I had a completely different blog post written for today, but after the horrors of this week, I thought I would change it to something that will hopefully restore your faith in humanity, just a little.
I’ve seen lots of videos of ‘Russian Dash Cams’ with things like tanks, horses, cows, umbrella’s etc. going by, so much so, that Jon Stewart did a segment on them during the Daily Show… which you can see here on youtube.
But in a great twist of PR, tired of all the bad press, someone is Russia has put together another video. Instead of it being the funny/crazy things that are captured, they are featuring some of the good things that happen. Plus the music is lovely.
Eight lanes of traffic stopping for ducks and ducklings to cross – that is the kind of thing I love to see.
I know how much you love an Infographic, so here is a great one to demonstrate just how much video marketing has grown in popularity.
Using online video to market your business, especially if you offer a service; what on earth will you make a video of…
If you are happy to be the one filmed, you could follow the lead of Carrie Green from The Female Entrepreneur Association who does a weekly inspiration video, I suppose you could almost call it a vlog – rather than writing a blog post, she films it instead.
We’ve not looked at a bad publicity stunt for a while now, so here is one to get your week going.
Very large billboards popped up in Cincinnati, Phoenix, Sacramento and San Antonio in the USA recently, asking people to vote for whether George W. Bush or Barack Obama should be the new face of Mount Rushmore.
You were directed to a website to vote (which has since been removed), there was also a twitter account and facebook page with a competition where you could send in your photo and they would add you (digitally) to Mount Rushmore.
When you went to the website, you were asked to vote for:
a) Barack Obama
b) George W. Bush
c) Keep it as it is
Apparently 70% of all those who voted, wanted Mount Rushmore to remain unchanged.
So what was it all about then? The campaign was run by the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA), whose only comment was that they set up the campaign to “measure customer response”.
This just doesn’t ring true to me; the time and expense that must have gone into creating the billboards, the website and then running the Social Media campaign, says more that this was a publicity stunt from the OAAA, that backfired. Seemingly because most people either thought it was a joke and didn’t care/respond and those that did took it very seriously indeed with all sorts of warnings of what would happen if either Bush or Obama did end up on Mount Rushmore.
I can’t find any mention of the campaign on the OAAA website and I suspect they wish it had never happened.
After posting yesterdays blog about how frustrating the changes that Facebook keep making are, I went onto Google + and found that it looked completely different.
Oh, the irony.
I know that some people love the new layout and others aren’t so sure.
For me, it will take a little getting used to, but this is why Google is brilliant. Rather than grumbling, if you don’t like the new two column layout, you can change it back to a single column.
The wonderful Carol Dodsley has prepared a video to show you how to change the way your Google + feed looks.
I wish more social media sites would let users decide how we want things to look.
Extremely Decent are a sketch comedy group in Los Angeles, this week they have captured perfectly the frustration that most of us feel when Facebook keeps changing everything on the site.
Statistics show that the number of being using Facebook in the UK, Europe and USA has declined ever so slightly this year… do you think that could be down to the changes?
Talking about language differences in a meeting this morning, I was reminded of a chart that I saw a few months ago.
This is a genuine chart, created and circulated by a large international firm. Although amusing, I think it does a brilliant job of highlighting the differences in the way that people speak – there are many phrases that the British use that other English speakers just don’t understand.
If you are marketing to people whose first language isn’t English, it is important to remember that what you say and what they understand, may be two very different things.
When I first set up Ice To Eskimos in January 2012, we were based in Nottingham and most of our clients were local companies. I had no idea how things would change and 18 months later, Ice To Eskimos has had a little re-brand.
Don’t get me wrong, I still own the name, I’ve just put it somewhere safe for the moment.
When I came up with the name Ice To Eskimos (whether or not there was wine involved in this brainstorming session shall remain a mystery), I didn’t consider the possibility that one day I would be working with companies all around the World and that actually for a lot of my clients, English wouldn’t be their first language.
And that is the problem with Ice To Eskimos – selling Ice to the Eskimos is a well-known phrase across the UK, but head into Europe and they haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about.
I suppose there is a lesson here for people with unusual business names… think about whether or not that name translates outside of the UK. If it doesn’t it may be worth changing it now, (preferably while you’re relatively small and unknown) before you spend lots of money on your marketing and then have to go through the painful and tedious (trust me on this) job of changing everything.
With the Internet it is so very easy to do business with companies all around the world, so the chances that you’ll one day be on a Skype Call with a potential client in France or Brazil isn’t an impossibility.
