THINKing

Steal With Style

Writers “steal with style” all the time – that is they may borrow a phrase from some other writer but somehow make it their own. Thst’s one thing, out-and-out plagiarism is another. Just received a note from Jonathan Kay at Grasshopper about an apparent idea heist. I’ll let Jonathan tell the story,

 A little over 2 months ago we released the video “Entrepreneurs Can Change the World” to spark a movement to help turnaround our economy, remind entrepreneurs why they started in the first place, and inspire others to go out and realize their dreams.   Our goal of this campaign was not to increase sales, but rather to inspire entrepreneurship.  From day 1 the only success metrics we tracked were “number of views”, and “comments & ratings”.

Recently our founder, as well as numerous employees throughout Grasshopper started receiving calls from friends asking if we had done a commercial with American Express.  People kept saying “We heard the song from your Grasshopper video on TV!”.  Like any curious person, when you hear something enough times you start to dig deeper, which is exactly what we did…We discovered Ogilvy & Mather was AMEX’s ad agency.  After some serious research and a lot of time on Google Analytics we discovered maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that Ogilvy’s new ad for AMEX is very similar to ours.  Below are a few statistics that well, made us think twice:

·         Between May 1 2009 and July 26^th 2009:

o   Ogilvy agencies visited our Grasshopper website over 15 times, spending nearly 3 hours or total viewing time.

o   The same Ogilvy agency spent the vast majority of these hours on our “idea” page which contains ONLY our video

o   The entirety of their traffic was either around May 4^th (when our campaign first launched) or the 2^nd week in July (right before their campaign launched).

o   The same Ogilvy agency then researched the producer of our video (Sonja Jacob) and visited her site 10+ times, around the exact 2 time period listed above.  All the pages they viewed were specific to Sonja’s Grasshopper work.

Now what bothered us here at Grasshopper is not how oddly similar the 2 ads are, but rather the use our message.  Ogilvy’s use of this “borrowed” message was for direct commercial gain by AMEX to promote their OPEN Forum.  We understand that here at Grasshopper we do ultimately sell a product; but the purpose of this video was to motivate entrepreneurs, or anyone for that matter, to go out and do something, make a difference.  We can’t understand why a near billion dollar agency, with so many resources couldn’t be more creative?  Either way, draw your own conclusions; I simply hope you will consider spreading the word about the video that inspired it all, “Entrepreneurs Can Change the World”, as well as the message that we really are capable of turning this country around. Here are the 2 videos and see all the analytics, and what our founder says.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6MhAwQ64c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSkA91_nURo

What do you think? Was this an outright theft? Speak up.

bookmark to:

D.A.N.C.E. With Me

Recently, a client asked what he could do to help my business, but I wasn’t ready with the answer. A lot of us probably miss these opportunities because we don’t think through what we need and how to respond when someone offers to help promote us.

Let’s take a look at the D.A.N.C.E., a few simple ways you can enlist your network to help promote your organization.

Distribute and Display. Do you have literature or product samples that you can ask someone in your network to distribute for you? Perhaps you could ask them to place your information in their next client mailing, or hand out your brochures or samples at an upcoming meeting they are attending. If they have a high traffic office, ask them to display your products or material.

Arrange. Your contact knows a lot of people that you also should know. So, get her to arrange a meeting for you. It’s best if you can get your friend to accompany you to the meeting. This helps place everyone more at ease.

Nominate. There are all sorts of awards and recognition programs. Ask someone to nominate you for appropriate business and community service awards. Your local Business Journal has a number of awards ranging from Women in Business and 40 Under 40 to Diversity awards.

Don’t forget the community service related awards, too. For instance, our local radio station, WBT has a hometown hero award. Client Bank of Commerce is the sponsor of this award.

Contact. Your network also can provide you with leads and referrals. Maybe he heard about plans one of his clients has for expansion. He could pass this lead along to you and direct you to the appropriate contact. Someone in your network could give you the names and addresses of people they think would be good prospects. Better still, they could make the first contact with the prospects and then provide you their information so you can follow up.

Endorse. Testimonials are a time honored method of getting others to promote your business. Ask your client if he would provide you with a quote on what he gained from your products or services. This endorsement can then be used in a multitude of ways from your website to direct marketing.

