Great story on how to market your business online.
http://www.thestreet.com/s/optimize-your-online-marketing-skills-with-a-consultant/newsanalysis/small-business-blog/10419853.html?puc=googlefi&cm_ven=GOOGLEFI&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA
Friday, June 06, 2008
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Viral Marketing: You Tube Style
This is a great article about the viral possibilities of youtube. Youtube should become a major tool when marketers create and implement online marketing campaigns.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/06/youtube-puts-de.html
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/06/youtube-puts-de.html
Product Marketing Goes Cellular
It was only a matter of time before this happened. Marketers have had to get more crafty about where and how we market our clients products and services.
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
The Importance of Messaging and Branding
Marketing communications folks are always preaching about the importance of messaging and for a taste of the topical, the presidential campaign thus far has been all about messaging. Hillary Rodham Clinton is the Fighter and Barack Obama is the Diplomat. Those two messages sum up the reason that the dream ticket is in fact, a nightmare. Certainly Clinton still has her vocal and loyal supporters, many of whom are women, Latinos, and those on the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum, as she should. Hillary Clinton has fashioned herself as a rough-and-tumble politician and after Super Tuesday, ran an effective campaign for presidency.
On the other hand, Barack Obama's campaign has been about changing the way that politics work in Washington and reaching across the aisle to Republicans and Democrats. In a word, being a united and not a divider.
The messages that each politician (one a presidential nominee and one a vice presidential wannabe) espouses should make it clear that each is wrong as the other's vice presidential or presidential nominee. We won't even get into the issue of healing the Democratic party, because while that is important, it is not what I want to talk about. My belief is that Clinton as VP to Obama's President does not make good branding sense. If we believe (as I do) that Obama's message is one of change, ending partisan politics and talking our problems out instead of fighting them out then Clinton's message of being experienced in the nuances of Washington politics and fighting to get things done then we have a slight branding issue.
If Clinton and Obama were companies that were considering merging, I would advise against it because the companies come from two vastly different ideological places. On the substantive issues, there is little on which there is a marked disagreement -- with the exception of maybe healthcare. But it comes down to an issue of brand. Because they staked their respective campaigns on their brands moreso than on substantive difference on the issues that face Americans, we have come to a crossroads. And my belief is that while many Democrats salivate over the prospect of having these two powerful politicians, it is a nightmare for the brand. It'd be like Pepsi and Coke merging. Two mega-brands that have fought each other since their existence began and now they want to play in the same sandbox together. Will the new company be Coke or will it be Pepsi? My guess is that neither would be willing to take second position to their fiercest competition as I don't think Hillary Clinton ultimately wants to either. Afterall, Clintons don't take second place.
On the other hand, Barack Obama's campaign has been about changing the way that politics work in Washington and reaching across the aisle to Republicans and Democrats. In a word, being a united and not a divider.
The messages that each politician (one a presidential nominee and one a vice presidential wannabe) espouses should make it clear that each is wrong as the other's vice presidential or presidential nominee. We won't even get into the issue of healing the Democratic party, because while that is important, it is not what I want to talk about. My belief is that Clinton as VP to Obama's President does not make good branding sense. If we believe (as I do) that Obama's message is one of change, ending partisan politics and talking our problems out instead of fighting them out then Clinton's message of being experienced in the nuances of Washington politics and fighting to get things done then we have a slight branding issue.
If Clinton and Obama were companies that were considering merging, I would advise against it because the companies come from two vastly different ideological places. On the substantive issues, there is little on which there is a marked disagreement -- with the exception of maybe healthcare. But it comes down to an issue of brand. Because they staked their respective campaigns on their brands moreso than on substantive difference on the issues that face Americans, we have come to a crossroads. And my belief is that while many Democrats salivate over the prospect of having these two powerful politicians, it is a nightmare for the brand. It'd be like Pepsi and Coke merging. Two mega-brands that have fought each other since their existence began and now they want to play in the same sandbox together. Will the new company be Coke or will it be Pepsi? My guess is that neither would be willing to take second position to their fiercest competition as I don't think Hillary Clinton ultimately wants to either. Afterall, Clintons don't take second place.
