Marketing

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27
Nov 09

How to Stand Out

Imagine being an HR representative. You are in charge of hiring and with unemployment rising, you’re flooded with applications. This past March, a high school janitorial position received a total of 700 applications. So how do you stand out from the crowd?

Typically, advertising is known for eye-catching, creative applicants. For instance, a newly minted BA bought a wallet, put his resume on business cards and gave it to the ad agency secretary to “return” to the creative director. The creative director was confused for a moment when he opened the wallet and found a resume. While the creative director might only consider a few — if any — portolios that come across their desk, the intern was hired immediately. He stood out.

The resume below captures that same creative spirit. This is Sean McNally’s (an artist and animator) resume:

killerresume

Consumers experience something similar to your HR rep: they see hundreds of brands every day. Even those that struggle to stand out are “just typical” ads.  So how do you stand out?

It’s about creating something that is fun and meaningful, then building a branded experience around it. Consider Volkswagen’s Fun Theory. The project makes banal activities fun. For instance, they attached a sound recorder to make throwing out a piece of trash fun. Or, they make a staircase a piano so it’s fun to use.

How can your brand make your product or service stand out by injecting a bit of fun? Is it the sound of lightening every time you spray your produce (Genuirdis), or syncing your music with your running (Nike)… or is it illustrating your creativity and wit (RPG resume)? Brands that cut loose and have a little fun stand to generate buzz and engage their consumers in a meaningful way.

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23
Nov 09

The Downside to Google’s Product Release Model

With every new product, Google first opens it to a small group of developers to work out the kinks. Then the product is handed off to a small group of influencers who generate buzz and the final step is a broad audience release. This model worked with such online staples as Gmail and Docs. Mainly because both web services could work cross platform — you could send and receive e-mails to and from your Gmail account to other services and Docs could work with Microsoft Office.

Google engineers asked: why should Google Wave be any different? Collaboration and single party platform. Google Wave is powered by collaboration and does not work with other platforms. The product is only as interesting as the amount of people you have to share it with. So those with only a handful of invitations you might be able to chat with a few of buddies — not with everyone you might want to Wave with.

Google failed to see the problem with their traditional product release model with Google Wave. Those top sets of influencers were not able to effectively use Google Wave because it requires others to have Wave. While it is essential to have developers work out the kinks to make a functional product, Google might have been better off of skipping the influencer step and opening it to the greater audience.

One of the most criticized features about Google Wave is, who do I Wave with? In this case, Google could have skipped over their tried and true product release model to make the product accessible for everyone. This way those early adopters can completely immerse themselves in the product — not be forced to wait until everyone else is allowed into the community.

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5
Nov 09

Best of Us Challenge

The Best of Us Challenge is a competition to create some buzz for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. It’s not your standard competition, however. It’s all about the b-sports like hula hooping. And to top it off, you’re being challenged by Olympians. Michael Phelps will challenge you to speed putting, professional snowboarder Lindsay Jacobells will challenge you to a hula hooping contest and the list goes on.

And not only can you post your performance, you can create different challenges. Those contestants that come out on top get a chance to go to the Winter Olympics. This contest works on many levels to engage users that other promotional campaigns could take note from:

Have Fun: Start with a fun concept. If you’re constantly thinking about how to make your product or service buzzworthy, you’re going to talk about the product or service, not the fun.

Be Relevant: It wouldn’t make sense for the Winter Olympics to have mural painting contest. Though it might spark some fantastic user-generated art, it wouldn’t be all that relevant to the Winter Olympics. Keep focused. The creatives behind the campaign had the insight to identify the fun elements of sports: b-level or non-sports. Putting might be a part of gulf, but it’s by no means an actual sport.

Have a Face: Whether it’s Olympic athletes or a local hero, put a face to your campaign. It’s easier to identify with a human than an abstract concept.

Allow for Participation: In today’s digital age, there are many sharing platforms to engage your audience. Best of Us Challenge utilizes YouTube, but you could use Facebook Connect or Twitter (think Twestivals). Additionally, you can feature the user generated content on your site while promoting it on the uploading platform as well.

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3
Nov 09

Ninjas and Rewarding Creativity

The other day, I passed a man with a sign that read, “Wife and Family Kidnapped by Ninjas. Need Money for Kung Fu Lessons.” Call me Scrooge, but I normally don’t give money to homeless people. Partly because I hardly ever carry change (and I have trust issues with my credit card) and if I do have change, how could I only give it to one person and not the other 3 people that ask?