A good way to get others to D.A.N.C.E. with you is to do the same for them first. So, make a list of those who could help your business and then offer to help them first.

bookmark to:

Aligning Metrics

Years ago, I worked with a Fortune 500 company on an integrated marketing communications program. It was integrated everywhere except with sales. And therein lies the rub. Our marketing metrics were highly successful, but our sales metrics weren’t. Let me explain.

We were telling consumers to call the company for a free in-home survey because we discovered that if the company’s representative got into the home for the free audit, they sold – on average – five additional products or services. The program was wildly successful. The media relations part of the program targeted at local newspapers was an incredible success. The morning the story appeared in The Charlotte Observer, we almost broke the company’s telephone system we had so many calls requesting the free survey.

The company’s field representatives balked at doing the surveys because they were being incentivized for selling one certain product. The agency and the company marketing folks did not know this before the program was launched. We had even done a presentation to company managers – sales included – but no one thought to mention this small detail.

Here’s the funny part: each free survey resulted in a nearly 70 percent success rate for selling this product. Didn’t matter to the field reps. If the lead wasn’t for that product, they didn’t want to go on the call. Period.

Did the brand take a beating because of this? Oh, yeah. Did the company change its approach. Not on your life.

This is so typical of large corporations. The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.

Lesson learned: a well conceived marketing program can fail if everyone is not heading in the same direction.

bookmark to:

Calling All Carbon-Based Lifeforms

Many businesses want to market to all carbon-based life forms. They won’t take the time to really understand their audiences from geographic, demographic and psychographic perspectives.

Marketers waste a lot of time and money when they consider everyone a prospect. It requires research and a lot of thought, but for my money one of the most important elements to marketing success is clearly defining your audiences.

Geography allows you to target locations more finitely by country, state, city, neighborhood, and telephone number. You can target digital locations by knowing Internet service provider and email service information.

Demographics helps you define audiences by such elements as age, gender, marital status, race, employment status, industry, income, education, household size, market size, job function, intent to purchase, lifestyle-related habits and geographic location.

Once you have your geographic and demographic information, you can put your marketing on steroids by adding psychographic information such as personality and emotionally based behavior linked to purchase choices. Psychographic qualities you might consider include buying history, similar or related product and service interest, and activities, or hobbies.

Demographics help you identify people who might need your product or service, while psychographics help you identify those who need and desire it.

Having finely targeted your audiences in this fashion makes it easier for you to “clone” your best customers, and make the most of your limited marketing resources.

bookmark to:

What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate

Today’s successful organizations are the ones which carry on open and honest communications with their employees. If employees know and understand the mission, they will help communicate it to customers.

Here are some employee communication methods and the pros and cons of each. As in marketing communications, a multi-media approach will be most effective when delivering honest and open communication.

Meetings and Discussion Groups

Pros – Effective. Allow immediate response and feedback. Allow Q&A. Delivers message that management cares and wants open communication. Also, one of employees’ top preferred methods.

Cons – Consistency at risk with many different group leaders involved. Hard to evaluate. Can get out-of-hand and become counter-productive. Management time required.

Newsletters

Pros – Consistent, controlled message. Big picture message can be combined with local messages, allowing you to tailor to location, audience. Relatively inexpensive. Timely.

Cons – Not a society of readers. Impersonal.

Television

Pros – Consistency, control, timeliness. Chosen spokesperson speaks directly to audience. We are a TV society, so people relate well to this method. Live interaction through teleconferencing provides some of the benefits of face-to-face meetings.

Cons – Distribution. Cost. Time required on the part of the spokesperson.

Audio/Podcasts

Pros – Consistency, control, timeliness. Chosen spokesperson speaks directly to audience. Relatively low cost. Ease of use (most people have access to cassette/CD players at home, work or in the car.)

Cons – Distribution. Time required on the part of the spokesperson.

bookmark to:

Links 7/20/2009

A detached retina has kept me sidelined for about a week, but the eyesight is getting better. So, here are a few things I’m trying to read with fuzzy vision:

10 Fundamentals of Good Writing -  Why have companies lost their voice? The biggest reason is fear. Good communication can’t thrive where every word is second-guessed and scrubbed of all meaning. We’ve got to get back to good writing, and it’s up to communication executives like you to make it happen.

Twitter Generates $48 Million Monthly In Media Coverage -  What are  Twitter mentions worth? According to news-monitoring service VMS, a cool $48 million over the past 30 days. (That’s half of what Microsoft plans to spend marketing its biggest product launch of the year, Bing.)

