Print Ad of the week

Client: Manix

Category: Lubricants

Agency: DDsyR, Europe

Hunterz Inspire

Branding Customers—Literally

There you are, wandering around SEMA, a trade show for the automotive aftermarket industry, when a promotion at the Dunlop Tires booth catches your eye. If you let them tattoo the Dunlop logo on your body, you get a free set of tires. Crazy? Of course it is. But blogger Debra Mastaler explains why this smart strategy works on a number of levels:

• It exploits mainstream acceptance of tattoos, particularly among SEMA folks, and ups the ante with celebrity artists like Kat Von D.


• It generates publicity aplenty—like this—without the use of traditional media.


• It builds on the company's earlier marketing efforts, like the "Treadhead" promotion, in which hairstylists shaved Dunlop tread patterns onto customers' heads.

According to Mastaler, 50 Dunlop enthusiasts took the plunge, and there are hundreds more on a waiting list. Mack Collier at The Viral Garden adds that Dunlop filled every available appointment within minutes, and that one recipient didn't even realize the tattoo came with tires—he was just thrilled about getting some free ink!

"You have to remember that a customer evangelist is crazy about their favorite brands!" writes Collier. "So Dunlop ... made it easier for [their evangelists] to engage in actions that they were already performing."

Tattoos may be an extreme example, but if you aren't providing inventive ways to help your customer evangelists spread the good news, you might never learn just how far they'll go for you. And that is Marketing Inspiration.

Hunterz Tips

Another Way to Dodge Spam Folders

As good as your online campaign might be, you'll accomplish nothing if messages wind up in spam folders alongside pitches for counterfeit watches and herbal remedies of dubious merit. Neil Anuskiewicz claims it's easy to avoid this fate by establishing an SPF (sender policy framework).Don't let the techno-jargon scare you. In layman's terms, it works similarly to the authentication process a merchant uses for credit-card transactions, and assures Internet and email providers like AOL or Gmail that you are who you say you are. All told, an SPF vastly improves the chances that your message will go straight to a recipient's inbox.

Getting one is not only simple, says Anuskiewicz, it's free. You can use the setup wizard at sites like this, which walks you through each step, or you can create a manual record with your domain name registrar or hosting provider. Another option is delegating the task to your email administrator. A few things to keep in mind:

• You can't create an SPF with a free email provider like Gmail or Yahoo. This means you'll need a personalized domain name. They're inexpensive and there's a payoff: An email from sales@yourcompanyname.com has much more credibility than yourcompanyname@yahoo.com.


• Always use your domain name as the from address when you publish your SPF record. If you send email from sales@yourcompanyname.com, register the domain yourcompanyname.com.

The Po!nt: Setting up an SPF is a free and easy way to avoid the spam filter. If you don't have one, get one today.

Get to the Po!nt

How Caricatures Help Your Brand

Seth Godin points out a post at Boing Boing about a study suggesting that people are twice as likely to identify celebrities correctly when they are depicted as caricatures that exaggerate prominent facial features. "A caricature falsely highlights various anomalies while diminishing the boring parts," writes Godin. "So Jay Leno gets a ridiculous chin, or Jimmy Durante gets an even bigger nose."

The concept, says Godin, also applies to business. "The best brands are caricatures of their true selves," he continues. "Yes, they must have exceptional 'features' (a step that's easy to skip, but without which leads to failure) but then, over time, those features become a caricature."

To illustrate, he cites a pair of effective corporate caricatures:

• In its early days, ads from FedEx showed dedicated drivers doing whatever it took—even renting helicopters—to deliver a package on time. A wild exaggeration, to be sure, but it made the point.


• The standard joke about Starbucks, meanwhile, is the pretentiously complex order à la "half-caf, extra hot, short macchiato, extra foam, with soy, in a ceramic mug." Everyone takes their potshots, yes, but they also know they'll get exactly what they want. Far from doing damage, a caricature might actually make your company's most outstanding features more memorable.

The Po!nt: "Coloring inside the lines and pleasing most of your customers most of the time almost guarantees you'll be bland," writes Godin, embracing personality over popularity. "It's a lot cheaper and faster and more effective to have a big nose."

