Sometimes people get so wrapped up in tactics that they try to make one tactic fit all strategies. Two articles and a phone call this week reminded me of this. And, also, a project I am currently working on, but more about that later.
Yes, I actually look at every follow request. I only have 1000+ followers and get maybe 10 requests a day–no complaints!–so I can take a moment to check them out. Unfortunately, the latest spam trend is killing me, but there is wheat mixed in with the chaff and I discovered a quick way to separate the spam from the real people.
Here’s five ways to make sure I won’t follow you and know you are Twitter spam: Continue reading →
OK, here’s a story about the importance of using myths, or stories, to market product. Yeah, I know, the idea of Las Vegas as a myth is not exactly a big “eureka!” moment, but it does demonstrate that even in a fantasy town marketers need to be reminded of the importance of the myth in the marketing process.
The New York Times ran this article about using stories to sell sake in their Dining and Wine section, but it really belongs in their Business section.
Las Vegas “whales”, as big gamblers are known in Las Vegas, come to town on Chinese New Year to celebrate and they celebrate in a very big way. Part of the celebration is showing, and enjoying, their success, and that involves having the best of everything, including the best food and drink. In keeping with that theme, Las Vegas restaurants look for something special and expensive to serve, something that is not easily found anywhere else in the world, and at the moment that product is sake.
Sake suppliers and restaurateurs have rediscovered that a great story sells higher priced product, so they now have stories about all their sake. Some stories parallel Hollywood movies:
strains of rice that were thought extinct until small batches were discovered and saved with new growing techniques – Jurassic Park
the prodigy sake brewer (yes, sake is brewed, like beer) raised from a young age to become a master and carry on a tradition – Kung Fu Panda
the ancient sake company, around for over 800 years, that is saved by the new owner – The Santa Clause
Yes, these are ridiculous movie comparisons. But that’s the point, they develop and use the myth to enhance the product. When myth is not enough, there are special names evocative of Asian philosophy and poetry: Ice Dome, Devine Droplets, Ancient Beauty.
There is really nothing new here, the Las Vegas crowd is just applying standard marketing techniques to create and enhance brand image in a commodity market. Rosser Reeves invented the Unique Selling Proposition (USP) in the 1940’s to help focus attention on finding the most important product attribute and then build the myth on that attribute. Patent medicine peddlers of the 1800’s crowed about all the ills their miracle would cure and regularly cured someone in the crowd of their infirmities.
We can all take a lesson on this and look at how we market our most mundane products. There is always something special about “our” product and we can find the myth that supports our brand over all other brands.
Yep, once again the Super Bowl stuffed us with new ads: Betty White and Abe Vigoda took turns getting stuffed on the playground gridiron: Budweiser vacillated between celebrating their brand’s glorious past with another Clydesdale ad, and it was nicely done, and celebrating the dumbest party scenes imaginable with Bud Lite (full disclosure: Bud Lite is my favorite summer beer for closing out weekend chores in hot weather, the main advantages being that it is cheap and watery); and Danica Patrick helped GoDaddy.com dose us with really low level sexual humor.
But two ads stand out in my mind as something special and, even though the ads are built around huge brands, they teach what small business can do in advertising; David Letterman and Google.
Why Google?
This is simple, and that is the Google ad’s strength. Google told us a story, a very familiar love story, and demonstrated how their product helped this story happen. With only a simple music track and some background sounds (check the baby giggle at the end of the ad), a quiet track compared to the rest of the overblown loud ads, Google told the story through the search field of their own home page. They kept their brand in front of the audience during the entire commercial and showed how their suggested search terms lead the protagonist through an entire love story, first meeting through married-with-kids, set in Paris. The whole ad demonstrated Google’s effort on keeping things simple, staying centered on search, and on being relevant.
Google’s ad was an obvious response to Microsoft’s Bing ads showing how Google’s search can bring up too broad a response. Google showed how that broad response can bring serendipity. What will be important is seeing whether Google will follow this up with more advertising to counter the Bing ads, one ad will not hold back the tide (Apple’s “1984” ad notwithstanding).
Why David Letterman?
Because each ad for these two large brands worked on a human scale, they told a story, and they were smart.
Personally, I am no fan of David Letterman’s humor. I am more of a Leno-O’Brien-Fallon kind of guy, I like the positive. To me, Letterman just has too much of a nasty side to his humor. But this ad was smart, it used surprise, and it used a pretty negative situation and turned that into a positive. Jay and Oprah appeared with Dave, they even appeared on the same couch.