Cinnabon Direct Mail. Mmmmmm. – (You have to register to read this).  Bakery chain Cinnabon is one company embracing direct mail over more tech-savvy channels and seeing customer acquisition rise as a result. The days of direct mail’s marketing dominance may be over, but don’t call it dead yet.

Customer Loyalty: How To Earn It. -  THINKing has written about the topic of customer retention often. There’s a saying in the business world: Customer acquisition is an investment, but profitability is built on customer retention. And with the economy in its current state, it’s more important than ever to keep the customers you have.

MasterCard Launches “Priceless” iPhone App – The Purchase, N.Y.-based company is introducing the “Priceless Picks” app, which gives consumers a location-based utility to find and share their favorite picks with others. Via the iPhone’s GPS technology, users can find shopping deals, entertainment options and dining venues based on the users’ current location or where they are going.  MasterCard is extending its “Priceless” catchphrase to a new iPhone application.

bookmark to:

Links – 7/10/2009

Here are a few things we’re reading today:

AP Works Toward Universal Online News Format -  The Associated Press, along with fellow non-profit The Media Standards Trust, unveiled a digital news “microformat” to effectively encapsulate the content and key meta-data of every news story online.

Bing’s Growth Accelerates – Microsoft is gaining ground with its search engine Bing, but Google still dominates the market. Microsoft’s Bing grabbed 5.25% of the U.S. Internet search market in the four weeks ending June 27, while Google captured 74% of the market, according to data released by Hitwise.

Evian’s Babies Take Internet By Storm -  Evian’s break-dancing babies have become an instant viral success — which is just how the bottled water company likes it, since there’s no TV media buy planned for the U.S. to support the new ad campaign, themed “Live young.”

Everything You Need To Know About Twitter You Learned From Your Grandmother -  Sure, it can help to utilize the growing number of Twitter tools available as well, but if your Twitter grade isn’t as high as you’d like it to be, you may want to take some tips from grandma.

I’m On Someone’s Media List -  THINKing has written about this before. Now, Rodger Johnson takes on the topic of PR people sending totally off-base pitches and news releases to bloggers and newspeople.

bookmark to:

Dusty Archives – July 2009

I’ve been poking around in the archives again and have come across a few articles that need to be highlighted. Most of the featured posts are in the branding category this month. Enjoy:

Color Me Orange – It seems that every major – and minor – corporation adopts blue or red for their brand identity color scheme. These colors are not necessarily the best choices for your brand.

This Pork Brand Extension Is Spot On – Since ending his racing career, Junior Johnson has taken his carefully cultivated country boy, outlaw image and turned it into a brand that makes sense.

Building Brands One Touch At A Time – So much of what we do as marketers involves communication with digital media that we forget how powerful the human touch can be in building a brand.

Shallow Brands – Here is why, I believe, so many brands are like shallow people. They come on initially with charm, energy and charisma but pretty soon it is clear the suit is empty, and it really is all about them.

bookmark to:

Has The News Media Disappeared?

The free press of my early career was a thing of beauty. It was truly a watchdog over big everything, including government. It provided non-biased coverage of issues and kept its editorials on the op-ed pages.

Today, it panders to the lowest common denominator and doesn’t provide us with the balanced information we need to make informed decisions. It merely regurgitates the government position. And the media wonders why it is withering and dying.

Let’s take this example, and it is not an isolated one. USA Today covered the death of Michael Jackson like it was D-Day.  But didn’t even mention what may be one of the biggest goverment tax increases ever through the cap and trade bill.

According to the Business & Media Institute,

Jackson, who passed away June 25, dominated USA Today. Nine articles were devoted to Jackson on June 26 and 29. The June 26 front page blared: “MICHAEL King of Pop dies” over a photo of Jackson that took up much of the remainder of the page. The top of USA Today advertised: “Faces of Jackson: Keepsake posters, 8-9D.” Jackson also was the headline on June 29: “Inside Michael’s Last Show.”

Many newspapers reported on cap and trade but relegated their stories to pages so deep most people didn’t see them. I saw some highly opinionated articles that should have appeared as editorials, instead of masquerading as unbiased reportage.

If you have been reading THINKing for a while, you know that I believe the media has a decided liberal bias. Compared to the media of my youth, it now looks almost like the state-run media of fascist Germany. Do you think the media has disappeared? Agree or disagree with me, why don’t you?

bookmark to: