by Miriam Hara | Aug 29, 2013 | Advertising, Communications, Creative, Latest, Marketing
It’s difficult to stay on trend today. Within minutes of an event it’s viral. Next week it’s old news. And it’s not hard to predict. I can safely predict today that by the time you read this blog Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke will be replaced by another event that’s just as newsworthy.
And there’s no greater sure death for any marketing or advertising campaign than being out of date. Like I said it’s not easy to stay on trend. It’s not all bad. We do have some advantage in that we can easily and quickly update our sites and tweet the latest.
But, not every project or campaign can enjoy the velocity of the web. Design takes time. Printing takes time. Radio takes time. Photography takes time. So many aspects of marketing and advertising take time to produce no matter how fast we work.
But there are a few simple strategies that can help you keep on top and stay on trend.
Stay on trend with the classics
There’s a reason something is classic. A classic has stood the test of time and still comes up winning. It’s not simply because it’s a favourite. A classic implies continuance and consistency while at the same time adapting to our conventional point of view.
You can’t get older than ancient Greece. Well yes you can, but you have to agree ancient is pretty old. And you wouldn’t really think that staying on trend would mean stealing from the Greeks. Or would you?
Who could be more on trend than Nike? Yet, Nike chose its name from Greek mythology. Nike is the goddess of victory. A “classic” example where a brand has reached into the past and adapted it to fit the modern market.
We all know Amazon.com and Mars candy bars. The Apollo Theatre is a famous music theatre in New York. And I’m not going to even talk about Trojan.
Stay on trend with old ideas
There are times where an idea didn’t work. It wasn’t a bad idea but it didn’t work during that particular moment. Hang onto these ideas. Next time when you want to jump on trend, resurrect those ideas. You are already ahead of the game. You can capitalize on the time you saved and jump that much faster on trend.
Stay on trend by pulling from the past
Radio and TV and other media outlets create material ahead of time on news that hasn’t happened yet. This allows them to stay on trend and be current. They pull information from the past and use it to provide content to complement upcoming news. For example, there was lots of background material that made it easy to prepare fill in for William and Kate before the birth of Prince George.
And when you take it one step farther, it was easy to prepare two versions of the event. Boy or girl? People want to know what happens to lineage based on the sex of the baby. Easy to prepare ahead of time. As soon as the birth is announced up pops material that was already prepared.
Stay on trend with Mark Twain
There’s no argument that staying on trend means understanding your target market. That’s where your professional ability comes into play. But when staying on trend is getting your frazzled, there is some pleasure in Mark Twain thoughts on the subject.
“There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”
Perfectly said!
by Miriam Hara | Aug 27, 2013 | Advertising, Branding, Creative, Latest, Marketing
The real question is “should marketing be subjective?” Through years of creating concepts and designs, I have realized when you ask someone their opinion they will give it to you… whether they are qualified or not.
Most people either like something or don’t. It doesn’t matter if it’s a priceless painting like the Mona Lisa or their kid’s artwork hanging on the fridge. So the 
bottom line is, if people don’t like something there’s nothing that anyone can do to change their mind.
It would seem then, pretty tough to sell a product with a marketing position or concept that doesn’t resonate with the market. It’s even harder to come up with a marketing and advertising campaign that helps people make decisions on whether they should buy or not.
Marketing is like art
When it comes to marketing concepts, like art, everyone’s a critic. And like art, it’s not always easy to defend when the art you’ve just created is being criticized. It’s not like mathematics where it’s either right or wrong. 2+2 is 4 no matter which way you look. But marketing is different because it boils down to the way people think and feel.
Is marketing subjective? Is the creation of a marketing campaign purely subjective? Is it really based on the reaction of the client who tells you for the umpteenth time, ‘so and so doesn’t like it”.
Marketing behind the scenes
Not everyone seems to appreciate what goes on behind the scenes in marketing. Maybe you’ve heard: “Whoever came up with that idea? My kid can do better.” But marketing shouldn’t be evaluated on likeability alone.
Marketing is a critical business function to attract customers. Is it realistic then to leave marketing to chance? It’s true how we view elements of marketing can be subjective. I like that packaging. I don’t like that commercial. But what many don’t understand, fail to understand, forget, ignore or just don’t care is that marketing is strategic. It doesn’t matter what you like, your wife likes or your dog likes. A good marketing campaign first requires investigation and research. A SWOT analysis is key. A definition of target market is only the first step. We need to learn about our target market and what makes them tick. We identify what we want to accomplish. We anticipate how the consumer will react to our objective.