Priceless
MasterCard really created a great capaign when they started using "priceless" to describe various life events. This story is not only a great one about an ad campaign that will be succesful, but I think it also continues the use of vintage commercials and images that advertising, marketing and public relations agencies have used to appeal to consumers. If you were around in 1976, when Mr. Bill made his debut on Saturday Night Live, you no doubt remember Mr. Bill (or maybe you remember him from the countless other campaigns in which he has appeared), but this campaign underscores how marketers now have a new tool for our marketing tool kit that will help us connect with consumers: nostalgia!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/business/media/03adco.html?_r=1&ref=media&oref=slogin
Mr. Bill Returns (in One Piece) to Pitch a Debit Card
By WENDY A. LEE
MasterCard executives have found a new poster boy for the angst-ridden economy: Mr. Bill.
The small clay figure that appeared in “Saturday Night Live” short films three decades ago — being dismembered, pulverized and humiliated to his falsetto cries of “Oh, nooooo!” — will be the latest star of MasterCard’s “Priceless” campaign.
He is being revived as a debit-card holder who gets roughed up but keeps on going. The 30-second spot, to start airing next Monday, casts Mr. Bill as an urban professional on his daily routine:
Mr. Hands pours hot coffee on him (“coffee: $2”), a personal trainer launches him off a treadmill (“gym: $59/mo.”), and an opened briefcase flips him onto the windshield of a city bus (“briefcase: $120”).
Mr. Bill, rolling with endless punches, just enjoys the ride home: “Making it through the day: priceless.” A voice-over adds, “For whatever comes your way, there’s debit MasterCard.”
The spot is meant to tap into the current “unsureness about what’s going to happen next,” said Joyce King Thomas, executive vice president and chief creative officer at McCann-Erickson, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, which created the “Priceless” campaign for MasterCard in 1997.
“This is the sunny Mr. Bill,” she added. “We wanted to make him a character who can handle things beyond his control and stay optimistic.”
Part of the idea is that baby boomers who made “oh nooooo!” jokes in their college dorms will remember Mr. Bill fondly, and younger people to whom the shorts are ancient history will enjoy seeing him get abused.
“It’s very interesting that 30 years later, you can bring this character back,” said Edward Russell, an assistant professor of advertising at Syracuse’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. “It tells me that they’re really going after 44-plus-year-olds, which would make sense since this is a group with more disposable income.”
Mr. Russell, who remembers watching the “SNL” skits in college, did have one quibble: “It’s hard to say that this is completely true to the real Mr. Bill. In the ad, Mr. Bill always finds something positive. That wasn’t true in the original series — he just got hurt.”
Ms. Thomas of McCann-Erickson said that Mr. Bill tested well with viewers of all ages. People who had never heard of him before “found him to be a charming character,” she said. “He’s a little clay guy who things happen to and he’s just fine.”
Mr. Bill made his debut on “Saturday Night Live” on NBC in 1976 when his creator, Walter Williams, won the show’s home video contest using a reel of film that he shot in his living room with a budget of $10. “No one hired me to create Mr. Bill,” said Mr. Williams, now a filmmaker in New Orleans, in a telephone interview.
Mr. Bill appeared on the first five seasons of the show, and Mr. Williams became a staff writer after three years, which is when he started being paid for Mr. Bill for the first time. He owns all the rights to the character, and he directed the MasterCard spot.
“I’ve been doing everything I can to kill him off for 30 years, but he seems to be coming back,” Mr. Williams said.
Since “SNL,” Mr. Bill has appeared in ads for Burger King, Ramada Inn, Pringles and Lexus. Mr. Williams has declined offers to appear in promotions for beer and casinos. “It taints the character,” he said. “I didn’t want Mr. Bill associated with the end of Johnny’s college fund.”
MasterCard is not the only company that sees Mr. Bill as a reflection of the nation’s mood: Subway sandwich shops picked up the character for ads in January.
”I think it’s the times, like how Charlie Chaplin flourished in the Depression,” Mr. Williams said. “People are looking for comedy.”
Dark humor had been out of vogue in the period after 9/11, Mr. Williams said; requests to use Mr. Bill declined. “Having a character stepped on and crumbled was just not funny,” he said. Apparently, it is again.
