Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
Luke Wilson you better have gambling debts to pay , or else you aren't cool anymore.
AT&T Swings Back At Verizon Wireless, Misses (via brandchannel)
AT&T Swings Back At Verizon Wireless, Misses (via brandchannel)
Next up is the Luke Wilson Lifetime Movie of the week.
AT&T Swings Back At Verizon Wireless, Misses (via brandchannel)
Next up is the Luke Wilson Lifetime Movie of the week.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Management reading: Bursting the branding bubble | The Economist
Management reading: Bursting the branding bubble | The Economist
Shared via AddThis
The most important part of the book:
Mr Baskin does not simply rail, but redefines branding. “For branding to mean something, it has to do something.” In other words, branding must be generated directly by the experience of the user. At a basic level, straplines such as Nike's “Just do it” and Las Vegas’s “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” work, he says, because they play to feelings that are related to how a product might be used. His notion of branding goes much further, taking in, for example, the way an airline deals with its stranded passengers. The amalgamation of all such company-wide actions emerge to create a brand, he argues.
The new reality of branding requires the visceral feelings and experience more than straight recall of names.
Shared via AddThis
The most important part of the book:
Mr Baskin does not simply rail, but redefines branding. “For branding to mean something, it has to do something.” In other words, branding must be generated directly by the experience of the user. At a basic level, straplines such as Nike's “Just do it” and Las Vegas’s “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” work, he says, because they play to feelings that are related to how a product might be used. His notion of branding goes much further, taking in, for example, the way an airline deals with its stranded passengers. The amalgamation of all such company-wide actions emerge to create a brand, he argues.
The new reality of branding requires the visceral feelings and experience more than straight recall of names.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
How to explain social media to your boss and your bosses' boss.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Communications Planning in Four Quuestions or Less
Posted On: 5/21/2009
This article is terrific for the current economy, if you can't answer these about anything you are working on, go home. Seriously, every communications campaign should start with the answers to these four questions. It might not make for flashy presentations but it will help you initiatives to stay focused and be successful. In the end it is important to be about concise communications that are clearly understood by your intended audience.
The four questions communicators should ask themselves
By Jim Ylisela
jimy@ragan.com
Use these questions to help you cut through the crap and improve your communication program
Simple is not dumb. And clear does not mean basic.
What’s the biggest problem facing communications today? Fear, you say? Yes, that’s certainly holding back a lot of organizations.
Incompetence? Sure, there’s plenty of that going around.
What about this: The overwhelming desire, among too many executives and even some communicators, to make things more complicated than they are, or need to be.
What is it with this obsession with convolution, whether it’s how we write and speak, or how we plan?
Which leads us to the four big questions you should ask anytime you’re doing a piece of communication. Use these questions to help you cut through the crap and get to the heart of the matter.
Big Question No. 1: What are we trying to do?
We’ve sat in meetings with executives who talk about communication as if they’re planning the manned mission to Mars. You don’t have to use a lot of fancy terms to talk about what you’re trying to achieve.
In fact, the simpler the better. If you can’t sum up your communication goal in a sentence or two, there’s trouble ahead, cheri.
Here’s the problem: Nobody wants to ask this question, because they don’t want to admit they don’t get it, and because the question itself sounds kind of dumb.
Exactly. If you can’t get a simple answer to that simple question, your communication planning can easily fall off track.
So in our consulting work, we ask communicators and executives alike: What are we trying to do? And if the answer that comes back is something we can’t understand, we ask again—and again—until we reach a point of clarity that lets us go to the next step.
Big Question No. 2: Who are we trying to reach?
You can’t do communications without considering your audience. Every organization has many audiences, and we’re not just talking about internal and external.
For example, internal audiences might include:
• Everyone
• Front-line workers
• Managers and supervisors
• Members of a particular department or division
• Executives and top leadership
Communication to each of these groups should be tailored to what they need to know, and what’s most important to them.
External audiences are the same way.
You might have:
• Customers
• Members
• Media
• Shareholders
• Analysts/regulators
• The greater community
Who needs to get these messages, and what’s the clearest and simplest way to construct them?
Big Question No. 3: What’s the best way to get there?
OK. So you know what you want to do, and you’ve figured out who you want to reach. If you have multiple audiences, you may have even decided what each group needs to know. Now what?
Vehicles, baby. Channels. Print. Online. In person. Social media. How do those audiences like to get their information? What’s the appropriate channel for each? What about using multiple channels?
We see print publications with stories that should never be in print. Print is about explanation and context. It’s not about timeliness.
