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Soulati-'TUDE!

Does Your Marketing Pay It Forward?

07/22/2013 By Jayme Soulati

bowden-2-bowden.jpgTrust is the foundation stone of any successful relationship. If two people don’t trust each other, they constantly second guess the other’s motive and integrity. There is no opportunity for growth.

The relationship between a business and its customers is no exception to this rule. Customers can become intensely loyal to a particular brand, but only if they feel they can place their trust in that company. So the real question is, how can you make potential customers view your business as trustworthy?

The answer lies in social media marketing.

Why Is Social Media Such a Big Deal?

Social media has completely altered the face of Internet marketing. Previously, companies had to rely on emails, 1-800 numbers, and promotional events to connect with their customer base. But now, with the help of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, literally millions of customers are just a tweet or status update away. Twitter alone has around 500 million users.

Social media is different from most other marketing techniques because it is both simple and timely. Tweets are limited to a mere 140 characters, which means your message must be concise and relevant. People are constantly logging onto social media accounts to give and receive information, ideas, and opinions. For some, tweeting or updating their status comes before brushing their teeth or eating breakfast. In short, social media offers an immediate, dynamic, and personal way to connect with potential customers.

But How Can You Build Trust?

Many businesses grumble about the fact that they have tried this “social media thing” and not seen tangible benefit. It’s possible they have done everything right and somehow the gods of social media have simply deemed them unworthy. It is much more likely they are approaching social media marketing the wrong way.

We’ve already established social media is a completely different animal from conventional marketing strategies. It makes sense that businesses must approach it differently, as well. Traditional marketing is all about the business and the brand. It focuses on what the company has to offer and concerns itself with presenting an idea in the most appealing manner possible. To be successful in social media, the focus needs to shift to customers. People love social media because it provides a forum for sharing ideas and information. People want to be inspired, intrigued, and moved. If your company doesn’t offer content that is deemed valuable by social media users, you won’t gain a single customer.

So What Strategies Are Effective?

Being successful on Twitter is about the simple concept of paying it forward. If your company provides exceptional content, information, and insight without any brand or product flaunting, people will be drawn to it. It all goes back to that central idea of trust. When customers know they will receive interesting and relevant content from your company they are more likely to place their trust in your brand. They will want to talk about your company to their friends, family, and social media networks. Because social media is an opt-out society, users are completely in control of what brand messages reach them. Remember the core of social media is exactly that…being social. Once you establish trust, social media will become a huge boon for your brand.

 

About The Author

randy-bowden.jpg

Randy Bowden

Randy Bowden is a principal partner along with his wife, Shalah, of bowden2bowden llc, a marketing and branding consultancy firm. Specializing in developing targeted marketing solutions, exceptional creative executions and solid branding strategies that give clients a real competitive advantage. Our core team has the ability to scale quickly and effectively with trusted partners as needed. We consider them an integral part of our team and process. Our ability to approach challenging projects in an atmosphere of spirited cooperation leads to engaging, compelling solutions and successful work that yields desired results. Randy writes three posts weekly for their bowden2bowden blog.”

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Filed Under: Branding Tagged With: Brand, Business, Customer, Facebook, Randy Bowden, Salah, Social Media, Twitter

Social Media, Girls And Corporate America

07/17/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Soulati-jpgLook out corporate America, the girls are coming to a social media channel near you. Little girls, some as young as 9-years-old, have taken to activism with online petitions by Change.org against multi-national corporations the likes of McDonalds, PepsiCo, Coca Cola, Hasbro, Jamba Juice, and other unsuspecting entities.

This Crain’s Chicago Business story June 17, 2013, Girl Power; Big Business Faces A Formidable New Force: They’re under 18 and All Over Social Media, provides the scoop:

Pre-teens and teens with evolving female emotions (high-touch/high-care) about right and wrong, healthy eating, food toxicity, the Earth, animals, and more are taking issues to heart and attacking corporations via social media channels, online petitions, at corporate events, and in tandem with activist groups.

And, the floodgates are nearly breached. This generation (what label does it have as they are younger than Millennials?), was born with social media engagement. They watch their parents take snapshots on Instagram, tweet, Facebook, and basically live and breathe every social media channel.