And through all this we are cognizant of the 4ps of marketing.
Marketing is the process of communicating the value of a product to our customers. We do this by positioning our product to find its place and stand out amongst all the noise and babble. We create brand awareness and we sustain that awareness throughout the campaign. In order to create a marketing campaign, we capture marketing insight to determine how best to connect with customers. We build a strong brand and communicate its value. We communicate consistently. We connect with our customers and deliver a message that communicates value. We are conscious to protect our brand. We monitor on a continuous basis. And in the end, our metrics tell us whether we were successful or not in cold, hard numbers.
Those numbers are the facts. They are indisputable.
So maybe, marketing isn’t so subjective after all.
by Craig Robinson | Aug 15, 2013 | Advertising, Latest, Social Media
Most Facebook marketers quickly realize that things aren’t as easy as some of these web articles make them seem. There is a lot of nuance to every different type of engagement method. So when you read about leveraging something in your favor, you need more than the gist – you need to get to the meat of the matter. Below, you will read about a few different ways to find leverage on Facebook, along with practical applications you can implement immediately into your campaign.
Different Ways to Find Leverage on Facebook
Facebook Ads
There are many different paid categories of ads on Facebook for a reason: They work! Of course, using Facebook ads can be difficult for beginners and even for individuals who don’t quite understand how to target their intended market. While it is true that paying more money can help increase your reach, it’s also true that ads won’t work all on their own – as in, they don’t simply fall into the pockets of your audience without some guidance. So it becomes a game of leverage here. How can you use Facebook’s ad options to leverage your campaign? Out of the multiple types of ad formats Facebook offers, let’s speak quickly about Page Post ads. These ads come in six different varieties: Photos, videos, questions, status updates, events, and links. A picture ad, for example, can take up much more real estate on a person’s News Feed than other ads, and they appear on both the mobile and desktop version of Facebook. They also earn a 14% higher ROI than normal domain ads, according to a Nanigans study based on 975 million impressions, and you can target this ad to its intended audience through a variety of Facebook tools. There are three things to keep in mind when using Page Post ads:
- Always be engaging: Engagement is paramount here. You want to ensure that you’re releasing eye-popping, interesting photos (charts, memes, infographics, specific product images, etc) that really capture a user’s attentions.
- Always use concise messaging: Think of text on your Page Post ad like text on a mobile ad. You want to get to the point as quickly as possible. Say what you need to within the first 90 characters of the ad. Use hot-button words that are niche-appropriate; list dollar amounts, guarantees, or other compelling messages to draw attention without being vague. Get right to the point.
- Always test multiple ads: Using a third-party application will allow you to test multiple ad formats. Even though you’re going to change ads consistently, you still need to test how ads perform before you launch them on a wider basis. Run multiple versions of an ad with variations (demographics like age range, location, different keywords, etc) to see which works best for you.
Embedded Posts Embedded Posts is a relatively new feature launched by Facebook which will allow page posts to actually be embedded on other websites. These third-party embedding features are very similar to other sites like Twitter and Instagram. CNN was one of the first to jump on this, conducting a poll about Bradley Manning on Facebook and posting the results on their main website. This type of embedding feature has huge implications for marketers in terms of leveraging the feature. How can this work out in your favor as a marketer? Well, a good example of this is taking a Facebook review you’ve received and embedding it on your website. If you have an informative post that’s very popular and engaging, or a Facebook post that has perhaps earned a lot of likes and shares that has more of a social context, you can spread out well beyond putting a Facebook button on your site and meld two sites together. This drives traffic back to Facebook and also allows Facebook participating from another site. Embedded posts obviously aren’t all the rage yet. But this is a free feature that you can easily use to your benefit. Facebook Hashtags Using Facebook for business is usually a low-cost and even fun way of conducting your business affairs. With Facebook hashtags, marketers on this site can now use the system made famous by Twitter and used by other social sites like Google+ to help categorize keywords and ultimately boost their presence. These hashtags (#) are basically like a DD system at the library, for lack of a better analogy. By having the # symbol in front of a word, it then gets categorized and becomes available in a search. So what was a simple “Hey, what’s up” post can now contain a hashtag keyword/phrase and become searchable. When you’re planning on using hashtags for your Facebook content, be careful here not to get into Kobe Bryant territory, where every other word has a hashtag in front of it. Hashtags can be valuable weapons for you to use for your organic reach, or potentially even to add keywords and phrases to paid advertising. So make sure that