But for this guy, I could certainly spare a couple of quarters. If he was just asking for change, I’d keep my money. But I had to reward him for his creativity. The same principle applies to advertising. The typical message is, “could you give us your money because we have a better product?” Thank you for asking, but I’ll keep my change. You’re no better than the guy just simply asking for money because… what, he’s worth it?

Inject some creativity into your message. It could be as simple as, “No dogs. No cats. But who are we to say no if you bring in a walrus?” (This line was used by a coffee shop I believe. Not sure who to credit, as I first heard in about four years ago.) With more voices vying for attention on the web, it’s not enough to just say your better, show how you are better with a bit of creativity and guts.

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1
Nov 09

Alarm Clock and Understanding Your Audience

For my last birthday, I received an alarm clock with an iPod / iPhone dock so I could listen to music in the apartment (a CD player is as useful as an 8-track at this point). It had several great features including a play list alarm so I could wake up to my favorite song. It was what I wanted and so consequently, I stowed the other alarm.

In the move from Rochester to Philadelphia, I started using the other alarm clock — as the iPod clock was in storage. When I finally unpacked in Philadelphia, I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t want to use the iPod alarm clock. Then I realized the iPod alarm clock didn’t have the interface I needed in an alarm clock.

The old alarm clock had the information I needed. When the alarm was set, I could see the time. Ok, so it’s not 7:00pm. I couldn’t tell when the alarm was set with the iPod alarm clock. Therefore, had I taken a nap the previous day, the alarm clock wouldn’t tell me. There were two symbols (alarm 1, alarm 2) — nothing else.

Nothing is wrong with the iPod alarm clock. It suites the needs of its audience — primarily an mp3 player and an alarm secondly. I was a bad consumer. Really, I wanted an iPod doc, not an alarm clock. Therefore, I could have saved a few pennies and purchased the iPod doc separately.

So why am I blabbering on about my alarm clock? For marketers, though you might have mound of great data on your demo and pyschographics, you can never really know who they are. There are always going to be several customers that will tell you what they want, but in actuality, they have absolutely no idea.

Everyone has an opinion about paper towels, though we never actually think about paper towels until we 1) buy them or 2) they fall apart. Sure, I could tell you I enjoy the soft, quilted kind — that paper towel makes me feel nice inside, right? But really, I’ve never thought about paper towels before, therefore I really don’t have an opinion.

Understand that there are a couple of duds in your data and account for them. Not everyone has an opinion about your product, nor do they invest much emotion in them. I would be a liar if I told you I enjoy one paper towel brand over another. To me, it’s all the same.

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28
Oct 09

Personifying your Audience

Think about some of the most iconic cartoon characters of all time: Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Roadrunner, etc. What do they all have in common? The cartoonists personified animals and even inanimate objects (think Spongebob) to make fun characters children grow up with.

All of us have a favorite cartoon character we loved as a kid. We could identify with them. Our parents bought us the stuffed animals, countless plastic toys and video games. We have an emotional connection to these characters.

Marketers can use the same principles that connected us with our favorite cartoons to better understand their target audience. Consider an organic soap company that wanted to target socially conscious Gen Yers. You could personify your demographic and psychographic by calling her Lili. Then you have to do some character-building. You can start macro with, where does she shop? What are her favorite brands? Is she single? And you can even project what she’s going to do: After she graduates, does she want to get married and have children or focus on her career? You can even get granular with it: does she ever wear high heels? Does she want a job wear she can wear jeans?

Think introspectively. As you consider how to define your audience character, what qualities define you? Are you laid back and enjoy wearing flip-flops in the office or are you a traditionalist and wear a suit?

Personifying your audience can help you build an emotional bond that will guide your marketing and branding efforts. Because you stop thinking about your audience as white, female, 17-32 and start having a relationship with them. Just as you know your father doesn’t like sweaters for Christmas, you will learn intuitively what your audiences likes and dislikes.

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26
Oct 09

Emotion, Meet Viral Marketing

Wait at least half an hour to swim after eating. It will upset your stomach, right? Almost everyone has heard this from either their mother or grandmother when they were a child. If you’ve ever tried it, the answer is no. I’ve done it many times and been completely fine. And I take my friends with me and there is no difference between five minutes and half an hour. No one is sick or dying. So why has this myth been passed down from generation to generation?