When something goes awry in customer service, what’s the first thing an adult does? Complains on social media and takes images of the entire experience. Where are the kiddies? Watching, clicking buttons, hitting send, and reacting to their parents’ social media zeal.

Look at some of these young people and what they’ve done under 10 and 20 years of age:

  • Hannah, 9, of British Columbia attacked McDonalds in Oak Brook, Ill. In May 2013 at its annual meeting. She accused CEO in person of “trying to trick kids into wanting to eat your food all the time.” Hannah was backed by Boston activists Corporate Accountability International.
  • Sarah Kavanagh, 16, Hattiesburg, Miss. used Facebook and Twitter to get brominated vegetable oil out of Gatorade and Powerade sports beverages. (Hey, Pepsi and Coca Cola, she’s now of age; hire her!)
  • McKenna Pope, 13, Garfield, NJ lobbied Hasbro to make a gender neutral Easy-Bake Oven.

Yesterday’s Kids v. Today’s Kids

As said, the floodgates are nearly breached. How many pre-teens and teens are there watching people use social media to get what they want? Back in the day, my brother and his friends used to hit McDonalds, order cheeseburgers, eat half, take it the counter and tell them they found a hair or it was overcooked. They’d get another one and then turn around and ask for fresh fries because the ones they bought were dried out.

No more.

Teens are smarter than adults in the online world, and schools are teaching students to think differently, use online tools and take action sooner.

Corporate America is what the kids target; it is ripe for the pickins’.

What’s A Company To Do

  • Corporations need to listen!
  • Never attack a kid anywhere – in writing, in person, or via a third party.
  • Don’t use corporate speak, but don’t treat these kids as if they were adolescent.
  • Make the girls into ambassadors; invite them to company functions, ask opinions, hire them, give then a scholarship, recognize their maturity – especially the kids acting alone without help from the activist organizations.
  • Respond on social channels…graciously.
  • Social media teams who answer posts must be trained to be fully aware that children may be responding. There’s no way to determine age of a consumer especially if the avatar is an animal or shape.

No one said it was easy being on the frontline as a multi-national corporation. Smaller companies need to sit up and take notice from example, too.

One Chicago girl took on the municipality of Grayslake to ban single-use plastic bags. She is 13-years-old.

When any company believes they can ignore social media; think again. When you don’t engage, you cannot respond. When a pre-teen girl gets a brick wall in answer to a smart social media attack, look out…you’ll be on the defensive for years from not just one girl but all her friends across every single social channel.

That train? It left four years ago. If you are not taking social media seriously by now, then hop into your horse and cart and enjoy the ride.

Related articles
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  • 12 Most Attainable Goals for Social Media
  • 9 Creative Ways to Use Social Media to Launch a Product
  • You Don’t Have a Social Media Problem, You Have a PR Problem
  • Report: Salespeople Who Use Social Media Outsell Peers
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Filed Under: Business, Social Media Tagged With: Business, Coca Cola, Facebook, Instagram, Jamba Juice, McDonald, Social Media, Twitter

New Gender Marketing With Oakley And Ruffles

07/08/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Advertising Age hasn’t inspired too much blog fodder of late; perhaps it’s due to its new ugly format and thin reporting. It was too serendipitous, though, that in the June 3, 2013 issue two stories about gender marketing with men and Ruffles and women and Oakley appeared pages apart. 

Which got me thinking (always dangerous). 

Why do brands continue to have gender marketing challenges in this day and age? You know, the era of women’s equality, stay-at-home dads, paternity time, and breaking the glass ceiling, etc.?

Oakley Trying To Sun Glass Women

The sub-head of the story really surmises the irony of this brand’s challenges, “At the $1 billion (yes, billion) apparel and eye glass company, the women’s business accounts for just 10% of sales, making it the biggest opportunity.” (Read that again without gasping, really?)

Apparently, the brand has attempted to sell to women but has obviously failed. No women were managing teams; they were in product development roles instead. Pink became the predominant color of choice for the women’s line because male leadership thought every woman identified with that. Few women were positioned in leadership ranks and testosterone prevailed in the male-dominated company. 