My wife and I looked at each other in shock and swore that Oprah and Jay were celebrity lookalikes, but that theory was dashed almost immediately after the game when a promo came on confirming that all three people were the real item and not dubbed or faked in any way. Jay and Dave together on the couch, after the internecine war when Dave was passed over to Jay almost 20 years ago, still passing barbed comments with Oprah, the queen of togetherness, sitting frustrated between them.
Who wins with this ad? Everyone. David Letterman wins by having himself linked with Oprah and Jay while he is sitting atop the heap of late night television (although Conan was giving him a good run for his money that last two week before he bowed out of NBC and the Tonight show). Oprah wins because she is winding down her show and preparing for some future that will probably not involve her sitting on an island counting her billions, she is too motivated and engaged to waste her time lounging around (I am waiting to her about her second act). Jay wins because he got great publicity on the competing network that might help pull back some of the audience NBC lost with their business-busting moves.
So what did we learn?
Keep it simple. Tell a story. Demonstrate your product or service. Be smart and respect your audience. Stay true to your brand. When everyone else is yelling, consider whispering.
The Losers? (according to me, anyway)
Dockers and CareerBuilder.com. Really guys? The best you both can come up with is people in their underwear? Seems like both creative teams got lost on the No Pants Day public transit movement. At least the creative teams have not seen a Naked Bike Ride (no link, too NSFW, but you can Google it).
Intel. A sad robot? What about the other sad robot commercial that appeared about an hour later? I forget what the second sad robot advertised, but it was a complete parallel.
Punch Buggy? Gee, when I was a kid the VW Beetle was called a ” slug bug”, and for good reason since it came stuffed with some 40 horses in the trunk. Actually, I liked the ad and I think it communicated the brand pretty well, but where did this punch buggy term come from? Maybe it’s one of those “Hellman’s” versus “Best Foods”, or “soda” versus “pop”, geographical differences.
Oh, yeah, that was a great Super Bowl, too. I actually watched the whole thing through without switching channels this year!
Yes, I’ve been on Twitter longer than I’ve been blogging; although I think we can safely say that Twitter is a short-form blog, so maybe Twitter counts in my blogging timeline.
What have I learned in this first year?
Twitter is something I really enjoy. I follow a small group of tech industry analysts, a few Web 2.0 proto-celebrities (a couple of whom I’ve known for a few years), a group of marketing and communications workers like myself, some new media workers, a large number of Portland, Oregon-area tech industry workers, and a few good friends that have no connection to technology other than using it on a regular basis.
As a feedback mechanism, Twitter works pretty well. Twitter has a Virginia Woolf stream-of-consciousness about it that can be distracting, but it also gives a good feel for the emotions of the day outside my office. And I’ve gotten instant news reports on Twitter that beat the timeliness of any other communications medium.
Could all this Twitter stuff fall into group-think and garbage? Yes, but I think that depends on who you follow and pay attention to. I follow as many people as I can keep up with and I drop those who add nothing valuable to the daily conversation.
So, the first year with Twitter is up and I’m giving it a successful rating, with an expectation that the next year will be even better. Hope I can say that about my blogging activity.
There’s a certain charm to Jules Verne. Maybe it’s the innocence of the era, the belief in a better world–notwithstanding his bleak view of the future in The Time Machine–or it could be that he was so right about our future technologies. Either way, today New York City and London are involved in a trans-Atlantic experiment that has a Jules Verne twist almost 200 years after his birth!
This BBC article spells it all out and adds video that gives a much better feel to the story.
What I find interesting is that today we can easily reach in our pocket, pull out a mobile phone and simply call someone in London. So why are so many people in two of the more sophisticated cities in the world enamored with this idea? Is it the steampunk physicality (check this site for more steampunk) or is it a basic human reflex of communicating?
Most of us spend a large portion of our day communicating. We talk, type, text and sign. We are drawn to the unique. As business people we look for new ways to get our message across, to excite and entice our audience to engage in conversation and purchase from us instead of the guy down the street (or from around the world in today’s Internet age).
Obviously, there is a human-interest draw in this art installation. There is the happenstance of connecting and meeting with people one does not know personally. The novelty of the installation removes the fear of strangers and helps people interact. My father would say “it’s just damn fun, stop thinking about it,” but we can all see how the idea of a novel way to communicate has removed the barriers between people.
With a little work, we can apply this same process to our business communications. Start a newsletter, follow and respond to customers on Twitter (build a customer group on Twitter), update our web sites more frequently with new information, there’s dozens of actions we can take to be more interesting and exciting, and to draw more customers. By doing something new and unexpected, people will follow, and business will follow the people.
What new twists on existing communications technology have you put in place or just think might be interesting?
Dance Among Elephants 