Marketing Archives - Page 8 of 14

Do Powerful Brands Use Heart?

03/07/2013 By Jayme Soulati

The full-page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal boasts a “four-layered masterpiece” describing the hazelnut swirl atop the new Hazelnut Macchiato by Starbucks. The final words we’re left with (there are only 25 words total) are “Crafted by hand and heart.”

Several years ago, I complained to anyone who’d listen that Starbucks was in bed with the Wall Street Journal. I had never seen so much publicity and positive stories in this national business daily for a brand without the power and global reach of IBM, for example.

Incidentally, IBM is one of the five stocks being attributed for pushing the Dow to record high on March 6, 2013.

The ad we’re seeing by Starbucks today is colorfully creamy with espresso blending into the white latte to show a caramel you can’t resist (I never buy those ridiculously expensive lattes that are so full of calories, too). What is an appeal, suggests Starbucks, is that every barista makes your coffee drink with loving care — from the heart.

I’ve heard of people say that some baristas write a patron’s name on a cup with a cute little heart and a “have a great day” sentiment. I wonder if anyone has ever written a phone number for some cute customer? I think that would be too much heart.

Brands Using Heart Marketing

No other examples of powerful brands using heart come directly to mind, and (I think I just coined a new marketing field, Heart Marketing), so let’s do a scan through the last two days of Wall Street Journals to see whether heart is conjured:

Toyota: Toyota Shakes Up Top Ranks. Apparently, the family-owned car giant is now ready to welcome outsiders with open arms to its executive management. Think that’s a heart-felt move? Nope, just one of necessity for survival.
Clorox: The general counsel of Clorox, Laura Stein, researched the new CEO’s management style to learn how better to work with him. The new CEO, Donald Knauss “likes her go-getter style; ‘she will help anyone who asks for help.'” Heart or get-ahead smarts? I’m saying a bit of both. People who help have to be transparent or it’s just too smarmy.
Honest Tea: I wrote a post right here about Honest Tea and its CEO op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (what is it about the Wall Street Journal and beverage companies?) and in today’s paper that company gets a quarter page of top publicity with three color photos of beverages about Honest Tea’s New Soda. This company does have a heart and I know its guiding principles are about heart. Yes, a good example of powerful brands living by and using heart.

Let’s think of this a bit differently:

The world is a horrifying place for adults who are in touch with global and domestic news.
While the Dow dinks around in record territory and the housing crisis abates somewhat, students are still faced with record tuition at public universities.
Families are still grappling with lack of employment and other personal issues which contribute to red ink.

Is Starbucks on to something? With its subliminal copywriting that its baristas have a heart and care for you; does that work and will that bring in the patrons to order the new Hazelnut Macchiato?

Heart should not ever be taken with a grain of salt. It’s what I’m teaching kidlet — live from the heart, give to others first, focus outward, understand why someone is a bully and try to help them (well that’s a bit far fetched for a kid), but hopefully you get my drift.

Heart and Social Media

Heart computes in social media, too.

There are numerous people asking for help.

In fact, a 16-year-old asked me this week two questions about his brand new social media agency. Did I believe his prices were solid and how could he earn some credibility because people didn’t want to work with someone so young. I gave him my thoughts more than once and I invited him to write a guest post for The Happy Friday series.
How about the young man who found me locally who was writing a book and wanted my help publicizing that book? Now, mind you, that book of his was ensconced with one of those you-pay-we-publish businesses that just wanted his money; however, I spent time with him and counseled him and wrote a website and did a video with him. No charge.

What does your heart look like? How do you live it? I’m not talking about how much love you have for your offspring or spouse or partner. I’m talking about the values with which you live at work. Do you spout off about having heart, “C’mon, have a heart already!” or do you seriously come from a genuine place filled to the core with nurturing and caring and a desire to help, teach, support, share, and develop solid relationships?

Powerful brands can try to use heart to appeal to a patron who is down in the dumps; you, however, have the opportunity to make that a reality — a genuine and authentic reality.

What’s the outcome of all this? When someone you don’t know says to someone you do know who shares it with you, “You know what? I really like that girl, she’s the real deal.”

Enough said. Show me your heart…there’s a place for more love in business and social media. The scuttle butt I’m seeing, reading and hearing hasn’t been from the heart; perhaps it should be a guiding principle for each of us.

By Jayme Soulati

We’re Drowning In Marketing

03/04/2013 By Jayme Soulati

It’s daunting being a marketer these days. The lexicon in how we market has widened into an array of confusing methods to attract better brand positioning, growth, ROI, influencer authority, social this and that, and consumer loyalty.

The latest favorite is influencer marketing. Last week on this blog, we took an angular look at Google+, Google Authorship and Influence Marketing.