Mr. Williams, who devotes most of his time to promoting wetlands restoration in New Orleans, said that Mr. Bill’s commercial activity helps underwrite his nonprofit efforts, like public service announcements for hurricane protection. After Katrina, Senator Mary L. Landrieu famously said, “How can it be that Mr. Bill was better informed than Mr. Bush?”
Although MasterCard insisted that it was not using Mr. Bill to market specifically to consumers’ economic plight, the spot does highlight debit cards, which do not permit their owners to spend more money than they have (in theory), rather than credit cards, a riskier tool.
Americans are not backing away from spending and accumulating debt, but “they are being more careful,” said David Wyss, chief economist of Standard and Poor’s. People are “trading down,” he said, compensating for higher food and energy prices by shopping at discount stores like Wal-Mart and Costco.
Tim Murphy, president of the United States region for MasterCard Worldwide, said that more dollars were being spent in “the everyday categories, with gasoline taking up a larger part of consumers’ pocketbooks.”
That trend is not a bad one for MasterCard, which wants consumers to use debit cards to pay for casual purchases, like $2 cups of coffee. “The pitch for debit is that it gives consumers control and versatility,” Mr. Murphy said. “Mr. Bill uses it to buy everyday items and to pay a recurring bill.”
But Ed Mierzwinski, the consumer program director for the United States Public Interest Research Group, said that debit cards were far from a panacea. “If you’re using plastic, you tend to spend more than when using cash,” he said, adding that cardholders can incur heavy fines if they overdraw their accounts.
Mr. Mierzwinski also said that debit transactions — and the right to dispute them — are not legally protected the way credit card transactions are. “Zero liability promises on debit cards are only promises, they’re not the law,” he said.
MasterCard is not the only payment card company that has adjusted its pitch in light of economic conditions. Discover Financial Services recently started advertising its “paydown planner,” an online calculator that shows cardholders how to reduce their balances within a certain time frame or by making specific monthly payments.
However the economy swings, Mr. Bill will probably not be a recurring mascot for MasterCard. “We usually try to do something just once,” Ms. Thomas of McCann-Erickson said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/business/media/03adco.html?_r=1&ref=media&oref=slogin
Mr. Bill Returns (in One Piece) to Pitch a Debit Card
By WENDY A. LEE
MasterCard executives have found a new poster boy for the angst-ridden economy: Mr. Bill.
The small clay figure that appeared in “Saturday Night Live” short films three decades ago — being dismembered, pulverized and humiliated to his falsetto cries of “Oh, nooooo!” — will be the latest star of MasterCard’s “Priceless” campaign.
He is being revived as a debit-card holder who gets roughed up but keeps on going. The 30-second spot, to start airing next Monday, casts Mr. Bill as an urban professional on his daily routine:
Mr. Hands pours hot coffee on him (“coffee: $2”), a personal trainer launches him off a treadmill (“gym: $59/mo.”), and an opened briefcase flips him onto the windshield of a city bus (“briefcase: $120”).
Mr. Bill, rolling with endless punches, just enjoys the ride home: “Making it through the day: priceless.” A voice-over adds, “For whatever comes your way, there’s debit MasterCard.”
The spot is meant to tap into the current “unsureness about what’s going to happen next,” said Joyce King Thomas, executive vice president and chief creative officer at McCann-Erickson, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, which created the “Priceless” campaign for MasterCard in 1997.
“This is the sunny Mr. Bill,” she added. “We wanted to make him a character who can handle things beyond his control and stay optimistic.”
Part of the idea is that baby boomers who made “oh nooooo!” jokes in their college dorms will remember Mr. Bill fondly, and younger people to whom the shorts are ancient history will enjoy seeing him get abused.
“It’s very interesting that 30 years later, you can bring this character back,” said Edward Russell, an assistant professor of advertising at Syracuse’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. “It tells me that they’re really going after 44-plus-year-olds, which would make sense since this is a group with more disposable income.”
Mr. Russell, who remembers watching the “SNL” skits in college, did have one quibble: “It’s hard to say that this is completely true to the real Mr. Bill. In the ad, Mr. Bill always finds something positive. That wasn’t true in the original series — he just got hurt.”