The answer can help marketers craft effective viral campaigns. Viral marketing maintains many of the same principles as many myths, right? To begin, it’s about creating an emotion. Often times in myths, it’s about fear (don’t flash your lights at a car that doesn’t have their headlights on–it could be a gang!). It doesn’t have to be. Consider the viral sensations of YouTube. They do not instill fear–rather joy and awe.

It is those things that create a strong emotion that we want to talk about. Whether they’re viral videos or urban legends, we want to help people. Warn for danger or pass the joy, we want to share our experiences with others.

Consider Ray Ban’s viral video (viewed over 4M times). Or Levis. Something as simple as getting into a pair of Levis can be worth sharing if someone can to a backflip into them. How can you brand connect to an emotion?

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22
Oct 09

What Marketers Can Learn From a Skateboarding Whiz

Rodney Mullen is the Einstein among skateboarders. His creative wit and technical ability in concert make him the inventor of the most jaw dropping tricks. The dark slide (a personal favorite) is one of around 32 tricks he’s created and inspired many more.

He combines the past Californian surf style (i.e. flat surface tricks like spinning 360 degrees) with the current urban street style (i.e. jumping staircases, sliding down rails, flipping the skateboard, etc) and forgets about what is impossible. It’s as if physics do not apply to him. Past and present together make him a unique and unforgettable skateboarder.

With rally cries for innovative entrepreneurship to usher in the next wave of industry, it’s easy to forget about the past. It’s always inspiring to thumb through old advertising awards books. It can be refreshing to see campaigns without the influence of Photoshop—when the idea wasn’t so stylized and masked in intricate design work.

As we are constantly looking for the next new advertising campaign, products, service, etc, it’s easy to remember what happened two, three, five, years ago. But look deeper. Advertising campaigns have been around a lot longer than ten years. Dig deep into the past creative works and see what the guiding principles were then and how they’ve changed. Connecting the past brilliance with today’s thinking will yield something new, different and interesting.

Blending different eras together makes Rodney unique, different and a blast to watch. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he goes beyond the basics to be an inventor of new.

Take a look at this video to see how fusing different eras can inspire creativity.

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10
Oct 09

Full Disclosure: FTC and Blogger Endorsements

In an interview, would you ever tell your potential boss you want “to get paid as much as possible?” Believe it or not, some people do. Yes, everyone would like to be compensated fairly. However, fair pay is implied. Who wants to be underpaid?

If it were up to the FTC, everyone would have to say they wanted to get paid as much as possible. Well, maybe not to that extend, but it is that thinking that is driving new regulations concerning disclosure rules for bloggers. This new regulation would force bloggers fully-disclose their affiliations with companies with whom they write about.

Already, the blogosphere is driven by honesty and transparency. Consider Chris Brogan’s experiment with content endorsing. Though he fully disclosed that he was paid to write a blog post for Kmart, the blogosphere was up in arms.

It comes down to: the FTC is trying to solve a problem that does not exist. Any spammers are very easy to detect and any brand that endorses deceptful practices stands to lose value. It’s like the worn-out maxim: if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.

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18
Sep 09

Professor Bun Bun’s Intro to Marketing

With a doctorate in herbology and certificate to authenticate it, my girlfriends dwarf bunny, Professor Bun Bun leaves quite an impression.

Every time our landlord or friend stops by, it’s always, “How’s the professor?” I’ve had many animals (a dog, cat and some others, turtle, gecko you name it) and no one has been “enthusiastic” about seeing them.

Though she is a black dwarf bunny, the back-story (her degree in herbology) is what makes her a visitor favorite. She is not just another bunny, she’s one with a degree in herbology from Cornell.

Creating a compelling story makes products, people, brands and things more interesting. Take example from a luxury brand such as the Ritz Carlton. In general, purveyors of luxury are detail-oriented. Cherries are not just cherries, they’re port cherries, and a French crisp salad is no ordinary leafy pile–it’s pepato, hearts of palm, white crane springs greens, villa manodori balsamic.

Details, details, details. Think of Harry Potter. From Quidditch to elaborate spell names like Aguamenti and Expelliarmus (there’s an entire dictionary of HP spell names on Wikipedia), J.K. Rowling was so detail-oriented she was able to create such a real, yet imaginary world.

Though details can create the illusion of a compelling product (i.e. Denny’s couldn’t go into Ritz Carlton-type of detail), it has to be authentic. If your salad has white crane spring greens, then say so. But if you purchased your leafy greens at TOPS, don’t fluff an already boring product.

In the end, it’s about being appropriate. It’s fun to have a dwarf bunny that has a degree from an ivy league school.

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