Week of 12.21.09
@eamcc for real-time bit.ly's
The bit.lys (shortened urls) were brief this past week. Partly from the news and partly from my schedule.
Attract Loyal Customers By Creating A Magnetic Brand (BJ Bueno, MediaPost Publications, December 22, 2009, 9:20 AM) As a response-based marketer, starting with the customer comes naturally. That’s why it’s surprising and refreshing to read articles that link customer relationships and brand-building. Bueno features amazon.com, Zappos, and Netflix.
The challenge is word-of-mouth and influence. It’s hard to measure and manage, leaving it somewhat marginalized by some experts. But it’s importance cannot be overlooked.
Life Expectancy in U.S. Hits New High (Steven Reinberg, HealthDay News, December 16, 2009) Found this to be the most important news for marketers and businesses. Surprisingly, it was tweeted or bit.lied by only four other readers. If life expectancy is growing, then businesses, marketers, and brands need to consider new forms of engagement, relationship, and value drivers. Generalizing from my friendships with several ladies in their eighties, I suggest the “simplicity.”
Best demonstration yet of the potential of Google Wave.
Get out there and be creative in real-time at every stage of the process. That’s been the hardest part for many marketers and especially creative types. It’s the same song in a new application or wave. So try your own Best of Wave and see what you come up with. Then report back here, I hope.
@eamcc for real-time bit.ly's
Week of 12.14.09
Last week demonstrated a clear trending away from tried-and-true media for marketers and corporate sponsors. It’s clear that digital is here. For some, like Nike that received the best digital campaign of the decade, digital is here to stay. Sony Ericsson, is taking a new route to sponsoring the 2010 World Cup — interactive marketing via social networking sites.
As these seven featured bit.lys received the most click throughs, you’re sure to find them useful. Welcome your comments.
- World Cup sponsor shuns tradition, targets Twitter route
- The Present and Future of Direct Digital Marketing
- Q and A: The Death of Languages from Schott’s Vocab: A Miscellany of Modern Words and Phrases (NYTimes.com, Dec. 16, 2009)
- End-of-Year Article Template: Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus
- AdweekMedia; Best of the 2000s – Digital Campaign of the Decade: Nike Plus
- IAB Privacy Matters Campaign Creative
- Web Sites Cut Back On Shipping Offers: MediaPost
Put aside all the books, tags, and tweets about personal branding and keyword optimization. Here’s one of the simplest personal branding and keyword testing tools I know.
Created by Aaron Zinman of MIT, this search tool visualizes your online persona by mining public data for the name you enter. Since data mining doesn’t discriminate, the results can be confusing. For example, I share my keyword with a robust motor club around the globe!
Every marketer knows that and is working to optimize the integrity of data. Every personal brander and business professional knows to conduct a regular search for their name for networking and reputation management. But what about your persona? Yes, I can know that my reputation is squeaky clean with recommendations to prove it. Twitter grades and counters also give numbers.
But what about your persona? After all, isn’t that what social media — and especially blogging — is about? That can be tricky and grey — a color algorithms don’t like much. So for a test, I entered my personal keyword/moniker and here’s what I learned about how the Internet sees my persona.
How you look, in data
“Online, management, fashion, professional, design, education” popped up. The results fit my intentions, which was quite pleasing. Interesting that legal came up as a category. But then, I’m careful to register my all my content through Creative Commons, so it’s no surprise.
Try it — see what happens.
Use it as a quick tool to see your brand and persona in the numbers. Then I hope you’ll report back here and share your experience.
But to find and grow a market for anything — whether green products or new health delivery plans — means staying close to what users can adopt easily and then leading them to the next iteration.
— Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Find the 15-Minute Competitive Advantage, (Harvard Business Publishing, 9:26 AM Monday November 9, 2009)
This article just made its way through my Twittersphere. The steps to success approach is certainly valid. Quite honestly, I clicked through thinking the piece would discuss read more…
Fascinating track about age patterns and email usage. Great thought piece for all marketers in planning strategies. Wow. Use of social networks increases use of email.