Buy Influencer Marketing Books

Several books written by peers in my own social circles are must reads to keep us thinking strategically and visionary.

You may pre-order Influence Marketing: How to Create, Manage and Measure Brand Influencers in Social Media Marketing (Que Biz-Tech) written by Danny Brown and Sam Fiorella.

They have been writing it up with a large amount of content on blogs, Google+ Communities, and in comments all over. It promises to be a must-buy and read.

Meanwhile, a dear colleague of mine, Mark W. Schaefer, has written a quick read,Return on Influence, The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing, his second book that has hit the corporate world (IBM recently bought 500 copies) and the social media sector by storm.

Because I know all three of these peeps and vouch for their own cred and influence, you ought to consider purchasing these books for your reading pleasure.

Now, back to the topic at hand…If some marketers think they’re drowning, how does a company cope with that?

Does every marketing team need to know every aspect of marketing, or can they learn in a steady trickle?

The good news is, everyone is in the same boat absorbing knowledge and learning new tactics at the same time. How marketers execute on these evolving techniques is how one differentiates.

Here are my thoughts on how companies should stay the course with these basics and never mind the marketing buzz until prepared to address them head on:

Five Marketing Basics

1. Set up a solid team of people with the right mix of marketing for various types of organizations, someone in PR, another knows email and inbound marketing, a copywriter, a social media enthusiast, and someone familiar with advertising for all media.

2. Assess and solidify brand and dust off that mission statement! It’s critical to revisit this to ensure the company is growing in alignment with founders’ goals and vision.

3. Hire Jayme Soulati (shameless, I know) to do your message mapping exercise. No matter if your company is established or just starting, message mapping charts your company’s communication course.

4. Build a responsive website. I’m not talking about a website that looks good on a mobile device; I’m talking about a scalable site that conforms to smart devices and positions calls to action and contact information on the top of the screen followed by all the rest of the goodies. When your company keeps a website that requires visitors to slide windows back and forth, then the message you’re sending is pretty much, “We just don’t care.”

5. Pay attention to social media and engage already. You have to; you just do. In this post-social media adoption era, there are still companies without the basics in place. Companies owe it to consumers to connect via social media channels. If all we get is a direct mail coupon with no other channel, that is grounds for negative online reputation.

Confused about any of the above? Please ask me, I’m right here.

By Jayme Soulati

SUBSCRIBE AND NEVER MISS A POST!

Google+ Meet Influence Marketing

02/28/2013 By Jayme Soulati

By Jayme Soulati

In developing my piece on Google Authorship, and another one this week on niche networks, I needed a link for the words, “brand evangelist.” What happened in the next three minutes shocked me into writing this piece and made me extremely nervous that Google+ is going to influence influence marketing whether we want it to or not.

The steps that occurred are spelled out here carefully so you can follow along. See what you glean from what I did; do you come to the same conclusion, or not?

My search for “brand evangelist” was returned by Google. I saw a series of Google Plussers who had written a post or piece published on Google+ featuring these key words.
Each of the folks listed were mentioned with their Google Authorship profile. There was a photo as well as the number of people this person had in circles and the number of circles this person was in.
I scrolled down page one of my search on Google to see if I recognized anyone.
Way at bottom, I saw Mack Collier’s name although his Google Authorship information was not included because his post was pre-Google+.
Because I didn’t recognize an author or publication (there were few), I looked more closely at each person’s Google+ profile seeking anything that would help me discern influence.
I saw the quantity of circles each person was in; wouldn’t that mean something? The peep with the highest number of circles would supposedly be more influential, right? And knew what they were talking about? (Remember, this was happening over a minute to find one hyperlink.)
I set out to select the link for the person with the most circles.

Inadvertently, I had just discerned that I would select a hyperlink using someone’s Google+ post content in my blog post based on the quantity of circles associated with that unknown person.

I am agog. I believe strongly that it’s never about quantity; it’s about quality!

I did the exact thing that people complain about Klout for; I associated influence scoring of my own creation and subconscious to determining strength of content and influence.

I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, if I had automatically begun to select someone from a Google search with the highest number of circles, then every other company would be doing the same without a shred of second thought.

What does this mean for how influencers are screened?

Anyone who understands what’s written above understands what I’m getting at…we can hide behind a Klout score because it’s not well-known as an influence metric.

When someone in business plugs in a key word or phrase and watches those with Google Authorship turned on scroll by, then the ones with the most circles wins, right? (Based on what I just experienced first hand, to my utter chagrin.)

One can only hope I’m wrong. Danny Brown, Sam Fiorella, Neal Schaffer? Can you weigh in on this, perhaps?

