Digital Marketing Strategy, PR and Messaging
This is the coolest thing since sliced bread! An accolade that needs sharing.
Soulati-‘TUDE! is included as a 50 Small Business Blogs to Watch!
Scroll on down this so very well-done infographic from Infusionsoft, and you will find a PR section with mention of this blog in esteemed company with Spin Sucks!
THANK YOU, INFUSIONSOFT!!
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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.?
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:
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.
Soulati Media On The Street brings Randy Bowden, of Bowden 2 Bowden Marketing, to the screen from the New South Digital Marketing Conference May 17, 2013 in Myrtle Beach.
Randy makes it his goal to attend as many conferences within driving distance as possible. Why? You can find that answer right here when you listen to Randy’s answer as Jayme tries to act a bit southern and fails.
Meanwhile, don’t miss Randy blogging right here and also his own foray into G+ hangouts on “Marketer 2 Marketer” where he just featured two prominent influencers, Danny Brown and Sam Fiorella, who just published their book, Influence Marketing!
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:
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
Credit: ZDNet.com
Whether the term gamification connotes negativity or it’s just a word taken direct from the video game industry to entice, the trend is pulsing through social customer service, location-based marketing, and social marketing.
You need to begin now to view gamification as something that inspires, incents and motivates customers, employees, prospects, and others who engage with your brand in a variety of ways, on mobile platforms, in-person, via phone, or other.
At the core of gamification is a study in human behavior.
There is a burgeoning and nascent industry around the psychology of human connectivity which also stems from how we’re wired to compete.
Several years ago, Klout hit the social stage, and many pioneer users were up because the platform was assigning scores on “influencers” based on the number of tweets and +K awarded on a variety of irrelevant topics and levels of engagement. Was that really influence or was it selective tallying of whose on Twitter longer than most?
Flash forward. After many closed their Klout accounts in public protest, I just received last week my first Klout Perk — a free Sony Walkman. My Klout hovers around 60, and I can influence that score by three points sitting at Social Slam and tweeting and Facebooking and Instagramming all day in conference. Is a Klout perk bribery or good marketing? It’s probably good old gamification — incentivizing Klout users to tout, share, post, feel good, and compete, while sharing the good news in a blog post that a free Sony Walkman just arrived. (Yes, I felt compelled to write about that; it’s a high-quality product and I paid nada.)
Meanwhile, earning badges and becoming the mayor on Foursquare drives my competitive streak. While recently on spring break driving 2,500 miles, I was the leading scorer among my Foursquare friends until someone in the UK racked up 1,000 points literally overnight. My 11-year-old kidlet and I were not happy; so I tried to unfriend that guy to no avail. We knew he gamed the system and cheated while I diligently checked in at each Hilton hotel to earn 50 points in the Hilton Honors program.
With these two examples from one person, multiply that by Pi. I’m not even a gamer; I’m in a much older demographic, and I hardly engage with the platforms that would allow me to compete at a furious pace.
Website magazine’s May 2013 issue has a short piece by Evan Hamilton, head of community for UserVoice, on this topic. He references Zappos, Wired magazine, and Gartner’s prediction that 50% of brands will gamify by 2015 and 70% of the largest organizations will have at least one gamification app.
What he also writes is of interest:
“Gamification is not about creating motivation, it’s about reminding people of their inspiration.”
Think about that a moment…
Hamilton says…”If you’re trying to get your users more engaged, take a deep look into what inspires them. Then try building in gamification that evokes that inspiration and reminds them of why they’re doing what they’re doing.”
Social customer service is an area ripe for gamification. The frontline ambassadors need to realize that their motivation is not about earning a badge for the most calls completed; rather, motivation needs to be satisfied customers.
I find the psychology of human behavior behind gamification fascinating. As marketers, we need to delve into the crux of customers’ competitive nature and their need to be acknowledged. Blend that core element into product marketing, customer service, and mobility programs and platforms to motivate response via winning beyond just earning a badge or free dessert.
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