The Cliche Sin

LinkedIn recently released a list of the most overused words that people use to describe themselves on that web site.  After analyzing 135 million profiles, here are your winners… dynamic, motivated, innovative, track record, effective, organizational, extensive experience, problem solving, communication skills, and coming in at #1, Creative.

These are great words until they are used so often that they become clichés.   At that point people use them because they are not (get this) CREATIVE!

Are you perpetrating the same sin in describing your business?  Advertising and marketing can be expensive.  Don’t waste this valuable opportunity on clichés. 

No one believes your “service is second to none” or cares that you have a “knowledgeable, courteous staff.”   Stop using clichés. 

You can certainly do better.    After all, you are a creative problem solver, with extensive experience, and dynamic communication skills.

I Hate Possum Stew

How many times do I have to scream…“You can’t be all things to all people.” If you are tailoring your advertising for the masses, STOP IT! Here is a Dump-truck-size dose of reality for you. Most of us do not want your product, and we refuse to let you force it down our throat. There are only certain consumers that share your love for “Doggie sweaters” or “possum stew” or whatever it is you are selling today. Problem: most business owners believe they can make consumers use a certain product just by marketing it. Instead of trying to reach as many people as you can, take that budget and reach the right people more often. Go for the frequency. You don’t have to throw all your advertising dollars on the #1 radio station in the market or buy a commercial during the Superbowl or American Idol. Decide where your true potential customer is hanging out and grab ‘em. You are not going to make non-coffee drinkers into coffee drinkers. We are a predictable species, and we don’t like change. Your dollars are better spent marketing to people that have the same worldview. For a great take on Worldview marketing read Seth Godin’s “All Marketers are liars.”

Mom, Can I have a cookie?

“Momma, can I have a cookie? Momma, can I have a cookie? MOMMA… CAN I HAVE A COOKIE!”

Children learn at an early age the importance of repetition. They know that persistence pays off. Kids have absorbed into their snot-nosed, stinky-haired, pee-stained, spongy little bodies that they can elicit a response if they ask for something often enough.

Frequency works. Two year olds know it. Dogs even know that if they bark long enough their weak-willed master will give in. So why are advertisers so hard to convince?  The simple answer is, “No one knows for sure what the correct frequency is.”

Frequency is just the number of times customers are exposed to your message. being in the advertising business for a number of years exposes you to several theories. Three times? Six times? Nine exposures?  Maybe there is a formula tossed around by shyster consultants that make sense to you.

The most popular idea remains, contact the same person 3 times in seven nights sleep. That seems to be the magic number to create top of mind awareness. But the real answer to the question, “How many times does someone have to be exposed to my commercial?”

Until it works!

Keep Your Religion and Your Politics Out of Your Ads

Look, let’s be honest: rules tend to stymie creativity. And in an industry where creativity, or the lack thereof, can mean the difference between success and failure, breaking the rules would seem to make perfect sense because if you want to stand out, why on Earth would you even consider doing what everyone else, or even someone else, is doing? Problem is, while there are certainly “rules” one doesn’t necessarily need to follow to achieve success, there are a couple that I believe you should never, ever break in your advertising efforts. Unfortunately, Brooklyn, New York creative agencyStarvingeyes Advergaming, with their recent “Tea Party Zombies Must Die” game, pretty much willfully disregarded at least one of ‘em, if not both.

 (read the Mike Zuckerman article)

The Shopper’s Trophy

Nearly every mundane shopping trip has a trophy.  It may be a little prize, or it may be a big one, but there is usually something that a shopper buys that is a little something extra.  This is the item that the shopper brags about at home, “Hey, you’ll never guess what I got! Our favorite ice cream has a new flavor I think we’ll love.”  Or “I saw the cutest toy for our nephew.”   This is the trophy of the trip. Rarely does a shopper come home crowing that she got everything on her list.  It is the unexpected buy that is the trophy.

