Posts Tagged ‘advertising’

Lessons learned

I’ve recently “moved houses” as our British friends say. In doing so, I’ve touched every piece of stuff that I own and have come to the conclusion that there is too much of it. The other realization that crystallized during this process is that some of the stuff should have been ditched long ago. Some items that I’d been keeping for sentimental reasons no longer have value, or function as they should, so they have been purged or donated to others who can use them.

It occurs to me that it’s the same with a company’s marketing, public relations and advertising. Every so often, we need to evaluate  to determine if the things we’ve kept have any use, purpose or even if they are functioning for our firm.

5 Steps to Stay Current

So here are my recommendations:

1. Annually review your advertising placements and determine which ones have actually served your firm. For example, are you still using the printed Yellow Pages? If so, determine how many new customers you received from this expense.
2. Annually review your website for functionality. Digital technology changes so fast and so often that a website designed and coded 3 years ago may now be out of date functionally.
3. Monthly (or weekly) review your website for updated content. Search engines regularly scan websites and index fresh content. As a matter of fact, they have a preference for fresh content. Blogging, project photos, recent honors and awards, client testimonials and reviews are all ways to add freshness to your site.
4. Every 5 years review your branding. Your branding should be something that will be relevant for many years so while you may not need rebranding it may need freshening up. In the last few years, brands such as Wal-Mart and ATT have revised their identities and messaging to be more contemporary. Your firm should do the same.
5. Annually review your financial allocations for marketing, public relations and promotions. If the competitive space in which your company performs is crowded, you may need to step up your game in order to stand out. You might do this by adding new activities, placements, or marketing personnel. You may not need to add anything to your budget; you may just need to shift your priorities. But, you won’t know until you evaluate.

Be proactive for better results

If you undertake these five items, you can be sure you won’t be in the position that I was when I moved and can be assured that your marketing communications will be more current.

photo credit: Flickr Creative Commons image from ARTS

Research is continuing to show that consumers care more about those they identify as leaders in a segment than about celebrity endorsers.

Click to go to the spot in a new window

Television ad campaigns now running that use the power of celebrity endorsers such as Zaxby’s Chicken ads with Terry Bradshaw and Luke Wilson in AT&T’s ads demonstrate that real influence that causes people to purchase products comes from someone who is influential among the people who use the product.

This insight coincides with research showing that women respond to connectedness and relationships.

How does this translate into your marketing plans?

• Understand who uses your products as well as the other Ws (when, where, why)
• Listen to what users say about your products in forums, social media
• Identify the influencers in the conversation
• Develop genuine relationships with influencers
• Invite them to share their product insight with you
• Take their input seriously
• If appropriate influencers like and use your product, ask them if they will share their preferences among their community (with full disclosure of any and all benefits they may derive from that use.)

This may mean that rather than an up and coming author doing book signings at a bookstore, they meet with well established book groups interacting with members. Whatever the interaction is that derives from listening and developing relationships, it must be natural, unforced and authentic.  No broadcasting. Only natural growth of the audience. It’s not viral, it’s long-term, sustained, organic growth you want.

So many have sought to be the next viral product video, but really, when the end of the day comes, do you really remember the contents of a viral campaign for a product?

In this very well written article from The Washington Post and PC World, small businesses are counseled to “set up a Twitter account, establish a Facebook page, and start talking.” Unlike some articles I’ve read, this one is on point with a good explanation of how to establish goals, listen to the conversation and gain results.

So far in 2009, 66 percent of marketers used social media in some form, according to the Association of National Advertisers. That’s up from just 20 percent in 2007.”

The article brings together the latest metrics and good case studies about how several businesses use social media. The article also mentions several of the best of class tools for using social media and tracking results.

Websites with too many ads cause one in two site visitors to leave the site says a study from Burst Media. In a survey of just over 4,000 adults, women showed less tolerance and were quicker to abandon sites than men and those over 55 years of age had the least tolerance for cluttered sites.

Another key finding of this survey is that advertisers whose ads are placed on ad cluttered sites risk their reputation.

