Marketing Matters

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I don’t mean to be unfaithful to my primary blog, but I’m blogging on the side, too. Writing in the Sun is about writing my first book. I’ve ghostwritten a number of published works, from op-ed pieces on up, so this project is exciting for me. What makes it worth your while is that it’s an amusing (and amused) look at the process of making an idea a book.

Since the book is supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek look at how to take your foot out of your mouth, it’s hopefully a fun read in it’s own right.

So take a look so, when it’s finally done, you can look at the book on your shelf and say “I remember when this was just a blog.”

Burger King advertising around the world is in a cycle of offense and apologies. Is this an odd plan or a symptom of a lack of global brand coordination?
Read about it in Ad Age.

By the way, are you following me on Twitter? You should be. I regularly post articles of interest regarding marketing like this as well as updates about my other blog, Writing in the Sun, about my current book project

Don’t you love it when someone you respect points you to someone they respect? That’s how I found out about Hugh MacLeod and the Gaping Void.

I’m blown away by how insightful his drawings are. Some of them seem so unartistic that you might be inclined to dismiss them. Don’t. There’s a lot to each one of his ideas, and anyone involved in messaging can learn a lot from his approach and his content.

In one of his “back of a business card” cartoons, he states “It’s not what the software does. It’s what the user does.” In another, the message is even more blunt “Quality isn’t Job One. Being totally fucking amazing is Job One.”

He packages his message simply, and marketers need to hear what he has to say.

Thanks to Rick Julian at Quo Vadis (another amazing message-builder) for enlightening me.

I’ll confess that my original title for this post was “It’s Cool, It’s Useful, It Makes Life Simpler – It’s from Microsoft???” Like most people, I’ve done my fair share of Microsoft bashing. After all, I use Vista, so that’s really no surprise. But I have to give credit where credit is due: Bing is really cool, very useful and even pretty.

Haven’t heard of Bing yet? It’s designed to do to Google what Google did to AltaVista  – lay it to waste by making life exponentially easier for the people who use it.

Bing’s introductory video does a good job at making it clear that this is a serious tool designed with the user in mind. That’s great, of course, but for me, though, what stands out the most is the approach Microsoft is taking with its marketing. The thing that impresses me is that it’s so thorough: they employed standard big-brand tactics like issuing a press release and doing a tradeshow launch, but then they created an interesting video that informs you about Bing’s functionality pleasantly in less than 3 minutes, and they make it easy for you to follow their progress on Twitter and Facebook.

As if that weren’t already an exceptional marketing program, they went and did it all really well. The video lets you know exactly why you should care and why we’re all probably going to end up using Bing. It elicits more “oh cool!” and “hey, look at this” reactions than most campaigns. The social media pages have actual information on them. And the site itself is sleek and well-designed.

I want to make it clear that I’m not just swooning for no good reason. I’m swooning for two good reasons: first, Microsoft really rose to the occasion in marketing Bing well. Second, it’s actually good.

To my friends in Redmond, my hat is off to you. Thanks for the pleasant surprise.

As if you need another reason to fast-forward over commercials on TV or ignore them in a magazine, have you noticed how most ad campaigns are increasingly cynical?

Apparently, someone told the major advertising agencies that a brand can only build an audience right now by appealing to our sense of snark. It’s actually gotten so bad that every time I’ve mentioned the subject to friends lately, I get another handful of examples that support the point. Don’t know what I mean? Just look at Old Spice, Super 8 and even Cheetos. Old Spice has no idea what its brand means anymore, Super 8 is shouting at me and Cheetos belongs on an after-school movie about clinical depression. It’s pathetic.

A brand is a promise a company makes about its products to its target audience. It’s supposed to be about a positive sense of emotion and community. If you don’t see something you want to be a part of, why buy that brand and not a competing one? Are we, the audience, really supposed to feel addressed by shouting sarcasm and lost identity?