Print Ads of the Day - II

Client: Svenson - deforestation & re-birth

Agency: Publicis

Location: Singapore

Print Ads of the Day - I

Client: Svenson - deforest & re-birth

Agency: Publicis

Location: Singapore

Get to the Po!nt

A Blogger's Guide to Building and Maintaining Readership

In a post at The Lonely Marketer, Patrick Schaber, who just celebrated his first anniversary as a blogger, talks about his criteria for choosing the blogs he reads. "When I first got involved with social media, I was subscribing to anything and everything," he says. "A while back I purged and got down to a manageable amount of daily blog reading."

With so much engaging content available, he's frequently tempted to re-expand his reading list. To help him decide what to read, Schaber developed a list of blog must-haves.

Here's some of his advice for drawing readers like him:

• Provide unique, actionable content. "To be honest," writes Schaber, "I don't care if you've been blogging for five years or five minutes, if I feel I'm going to leave a site having learned something new, count me in." He gives extra points for highlighting recent content in a sidebar.


• Post frequently. This doesn't mean that you have to blog every day—a few each week will do the trick—but if multiple weeks pass between each post, readers will stop checking in.


• Maintain focus. Nothing says you have to restrict yourself to a single topic, but you'll confuse readers if you hop randomly from subject to subject without explaining why.


• Add visual interest. You'll notice that many bloggers include an image with each post. Follow their lead. "So much of social media is visual perception!" says Schaber.

The Po!nt: Good content is good content. Even the busiest people make time for their favorite blogs.

Experts Speak

Speak to Me!!

December 2007

Some people are born speechmakers. They thrive on the rush of speaking to hundreds. They deliver rousing presentations without notes. They never want it to end. And we hate them. Because we dread the thought of getting on stage, of seeing those expectant faces, of flubbing our lines. It isn't fair. But speeches and presentations are a fact of life, and Christine Whittemore has some great advice for ways to feel like a born speechmaker.

In the days before a speech:

• Practice to boost your confidence. Videotape practice sessions so you know what works and, more importantly, what doesn't.


• Learn to project your voice and your presence. You can use an empty church or auditorium for trial runs.

In the minutes before a speech:

• Don't eat bananas before a speech. Seriously. Like with dairy products, you'll feel the need to clear your throat. Again and again. Caffeine works better!!!


• Drink plenty of water with lemon to avoid dry mouth.

During the speech:

• Make eye contact with each part of the room; remember to smile.


• Don't read your presentation or clutch the podium. In fact, stay away from the podium unless you need a sip of water.

"It's OK to feel nervous," says Whittemore. "Anticipate it ... Yes, you'll be aware of it, but the audience won't." And for anyone who gives presentations.

This is Marketing Inspiration.

Get to the Point

Blog Ads That Work

When an ad that appeared on her blog failed to impress, B.L. Ochman provided its purchaser, a television network, some pro bono feedback. "Please don't get me wrong," Ochman writes in an open letter at MarketingProfs Daily Fix. "I love you for advertising ... on my blog. But I want you to get results so you'll keep coming back, and this ad sucks."

Blunt talk, but Ochman speaks from experience: her blog ad campaigns for companies like American Greetings and Budget Car Rental have achieved click-through rates as high as 2.1 percent. And if you advertise at blogs—or have considered the idea—you might benefit from the advice she offers:

• Be intriguing, interesting, entertaining. Blog readers respond to a fresh approach, not the traditional advertising that they see everywhere else. So go ahead: Show your sense of humor. Get edgy and fun, topical and timely.


• Readers aren't interested in hearing your story; they want to know what you can do for them. Get right to the point and spell out the ROI. Tell readers how they benefit from your product or service. "We want you to tell us, in the headline, why we should care," says Ochman.


• White space is your friend. Ads compete with lots of other copy at a blog. If yours isn't easy to read at a glance, it might as well be invisible.
  

The Po!nt: Get the most out of your blog ad by tailoring your design and copy to the format and the audience.

Get to the Po!nt

Are Your Web Customers Engaged?

December 2007

Your Web site is an ideal venue for holding your customers' attention. But how do you measure the success of your efforts? Inspired by Eric Petersen's presentation on the subject at an eMetrics conference, Katie Paine, of KDPaine's PR Measurement Blog, decided to make a list of the basic information you'll need:

• The percentage of increase or decrease in unique visits


• The 10 most popular pages, and changes from the previous week


• The number and percentage of sessions that represent more than five page views


• The percentage of sessions that last more than five minutes


• The percentage of visitors who return for more than five sessions


• The percentage of sessions arriving from a Google search, a direct link at your Web site or another site related to your brand


• The percentage of visitors who become subscribers, download content or provide an email address

Paine says it isn't hard to find this data. Your webmaster should be able to compile a report on a regular basis using tools like Visual Sciences, Google Analytics and ClickTracks.

