up with its self.
Take for example the wikipedia page for Modernista!, they point out that you are not at the modernista site and they are doing things wrong!--AHHH! We can't have companies doing things on the web wrong.
According to Wikipedia there is a right way to navigate the web and a wrong way. Modernista! is the wrong way.
Here is the line in the sand for me. The internet will never be the same. Companies like Modernista! have changed it for me. They pushed the boundary on what it can be- a place to navigate with friends, and have it be an experience. And I don't mean social networking, I mean sites like pmog.com. These are sites that change the web into an experience.
So what happens if you are too far out of the box? You are considered a non-conformist. This is perfect for Modernista! because that builds their brand and fits nicely with their mantra.
But what about your brand?
Can you push the boundaries for your company? Your sales department?
Lets think about this. Take for example the thank you letter. Does it have to be a letter?
User- generated content is undeniably hot right now. Websites like youtube, flicker, facebook, and myspace make sharing your personal preferences easier than ever.
Some brands inspire great content.
Some really miss the mark.
But lost in all of this hype is the original user-generated content- the customer feedback letter.
Here is my idea for you...
The next time you think about having a sales contest I believe you need to make the goal unrelated to a dollar amount. Instead, work to increase customer satisfaction and monitor it by the number of complimentary letters your company receives. Increasing sales is beneficial in the short term- increasing brand loyalty is beneficial for the long term.
I spent 5 minutes tonight with iTunes and added an iTunes widget to my blog.
Why?
Because its great sales and marketing on Apple's part. And doesn't everyone care what music I listen to?
Hmm. Maybe not.
But it looks neat right?
So then its more about the viral marketing part. Apple hopes that you will come to my blog, like my music, click on the widget and buy some music from the iTunes store. Ok, I will buy that.
But I think it has more to do with the bottle water theory. You have heard that before right? People don't buy bottle water for the water, they buy it for the 'coolness factor' of being seen drinking bottle water.
Well then let's go with that in our kudos to Apple and their new widget. They increased my coolness factor by making this blog just a bit better looking, and my social status as someone who buys his music from the iTunes store. So as you read through some postings feel free to take a moment to admire my new widget.
Its cool. And I am cool for having it. Aren't you jealous?
Here is an idea for you....
With Apple's new widget they are definitely upping the exposure of iTunes to the few non-iPod owners. (Honestly I only know 1 person that doesn't have an iPod.) But in doing so they made it fun to do and increased my brand loyalty. So when was the last time you gave someone a reason to "tattoo" your brand? Sure we don't all sell music and movies, some of us sell a bit less interesting things like test assessments. But allowing your customers access to fun webpages to create a widget with your logo is a perfect way to bring viral marketing in through the front door.
So what is your idea to increase brand awareness?
The ebook is here!
I like the trend I am seeing in marketing copy for products today. Gone are days of boring promises that a product will do this or that.
That's old school.
New school today is all about the story.
Yesterday, while out for a ride on my bike I stopped for some fuel. Both for myself and my bike. As I perused the cooler filled with energy drinks and the usual gatorade type-super-carbo sports drinks. I came across Vitamin Water. It looked so un-pretentious in its simple two color label-as opposed to the flash and glam that seem to be the norm for sports drinks. So I picked it up. And on the back was story.
"in soccer (excuse us mexico, spain, and italy, we mean 'futbol'), there isn't a more exciting moment than when the announcer screams 'goooooooooal' (yelling 'oooffffsiddde' never quite caught on).
with that said, we added b vitamins and guarana to give you an extra kick (pun intended). so now when your watching soccer, playing soccer, coaching soccer, driving kids to soccer or doing anything that starts with 'socc' and ends with 'er', you too can have the energy of a raving lunatic to yell 'goooooooooal.'"
The ebook is here!
The ebook is here!
Friends first, customers second--the approaches I use for every sale, every time.
Click here to download it for FREE from my website! And you can (if you like) make a donation, but its not required.
It is required is that you blog, email, and share this with your friends and colleagues. And while you are at add me as a friend on myspace.
More on how I found this later, but more importantly Cactus, an advertising agency out of Denver Colorado, gets it!
What's "it"?
They don't try to just make the sale, they try to make a friend. They know if they do this successfully the business will grow and there will be a greater chance for repeat business.
Keep this in mind the next time you are in contact with your customer and ask yourself: am I trying to make a friend or make a sale?
Kudos Cactus for posting this right on your website for all to see. This is one of the best mission statements I have read.
Anytime I submit a piece of marketing materials for approval from my boss, I get one question.
What is the ask?
To him if it is not apparent why we should spend the money on something he wants to know what we will get in terms of ROI.
Fair enough and sometimes the answer requires a long winded explanation.
Today I got an email from Nike featuring the famous "Thank you" ad that Nike ran in the Sunday Edition of the New York Times, as well as banner ads around the city. Read more about it here.
So my question to Nike and to you is, what is the ask?
The Chick Flick floor. That is the title for the 11th floor of “the CURTIS”. Every picture on the floor is movie posters for girlie movies. In the room there are pictures of Marilyn Monroe working out, a kid blowing a bubble, and a Dudley Doo-right bobble head adorns the bathroom. Did I mention they put Pop-Rocks on the pillow?
I had a bunch of choices on a recent trip to Denver, but gravitated toward “the CURTIS”. From the minute I walked in I could tell this place was different. The front desk staff was playing scrabble, and the name tags they had on didn’t proudly proclaim their title but their favorite movie.