Enter Cat Stevens.
After 30 years of silence, Cat came back. OK, well, he’s Yusuf Islam now, but his new album, Roadsinger, is out and he’s making rounds on TV (check out his interview with Stephen Colbert here), talking about peace and openness and singing about it, too.

He may have changed his name to Yusuf, but he sounds just like Cat: He’s delivering songs with a message and a point and he rewards listeners with insight and reflection along with memorable melodies that you find yourself singing quietly later.

It’s amazing that he can have such a positive and educational message, encased in a 30 year-old brand, while everyone around him is broadcasting the exact opposite. I don’t think he would have had the same impact a year ago as he does right now. The contrast wouldn’t have been as crass. Most of what we’re hearing these days is louder, more aggressive and more cynical than we’ve ever heard before.

I don’t know if it’s more dispiriting to hear those commercials or to think that that’s what marketers believe resonates now. The only thing I can think to say is, “Yell all you want, advertisers, I’ll just turn up the volume on Roadsinger.”

It’s no secret that, a year ago, I lost my job due to the recession and that’s when I returned to my roots as a consultant. Since I’ve had the opportunity to talk publicly about what it means to lose your job and how to find a new one (on Fox News and on behalf of TheLadders.com, respectively), I’ve thought a lot about how to keep your head above water when you find unemployment has robbed you of your routine, your community of colleagues and your self-confidence.

Here are four suggestions on how to make the best of a bad situation:

Connect with family and friends.
Build your community at home and make time for the people and things you didn’t have enough time for before. Personally, I spent a lot of time with my (now) two year-old son. Nothing takes the edge off your worries like playing with a baby.

Network with every business contact you’ve ever made.
Smart networking is in everyone’s best business interest. You’ve probably gone to great lengths to build up your social media contacts (if you haven’t, do so), but most deals are sealed face to face. Find your Twitter followers, LinkedIn contacts and Facebook friends who live in your area and arrange to meet. Are you a member of an online business group? Arrange for the whole group to get together to meet and put faces to those names. You’ll keep in touch online, but you’ll find the relationships are deeper and more useful once you’ve met in person.

For me, one of the best occasions I’ve had for this has been monthly meetings of Brandhackers. Nothing reminds you of your talents like being in a room full of colleagues, whether you’re a new-found freelancer or just looking to connect.

Create a sense of accomplishment for yourself.
Do all those things you always said you’re going to do but never had time for, be it cleaning out your basement, getting more involved in local politics or unpacking that last box from your most recent move.

I never thought I’d be inclined to fix a roof, but when I realized mine needed fixing, I taught myself how. And since no rain is pouring in at the moment (and it’s raining hard right now), I’m guessing I didn’t do too bad a job.

Learn. They say a wise man knows just how little he knows, so invite someone you consider accomplished to breakfast or lunch and have them tell their story and learn from their successes and failures. You’ll be amazed by how generous people are with their knowledge.

I do this every chance I get. Those conversations have led me to returning to my roots as a consultant as well as to finding new clients. And I’ve learned a lot about people I truly admire at the same time.

I’ve never met a business owner who hasn’t believed that change is good, but sometimes changing nothing will provide better brand value. Ben & Jerry’s were recently presented with just such a perfect pitch by one of their main competitors, Haagen-Dazs.

Here’s what happened:
Haagen-Dazs noticed that their production costs were rising and started trying to find solutions. They had several options:

• Exert market pressure on suppliers who are jacking up prices because of last year’s increase in oil prices
• Reach out through social media channels to their most active consumers and explain the situation
• Launch a viral campaign in which they demonstrate the way they’re fighting for summer against the forces of evil
• Pass on the cost increase to the consumer
• Reduce their profit margin
• Improve their internal efficiency to save money
• Shrink the size of a “pint” and hope no one notices they’re getting less with no change in price.