The Po!nt: Ask the right questions about your Web site's traffic, and you'll learn more than the number of people who visit—you'll gain insight into how effectively you engage your customers.

[Source: KDPaine's PR Measurement Blog.]

GET TO THE PO!NT

What Surveys Can Tell You—and Your Customers

December 2007.

What are you trying to accomplish with a survey? It's likely you're asking a series of questions designed to elicit valuable feedback for ongoing improvements of your product or service. But in a recent post at his blog, Seth Godin discusses the various ways a survey—and its results—can be used for much more.

One option is to use the survey question as a marketing tactic:

• "You can TEACH people with a survey," writes Godin, "simply by asking them questions that help them notice things they never noticed before." For instance, you might ask, "Do your prefer option A or option B?" when the real purpose of the question is to let the participant know that they have an option B.

Another twist uses survey results to influence behavior:

• Godin cites the marketing campaign for Trident, which claimed four out of five dentists recommended the sugarless gum to their patients. "Hardly scientific," he says, "but publishing the results made dentists feel better about recommending the gum and made people with teeth happier about chewing it."

The Po!nt: A survey's usefulness is not limited to gathering data—you might also find that it can be a useful marketing tool. So explore all the ways a survey can benefit your company.

Product Launches

New Products: The Real Challenge Is in Execution, Not Strategy
by Barry Curewitz
December 2007

Marketers love talking about products like the Swiffer or iPod, two colossal successes in terms of brilliance in innovation and new product development. In fact, rumor has it there are more consulting firms taking credit for Swiffer's development and success than can fit into the new Yankee Stadium.

The puzzling question remains: Why aren't there more examples of unabashed new product successes?

To gain insight, we recently implemented a research study exploring the factors that have an impact on a company's ability to succeed in the ever-important CPG growth domain.

Our survey, titled "Creativity in New Products, A Reality Check," queried 128 senior CPG marketers to gauge the challenges they face in growing their businesses as well as the strategies and thought processes they employ.

In planning the research, we theorized that new-product development efforts could be influenced by both strategic and tactical elements. Therefore, we developed a list of five strategic and five tactical pitfalls that could limit a company's ability to succeed.

Then, we asked participants to identify those issues that currently challenge them; those they addressed three years ago; those they expect to face three years from now; and which single factor occurs most frequently.

Based on our experience, we hypothesized that strategic issues would be the most relevant causes of new-product disappointment. We were way off base. We learned that, yes, there are strategic issues affecting the outcome of new product activity, but the more relevant issues focus on tactical elements—those things that can be addressed in the short term.

In fact, 63% of survey respondents identified tactical issues as the leading prohibitive factors in the development and launching of new products.

The need to satisfy stockholders (Wall Street) has had a profound effect on our ability to identify, develop, and launch new products as reflected in the lack of human capital, financial resources, and company competencies (another form of human capital). Strategically, we're confident we know where to "place our bets," it's just that financial limitations prevent us from doing it.

The following data illustrate that three of the strategic categories we identified have become less of an issue in the last three years and are expected to become even less relevant over the next three (or at least remain status quo). These include the identification of differentiated opportunities, identification of the key consumer insight, and development of a motivating consumer proposition.

Two issues that will become more relevant to marketers have to do with competitive challenges and the elasticity of brand equities. It appears our own tactical issues have caused a bit of paranoia that the competition is moving faster than we are. And, the research further suggests that brand equities (perhaps our most valuable asset) have reached their breaking point and can't go any further.

Tactically, while all but one factor (the lack of product technology) are expected to decline over time in the amount they can limit our success, several of them are working against higher levels of frustration today, as compared with three years ago.

For example, the lack of human capital and financial resources are more relevant today than they were three years ago, but they are projected to be less relevant in '10 than they were in '04. Why? Because new product development efforts are often disrupted or delayed in order to meet the immediate corporate financial obligation—we're responding to the financial needs of the current quarter.

What are we to do? Well, we're called "managers" for a reason. We need to manage the innovation process so that we can support the best, most promising initiatives, with the limited resources available to us.

And, when possible, convince our management that additional resources are prudent in order to realize the success that the Swiffer and iPod have enjoyed.

[Barry Curewitz is managing partner of Whole-Brain Brand Expansion (www.wbbe.biz); reach him at barry@wbbe.biz. ]