So what is my business name now… Michelle Jackson Rowe – yes I used all of my creative power and have decided to use my own name… let’s just hope I don’t get divorced!
Each time a new social media platform is launched, you have two choices. You can sigh, grumble about whether or not this one will last and then wait until everyone else is using it to try to promote your company, or you can get excited about another way of reaching potential customers and embrace it with open arms.
Don’t get me wrong, we’ve all done the former at one time or the other, but if you can try to do the latter, you will probably find that your life becomes a little easier!
Take Instagram, used to take pictures and then share them with your network, it has become very popular with food bloggers (I should know, I am one!) the foodstagram is everywhere.
Instagram has been around for a while now and companies are starting to use it, but compare it to Facebook and Instagram users can experience a pretty much advert free social media network.
CT Food an Asian food supplier in Sweden are definitely embracing Instagram. Eat an Asian meal at a restaurant, Instagram a picture of it – tagging @askctfood and they will reply with a list of the ingredients and instructions of how to re-create it at home.
Each ingredient is linked to a hashtag so users can see what it looks like when they come to buy the items.
Such a brilliant idea. The video below explains more:
Have you started using Instagram to promote your company yet?
If you have a product or business to sell, it is very tempting to try to sell it to everybody.
It makes sense, especially if you have a broad customer base… surely the more people you market to, the more people will buy from you.
Unfortunately, that is very rarely true. Narrowing down your target market and focusing directly on that group is more effective. By tailoring your message, you are far more likely to reach the people that actually want what you’re selling.
Lamborghini have taken that a step further with their latest car. The Veneno is said to be “the fastest, most powerful Lamborghini ever built” (to my untrained eye, it has a Bat-mobile feel to it).
Priced at €3,000,000. (yep that’s 3 million), they made three cars and all three cars were sold very quickly.
I doubt your niche will be quite that small, but you shouldn’t be afraid to be a specialist in your field.
Any tips or advice you receive about using social media for your business will include ‘interact with your fans/followers’ and ‘be social – the clue is in the name’ or it should do anyway!
Yves Saint Laurent came up with a fantastic campaign to interact with their Facebook followers, in the form of an exclusive eye shadow palette.
Seems a little strange, I know, but this palette was a limited edition, only available to buy from their Facebook page and only if you had ‘liked’ their page. Priced at £39, the quartet included two of the classic Facebook colours; blue and white, along with a grey and black.
To say the campaign was popular would be an understatement. The initially fifty palettes sold out within the blink of an eye; a month later they released the remaining 1650 and they were sold out in around two blinks of the eye.
Was it a successful campaign? The figures would most certainly suggest that it was… selling £66,000 worth of eyeshadow in a month just via Facebook is not to be sniffed at.
That said there are also some rumblings that it cheapened a rather high-end brand and so far (to my knowledge) no other designer make-up brands have done anything similar.
Do you think this is something you will replicate in your business?
I thought I had shared this with you at the beginning of 2013, but as it turns out I hadn’t, so I thought I’d do it now.
Publicis Groupe is a multinational advertising and PR company. Their president Maurice Levy delivers their 2013 annual message in an ingenious YouTube Video.
Make sure you pause and skip the video (both backwards and forwards a couple of times), fiddle with the volume (choose different settings from maximum to mute), keep changing the quality and of course set it to full screen. Take a look here - you won’t regret it!
In recent years the way to sell a car online has been to take some pictures and upload them to a website like Autotrader with your contact details and then wait for enquiries to come in.
Well Nate Walsh, decided to do things a little differently and has created a fantastic Craiglist advert for his 1999 Toyota Camry.
Making a selling point out of the fact that only one person has vomited in the car, that there is a door that doesn’t open and that there are some large dents is certainly one way of generating interest.
This advert is quite frankly ingenious and I hope that others will be quick to copy his idea, it will certainly make the used-car market a little more interesting.
I first became aware of it via twitter (naturally), when people were raving about moonwalking ponies.
I was intrigued of course (I mean moonwalking ponies – who wouldn’t be?)
Here is the advert…
This is a great advert – cheesy and silly of course, but the advert embraces that… “silly stuff. it matters.”
To complement the campaign we have a hashtag for social media #danceponydance and if that wasn’t enough – you can make your own advert via The Pony Mixer.
I’ve spent more time playing with The Pony Mixer than a grown professional person should.