Which do you suppose they did? If you guessed “shrink the size of their pint” you win the kewpie doll. With a murmur on their Web site Haagen-Dazs explained that they are no longer in the business of selling pints of ice cream. They shrunk their packages from 16 to 14 ounces

Ben & Jerry’s responded immediately with a well-distributed press release that was very simple. Everyone’s feeling the pinch, they wrote, and “now more than ever you deserve your full pint of ice cream.”

With that simple statement, they positioned themselves as a brand that cares about you and your family in this economy and Haagen-Dazs as the brand that doesn’t.

Sometimes business realities are harsh and prices need to go up and things need to change. A wise company will figure out how to come out a hero when it’s struggling against market forces. That’s why they employ hundreds of professional storytellers (read marketers): to figure out how to structure the story. That’s the way you stay on top of it and preserve your brand value. And these days, marketers have incredible tools with which to be clever and reach out to their consumers.

What you don’t do is ignore the fact that acquiring new consumers is about brand image. Don’t blow yours by handing your primary competitor an opportunity to make huge gains in brand value by doing nothing except issuing a press release.

It was a pretty harsh wake-up call to have the Online ID Calculator tell me I’m only digitally dabbling.

source: http://www.onlineidcalculator.com/digitalscale.html

Considering the pains I take as a marketer to establish continuity in my messaging across my blog, site, LinkedIn profile, Facebook page and Twitter (which I’ll admit I only do when I have something to say), I was surprised I didn’t cross the threshold into “digitally distinct”. That’s a good indicator of the lengths you have to go to truly make your brand distinct.

The Calculator was created “to help [you] understand how [your] personal brand shows up online.” It’s free and it’s certainly worthwhile. No matter who you are or how you’re using your online presence, it’s worth knowing. Brands can quickly get away from you, no matter how hard you try to control them – just look at what happened to Domino’s this week.

A tool like this is a quick and easy way to check up on the status of your brand. If you find out it’s in a bad quadrant, you should take a firmer grip of the reins and start to steer your messaging in the direction you want it to go.

If you’re not sure how to coordinate your branding efforts, be they your personal brand or for your company, take a look at this video I did for TheLadders.com. It’s directed at job seekers, but it’s really for anyone who cares about a brand they’re involved with.

Did you try it? How do you rank?

There was a very kind article written about me in the Career Advice section of TheLadders.com yesterday. It was a bit unexpected – while I had spoken to a journalist they had hired, I thought it was background on a different project.

The article wraps up a very eventful ten days for me – last Monday I was on Fox & Friends. Two days later, I was taping a segment for a new venture I hope to be writing about soon, and now this article.

If you’re a Ladders subscriber, you can read the article here, along with a lot of other great career advise. Otherwise, you can see it below.

Many thanks to TheLadders.com for this great story!

Marketing Pro Remakes His Image
Marketing executive details his job search and offers tips to other marketers looking for work.

by Patty Orsini

William Scheckel is a marketing executive skilled in marketing financial and technical services. He had never thought much about marketing himself, though, until one day last May, a couple of weeks after he had been laid off from a management consultancy in New York.

“A colleague, who is the chief marketing officer at a company I respect, pitched me back to me,” Scheckel said. “It was an eye-opener. I realized that I needed to put together this pitch, to get the word out about me. It was very helpful to get that kind of support.”

For Scheckel — who was still upset about being laid off and the way his former employer had handled the situation — it was the right thing to hear at the right time. “I could continue to be angry, shocked and concerned about the layoff,” the Montclair, N.J., resident said. “But I pushed myself to take that fear and anger and turn it toward making the effort to market myself.”

The MktgLadder member had many reasons to regroup as quickly as possible. “A few weeks before I was laid off, I had told my wife, who is a teacher and was miserable in her job, to go ahead and take some time off, rethink some things and then find a new job,” he said. “And my son had just turned 1. So, talk about putting everything in perspective! I knew what I needed to do.”

