I recently wrote about branded utility, and while many of the examples were full-on applications or products, I thought a more "simple" example of branded utility in advertisements would be a good follow-up. The photographs found in the article "192 Creative, Smart & Clever Advertisements" are indeed creative as well as inspirational, thought provoking, and useful. Many of the examples take a traditional issue and shed light from a new angle -- the kind of angle that makes you say, "Huh...I never thought of that..." That's what it's all about -- Advertising should surprise and delight.

Thanks @AvinashKaushik for the link - it's old but it's good! For some of you, this will be a flashback, for others it will (hopefully) provide first time inspirations. Here are a few of my favorites:

Continue reading "Clever Photographic Advertisements"

Is email the “digital glue” that holds our online lives together?  Will email remain the dominant form of communication, or will it be replaced by new means of online communication such as Facebook, Twitter, Wikis, etc.?  How do so-called “Millennials” view email?

Continue reading "Middle School Marketing Recap: The State of Email Marketing"

This amazing post on why Google loves Denmark inspired me. What do people search for? What are we thinking? What does Google think? I started this thinking I would find some funny stuff, but I was not at all prepared for some of these results. Some of them are offensive, so be warned. Some are absolutely hilarious. All of them say something about human behavior online...

First, some general questions:

Why...

Continue reading "Search Behavior Proves Humans Are Just Weird"

Another month, another successful MSM meeting...Josh kicked off yesterday's meeting with a comment about Google's recent announcement about launching interest-based advertising on partner sites and YouTube. This means that ads being served will be based on a user's browsing history. Josh asked the group: Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Continue reading "Middle School Marketing Recap: Interest-Based Advertising"

Oh boy, it's everyone's favorite topic right now.

The economic slowdown.

But despite all the very real concerns, products still need to be moved, sales need to be made, and companies still need to advertise. As we are all too well aware, the marketing budget ususally the first to get slashed when times are tight. So how do you accomplish more, with less?

The veritable brain trust that is the Middle School Marketing crew tackled just such a topic this week in our monthly meeting.

Continue reading "Middle School Marketing Recap: Marketing in a Recession"

Like many of our peers in the media "middle," we've been doing a lot of thinking about 2009. So, we kicked off this month's Middle School Marketing meeting talking about our online marketing predictions for the new New Year. Rightfully so, this week there's been a lot of chatter about what's to come: Peter Kim's compilation of social media predictions, eMarketer's article of what lies ahead, and Clickz's What Next piece, to name a few.

Like many of our earlier MSM meetings, we talked about the utility, usage and future of Twitter. Lisa mentioned that she was surprised to learn over Thanksgiving that many of her high school and college-age relatives had never heard of Twitter. Dispite the 1.3 million users, how many of them are active, and what's the demographic breakdown? Even within our small group, there were various use cases: keeping up with current events, networking, RSS feed, following friends, following clients, and networking with other industry types. In the end, Twitter is simply another medium which can be used to broadcast message... in 140 characters or less, of course.

Continue reading "Middle School Marketing - Reflections & Predictions"

So… I’ve been busy my first month at Viget. As the new marketing services director, I’ve spent a lot of time learning from colleagues, meeting new people, redefining our marketing services, and working with a wide range of clients.  Like everyone else, I wish there were more hours in the day. There’s always someone else I could call, an email I could have sent, a blog post to write, or cool tool to check out.

One of the many things I’ve learned this past month is if you’ve got something to say, blog. So in talking with the team, we decided to continue sharing what we’re learning in a more regular format. It’s about giving other online marketers a peek at what’s working (and what’s not), and our take on "why." We’re calling it “Under The Hood” because, just like any well-maintained car, there’s a certain amount of maintenance required for true marketing success. And good marketers will tell you there’s always an opportunity for some fine tuning and performance enhancements.

Continue reading "Introducing Me and “Under the Hood”"

Ryan and I recently returned from ad:tech Chicago, and I thought I’d add my two cents to Ryan’s summation. As a warning, this post has two parts which, although related, could be completely separate posts. Accordingly, I’ll save you the pain of attempting to create a lame analogy in an effort to connect the two topics and just split it up.

Part 1) Clay Shirky Was Awesome.

Part 2) Case Studies.

Continue reading "“If It’s Being Discussed, It’s Marketing” & Case Studies from ad:tech"

Banner advertising has long been the bane of web surfers around the world.  Garrish, annoying and ineffective, it’s rare that a campaign actually expresses any level of creativity or effectiveness.

As social networks entered the scene - ripe with rich, detailed demographic data about each and every user - advertisers simply couldn’t resist. But, an odd thing happened on the way to targeting users in online communities. No one clicked on the ads.

It seems once inside the walled garden of Facebook or among friends on MySpace, users weren’t in any mood to search for new mortgage rates or purchase airline tickets and avoided the ads at all cost. In the latest attempt to earn more clicks through banner advertising on social networks, the social media advertising firm SocialMedia launched "social banners," which create banner ads that incorporate you or your friends into the ad. CNet writes:

For example, instead of a banner advertising The Incredible Hulk movie, a social banner would ask which of your close Facebook friends, among a short list, you’d like to invite to see the movie. Or a social banner might inform you that a friend Jim just ranked Iron Man with three stars, and it might ask to "click here to buy tickets at Fandango."

While the intent may be, "to make ads suck less in social networks," said Seth Goldstein, founder of San Francisco-based SocialMedia Networks, this move could bring a backlash similar to the Facebook Beacon uproar from last year. The privacy issues that arise are incredibly complex.

Continue reading "Social Banner Ads Continue to Frustrate"

One of my favorite tools for the online marketer is Google Website Optimizer. I’ve been planning on writing a post with some solid case studies regarding Google’s Website Optimizer; but in the meantime, I just wanted to let our readers know that Google is hosting a website workout contest.