In terms of a fun campaign that promotes brand awareness, this is a great offering.
Last Thursday Twitter launched a new video sharing service called Vine.
Mentions of it started to trickle into my twitter feed over the weekend, but since yesterday I’ve been seeing #vineapp everywhere – so I thought it was time to take a look.
I’ve played with it for about 10 minutes so far and my first reaction is that it’s a lot like Instagram, but with videos.
You download the free app – at the moment it’s only available on Apple devices (but I’m sure it will roll out soon to android and windows).
The videos are six seconds in length and on a constant loop.
You can follow users, like videos, and share them to twitter and FB – in the same way as Instagram.
I found a great video review on Youtube (beautifully ironic) which will show you how it works…
I’ve not made a video yet, but looking through some of the offerings available, I’m really impressed with the creativity and work that goes into some of them..
From a business marketing point of view; I think this will become very popular, very quickly, which means for now at least, it should be incorporated into your social media plan.
Although, I wouldn’t rush into it. The videos need to be innovative so that people will actually watch and share your content, otherwise it will be a huge waste of your time.
I would suggest having a good look through at the things that are being posted and ask yourself:
what is being liked?
which users are being followed?
what is the message that you want to get across?
how you can incorporate that message into a 6 second video?
There have already been some issues – a lot of users have reported that the app crashes on their iphone and they aren’t able to open it. There have also been problems with people finding pornographic material when they weren’t looking for it… but these will all be quickly solved I’m sure.
Personally, I think Vine will certainly overtake Instagram in the social media stakes. if not replace it.
When Cesar Kuriyama saved up enough money to quit his advertising job at the age of 30, he planned to take a year off to travel and spend time with family.
To document the year, Kuriyama filmed one second of video every day. After editing the clips into a single video, Kuriyama had not only a record of daily life, but a new perspective on how he lived day to day. Now he plans to do it for the rest of his life.
He’s even developed a smartphone application which allows others to create their own “one second” videos.
Here is the video that Cesar made, featuring all of his one second clips…
Talk about a fantastic way of marketing your product!
Do you remember that episode of ‘Only Fools and Horses’ when Del Boy bottles water from Peckham Spring? Of course, there isn’t really a spring in Peckham (correct me if I’m wrong), and the supposed spring water is actually just tap water sold and marketed as something much more exclusive. In a move almost prophetic of the current $60 billion industry, this idea turns Del into a “miwwionaire”.
From the kitchen tap to the plastic bottle… Only Fools and Horses
The main players in the bottled water industry are Pepsi, Nestle and Coca-Cola, companies more likely to be associated with unhealthy and sugar-ridden beverages than something as ubiquitous and necessary as water. Their adoption of bottled water seems to be the perfect counter move to prevent their brands becoming associated with ill health at a time when even McDonalds have started making salads.
According to Elizabeth Royte (in her book Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought it), 92% of the 53,000 local water systems in this country actually meet the same standards as bottled water.
This is a simple game of brand projection and exemplifies the innovative nature of marketing. After all, does Evian really make you “live young”, and does being “filtered through layers of volcanic rock” (I can’t believe I actually know that line from the ad by heart) make Volvic all the tastier?
In 2004 there was a scandal behind Coca-Cola’s Dasani bottled water which was actually just “purified tap water” (according to the BBC: click here to read the original article). According to Coca-Cola, “We would never say tap water isn’t drinkable. It’s just that Dasani is as pure as water can get – there are different levels of purity.” But are there really different “levels” of purity, though? Or is this just advertising jargon which, as consumers plied with it for hours every day, we are all becoming numb to?
Of course, there is also a practical element to buying bottled water too. When you’re out of the house and need to buy a drink the tap simply isn’t there, consequently buying bottled water can be cheaper, healthier than the sugary alternatives and (if you’re anything like me) provides a bottle which you will use to bring tap water to work for at least a good few days.
So how do you sell something that can actually be bought for free? Well, it does seem to be denial; deny that it is ubiquitous, healthy and attractive, and market your item as an ‘alternative’, when really its most innovative and creative element is the shape of the plastic bottle that surrounds it.
Usually when we think about marketing and advertising we liken it to encouraging people to buy products. By placing an advert on a billboard, magazine, on TV or on the internet, companies are hoping that people will see them, like them and then perhaps at a later date, buy the products they are promoting.
