Promotions

There are various modalities and senses of urgencies that flow through the upper echelons of executives at major corporations. Most of these individuals realize there is a time to grab market share as well as a time to plan a strong counter defense to against any and all plausible business, nuclear scenarios. Sometimes they’ve got to get into the boardroom and realize that the strategical direction that they are taking their company is concretely and 100% absolutely even more vital than the sugar coated, feel-good marketing messages that they continue to beam out into the ethos for all of the letdown customers to hear. Thus, drawing an even bigger divide in customer’s thought space re: the brand and what it really is vs. what they’re getting told it is. more

Time magazine has several elements that reinforce its brand. Its distinctive red cover border, the central positioning and font of its logo and its reliance on single, full-page cover images all evoke the Time magazine feel.

Since 1927, Time has linked another element to its brand – its annual Person of the Year issue. While the idea of awarding an individual annual honor is widely duplicated, the concept is tied more closely to Time magazine than any other entity.

The key aspect of this element is selecting a person. Marketers immediately grasp the benefit of choosing an individual: It’s the resulting discussions. Love the pick, hate the pick. Water-cooler conversations over a specific person incorporate the magazine’s name. Reinforce the idea of a person of the year and build that brand, baby. more

Below were my 2011 marketing predictions. Let’s journey together and see if my crystal ball needs cleaning:

I can’t really claim these are anticipated, but here they are, my 2011 predictions advertising/marketing/communication specific to the New Year. For the record, my last few years’ predictions have been accurate. Use or dismiss this prose at your discretion.

Prediction #1: Video will play a keener role in website conversions, and marketing as a whole. It’s already happening and with YouTube the second most popular search engine (that’s right, only Google is bigger), it just makes sense. Zappos and other sites already know this, so test video on your site(s) and watch conversions skyrocket. As such, SEO/SEM will play a critical role in marketing effectiveness next year.



Video is being added to every new website that we now build and is being incorporated into old sites as well. YouTube continues to grow, so I would say this was spot-on. How often do you view video content on websites compared to one year ago?

Prediction #2: Consumer and Business purchasing decision-makers are changing their buying patterns because of advances in technology and the ubiquity of information that can be had on Google, YouTube, Yahoo, Bing, Rock Melt and the like. Thus, those who understand data – specifically how that data relates to transactional occurrences by each KEY target market segment – will rule the day. This applies to both customer and prospect segments. We have trained buyers to this fact: know intuitively who I am, what I am seeking and make it as easy as possible for me to do/continue to do business with you. Those companies that don’t understand this will be watching their bottom lines evaporate.

The web is blurring the lines between B2B and B2C marketing. Relevancy is the key to making me want to buy from you. Agree?

Prediction #3: Larger companies will hire more reputation mangers to make sure they can react swiftly to the chatter – specifically the negative chatter – that is so easy to post and even easier to go viral in 2011 and beyond. It’s a trend that will continue to grow and customers/prospects gain more powerful customer relation options thanks to the the web. more

There it was, dangling over the roadway from a tree along the side of the road in a small community in upstate New York. A large three-sided purple box tethered high up in the tree by a long yellow rope. It had suddenly appeared there. There was no sign explaining what it was and no wording that the naked eye could see from our human perch on the asphalt down below.

Everyone in town began talking about the purple box. All had the same question: What is that? more

I came away from this week’s annual conference of the Direct Marketing Association with a mixture of admiration and confused disorientation. On the one hand, the DMA (motto: “Even if the Post Office goes toes up, we’ll still be around!”) seemed determined to put its paper-based, push-message legacy behind it by fielding an agenda that recognized that the mail slot is not the only route to consumers’ attention. There were tracks devoted to branding, social media, mobile campaigns and cross-channel integration. (And at the same time, virtually no mention of the association’s rooting interest in digging the USPS out from under its most recent avalanche of woes.)

Even if the substance of those sessions didn’t live up to the advance publicity—hands up, all those who felt seeing Twitter co-founder Biz Stone Skyping the opening keynote from his San Francisco rec room was a gyp— the effort to re-position the group was worthwhile. And crucially necessary for its survival.

The dislocated feeling came from the speakers, from DMA chief Lawrence Kimmel on down, who kept insisting that all these new channels for reaching consumers always boiled down to measurability, and that’s what placed them directly in the realm of traditional direct marketing. Brand marketers who have looked down on DM have finally come around to direct’s emphasis on measurement, Kimmel exulted in his welcome address—stopping just short of adding “nanny-nanny-boo-boo.” more

Apparently there’s nothing so enjoyable that someone can’t find a way to make it nasty. Now flash mobs, those pseudo-spontaneous acts of guerrilla goofiness, have made their way onto the list of criminal tactics retailers need to be on the lookout for.

The National Retail Federation has included “criminal flash mobs” in its list of theft tactics retailers should be aware of. A surprising number of them already are, to their dismay. more