As a creative person, learning these patterns is invaluable in crafting compelling, engaging conversation. It helps me set the stage of the chat, plotting content, context, and setting an overall tone.
- Do your patterns match the research?
- Do your behaviors change for personal, business, and permission-based e-mail communications?
- How do you, as a marketer, apply this research to developing new creative and/or marketing strategies.
Most fascinating for me is mention of reasons why people follow brands on Twitter and other networks. It’s the coupons and discounts. Does this mean we’re back to silos of marketing and advertising or funnels of pushing customers through a sales pipeline?
For me, it’s a definite no as the customer owns the brand, like it or not, in the mind of today’s customer. Especially younger customers. So that attitude is not going away but growing. It will, to borrow from the speaker, become a “workhorse” attitude that marketers must accept as a baseline. Engagement begins and remains with the customer. Authenticity, courtesy, and empowerment become the “product” that brands will offer customers.
Read on for numerous examples of brands like Outback that grow their list in response to Facebook and Twitter promotions. Of course, the story’s just beginning. But it’s definitely in need of review. And as response marketers, it’s our role, vision, passion to test and retest, learn and refine.
Borrowing from Marshall Field, “Give the lady what she wants.” We, as marketers, just need to keep on track in real-time.
Thanks!
My bit.ly click-throughs keep rising!
Here’s a recap of this week’s real-time shares on Twitter, along with annotations about what sparked my interest, preview and initial click-through.
Feel free to bookmark this post or individual articles. To enjoy a real-time feed, follow me on Twitter.
Direct Sales Slide at Nieman Marcus (Multichannel Merchant, 12.10.09)
- Luxury retailer Nieman Marcus prepared for reduced sales with reduction in inventory vs. prices. These bottom-line, back-room choices show great forethought in protecting the brand’s integrity and its sweet spot in the hearts of customers. Buying less and paying less are entirely different matters. Tags: marketing, retail, luxury
Location Matters: How Ad Environments Affect Performance (Dean Donaldson, Advertising Age Digital Next, 12.10.09)
- Banner ads, the author argues, have become a game of ad size at the expense of strategic placement. Strategic placement, in turn, links implicity to creative content and strategy. Tags: advertising, media, placement, online ads
About Google Wave (Google I/O 2009)
- Early testers of Google Wave may be surprised that colleagues you invite — including some designers and traditional marketers — may be dimly to unaware of Google Wave. This 1-hour video offers developers a preview of Google Wave and the opportunities it provides to take e-mail, community, and collaboration to the next level. Tags: Google Wave, social networking, community
Word of the Day: Traumatophobia (Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus, 12.10.09)
- Traumatophobia is not a word that will boost your search page rankings. Still, it’s good for writers and all creatives to kick back and have fun with language. As I teased on Twitter, it’s “A word you can’t afford in a recession.” Tags: creativity, words, writing, word-of-the-day (WOTD)
Word of the Day: Evanescent (Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus, 12.05.09)
- Another word for poets and literary reviews. Last Saturday, I challenged tweeples to use Evanescent in an tweet. Lots of click-throughs but no takers. How ’bout you? Tags: creativity, words, writing, word-of-the-day (WOTD)
Why Rich Consumers Matter More (Yahoo! News, from Rick Newman, U.S. News & World Report, 12.04.09)
- Yahoo! News reports that the rich are inching back to pre-recession spending patterns. In running the numbers, the article reports that the rest of us should take comfort in this news as it’s an early indicator of recovery. Tags: retail, marketing, luxury, recession
Monkeys Recognize Their Pals in Photos (Yahoo! News, from HealthDay, 12.04.09)
- Fascinating article on any account. Still for me as a creative person, it provided some humor and relief to the discussions over ad impressions, recall, and retention. So many argue that focus groups are dead, I twittered “Mmm…marketing application”? Tags: marketing, research, recall
One article, in particular, rattles my creative mettle — “Location Matters: How Ad Environment Affects Performance.” Let me work out my thoughts this weekend and post Monday. Best all.
P.S. Please send your comments about any of these articles or post links to related subjects.