Same-sex companies targeting same-sex customers does not beget inter-gender marketing success; I guess Oakley found that out.

Hmm, I wonder if Proctor and Gamble has noticed a trend for Daddy Mamas and is redoing diaper branding to make the box more manly?

 

Ruffles Women And The Bro Code

Ruffles, the potato chip with ridges, has always been a family brand – moms buy and the family eats. Getting too family for its britches, brand marketers sent a team of women into bars to immerse in the male snack-food psyche and crack the bro code. Men, who are too close to men, couldn’t master such research due to the introspectiveness of that analysis (or some such).

For three years (wow), the women infiltrated the snack-food brotherhood and learned a lot that resulted in these adjustments to the lowly potato chip with ridges:

  • Men shop for junk food on impulse; 25% of chips are purchased in smaller sizes. 
  • The brand began to target millennial men.
  • Packaging was redone with inspiration fueled strictly with testosterone.
  • A spokesman the likes of Ron Burgundy meshed with Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood (how the heck are they millennial inspiration?) was created, named Ruff McThickridge.
  • The Ultimate Ruffle was born with thicker, manly ridges along with Ruffles Max to go alongside the beer (not so heavy).
  • Flavors were beefier and included beer-battered onion rings.

What’s so astonishing is the longevity of both these brands. Oakley is 38-years-old and Ruffles has to be older than that. How is it that this kind of eye-opening gender marketing research is happening now? 

So glad it is, as I pity the poor man who can’t have a potato chip because the packaging is too girly. As for my sunglasses? I think I’ll settle for my Prada. Goodness knows those Oakley wraparounds would totally interfere with my curls. 

 

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Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: Advertising Age, Brand, Business, gender marketing, marketing, Oakley, Potato chip, Ron Burgundy, Ruffle, Sunglasses, Wikipedia

The Happy Friday Series: Life-Crafting Goals To Push The Envelope

06/21/2013 By Jayme Soulati

scuba.jpgThe absence of goals, or something bigger to strive for in life, leads to coasting; slowly bleeding away happiness.  As a big believer in always having goals, reaching higher, stretching personally and professionally, it bothers me when big bulls-eye personal goals are missing on the horizon. And yet, in the past few years I’ve found it easier to set business goals than personal ones.

Maybe it’s a ‘40s thing; or a Christian thing (be thankful for your many blessings, do not covet thy neighbor’s stuff); or even a self-actualization thing (yes, I was actually paying attention during the class on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs).

Even more likely? It’s a prioritization thing. Life and work are so busy that I simply don’t have time to really focus on personal goal-setting and visualizing. So sitting down in a boardroom to “plan” parts of my personal life just doesn’t work like it does for business.
I’ve given this a good bit of thought and energy and have come to two truths:  you take inspiration where you can get it, and anything that isn’t scheduled into my week isn’t likely to occur. 

 And so, I give you… Life·crafting  (the active, deliberative crafting of the life you want) just coined today for this blog post! It is a purposeful, exhilarating and ongoing process that while previously unnamed captures a habit that leads to happiness.

 

Here’s how it works. I go to conferences, networking events, dinner parties, meetings, etc. and meet a diversity of people. With each person I meet, I try to unearth at least one really interesting thing about his or her personal life.  A few examples of cool things I’ve discovered in people this week?

  • Jeff is taking flying lessons and wants to own a small plane.
  • Kathryn discovered roller derby this year and now she’s on a team.
  • Jennifer is headed to India in 2 weeks and then to London to deliver a keynote at a blogger conference.
  • Dorien has a friend who has hosted orphaned children from other countries for the summer.

Not only do I get to enjoy interesting conversation with these folks, but also I find it helps me remember names of new people more easily  (great for business), and I get to “sample” potential hobbies, possessions and activities that might be a great goal for me.  Through these conversations, I am exposed to all kinds of things I never would have thought of.  (Who even knew you could host orphaned children from another country?) When I find something of personal interest for myself, I put it on the list. (Yes, an extended trip to India is most definitely on my itinerary in the next three years!)

