What do you get when you put cameras on two groups of highly creative and competitive people for a week? AMC’s The Pitch. It’s over-dramatized to be sure, but I’m fascinated by the show. When we know who we are up against in a new business pitch, we check out them out and try to guess how they’re going to approach the task. Here’s our chance to watch two agencies a week run the gauntlet of a new business pitch.

The fun part about the show is sitting back like a figure-skating judge and scoring the two full-service ad agencies as they move through their routines; developing their campaign recommendations. Who asks the client the best questions? Who brings more energy to their presentation?  Who offers unique thinking? Who proves they really understand the client’s needs? Who ultimately earns the business? Good TV … at least for ad people.

Judson Luke | Post a Comment

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You’ve reserved the space and paid a decent amount of money to run your ad. A few weeks later the magazine comes out, and all its readers see your impactful, full-page advertisement. But wait. Your eyes are drawn to the opposite page almost immediately, where you find your competitor. You expected the “Lift Truck Tips” column to be there, however the blow comes when there’s a photo, of significant size, combined with content that is dominated by your competitor.

Check out the April issue of Modern Materials Handling and that’s what you’ll find – Hyster versus Toyota. Competition is good. However, when you’ve paid for media space, only to be clearly overshadowed by competitive editorial, it’s tough. It wouldn’t be such an issue for me had the editorial covered other manufacturers. In this case, the result is Toyota editorial versus a Hyster paid ad. Who wins? From an editorial standpoint, this is great news for Toyota; from a paid media standpoint, not so good for Hyster. If I were Hyster, I’d be mad as even a makegood won’t repair the damage done.

Here’s the spread. What do you think?

Karen Enriquez-Wagner | Post a Comment

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A recent study found that consumers in their 20s (“digital natives”) switch media venues about 27 times per nonworking hour—the equivalent of more than 13 times during a standard half-hour TV show.

What does that mean for us as marketing professionals? At the most fundamental level, it translates to the fact that you have less than two minutes to grab an individual’s attention and invite them to further read your message. According to some scientific scholars, they’ve went as far as to say, you have someone’s attention for 8 seconds – that’s less than that of a goldfish.  Which means – content needs to be engaging and clutch the reader’s brain to want more. 

As we move further and further into the digital age, marketers also need to verify that they are reaching their audience from a variety of angles and grabbing their attention immediately. While traditional print may and will still work – there is a high possibility that the end user may be flipping through that magazine while watching a television show…only to put the magazine down and pick up a tablet. Our marketing strategy needs to ensure that all of these factors are taken into consideration, before we’re switched off and dismissed.

Angela Mork | Post a Comment

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Our social media efforts might seem more like Anthony Michael Hall’s character in Sixteen Candles (1984), “The Geek,” than Porsche-driving “Jake Ryan.” The problem may not be how our social marketing is actually performing. Instead it might just not be living up to our own unrealistic expectations. Much like my unfulfilled high school desires to be the popular jock, have the sports car and everything else our hero, Jake, seemed to have, reality turned out to be quite different (pretty good, but quite different nonetheless). 

For our social media marketing we all want thousands of “highly engaged” fans, all constantly commenting about their interest in our brands, as proof of their deep-seated devotion to them. The consistent two-way “conversation” with engaged followers is after all what is promised to us as the holy grail of the medium. We are concerned when no one actually comments on our latest Facebook or blog post. Why aren’t they engaging with our brand?

As Simon Dumenco of Advertising Age points out, that just isn’t realistic:

“As for the 99% of humans who aren’t engaging with media and brands? Maybe it’s time we accept that they might not be engaging through social media because they choose not to. And, hey, that’s also OK. Or to put it another way, maybe passively consuming content is just the way that most people choose to engage.” (February 27, 2012)

So we shouldn’t be too concerned when we don’t get comments on what we say in social media, because most fans won’t no matter what we post. Instead we should be more concerned that we have a growing number of people just continuing to read what we post – even if the vast majority of them never truly engage with us in a social media discussion.

Reality check: Michael Schoeffling, the actor that played Jake Ryan was not an 18 year-old high school senior when the movie was released, he was 24. Also, he was not 6’ tall as he was shot to look. He is actually 5’8”.

Judson Luke | Post a Comment

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“In the past year, marketers distributed more business-to-business content on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter than ever,” according to CMI.  

Mashable.com has posted a great info graphic highlighting the Content Marketing Explosion, taken from the article Marketers who Share Content Drive Traffic, Gain Customers.

The graphic is a great illustration of where you can use content marketing strategies to enhance your brand awareness and convert fans and followers into sales leads and revenue generators.

Julie Meidam | Post a Comment

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I had the pleasure to speak with several classes at Hartland Arrowhead High School on the advertisements that aired during this year’s Super Bowl.  Like many advertising professionals fortunate enough to get the chance to compare notes with students in this age group, I had some preconceived ideas on how they’d react to the ads.  Yet, I came away surprised and pleased with what I heard; just not for the reasons you might think.

I must admit I entered school believing the students wouldn’t like the same ads I did, and that we’d have differing opinions on criteria like message delivery, retention, branding and overall effectiveness.  (more…)

Dean LePoidevin | Post a Comment

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Another Super Bowl in the record books. Even though we didn’t really care about either team playing, my wife and I still felt compelled to at least have the game on. A loss for the NFL, but a win for the advertisers right? Well, maybe not.

I can remember lots of years being really interested in seeing what the major brands were going to run. The Super Bowl is the one TV show I can think of where the advertising is not an unwelcome break in the action, but the ads had actually become a celebrated and necessary part of the experience. This year something weird happened … I noticed for me some of the excitement was gone. (more…)

Judson Luke | Post a Comment

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What’s the one thing that any PR professional absolutely needs to have to be successful? If you ask me – it’s the ability to write well. Almost everything we do as PR professionals centers on writing. Which is why I was rather surprised to read in a blog titled 2012 PR Prediction: 5 guaranteed (ways) to affect your resume, which implies that the ability to write is overblown.

In bullet point No. 1: PR skills will move beyond media relations, an excerpt from the blog says:

While a press release does not necessarily need to be well-written, a PR professional must now be able to ghost author a blog in a CEO’s tone and style. (more…)

Steve Staedler | Post a Comment

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Industrial companies (primarily B2B) are continuing to shift their marketing resources by investing more dollars particularly in content marketing, which is the “creation and distribution of educational and/or compelling content in multiple formats to attract and/or retain customers.” For example, it can include tactics such as: articles, social media, blogs, case studies, white papers, etc.

The Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs conducted a study on 2012 B2B content marketing.

One area that they addressed was budgets. B2B marketers dedicated about 26 percent of their total budgets to content marketing initiatives last year. In 2012, that number is expected to increase with 60 percent of respondents indicating that they expect an uptick in spending. As more B2B companies are implementing content marketing and seeing its effectiveness, it allows marketers the ability and confidence to invest more dollars in this area. (more…)

Karen Enriquez-Wagner | Post a Comment

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Now this is an interesting story. The Department of Defense has begun engaging the Taliban on Twitter in a sort of Q&A over the war in Afghanistan. For years terror organizations have used social media sites to spread its message to sympathizers. I think it’s fascinating to follow this back and forth dialogue to see what each side is saying. Will much come from this? Who knows, but at least it’s creating some sort of conversation, and that’s what social media does best.

Steve Staedler | Post a Comment

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