Worst decision made over and over again: Running a meeting story in a monthly newsletter, weeks (or months) after the meeting. No one cared at the time you had the meeting, and they certainly don’t care now. But they might want to know how the decisions announced at the meeting will affect them.
We see online stories that are really print stories slapped on the Web. Online is about speed, action and choice. Present stories so they can be read quickly. Give readers actions to take. Allow them to choose if they want to read more.
Face-to-face communication is about the immediate and the emotional. It’s also about conversation. Too many managers and executives hold meetings and then don’t let anyone ask questions.
Big Question No. 4: Why should anyone care?
The most important question of them all, and one that is too infrequently asked.
Why? Are we afraid of what the answer might be? (As in, “I have no idea why anyone would care to read this, but the boss said we had to run it, and exactly the way it’s written.”)
If you can’t explain why the readers should care, then what business do you have doing the story? Once you figure out why, you’ll be able to organize the communication around your answer.
This article is terrific for the current economy, if you can't answer these about anything you are working on, go home. Seriously, every communications campaign should start with the answers to these four questions. It might not make for flashy presentations but it will help you initiatives to stay focused and be successful. In the end it is important to be about concise communications that are clearly understood by your intended audience.
The four questions communicators should ask themselves
By Jim Ylisela
jimy@ragan.com
Use these questions to help you cut through the crap and improve your communication program
Simple is not dumb. And clear does not mean basic.
What’s the biggest problem facing communications today? Fear, you say? Yes, that’s certainly holding back a lot of organizations.
Incompetence? Sure, there’s plenty of that going around.
What about this: The overwhelming desire, among too many executives and even some communicators, to make things more complicated than they are, or need to be.
What is it with this obsession with convolution, whether it’s how we write and speak, or how we plan?
Which leads us to the four big questions you should ask anytime you’re doing a piece of communication. Use these questions to help you cut through the crap and get to the heart of the matter.
Big Question No. 1: What are we trying to do?
We’ve sat in meetings with executives who talk about communication as if they’re planning the manned mission to Mars. You don’t have to use a lot of fancy terms to talk about what you’re trying to achieve.
In fact, the simpler the better. If you can’t sum up your communication goal in a sentence or two, there’s trouble ahead, cheri.
Here’s the problem: Nobody wants to ask this question, because they don’t want to admit they don’t get it, and because the question itself sounds kind of dumb.
Exactly. If you can’t get a simple answer to that simple question, your communication planning can easily fall off track.
So in our consulting work, we ask communicators and executives alike: What are we trying to do? And if the answer that comes back is something we can’t understand, we ask again—and again—until we reach a point of clarity that lets us go to the next step.
Big Question No. 2: Who are we trying to reach?
You can’t do communications without considering your audience. Every organization has many audiences, and we’re not just talking about internal and external.
For example, internal audiences might include:
• Everyone
• Front-line workers
• Managers and supervisors
• Members of a particular department or division
• Executives and top leadership
Communication to each of these groups should be tailored to what they need to know, and what’s most important to them.
External audiences are the same way.
You might have:
• Customers
• Members
• Media
• Shareholders
• Analysts/regulators
• The greater community
Who needs to get these messages, and what’s the clearest and simplest way to construct them?
Big Question No. 3: What’s the best way to get there?
OK. So you know what you want to do, and you’ve figured out who you want to reach. If you have multiple audiences, you may have even decided what each group needs to know. Now what?
Vehicles, baby. Channels. Print. Online. In person. Social media. How do those audiences like to get their information? What’s the appropriate channel for each? What about using multiple channels?
We see print publications with stories that should never be in print. Print is about explanation and context. It’s not about timeliness.
Worst decision made over and over again: Running a meeting story in a monthly newsletter, weeks (or months) after the meeting. No one cared at the time you had the meeting, and they certainly don’t care now. But they might want to know how the decisions announced at the meeting will affect them.
We see online stories that are really print stories slapped on the Web. Online is about speed, action and choice. Present stories so they can be read quickly. Give readers actions to take. Allow them to choose if they want to read more.
Face-to-face communication is about the immediate and the emotional. It’s also about conversation. Too many managers and executives hold meetings and then don’t let anyone ask questions.
Big Question No. 4: Why should anyone care?
The most important question of them all, and one that is too infrequently asked.
Why? Are we afraid of what the answer might be? (As in, “I have no idea why anyone would care to read this, but the boss said we had to run it, and exactly the way it’s written.”)
