Hello Kitty and Taiwanese airline, Eva Air, have showed us how to take a marketing collaboration to new heights. In an effort to boost both tourism in Taiwan as well as Eva Air’s brand awareness, the airline provides an ultimate Hello Kitty experience for fans on boutique-like trips in a Hello Kitty jet. Everything from food to ticketing is Hello Kitty branded. Of course, there’s a Hello Kitty Eva Air website.

 For fans of the Hello Kitty brand, it’s a dream in flight.

 Read more about Hello Kitty Air.

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.

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?

The other necessary ingredient is a really solid and thorough brief from the client (which we definitely had). When our client is open and transparent about their strategic objectives, needs and desires, and shares what they know, our creative really sings. Everyone leaves the table knowing that we hit the mark and this is going to be a great partnership.

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.

I was surprised by the survey findings on the number of companies that don’t have standards and also those that use total number of leads as their metric for measuring success. In today’s economy, we know budgets are tight and people are stretched thin. However, doesn’t it make even more sense now to be smarter about lead generation and ensure they’re qualified? By doing this upfront work, you can determine the percentage of leads are deemed viable overall and truly identify “quality” leads; ultimately allowing you to determine your return on investment. It also helps save time for the sales team so they can focus on those top, quality leads to garner a better chance of making a sale. At the end of the day, if you want to hear that cash register ring, then proper steps need to be taken upfront to give everyone on the team a better chance of success on the back-end.

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”.

So, imagine my excitement while reading through this month’s Wired magazine and I come across an article that captures my attention. The headline? Captain Morgan.  I love rum, so I read on.  It seems that the well-known figure from my favorite happy hour drink was an actual, real live swashbuckler. In fact, he was Captain Blackbeard’s mentor, knighted by King Charles II and appointed deputy director of Jamaica.  He retired at the ripe age of 37 to become a wealthy planter and grow…you guessed it…sugar cane…to make rum. I think I have found my new idol in life.

Having a brand that signifies what you stand for is not only important, it’s essential.  At LePoidevin, when we embark on a new branding initiative, we first begin our process with an exercise on archetyping and a profile assessment. When we’ve gathered our research and our assessment is concluded, we have specific descriptors and touch points that create a brand that specifically speaks to you and what you stand for. It’s a proven process that works – and that’s something you can drink to!

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.

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. 

Their teacher had them well prepared, having given them insight into audience demographics, message targeting, and what she termed appeals and fallacies.  When I asked them which ad was most effective, their choices mirrored mine.  They even disliked the same ads as I, for many of the same reasons. 

So, instead of me going in and lecturing groups of high school students on the effectiveness of advertising, it was I who became educated and enlightened on how well they understood each advertiser’s intent.  Not because the students agreed with how I saw the ads, but because they seemed to understand the central message of each advertisement and didn’t react solely to those that were funny or cute. 

My congratulations to this teacher and her students for taking their assignment seriously and for thoughtfully sharing their opinions.