It’s interesting to note that college age females and 65+ females have about the same rate of site abandonment. Except for the 45-54 age category, women have less tolerance for clutter. Maybe that’s true of all parts of life; women hate clutter.

Joking aside, the take away is that when your company wants to advertise in the digital world, it is important to check for limited ad placements and quality editorial content. To risk your brand’s reputation on poor placement is risking too much.

With DVRs, and direct delivery of news content, there are more opportunities for consumers to skip paid advertisements. The ability to skip commercials is leading to greater use of embedded placement or branded content.

The new dynamo movie, The Women, uses product placements like there will never be another opportunity for any other type of advertising. For example, when Meg Ryan’s character washes her face, there’s the Dove product. The first product placement was not a visual of a product, but an audio tagline used for product placement. The T-Mobile signature audio tag (ting aling aling)

was heard as Meg Ryan answered her phone in the garden and continued to be heard throughout the movie when the character received a phone call.

But it’s not just the movies where we are seeing increasing use of branded content and product placements. My favorite TV show, Mad Men, has introduced a new type of placement; a factoid appears in the signature Mad Men titling style leading into the (Heineken or Target or Chemistry.com) spot.

Product placement is carried to its most extreme with the Degree antiperspirant placement in Eureka, the sci-fi series about a genius town where geek inventors work in top secret developing new military technology. The new tech stuff is quickly (this season) turned into product (placement?). The latest placement is more like a marriage–they expect us to believe that Degree is a part of these fictitious folks lives?

I’m dubious about the success of the Degree placement. To me it’s not nearly as successful as the old Jack Benny show placement of Carnation Evaporated Canned Milk. One thing is sure I guess there really are no new ideas. We recycle old ones with newer technology–witness the demise of the back fence and the rise of social media.

What’s your take on the increasing use of branded content? Share your thoughts and tell us where you’ve seen branded content.

This parody of the Monster.com advertising campaign struck me as very hysterical. (Warning–this video contains profanity and phrases your mother doesn’t want you to say.)

People wonder what we do in advertising; and here from the mouths of babes is a great description of exactly what each person in the agency does, except…they left out traffic…but that person is probably too busy and nobody every notices them, uh, right?

Hey, can’t I laugh at my own profession? I do love it!

When is free, not? When it’s the FreeCreditReport.com, baby.

Today’s NY Times story detailing the woes of the service promoted by the catchy television ads that feature the lovable slacker and his band who are seen as a pirates, driving a clunker Metro, and residents of his GF’s parent’s basement, details the difficulty that people are having with the service.

The website invites you to sign up for your Free Credit Report, but are actually signing up for a credit monitoring service (To give the company credit, they do say that you are signing up for a paid service as you can see from the image here.) Even my Ivy League college-grad son, had difficulty canceling the service. Shades of the days when AOL wanted to own all internet dial-up customers and went after everyone with massive direct mail campaigns. Do you remember that? AOL would send out their free software discs and many initiated service with these discs and as a result, receive bonus minutes. The problem came when you decided that the service was not what you wanted and decided to cancel. You couldn’t get in touch with a representative to save your life. From my son’s experience, FreeCreditReport.com is similar.

But since the subject of this blog is generally marketing, advertising, and PR, I do want to give credit to the ads. They are catchy, do work, and send folks to the service’s website. Television ads when done well, with high production values and a strong statement of benefit for the user get attention. Targeting viewers by segment on a variety of specialty niche channels works. I’ve seen client’s website traffic go up dramatically in response to good ads with clear benefits. However, good placement will fail when the creative is poor or the benefit is weak. It’s easy for the client to think they can save money using the station’s free video-taping and editing service. It’s better to get a talented group experienced in the creation of television ads to work with you, write, shoot and edit a professional spot as well as suggest a strong offer that will pull in response.

So, buyer beware. Television ads work. But, be sure that they work to the benefit of the customer and the company. In the case of FreeCreditReport.com they work but don’t serve the customer well.

Summer is at it’s hottest. Here in the South we’re wilting and sweating (depends on if you are female or male.) Families are on vaca and offices are quiet in the torpor.