If you can’t explain why the readers should care, then what business do you have doing the story? Once you figure out why, you’ll be able to organize the communication around your answer.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Elusive Information about Social Media
This presentation contains some elusive information about social media and how it is really used in Corporate America. The wonderful part of the presentation is that anyone, even the technophobic department head, can read the presentation and have a clear sense that social media is accessible to everyone. The big headline from the presentation is to embrace social media before it is embraced for you. Social media is wiley and uncontrollable but that is why consumers like it... it isn't corporatized.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
The advertising quandary...
The principles of advertising and marketing are simple. It is the people who are difficult. It is critical to know the difference. Stay true to the business objective and supporting communications strategy and all important answers or decisions will be obvious.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Eureka! The greatest logo ever...
Brand identity is a big word for your logo. People can get obsessed with their logos but many people are looking for a steal. A great logo will last the company decades and become iconic. A bad one will become wallpaper. The following article clarifies what not to do with your logo. I applaud this article for making it so simple to say yes to good design without being snobbish about it. I cringe when I see these mistakes in practice but hope that the democratization of design will result in more lil' guys getting design (not decoration) to work hard for them.
http://tinyurl.com/logomistakes
http://tinyurl.com/logomistakes
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
The end is near marketing journalism...
There is some truth in the article below about what medium owns the big idea and the battle between the agencies,etc. This is one of many articles out there right now that preach the end is near for marketing and marketing departments. The end is near for a few things: big budgets, agency turf wars, and petulant creatives. Their time was up anyways.
There are more opportunities in this down economy than these types of articles allow you to think. There is the opportunity to ditch your overpaid big agency for a small integrated shop that is used to hustling and delivering to clients on time and on budget. There is the opportunity to reach out to your consumers and shoppers in more organic ways that cost less. Also, teamwork is very frugal, the more your team is working together the more you are saving. If you think about it, when is the last time the marketing guys sat down with the money guys and worked through their product portfolio to understand the success of each product? Remember that simple exercise from college with the four quadrants of a product life cycle? Yep, dust it off and analyze how your products match up. I think that a back to basics approach for some of these CMO is in order. You would be surprised by what you find.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Top 11 Twitter Tools and Twitter Best Practices - Brandhackers Presentation
This presentation is a wonderful introduction to Twitter and how to use it from a business perspective. You have to think of Twitter as an active medium to engage consistently. It is not a place to push out a message only. Think a daily:"Time to make the donuts." Instead, you can search, engage, and participate with the on-going conversation on topics of your choice. It may not be right for every business but there are ways to use it that make sense. Stay true to your marketing mission and the usage will become clear.
Check out this SlideShare Presentation:
Check out this SlideShare Presentation:
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Tough times. What is a marketer to do?
Times are tough for every person with a product to sell and a profit to make. Times are tough for every consumer out there making hard choices about their dollars. How do you, the marketer, win the consumer over and get their hard earned dollar? This is the new alchemy, the traditional search for remedies to create gold. The million dollar question. Marketers wrestle with this daily. Agencies are trying to figure out how to profit from this. The consumer is trying to scrimp and survive. Where is the middle ground? In this immediate moment, I believe the answer is in relevance or what my marketing professor called salience. I like the term relevance because it is easier to understand for the everyday person. Essentially, I define relevance as "Why is this important to me?" it helps differentiate items for the consumer. Items meaning brands. When consumers have locked down their spending, relevance will help them spend just a little where it is important to them.
An example of a relevant campaign right now, is Boarshead "Take back lunch" campaign which promotes brown bagging lunch and making sure your families are eating well at lunch. Simple idea. Contrary to their past campaigns which featured exploding turkey deli meats and other gross items in a comical fashion. This brings them to the same wholesome food place but with the soccer mom as the focus. The matriach revisited. The mom is in charge and trying to make sure her family is eating well and on budget. Times are tough. Lunch is an easy place to save money. This campaign is a natural fit for Boarshead. I think it does a great job of bringing the brand into the modern era of lunch. Why is lunch important to me the consumer? Well, I need to eat everyday. And now there is a smarter way for me to have a good lunch. Eureka!
I would say this is a great simple strategy. I googled it. Yikes, the hate that bored bloggers had for it surprised me. Who do you believe? I think the backlash means that the campaign is on target. Angry bloggers who think they are going to have to start eating better, obviously their wifes are setting their sights on it.
What advice can one glean from this blog entry or lesson on relevance? Well, captain obvious, relevance is important. Find out what is relevant to your target audience. Use the modern times as a backdrop. Think about how your product can be important or take your consumer to the next level. Finally, turn down the haters that are outside your target audience. Yes, bloggers, I called us haters. We rant and write. Maybe we are right. But your target audience life experience holds the true answer.
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