A video introduction
One of the first things he did was redo his Web site, adding a video introduction that would make that all-important pitch. “I put it to together with a friend of mine who is a film editor, who offered to do it for free,” he said. “We created this introduction that says, ‘Here’s what it’s like to talk to me, here’s what we will be talking about. If you like what you hear, let’s continue this conversation in person.’ ”

That exercise led Scheckel to rewrite his resume, using much the same language he had used for his Web site. On both his Web site and in his resume, he is doing the same thing, he said: marketing his brand.

“If I were a marketing consultant to myself, I would be hammering out the different aspects of my brand,” he said. “I know what I am good for: small- and medium-sized businesses. I wanted to make sure my messaging says this. If I do it right, I will display my value properly.”

While Scheckel is looking for a full-time position, consulting work is keeping him busy, in between job interviews, networking and taking care of his toddler son. His sense of humor keeps him going. “There are extra hours in the day when other people sleep,” he joked. “I stay up late, I get up early. I’m home with my son a couple of days a week, and on those days, if I can tire him out by 1 p.m., I can get a good three hours of work in. There’s not a lot of time to watch Battlestar Galactica re-runs.”

Scheckel has structured his week to fit in job hunting with consulting and refreshing his Web site. “Wednesdays and Fridays are job hunt days,” he said. “Mondays I have a regular gig with a company doing marketing work. I do like to have one day that’s flexible. But getting into a routine, where my day is structured like a job, is important.”

Beware of pigeonholes
While he is looking to broaden his search to other industries, “no matter what I try to do, I get tagged as someone who does marketing for financial and tech companies,” he said. “Marketing is marketing, and it can be applied across the board. In the 1990s, I worked in Germany, and my clients came from a lot of different businesses. But the places that are most likely to talk to me are financial companies, and no one is hiring there right now. With tech, I prefer small to mid-sized companies, and finding something viable can be difficult.”

But if he could choose any industry to market? “If Carnegie Hall or Jazz at Lincoln Center came knocking on my door, I would bend over backwards to work there,” he said. “I’m a musician; I would love to work in the arts.” But he is being realistic right now. Scheckel said he has been told by people in other industries that “no one is taking a chance right now. They want you to come in and be up to speed. They expect you to know the landscape, know the people. There is no time for ramping up.”

Career Advice from TheLadders

• Designer Clears Security to Land Defense Job in D.C.
• Hired! Creative Possibilities in Software Sales
• Sales Rep Leaves High-Volume Quotas for Higher Elevation
• Real Estate Director Plans Exit Strategy

Some days are tougher than others, he said. “My outlook varies from moment to moment,” he said. “It can go from staring into the abyss to feeling like something has got to give.” One big relief: His wife did go back to work, as a part-time teacher and part-time administrator at a local college.

And he keeps marketing himself, even to himself. “I’m good at what I do, and somebody is going to see the value,” he said. “I never let a contact rest. I never know where an idle conversation is going to lead. I’m in marketing, I’m not a salesman, but I’ve become a good salesman. I pull on whatever thread I can find.”

Did you catch me on Fox & Friends yesterday?  It was an interesting segment broadcast nationally on the role of unemployed fathers. Fox posted half of the panel’s conversation on its site, but the more interesting part was only available to those who tuned in (or who are reading this).

In the second half, we talked about how an entrepreneurial spirit is the only way to combat the economic environment we’re currently enduring. For established companies everywhere, that means that the surest way to weather this storm is to invest in your brand to draw out what makes your offering unique. Now is the time to get out your message in creative and engaging ways.

Many companies are waiting right now for things to improve. But change doesn’t happen on its own. Change needs an advocate – and right now it needs an impatient one. Now is the time to invest in your brand, to strengthen its voice and value. Now is the time to make your message cut through the white noise of anxiety in the marketplace. Create a bold statement of your value. Your customers are listening. An articulate voice can be of immense value to them, especially when your competitors are just muddling through. That articulate voice, that clear message are the products of your brand at work. It’s times like these that make having a brand worthwhile.

So yes, hunker down, be careful, be prudent – do all the smart, common sense things you know you should. But don’t wait – leave that to the competition. Now is the time to create!