you’re putting the hashtag on popular terms and words that are related to your market. You still have to exercise a marketer’s a approach here; it’s not all about using the most popular or unique hashtags to draw attention to yourself in an unrelated market. That’s just a wasted effort. EdgeRank To put it in simple terms, EdgeRank is Facebook’s algorithm that it uses for rating and sorting and displaying material. This is a very cutting-edge algorithm compared to others used by similar social sites. According to the main EdgeRank site, the algorithm can be understood as “the sum of edges,” and is made up of three separate aspects of content: Affinity, Weight, and Time Decay. To leverage EdgeRank while using Facebook, one has to play to the way the algorithm sorts material in order to increase visibility. For instance, Facebook has stated that 88% of all its engagement on-site happens via the News Feed. Leveraging EdgeRank can put you in more people’s News Feeds and ultimately boost your engagement. Sound simple enough? Well, it’s not as simple as using better keywords or posting better-quality, more interesting content that your audience will appreciate. Yes, you should definitely do that! But the fact of the matter is that your content may need to change dramatically. The idea here is to increase the number of likes and shares your material is receiving to boost its affinity and weight, which should stave off immediate decay. To increase the affinity and weight of any particular piece of content, you have to really amp up the content. You have to do certain things, such as:
- Amazing people with content they love
- Solving a specific problem
- Offering tips and other useful information
- Providing humor for people
- Providing inspiration for people
- Posting high-quality, unique content that’s not simple recycled
Graph Search As someone in the tech “know” and they may tell you that Graph Search not only has the potential to revolutionize Facebook, but also the entire ‘net in general. Now, whether this eventually becomes reality is beside the point. The important thing to focus on is leveraging Facebook’s Graph Search in order to boost your marketing – your engagement and ultimately your bottom line. Graph Search is different from typical SEO in that the former uses objects rather than keywords. Facebook’s unique searching method focuses on entities and relationships and how things fit together in a wider context, rather than just keyword X pointing to content Y. One of the best ways to leverage this searching potential is to provide objects – in this case, a node. Graph Search returns nodes, and if you have an on-location business, for example, its location should have a place node. Each one should. Nodes also pick up popularity through engagement on Facebook, so this is yet another instance where focusing on engagement can help you out tremendously in your marketing. Nodes that are connected directly and indirectly with users are more relevant, so this plays into your audience and also friends of your audience. Try optimizing your brand’s presence via the entire Internet via other sites, as well as offering incentives to customers in exchange for some type of engagement. What could work well here are contests and promotions, interesting status updates and other posts, discounts, solving a problem, etc. There are many ways to increase the effectiveness of your marketing campaign when advertising with Facebook. Use the examples listed above in order to boost your engagement and to bolster your campaign.
by Lisa Wedmann | Aug 9, 2013 | Advertising, Branding, Creative, Latest
“Life can be much broader. You can embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.” – Steve Jobs
I was reading about the soon to be released movie “Jobs” with Ashton Kutcher and this quote jumped out at me. So much knowledge packed into one simple sentence.
I get it. I totally agree. Jobs is a testimony to this philosophy. I can easily live vicariously through Jobs and let this knowledge spill into all areas of my life. In this case, it captures my interest in marketing and brand building. Brand can be much broader. You can embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it. It’s about a brand’s life cycle and it being able to live in the now.
Embrace it
There’s much to be said about your product and positioning your brand. But embracing it, now that’s where it gets juicy. Embracing is about nurturing and caring. It’s the point in your product life cycle where you have done your research. You understand what it takes to make your brand strong and resilient. You are not afraid to stand behind your brand and make your mark. You own your product. You protect it. And you embrace it.
Change it
For brands, change is not always good, but sometimes it’s necessary.. Knowing when to tweak an element of your brand or when to re-haul it takes a keen sense of timing and a marketing intuition. In most cases when brands (not products) need a total re-position, it’s because the brand hasn’t had the attention it deserves…for quite some time.
Improve it
Improving your brand is not about changing it. It is about realigning your brand to keep it current. It’s about paying attention and having your brand live in the now. Improving how your brand is presented and keeping it relevant to the market ensures its success. Staying on trend. Being fresh. In today’s marketing landscape, this is keeping current with social media and all that it has to offer.
Make your mark upon it
And here’s where Jobs was so distinctive. We can all agree he made his mark. We are all familiar with the iconic apple symbol, the brand and all that it means, not only as a product, but as an experience and a promise.