Ms. Thomas of McCann-Erickson said that Mr. Bill tested well with viewers of all ages. People who had never heard of him before “found him to be a charming character,” she said. “He’s a little clay guy who things happen to and he’s just fine.”
Mr. Bill made his debut on “Saturday Night Live” on NBC in 1976 when his creator, Walter Williams, won the show’s home video contest using a reel of film that he shot in his living room with a budget of $10. “No one hired me to create Mr. Bill,” said Mr. Williams, now a filmmaker in New Orleans, in a telephone interview.
Mr. Bill appeared on the first five seasons of the show, and Mr. Williams became a staff writer after three years, which is when he started being paid for Mr. Bill for the first time. He owns all the rights to the character, and he directed the MasterCard spot.
“I’ve been doing everything I can to kill him off for 30 years, but he seems to be coming back,” Mr. Williams said.
Since “SNL,” Mr. Bill has appeared in ads for Burger King, Ramada Inn, Pringles and Lexus. Mr. Williams has declined offers to appear in promotions for beer and casinos. “It taints the character,” he said. “I didn’t want Mr. Bill associated with the end of Johnny’s college fund.”
MasterCard is not the only company that sees Mr. Bill as a reflection of the nation’s mood: Subway sandwich shops picked up the character for ads in January.
”I think it’s the times, like how Charlie Chaplin flourished in the Depression,” Mr. Williams said. “People are looking for comedy.”
Dark humor had been out of vogue in the period after 9/11, Mr. Williams said; requests to use Mr. Bill declined. “Having a character stepped on and crumbled was just not funny,” he said. Apparently, it is again.
Mr. Williams, who devotes most of his time to promoting wetlands restoration in New Orleans, said that Mr. Bill’s commercial activity helps underwrite his nonprofit efforts, like public service announcements for hurricane protection. After Katrina, Senator Mary L. Landrieu famously said, “How can it be that Mr. Bill was better informed than Mr. Bush?”
Although MasterCard insisted that it was not using Mr. Bill to market specifically to consumers’ economic plight, the spot does highlight debit cards, which do not permit their owners to spend more money than they have (in theory), rather than credit cards, a riskier tool.
Americans are not backing away from spending and accumulating debt, but “they are being more careful,” said David Wyss, chief economist of Standard and Poor’s. People are “trading down,” he said, compensating for higher food and energy prices by shopping at discount stores like Wal-Mart and Costco.
Tim Murphy, president of the United States region for MasterCard Worldwide, said that more dollars were being spent in “the everyday categories, with gasoline taking up a larger part of consumers’ pocketbooks.”
That trend is not a bad one for MasterCard, which wants consumers to use debit cards to pay for casual purchases, like $2 cups of coffee. “The pitch for debit is that it gives consumers control and versatility,” Mr. Murphy said. “Mr. Bill uses it to buy everyday items and to pay a recurring bill.”
But Ed Mierzwinski, the consumer program director for the United States Public Interest Research Group, said that debit cards were far from a panacea. “If you’re using plastic, you tend to spend more than when using cash,” he said, adding that cardholders can incur heavy fines if they overdraw their accounts.
Mr. Mierzwinski also said that debit transactions — and the right to dispute them — are not legally protected the way credit card transactions are. “Zero liability promises on debit cards are only promises, they’re not the law,” he said.
MasterCard is not the only payment card company that has adjusted its pitch in light of economic conditions. Discover Financial Services recently started advertising its “paydown planner,” an online calculator that shows cardholders how to reduce their balances within a certain time frame or by making specific monthly payments.
However the economy swings, Mr. Bill will probably not be a recurring mascot for MasterCard. “We usually try to do something just once,” Ms. Thomas of McCann-Erickson said.
How Pepsi-Cola Wooed Black Consumers, Invented Niche Marketing
Here is a great piece about Pepsi and how they invented niche marketing. This tells us a lot about how we should be approaching our target and niche markets to ensure success for products and services.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aDhw8iazM.80&refer=muse#
Review by Carly Berwick
June 4 (Bloomberg) -- In 1940, Pepsi-Cola Co. President Walter S. Mack, competing against the behemoth Coca-Cola Co., made a historic marketing decision: to hire the company's first black salesmen to target black consumers.