Now’s the time to start thinking of how to differentiate your client’s products in the Christmas season. Most of the major shelter mags and online catalogues are already together. So, if you didn’t get your gift guide submissions off before July 4th, you’ve missed that boat.

Think instead of what types of cooperative advertising or PR you can do to benefit your client. Find your client’s natural partner and offer a promo that works for both; such as a personal chef and a wine shop partnering on savings on holiday catering. OR a personal shopper and car detailer doing a direct mailer together. You do spend time in the old Ford going to all those parties and you’ll appreciate it cleaner. As for the personal shopper, just think how much time you’ll save hiring him to do your shopping while you work up the new client’s proposal. That is if you use your new found time wisely.

Also, rethink Christmas parties. With today’s tight times, go in with a favorite vendor-printers with ad agencies for example and invite your fav clients. You’ll both save money and meet each others clients. Perhaps it will lead to new business for you both.

The key is not to think territorially. Chose your co promoters wisely. There must be a benefit for you both and a natural affinity.

As a child born smack in the middle of the Baby Boom, I have a certain fondness for men in spread collar shirts with hair dressed with Brylcreem or Wildroot, dark suits and narrow ties. I’ve been binging on Mad Men, the AMC original series. It’s a stylish look at Madison Avenue in the early ‘60s.

While I find it a walk down nostalgia lane, it reminds us how much our society has changed and how much advertising, though it may have found new mediums, is much the same. There’s the constant pressure to be original, creative and to keep clients happy, but the treatment of women and the behavior of men has certainly changed more than anything else.

Sexual harassment was an oxymoron then. Some men believed it was their right to say and do things that belittled women and sexuality. It’s hard for the brilliant career women of today to comprehend that fact. As a teen, I once quit a job rather than explain to the store owner that his general manager propositioned me.

Today, smoking is all but gone from the workplace. The fictional Sterling Cooper’s client is Lucky Strike and they do all that they can to keep that client from firing the agency when one of the partners suffers a coronary while playing “horsie” with a model for an aluminum siding campaign.

What I love are the clothes. They form the backbone of what is rooted in my 50s/60s childhood memories as the clothes worn by grown ups. It’s not hard to believe that Pete might be a good AE when you see him in his neat suit; that is until he threatens Don and reveals secrets that don’t matter to the partners but give them power over him.

Deep in the summer heat of the South Carolina Lowcountry, through a television program about my profession, I’ve found a path to the days of a 60s magical childhood as well as gratitude for the changes that have occurred in our world through the years.

Recently I was working on a publicity campaign for the launch of a new business. The plans for publicity called for the new business to share information with conventional media and bloggers.

Someone asked me, “Are bloggers important?” My reply, “Yes.” Sharing your news directly with those who start conversation is the best way to reach targeted persuaders.

Many old school types can’t see the power of blogging, they don’t read blogs or use them as a forum and there is not a really good way, yet, to measure the power of a blog. (If you know of one, do tell me!) Oldies know blogs exist, but it’s like the feelings that advertisers had ten years ago about the Hispanic and Latino market, “why bother?” And now that the other shoe has dropped on that market, we clearly understand the importance of the Hispanic and Latino markets.

Here’s why bother, about blogs that is. Bloggers and their readers are conversationalists who are sharing, posting, inquiring and recommending on a daily basis. Not only that, they are Twittering, FaceBooking, and, yes, even MySpacing to their contacts. Not only are bloggers opinions real, they are searchable.

Google is caching pages with your company’s name, your products and your press releases.

This isn’t just my opinion, but is the reality of the merged world of marketing and PR.

I’ve been reading, How the Web Has Changed the Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott and I am especially impressed with his statement about the change.

“With blogs, we communicate directly with our audience, bypassing the media filter completely. We have the power to create our own media branding the niche of our own choosing. It’s about being found on Google and Yahoo! and vertical sites and RSS feeds.”

So, if you have not started a blog, not read a blog, or don’t have one on your company site, today’s the day.