Jobs left us the formula for life success that can easily be adopted to brand success
We can all follow in Jobs’ footsteps. He left us the formula albeit, for life. To my way of thinking, Brand has a persona, and therefore, as mentioned at the beginning of this post, Brand has a life. We all refer to a brand and it’s product life cycle. Create a cohesive brand identity. Develop a unique identity that demonstrates your company’s personality. Make your product so impressive that people rush to do business with you and not your competition. Do whatever it takes to make it happen.
by Miriam Hara | Aug 1, 2013 | Advertising, Branding, Latest, Marketing
During the course of my marketing career, I have seen many brands change their marketing strategy, marketing direction and marketing definition on an annual basis or even worse, more often than that! For those of us who have professed the art of marketing, it becomes second nature – even an unconscious behaviour – to resist jumping ship when the water gets rough. It’s crucial for a marketer to support a marketing strategy, position, a brand persona or brand style. A marketer has to stay focused on the chosen strategic direction, even when there’s a storm brewing – and stay the course.
There’s always a new idea, a new marketing strategy or a different approach available for a brand to take.
It may not be wrong, but the true question should be: Is it right for the brand at this time? Marketing is all about putting a stake in the sand. This doesn’t mean being rigid. In fact, for a brand to grow it must be fluid, it must evolve and move in a certain direction. At the same time, a marketer must allow for seamless transitions that will add to its positioning.
There are a few behaviours you can count on when you roll out a brand marketing initiative and determine your marketing strategy. It doesn’t matter if its packaging design (or redesign), an advertising campaign, product positioning or a marketing concept – here are a couple of things you can be sure of:
- Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Respectfully though, not everyone’s opinion should have equal weight.
- Many people, including colleagues, don’t like change. Just as everyone has an opinion, most resist change and will sometimes criticize what’s new or different. Change often makes people uncomfortable.
For any marketer to put a stake in the sand with their marketing strategy, and stand behind it when the going gets tough, they must do their marketing homework beforehand. Here’s how:
- Investigate! Know your market. Know who plays in your market. Know what competitive brands are out there, and what marketing strategies they use. Get out there and do store checks, get price comparisons, look at promotional initiatives, and say yes, even to a one-time Nielsen three-year trend of the market category and segment you are considering.
- Evaluate what you have now. Don’t assume it is wrong. Do your research. Talk to your target audience. Get their take on your brand and on your brand’s positioning. It doesn’t matter what you think, it matters how your brand communicates with its audience. Say yes to market research! It’s well worth the investment. (Notice I didn’t say cost!)
- Quantify the potential. Know what marketing strategy works and what doesn’t. Measure it on a scale that will allow you to accurately assess your marketing stance.
After you do your homework, you can launch your marketing initiative stocked with objective, “non-personalized” rationales. This will give you the tools you need to ward off those nay-sayers and the ones that resist change! Furthermore, you need to wait it out. It’s amazing how with a little time, a revolutionary idea, or funky package can become comfortable and the good old standby!
by Lisa Wedmann | Jul 26, 2013 | Advertising, Business Success, Creative, Latest, Marketing, Objective
Quick… Pop Quiz
Answer the two following questions with the first answer that jumps in your mind.
- Who is the most creative person you know?
- Who is the most objective person you know?
Now think of those two people joined into one brain. Kind of like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde but they are both nice.
On the one side you have the creative person, full of original thoughts and insights, willing to try and experiment with new and innovative ideas.
On the other side, you have objective Judge Judy. Straight and by the book. Judgments are objective, based on facts and not influenced by personal feelings in the courtroom.
Creative ideas can turn into billions of dollars
Creative originality is valued in advertising and marketing. We create fresh views that draw and keep people’s interest. Just think of Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerman or Bill Gates. They all took a creative approach to their businesses; conducted creative campaigns and turned their ideas into billion dollar empires.
Objective thoughts balance creative ideas
At the same time business must be objective. You can bet that Steve, Mark and Bill were as objective as they were creative. They mixed their creative idea with business objectivity. They asked questions such as who is the market, how big is the market, where the market is headed, how much money can be made. This is objective thinking and the answers are the objective facts that are required to run a successful business.
Inventors need to be both creative and objective
We only have to look at a few examples of Dragon’s Den to understand where creative and objective didn’t always mix. On the television show inventors and entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to a successful business panel. They hope to get money to grow and expand their business.
Many of these inventors, although creative come up with ideas that nobody wants. For example edible greeting cards for dogs or a pair of roller blades you strap to your knees to get from one kneeling job to another fast.
And for that reason they’re out.