``The Real Pepsi Challenge: Breaking the Color Barrier in American Business,'' is a gently didactic exhibition at the Queens Museum of Art in New York. It tells the story of the 12 black men who worked at Pepsi as their ``special markets'' sales team from 1940 to 1951, through news clippings, letters, vintage audio recordings and contemporary video interviews.
Blacks made up a consumer market of an estimated $8 billion at the time, yet most corporations never considered the demographic in their sales pitches, by design or neglect.
Mack's hiring of Herman T. Smith as its first black soda salesman was so unusual it got a mention in the March 18, 1940, edition of the New York Times, which is reproduced in the exhibition.
So, too, are numerous columns from the Chicago Defender, one of the many black papers that chronicled the comings and goings of the Pepsi salesmen as if they were celebrities -- which, in a way, they were.
Photographs of the Pepsi special-markets team show confident men in fashionable suits. The team, started before World War II, sputtered toward its end, as did Pepsi's fortunes, with sugar rationing. Then, in 1947, former actor and National Urban League organizer Ed Boyd took over the team and reinvigorated its efforts.
Top Talent
Boyd brought in top talent to sell Pepsi to black consumers and to bottlers, who often required extra convincing to send more soda to black communities.
The segregated South was hostile territory for the salesmen, who had to explain to corporate accounting why they never submitted hotel receipts: Hotels wouldn't let them stay there.
Even Mack and other self-identified liberal Northerners used egregious slurs, and Pepsi itself continued to run racist advertisements. One 1944 ad shows black-faced ``natives'' hailing the Pepsi skywriters from their tropical island.
Pitch letters Boyd wrote to bottlers are particularly moving and in pristine condition. He experimented with innovative marketing strategies, such as offering to print free football schedules for black colleges. One 1948 letter detailing the program begins: ``Dear Sir, I am sure you aware of the interest this Company has shown in worthwhile activities among the Negro race.''
Niche Marketing
This was the advent of niche marketing, and it worked. Sales in targeted communities shot up over one concerted two-week campaign by 13 percent.
PepsiCo Inc. (the company changed its name in 1965) is a sponsor of the exhibition: Its early efforts at workforce integration are clearly good public relations almost six decades later.
The show's curator, Stephanie Capparell, is the author of the 2007 book ``The Real Pepsi Challenge: The Inspirational Story of Breaking the Color Barrier in American Business.'' While the stories of Smith, Boyd and their co-workers are well told there, the exhibition's pictures, letters and audio clips offer a wider audience vivid portraits of a dozen salesmen who showed everyday grace in trying times.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aDhw8iazM.80&refer=muse#
Review by Carly Berwick
June 4 (Bloomberg) -- In 1940, Pepsi-Cola Co. President Walter S. Mack, competing against the behemoth Coca-Cola Co., made a historic marketing decision: to hire the company's first black salesmen to target black consumers.
``The Real Pepsi Challenge: Breaking the Color Barrier in American Business,'' is a gently didactic exhibition at the Queens Museum of Art in New York. It tells the story of the 12 black men who worked at Pepsi as their ``special markets'' sales team from 1940 to 1951, through news clippings, letters, vintage audio recordings and contemporary video interviews.
Blacks made up a consumer market of an estimated $8 billion at the time, yet most corporations never considered the demographic in their sales pitches, by design or neglect.
Mack's hiring of Herman T. Smith as its first black soda salesman was so unusual it got a mention in the March 18, 1940, edition of the New York Times, which is reproduced in the exhibition.
So, too, are numerous columns from the Chicago Defender, one of the many black papers that chronicled the comings and goings of the Pepsi salesmen as if they were celebrities -- which, in a way, they were.
Photographs of the Pepsi special-markets team show confident men in fashionable suits. The team, started before World War II, sputtered toward its end, as did Pepsi's fortunes, with sugar rationing. Then, in 1947, former actor and National Urban League organizer Ed Boyd took over the team and reinvigorated its efforts.