The mental “trying on” of these potential goals always elicits a quick reaction:

  • Pilot Lessons – would love to, but probably not interested enough to invest the time and mone
  • Roller Derby – I want to keep my teeth, 44-year-old-bones do not break well
  • India – Yes, please!
  • Orphaned children – could be a life-changing summer for all involved

Once a month I schedule time to review them.  I make an occasion of it – sit down, light a candle, have a glass of wine (or a cup of great java), some good chocolate and sort through my list. Sometimes they are small goals, skills I want to develop, hobbies to explore, etc.  But sometimes they are the spark for much larger, far-reaching goals. I ultimately became a (small scale) commercial real estate investor as a result of this process.

So I no longer plan out personal goals along with business goals once per year. It becomes a life-crafting process that evolves from month to month, along with free-flowing beverages and chocolate.  And presto! There they are – cool, fun, different, stretching goals that inspire me. And that makes me happy.

How do you find inspiration that challenges you to grow? What’s on your list?

 

About The Author

Adrienne Cregar Jandler is the Founder and President of Atlantic Webworks, a full-service web and interactive marketing firm in Greensboro, North Carolina. When she’s not working with clients on web strategy, she’s likely to be on the lake, traveling or working on property improvement projects. She also enjoys scuba diving with her husband, and is an Indian-food addict and cupcake connoisseur. Be sure to give her a tweet and circle her on Google+ .   

 

 

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Filed Under: Happy Friday Series Tagged With: Business, goals, Google+, India, life crafting, London, Personal life, Yes (band)

The Blending Of PR With Marketing Is Its Death

05/23/2013 By Jayme Soulati

The with every aspect of social marketing, search, digital marketing, and plain old marketing has provided new opportunities for older, seasoned professionals to reinvent to keep up with the changes. I know this to be true, as I am one.

Sadly, this very blend may be the demise of PR as we know it.

In a recent conversation with a table of marketers IRL originating from the disciplines of search engine optimization turned digital; PR newbies turning digital; PR veterans turning digital/social marketing; and, old-hat marketers, the chatter surrounded the old vs. new of public relations.

The old teachings of the 4Ps stemming from advertising were unknown amongst the newest professionals. Those with search engine optimization  competency likened public relations to search marketing. In fact, they said “PR is SEM.” Another had no idea that media relations and publicity are just not the entire discipline.

Me? I merely shook my head in awe at the implications for my profession within this conversation. I walked away from that discussion with a sinking feeling for tomorrow. What will PR look like in 20 years? Based on what I heard, methinks the traditional public relations profession’s demise starts now.

The blending of the disciplines is removing every single barrier and silo from core competencies and making everyone look alike. Do young professionals and our sisters in marketing and brothers in SEO understand the value public relations professionals bring to the marketing mix?  Apparently not, and who’s at fault for that?

Off the top of my head, this list below is not inclusive by any stretch, but it’s meant to provide a look at what pure public relations professionals deliver in a traditional sense:

  • Spokesperson Training
  • Thought Leadership
  • Blogger Relations
  • Industry Analyst Relations
  •  Investor Relations/Stakeholder Communications
  •  Corporate Communications
  •  Internal/Employee Communications
  •  Events Planning/Execution
  •  Community Outreach

What shook me up from my in-the-flesh conversation was the correlation people made with PR and search engine marketing. That bridge is so far from the truth, and it made my heart stop to hear it.

I’m wondering if folks believe PR peeps are only good for stuffing key words into content to game traffic and organic search?

I am all for reinventing oneself in order to earn more revenue-making opportunities. What I’m not happy about is the future of public relations when those who lack traditional hindsight are teaching new professionals that public relations is search engine optimization is digital marketing.

By Jayme Soulati

Related articles
  • Marketing Webinar: How the Convergence of Public Relations and Search…
  • Week 1-3 What is public relations?
  • Why You Should Hire a PR Agency
  • Integrating Digital Marketing & PR – Breaking Down Silos Through Content

Filed Under: Public Relations Tagged With: Business, Digital marketing, marketing, Marketing and Advertising, Media Relations, Public Relations, Search engine marketing, Search engine optimization

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