This is not the only type of marketing. There is a large sector or marketing which is used in order to prevent and deter people from buying products. One of the most notable are the horrible pictures on cigarette packets. Government and health agencies all over the world are imposing photos of the horrendous effects of smoking onto cigarette packets in a bid to discourage people from smoking them. This is prevalent in many countries over the world.
However, Australia is the first country to also impose plain packaging onto cigarette packets in order to discourage people to purchase them. All company logos and colours are banned from all cigarette packets. Instead all packets are the same colour; a uninspiring brown-green colour and accompanied by the most shocking anti-smoking photographs I have ever seen.
Taking away the personality from the cigarette packets and de-glamorising them completely has had a very significant effect. Customer and complaint lines of Cigarette companies has received a large amount of calls claiming that the cigarettes don’t taste as good as they used to; which goes to show just how effect packaging can really be.
This is a really interesting example as it demonstrates how marketing strategies (such as packaging) can be used to actually deter people rather encourage people to purchase something. Furthermore by looking at the effectiveness of, say, eliminating packaging can be in deterring consumers to buy something goes to show just how important packaging is in persuading people to purchase something.
In yesterday’s post I wrote about how Chirpify have set about creating a platform that allows people to pay, hassle-free, for products via their twitter account.
However, some companies believe that social media has its own currency that is just as valuable. There are a few companies who are now trading their products for tweets themselves.
We saw one example earlier in the week on this blog when I wrote about the Generous store in Denmark who trade their luxurious chocolates for the promise of a good deed sealed by them proclaiming it on Facebook. Similarly at the beginning of this year, Innocent launched their Tweet and Eat campaign for their Veg Pots. The deal was that in order to get money off a veg pot, or indeed a veg pot for free, a certain amount of people had to tweet about them using the hashtags #tweetandeat, #vegpot or #vegpots. Not only does this make people tweet about Innocent, but it incites people who are tweeting to try and encourage their friends and families to also tweet. Innocent seem to have managed to make ordinary people do their internet marketing for them; how novel!
Kellogg’s have done something similar in order to launch their new crisps. They have opened a shop in Soho, London called Tweet Shop. If it’s not the first of its kind it’s certainly one of the first. It’s a shop where people can buy their new savoury crisps in exchange for a tweet.
The pop up shop has attracted a lot of attention and I think it’s a great way to promote new products. Pop up shops like the Tweet Shop will definitely catch on to other companies. However, it is clear that only certain companies can actually partake in such a novel marketing strategy; those who are big enough to be able to afford a pop up shop and those who can afford to and indeed want to give away their brands. I can’t image any high end brands partaking in this activity any time soon; giving away 1000′s of Kellogg’s crisps probably don’t add up to giving away one Gucci bag!
Both Kellogg’s, Innocent and the Generous Store all share something in common; they realise the strengths and the usefulness of tweets. Quite simply; if a lot of people start tweeting about you, your public awareness will be increase which will lead to more enquiries into your company and the products or services you sell. In turn this will lead to more sales. Although the way Kellogg’s have gone about it isn’t something just any company can do, the basic idea that Innocent use is a method that any company can mirror. As more companies partake in similar schemes using social media as currency, we will have to wait and see whether other social media networks have as stronger currency as twitter.
Social media is great for attracting more buzz and public awareness to your brand. However, many people have doubted before whether more likes on facebook actually converts to more sales. Similarly with Twitter, will more tweets and followers lead to more cash for the company?
After the creation of Chirpify, I think there is a clear answer to this question.
Chirpify is a social commerce & Payments platform. If you’re a company, Chirpify allows you to sell items to others on twitter and if you are a consumer you can purchase an item on twitter at the touch of a button; shopping made incredibly easy!
A lot of people use twitter to promote and to find out about new products. Imagine if a singer/songwriter with many followers tweets about their new album release. If they use Chirpify they are able to also say; ‘in order to purchase it just click here’. Instead of taking you to another page on your tiny android phone where you have to enter your card payment details using a magnifying glass; Chirpify will do that automatically for you.
I think this is a really ingenious, virtual invention. It lets companies sell directly to those who are following them with ease and thus encourages more sales. It’s always a fantastic marketing idea to have a point of sale as close as possible to the advertisement, promotion or marketing as it will still be fresh in the consumers mind. I can imagine that this will be incredibly popular amongst charities.
This intelligent little middle man only takes 5% commission (that’s from the company not the consumer), which isn’t that much per transaction but if this turns out to be as popular as I think I will be; they’ve tapped into a gold mine.