Top Talent
Boyd brought in top talent to sell Pepsi to black consumers and to bottlers, who often required extra convincing to send more soda to black communities.
The segregated South was hostile territory for the salesmen, who had to explain to corporate accounting why they never submitted hotel receipts: Hotels wouldn't let them stay there.
Even Mack and other self-identified liberal Northerners used egregious slurs, and Pepsi itself continued to run racist advertisements. One 1944 ad shows black-faced ``natives'' hailing the Pepsi skywriters from their tropical island.
Pitch letters Boyd wrote to bottlers are particularly moving and in pristine condition. He experimented with innovative marketing strategies, such as offering to print free football schedules for black colleges. One 1948 letter detailing the program begins: ``Dear Sir, I am sure you aware of the interest this Company has shown in worthwhile activities among the Negro race.''
Niche Marketing
This was the advent of niche marketing, and it worked. Sales in targeted communities shot up over one concerted two-week campaign by 13 percent.
PepsiCo Inc. (the company changed its name in 1965) is a sponsor of the exhibition: Its early efforts at workforce integration are clearly good public relations almost six decades later.
The show's curator, Stephanie Capparell, is the author of the 2007 book ``The Real Pepsi Challenge: The Inspirational Story of Breaking the Color Barrier in American Business.'' While the stories of Smith, Boyd and their co-workers are well told there, the exhibition's pictures, letters and audio clips offer a wider audience vivid portraits of a dozen salesmen who showed everyday grace in trying times.
Monday, June 02, 2008
What Marketers Can Learn from George W. Bush
There are as many opinions of George W. Bush as there are people in the United States. His effectiveness as a leader is certainly up for debate and history will tell how we ultimately view the 43rd President of the United States. This post is not about George W. Bush's politics. Rather, it's about what marketers can learn from him. If nothing else Bush can sell and stick to a message -- something I preach to clients for whom I conduct media training -- and get the people to react in a way that he would like.
When the case was being made to enter the Iraq War the message, ad nauseum, was that Sadaam Hussein was hording weapons of mass destruction. Even when there was initially infromation to the contrary, Bush stuck to his key messages. Whenever a question from the media was asked that did not conform to his key message (a rarity) Bush was a master at "bridging" from the undesirable question to be able to hit his key message: WMDs.
But an even better example of Bush's masterful use of marketing messages concerns September 11. It is absolutely brilliant the way the Bush administration branded patriotism in the wake of the tragedy in black and white terms which led you to either be pro-America or a terrorist. Those were the only two options available. There was no being pro-America, yet against retaliation -- a position I took. I remember asking friends to think more critically about what happened in the wake of September 11 and our response to the tragedy. But for most of them it was too late. They had drank a full glass of the Bush Administration Kool-Aid.
Unfortunately, George Bush will not be judged on his marketing prowess by history, rather he will be judged by his governing skills. And for him, that may end up being a shame.
When the case was being made to enter the Iraq War the message, ad nauseum, was that Sadaam Hussein was hording weapons of mass destruction. Even when there was initially infromation to the contrary, Bush stuck to his key messages. Whenever a question from the media was asked that did not conform to his key message (a rarity) Bush was a master at "bridging" from the undesirable question to be able to hit his key message: WMDs.
But an even better example of Bush's masterful use of marketing messages concerns September 11. It is absolutely brilliant the way the Bush administration branded patriotism in the wake of the tragedy in black and white terms which led you to either be pro-America or a terrorist. Those were the only two options available. There was no being pro-America, yet against retaliation -- a position I took. I remember asking friends to think more critically about what happened in the wake of September 11 and our response to the tragedy. But for most of them it was too late. They had drank a full glass of the Bush Administration Kool-Aid.
Unfortunately, George Bush will not be judged on his marketing prowess by history, rather he will be judged by his governing skills. And for him, that may end up being a shame.
The O
As marketing communications professionals, many of us can relate to hearing the dreaded words from our clients: "How about getting me on Oprah?" Yes, Oprah is the Queen of All Media. Yes, an appearance on Oprah can catapult you into the stratosphere. This article shows just how difficult (and costly) it can be to get on The Orah Winfrey Show.
http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=127457
http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=127457
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