What is a website workout? Here is the official explanation:

Our consultants will work with you to discover ways in which we can increase site performance. Using Website Optimizer, our free website testing and optimization tool, a team of experts will work with you to determine the page layout, headlines, images, and text that will drive the most business from your site.

The short of it: You can win a chance for Google’s team to optimize your website using Website Optimizer.

The deadline for entry is June 17th, so check it out here!

 

By Josh Chambers & Ryan Moede

It’s easy to spot the two schools of thought in marketing and advertising today.  You’re either a "new school" marketer (you think Twitter is going to save the world), or you’re an "old school" marketer (you still double-click on hyperlinks and think TV spots are the future). The two groups don’t seem to communicate—and, worse yet, they actually seem to dislike one another.

In a recent discussion with Lisa Throckmorton from Speakerbox, we were talking about that very thing—the polarization of old school and new school marketing. Long story short, we decided it might be a good idea to get a few DC marketing professionals together with a variety of backgrounds to toss around ideas on how to navigate the current marketing waters—marketers who value traditional marketing, as well as who "get" newer online marketing. The "middle school" as Lisa called it.

Yesterday morning was our first gathering—and, we have to say, it was a blast. It was encouraging to hear other marketers resonate with the discomfort surrounding this polarization and hear their insight on why that is, and how we can move past it.

Continue reading "Our First “Middle School” Marketing Gathering"

It’s easy to spot the advertising and marketing today done by companies who simply don’t care about delivering valuable marketing to their customers – companies too content with interrupting them with annoying, trivial messaging.
Some, however, are beginning to see the light.

There may be several names for it, but no matter what you call it, there is no doubt that brand marketing must deliver value. Some like to think of it as marketing with meaning. Others have dubbed it branded utility (something I’ve written about before.) Still others prefer marketing as service.

No matter which way you slice it, brands are beginning to realize that the best way to make their product and advertising stand out amid the unparalleled noise is to simply provide value through their marketing. In the past, it may have—at best—been possible to satisfy a customer with trivial marketing and advertising if at least the product delivered. But now, customers expect both the information selling the product and the quality of the product to live up to their promise.

FastCompany’s Bill Breen writes, "Overloaded by sales pitches, consumers are gravitating toward brands that they sense are true and genuine. Hunger for the authentic is all around us. You can see it in the way millions are drawn to mission-driven products like organic foods."

Continue reading "Market Like You Mean It"

A post on Copyblogger today inspired me.  It opens,

Whether you’re promoting a product, a program or just an idea, exuberance sells. One of the reason blogs can be so effective is that their writers tend to show more enthusiasm than polish. And that’s not a bad thing—if you have to pick one over the other, enthusiasm wins.

As Sonia Simone says, enthusiasm can’t be faked.  Likewise, I’ve always found it MUCH easier to write compelling copy for people who are excited about their products or services.  When I have to struggle to find new ways of selling something through words that aren’t founded on some degree of passion, I’ve already lost the battle. 

For example, several years ago, I was asked to write some copy.  When I questioned, "What am I trying to convey?," my source responded, "That we’re better."

As Christopher Walken says, "Wowwy Wow Wow wow!" I couldn’t wait to get started writing engaging copy for a service that has no unique goals! 

Seriously, it was among the greatest challenges I’ve faced from a writing perspective.  I felt forced throughout the exercise, and when I finally delivered the product (taking longer than originally expected, since I didn’t have the personal energy to drive a quick flow of ideas), I wasn’t proud of it.  Amazingly, the stakeholders thought it was great, and they found mild returns once they implemented it in their collateral. 

But I wonder how my writing would have changed—and how many more conversions we could have encouraged—had the initial sell been wrought with admirable enthusiasm to energize the team and its writer.

If you give people too many choices, their brains will melt and they will retreat to the option thatoffers the least amount of uncertainty and confusion. In the online world, the most popular method of eliminating confusion and uncertainty is the "leave this site" option. Avoiding decision paralysis is imperative to effective marketing.

In their book, Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath reflect on what makes an idea stick—a topic I think quite a bit about. On the road to "sticky" marketing, my experience is that decision paralysis is a very sneaky little trickster.  it’s just an easy trap to fall into, and no trap is more appealing than offering too many choices.

The Heath’s cite a study in which college students are faced with the following choices when planning their evenings:

Scenario 1:

Choice #1: Attend a lecture by an author you admire who is visiting just for the evening, or

Choice #2: Go to the library and study.

(Is "neither" an option?)

Scenario 2:

Choice #1: Attend the lecture.

Choice #2: Go to the library.

Choice #3: Watch a foreign film that you’ve been wanting to see.

The choices made between Scenario 1 and 2 are surprisingly different.

Continue reading "Marketing To Avoid Decision Paralysis"

We’re all (too) familiar with the "This program has stopped responding" message when Windows decides to crash something. You know that little message that pops up after the error? The one that says "Report this bug?" What does Microsoft do with that information? Does it actually go anywhere? Does it suffer the same fate as Dwight’s complaints against Jim, stuck under Toby’s desk in a big trash bag? Or does that information actually help Microsoft debug and improve their OS/software?



The problem is, I have no idea what happens to that information. And that’s why I hardly, ever, hit "send." Why would I make the extra effort to contribute something if I have no idea if my contribution will matter? This, unfortunately, is an all too common error in customer service and marketing (which, I happen to think are one in the same). Companies, or inviduals for that matter, request user generated content with the promise that it will help "shape the future" or "make a difference," but what happens all those suggestions?

Continue reading "Liars! Why Talking to Your Customers Is So Important"