Meet A New Layer In The Sales Channel: The Genius

02/19/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Credit: Jayme Soulati; Santa Monica Apple Store

BMW went on a date with Apple and the former liked the latter’s “genius model” so well that it swiped the concept flat out. That’s OK; it’s allowed.

In 2014, BMW dealerships across the U.S. will roll out “BMW Genius Everywhere,” the program that puts IT-savvy youngsters complete with iPad in hand on dealership sales floors to interact with customers.

Just like Apple’s genius program where (mostly) 20-something men (have you ever seen a female wearing Apple genius shirt in store?) patrol Apple retail stores to help customers, BMW is doing the very same…taking a page from a successful Apple marketing and sales playbook.

As more vehicles go high tech with bells and whistles only IT-savvy dudes can figure out, BMW is helping its sales team by intercepting the customer with a barrage of cool information about vehicle tech features inside the car.

This new talent will stop short of selling vehicles, and they will be on salary and not commission. The program is set to coincide with the 2014 rollout of BMW’s i3 electric car. Cadillac and Lexus already have similar programs in the U.S.

Thinking About Customers

I love this marketing program.

It’s a steel bridge from the prospect to sales with the girder being a genius aka college upstart hungry to work with nothing but geek to share.
It finally puts marketing and sales on the same team; marketing gets to help disseminate information to prospects about vehicle features and pave the way for the sale.
Marketing gets to LISTEN directly to the customer with face-to-face interaction the likes of which only happens in a focus group session behind mirrored glass.
Young students can work nights and weekends without interfering with studies during the day.
Sales people are passed a hotter lead from the genius who can share more features and functionality about a vehicle than the sales person would know (e.g. how the USB port works and whether there’s a way to make the car a hot spot when driving).
As for customers, interacting first with a genius means no pressure to buy. Someone can listen to the good stuff, walk away and phone back and ask for a sales person.
The program is already doing well in the U.K. and will roll out across Europe.

Your Brand
Let’s think a moment about how this impacts your brand, and it doesn’t have to be a luxury brand to think about how to engage customers and prospects on a different level.

Your company should already be engaging customers via social media channels; however, is there also room for a 1:1 program where your team is on the frontline with prospects?

Let’s talk about what that program looks like…creativity is the name of the game to cut through the chatter.

Dust Off Your Company Mission Statement

02/11/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Courtesy of Ben and Jerry’s

Before a company establishes a blog, it’s important to determine its goals. Maybe it’s to drive sales or strengthen a brand; or, perhaps it’s to become an influencer in a category or sector. Either way, a blog has goals just like program strategy has goals.

If you own or work at a company, having business goals are also critical. Everything implemented throughout the company is in alignment with business goals.

What of a company mission statement?

No matter the size of your team, if you’re a small-to-medium business (SMB), then you need to think strategically about your company’s purpose. What is the philosophy you’ll guide your teams with? With whom are you engaging and in what location? Do you have a product or service you want to particularly focus on that should be added to your mission statement?

I honed in on the word “mission” in a story by Crain’s Chicago Business when I saw the viral video by the Chicago Music Exchange called “100 Riffs.” The owner of the Chicago Music Exchange asked its employees to create viral video (I think you can only create video with the hopes of it going viral, really).

The video of 100 riffs on the history of rock in one take did go viral and is still being viewed on YouTube. The campaign was submitted to Crain’s Chicago Business and was featured in a story. The owner of the Chicago Music Exchange said the video aligned with its mission, was perfect for customers, and showcased the very essence of the Chicago retailer of music equipment.

In the Jan. 28, 2013 issue of Advertising Age, a story “How the usually dry annual report has become brands’ secret marketing weapon,” detailed how a bland annual report took the 2012 Cannes International Festival of Creativity by storm.

Austria Solar submitted what looked to be a completely blank white book as its annual report. The pages were solid white with no ink…until someone took the book outside and exposed it to solar rays. The sun’s rays reacted with the specially treated paper to bring the words inside to light, literally.

Here’s the hitch…the article stated, “While it could have come across as gimmicky, it was a solid concept that conveyed the company’s mission in a single, startling moment.”

Think about that a sec…here is a reporter making the connection from a highly creative annual report the likes no juror at this international competition has ever seen to the company’s mission. When do reporters draw that bridge? When something so extremely innovative makes someone connect the dots to the company that launched it. Fabulous, eh?

We can draw the same correlation to the Chicago Music Exchange video, too. It asked the staff to develop something that showed customers its equipment, talent, knowledge, and love for music — all part of the mission.

We rarely see mission statements of companies; they’re oft hidden on websites or buried deep in a dusty file cabinet. Every so often, pull your mission statement off the shelf and see if your company is adhering to that original intent, philosophy, and strategy with highly creative products, services and actions.