The recession ushered in a new era of austerity, where over-spending became a dangerous enemy for most shoppers.  A renewed focus on “the list” ensued.  However even in this climate, impulse shopping lives on.

For routine shopping trips – like grocery, shoppers have an internal mental calculator that they use to regulate their purchases.  If that is so – how can anyone buy on impulse?  The answer is that about 25% of the shopper’s total budget is subconsciously set aside for opportunistic buys.  According to a 2010 study by Dr. Kirk Wakefield at Baylor University, shoppers don’t deviate much from their budgets, but they still have plenty of impulse buys…things that are not on their list in the pre-shop.

(read more from ShopperRevolution.com)

 

Social Media: The Three Big Myths

Today, Facebook has more than half a billion active users; Twitter users send more than 140 million tweets per day; and other social media outlets boast millions more logging in every day. That’s an enormous marketing forum, and organizations of all types have invested a fortune into using social media to acquire customers. But does that approach actually work?

Not in the way you might think. Recently, Gallup conducted research with more than 17,000 social media users — evaluating everything from the latest mobile social media apps to old-school word-of-mouth. We discovered groundbreaking new insights into how people interact with social media and into its effectiveness as a marketing tool.

These findings debunk three big myths regarding social media: that it effectively drives customer acquisition, that social networkers are all the same, and that social networking is an online-only phenomenon. But more important to companies spending tons of money on social media initiatives, Gallup’s research also suggests practical actions that can make these efforts more effective.

(read the story by Blaise James and Jim Asplund)

Restaurant Brings ‘Your Name Here’ to Life

A restaurant company with a penchant for attention-getting stunts is at it again, offering to change the name of one of its restaurants to salute devoted customers.

The company is Fourth Wall Restaurants and the restaurant is the Smith & Wollensky steakhouse in Midtown Manhattan. Each day from Oct. 3 through 31, a faithful customer of Smith & Wollensky will see his or her name replace the “Smith” on the brand trappings of the restaurant like signs, awnings, matchbooks, cocktail napkins and waiters’ jackets.

The promotion is going by this description: “Pledge allegiance to us and we’ll change our name to yours.” Information can be found on the restaurant’s Web site, smithandwollenskynyc.com.

Visitors to the site are directed to a section labeled “pledge” where they are asked to avow their fealty to the vittles dished up by Smith & Wollensky at Third Avenue and 49th Street.

(read Stuart Elliott’s article)

It has always been about listening and remembering

“If you strip away all the hype around how to ‘do’ relationships, you are left with one simple concept. The real essence of a relationship is simply a memory of past interactions.” [1]

Learning is at the heart of customer loyalty management and has been ever since the empirical work of Reichheld [2] (and others) in the early 1990’s showed that customer loyalty is directly related to corporate profits. Learning about customers and remembering them is central to the task of managing customer relationships.

(read Tim Tyler’s article)

How to Apologize to Customers

If you haven’t messed up yet, just wait. Mistakes are particularly painful when they directly impact customers.

How you apologize to customers will determine how those customers view you and your company for a long time.

Here is an email I saw from Backcountry.com after they made a mistake. Note the sincerity of the wording as you read:

(read Joe Rawlinson’s article )

10 Sexist Ads Made by Total Pigs

There’s been a lot of fuss about the new “Got milk?” ads, which claim that milk eases PMS symptoms—thus making your wife or girlfriend slightly less of a crazy, irrational bitch every month. The work is intentionally provocative—some say irredeemably sexist. But to put that sexism in context, check out the 10 TV spots below—from the 1950s to today—which are all, to a greater or lesser degree, anti-woman (or anti-girl). A lot has changed in 50 years—the Folgers spot seems like something from an alternate universe today. Yet there’s been a seesaw effect, too. As advertising has become less blatantly sexist, more ads than ever are being called sexist. So, where’s the line? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

(see the Ads from Adweek)