I want you to take a minute and think about the last hotel you stayed at, do you remember anything memorable? Probably not. Today, most of the hotel chains across the nation are nothing more than cookie cutter versions with different names, offering us the same saltine cracker choices. It's really disappointing if you think about it.
So what would you do to compete with that?
Promise your guests that they don’t just stay here, but experience your hotel. That’s what the website for “the CURTIS” boldly proclaims.
This isn’t your average hotel. And the staff is way above average, and I didn’t even mention the hula hoop contest they had in the lobby on Friday night! Or the fact that they come by every night to turn you bed down and give you candy.
This shows what a great marketer can do. The color scheme is perfectly carried out, orange and brown (yeah that’s what I thought too, but it works) is everywhere. And what you would expect to have the hotel's name on it does (coasters, pens, paper). But this place is so much more than that. The alarm clock is a VW Beetle. They know your going to steal the door hanger, so they offer to customize it on the website and let you print it out. By the way the door hanger says "If this sign is a-rockin' don't bother knockin'!"
The promise is carried out in EVERY detail. You really do experience this hotel!
The Selling Point:
It's one thing to tell your customers they are going to experience your company or your product, it's another to actually make them experience your product. You can't just say that your product is amazing you must show your customers that your product is amazing! In selling and in marketing DO-ing is much more convincing than SAY-ing.
With the Al Gore documentary on everyones mind it would appear as though global warming is an in thing right now--for me it has become a growing concern.
I am not going to sit here and preach about what we should and should not be doing environmentally.
I am going to point to the ad that I have pictured here, and say "is it ethical for advertisers and we as marketers to poke fun at global warming to use it to sell shoes?"
The Selling Point: I think all of us in sales and marketing should be well aware of hot button issues within society. It should be our policy to not paint this issues in a negative light, but realize they exist and paint them in a negative manner.
I am open to your comments on this issue!
I have been eating Snickers ever since I was kid. Since then I can't recall any of the advertising they have done that really caught my eye. Not that I was looking at advertising from the same perspective I am now. But anyway.
Recently I was in Chicago for a conference. While walking around the city I could help but notice all the cabs with Snickers advertising. I kept reading Snickers when in fact some of the cabs actually said " substantialiscious, satisfectellent, peanutopolis, nougatocity, hungerectomy" I had been so associated with the look of the logo that I actually didn't read the words. the logo and words had just all became synonymous with Snickers for me. Way to go! You get a kudos in my book for excellent branding!
Check out the Snickers website to see what each of the sayings mean.
To some extent today your target market is outside of normal thinking. Look at the world we inhibit. Do you really think your target market reads a billboard, or a magazine ad? Nope, they don't have the time. So what about the social networks?
The increasing trend in marketing and advertising is to create a myspace webpage or something similar on facebook. Think I am kidding? Just jump over to myspace and search for your favorite item. Sobe Adrenaline (part of the billion dollar energy drink industry) has a page, even a new show on HGTV called "Living with Ed"has a myspace page!
The Selling Point: Are you taking advantage of all the FREE sites that are out there? And more importantly are you paying attention to what your target market looks at while online. The best rule to remember is that your customers are paying more attention to your competitor's site than they are your site.
UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE!!!
Nick just pointed me to a couple of Presidential websites. Both the John Edwards Presidential site has a link to his myspace page and the Tom Vilsack Presidential site also includes a link to myspace and facebook. These are two great example of expanding your thinking and working to grab your target market.
From a marketing and advertising standpoint the gas station sign has always intrigued me. From its early days of the flashing arrow, harkening you to come in and purchase trinkets including the occasionally over-cooked hot dog. The gas station sign has become a part of Americana. It not only gives us the price of gas, but reminds us that a slurpy is only $.99 and is for a limited time only. The funny thing about the gas station sign with its pre-spaced letters is the limited amount of space you're given to convey a message. Companies will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year looking for way to incorporate a theme into every inch of packaging. (Which to be honest, the gas station sign is packaging.) Need an example? Take for instance Snapple, with its phrases underneath the cap. Bingo you just been sold to! So the fact that a company would spend thousands of dollars on a sign and then let someone who makes like $8 bucks an hour use it for advertising is beyond me. None-the-less. While driving back from lunch one day I made it a point to drive by this gas station whose sign always gives me a chuckle, and usually causes me to think. But usually not think in marketing terms. So today’s sign was:
Chicken
Tenderloin
Pizza
That’s it? What's so special about that, I thought. Are they now selling the worlds first chicken-tenderloin-pizza? And if so, good god how gross could that be! Or are they selling chicken, tenderloins, and pizza? More than likely its probably the latter, as they mostly get construction workers in and hand held food is the way to go for lunch. ( I don’t mean that in a derogatory fashion , but it is true.) Then I thought, way to go $8 dollar-an-hour-gas station-attendant-wanna-be-marketer! You just got me so intrigued about the product your selling that I almost want to check it out. And you did it without the use of flashy billboard style advertising. Of course he must still bow his head to the greatest of all $8 dollar-an-hour-gas station-attendant-wanna-be-marketers, that person resides in Cleveland, just north of downtown. Where in his infinite wisdom he placed the words:
Fried Chicken
Baked Fish
Praise Jesus
Not only did he get product placement its due justice, but reminded me to be religious. And the whole time I thought. I probably would need to praise Jesus after eating any of the first two.
The Selling Point: No matter what your budget is, take a cue from the gas station in Cleveland and BE CLEVER! The best advertising is one that causes conversation and not amnesia.
Sales Quote: Today, many companies are reporting that their number one constraint on growth is the inability to hire workers with the necessary skills.
-Bill Clinton
