Posts Filed Under ‘Brain Candy for Wealth’
Okay, Digital Digerati. We’re in the Digital Era, so it just stands to reason that digital advertising platforms have seen exponential growth. Ten years ago, terms like “mobile marketing,” “social media” and “search engine marketing” would have brought mostly quizzical looks. Today digital ad buys are an integral part of any campaign media plan. (And don’t you know it: Mindpower does digital campaigns for our clients all of our livelong days …)
Below is a table from Marketing News, a (fine) publication from American Marketing Association. In 2010, digital marketing will represent 13 percent of all advertising spends. And that impressive figure is expected to climb higher than 20 percent in the span of just four years. The fact that “search marketing” is the largest percentage goes a long way toward explaining why Google is the all-controlling digital Voldemort that it is. (Company 2010 first quarter reported revenues were nearly $6.8 billion).
The Marketing News predictions below came from Forrester Research, a market research firm. Given the amount of new digital devices that continue to come online – Can you say “iPad”? – we’d be surprised if the digital percentage doesn’t go even higher.
| $ millions |
2010 |
2012 |
2014 |
| Mobile marketing |
$561 |
$950 |
$1,274 |
| Social media |
$935 |
$1,649 |
$3,113 |
| E-mail marketing |
$1,355 |
$1,676 |
$2,081 |
| Display advertising |
$8,395 |
$11,732 |
$16,900 |
| Search marketing |
$17,765 |
$24,299 |
$31,588 |
| Total |
$29,012 |
$40,306 |
$54,956 |
| % of all ad spends |
13 % |
17 % |
21 % |
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Posted by Jack Stenger on April 20, 2010 at 4:40 pm
Filed under: Brain Candy for Wealth
Tags: Digital marketing, social media
Starbucks has received accolades and criticisms aplenty for its “My Starbucks Idea” program. My vote? I’m a fan. I’m not even a super-consumer. I’m barely a coffee drinker by most standards. But I appreciate when an organization opens itself up to its public. Starbucks has more Facebook fans than Coca-Cola. That’s quite a feat considering Coke’s history as the world’s greatest brand (yes, we’re Atlantans)!
Keeping tabs on “My Starbucks Idea” is fun. Starbucks knows they can’t make everybody happy – but that’s not the point. The point is active engagement. This concept shows that the Starbucks brand management team understands both the role of the influencer and the power of social media. They know that if you’re going to invest time, energy, and financial resources into social media, you shouldn’t treat it as another box to check off on your marketing or PR “to do” list.
We all know social media is the hot topic right now. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when it comes to developing – and then carrying forward – a social media plan. But it doesn’t have to be so daunting. And that’s what makes “My Starbucks Idea” so great. It’s simple. And it shows they care about what their customers and partners think.
So, how are you using social media to converse with your constituents? Have you identified key influencers in your market (or in the direction you want to move)? Have you successfully engaged them? Is social media an afterthought for your organization or has it been fully embraced?
Starbucks understands that the more individuals they inspire to be brand champions, the more their longevity as a market leader is secured. And their approach to social media fully supports this. If you’re looking for inspiration for your social media strategy (and how it can feed your overall growth strategy), check out what they’re doing. And if you have other examples to share, we’d love to hear them!
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Posted by Jenny Brower on December 14, 2009 at 11:42 am
Filed under: Brain Candy for Health, Brain Candy for Wealth, Brain Candy for Wisdom
Tags: Coca-Cola, Facebook, Starbucks
Excepting those living in caves and, perhaps, the cryogenically frozen, everyone knows the following Web 2.0 facts:
● Social networking is changing the face of the Internet.
● No site has done more to bring about this change than Facebook.
Smart banks are embracing Facebook as another channel not just for branding, but also in order to transform mere customers into rabid brand advocates.
A recent article in ABA Bank Marketing (“Showing Your Face on Facebook,” September 2009) magazine spelled out how any financial institution can put a best face forward on Facebook.
For banks, a “business page” is the most common way to make a social media debut. Every day more than 8 million Facebook users become business page fans. (A small beverage concern here in our hometown – Coca-Cola – has more than 3.3 million “fans.”)
As with all branding strategies, it’s important to have a strategy:
● Establish content/messaging issues before you start.
● Determine who page administrators will be, and from there commit to freshening your page often, if not daily. (Only Wonder Bread gets stale more quickly than Facebook fan page content.)
Here’s the best part. All of these “become-a-fan” decisions are transmitted across any user’s network. If a new fan is a recent college graduate with more than 1,000 friends – which can be common – your bank achieves some major digital word of mouth.
And CFOs have little to quibble about. After all, this is a low (no?)-cost way to reach a targeted (if not younger) demographic.
What are you waiting for? Create your business page! (And while you’re at it, become a Mindpower fan! We’ve always got something fun to say to our friends …)
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Posted by Jack Stenger on October 28, 2009 at 10:27 am
Filed under: Brain Candy for Wealth, Branding
Tags: bank marketing, Facebook, social networking
The vast majority of professionals worldwide are using social technologies for business purposes, according to an August 2009 survey by Mzinga and Babson Executive Education, but most are not measuring return on their investment.
Determining the success of your social media efforts can be a big investment in and of itself, but there are a few basic measures that cost next-to-nothing. Here are a few:
- Track the growth of your various social media channels
- Record your unique blog page views
- Count the number of Twitter followers
- Watch Facebook Fan Page interactions
- Track unique website visitors
- Analyze traffic generated by SEO, Facebook events, Twitter promotions, etc.
- Track leads and monitor leads by source (inbound web, email, trade shows, seminars, etc.)
Start there. While some of these measures won’t necessarily translate into a hard-core ROI or measure the business value generated, you’ll at least be doing something. You can’t manage what you don’t measure.
What measures are you using?
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Posted by Donna Bowling on October 8, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Filed under: Brain Candy for Health, Brain Candy for Wealth, Brain Candy for Wisdom, Ramblings
Tags: Measurement, ROI, social media
Your marketing investment should do at least one of four things:
- Create awareness of your brand and its offering(s)
- Change perceptions of your brand in ways that will encourage someone to choose your brand
- Give incentives for someone to “buy” more of what you’re offering or choose your offering more frequently
- Make your brand more available and more accessible
So, how are you doing?
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Posted by Donna Bowling on October 6, 2009 at 9:14 am
Filed under: Brain Candy for Health, Brain Candy for Wealth, Brain Candy for Wisdom, Branding
Tags: marketing investment
Next week, September 21st thru September 25th is Advertising Week. Advertising Week is North America’s premier gathering of cutting edge communications leaders. The Week is a hybrid of thought leadership and special event programming, uniting clients, creatives, media and inspiring figures in the biz.
Can’t make the event? Well, you can still (sorta) participate. Visit here to vote for your favorite advertising icons and slogans. Each year, two slogans and two icons are voted-in.
Question. Last year’s winning slogans were “We Deliver For You” and “What Can Brown Do For You?” Without looking, can you let me know the organizations the taglines belong to? [Both are pretty darn easy.]
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Posted by Donna Bowling on September 17, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Filed under: Brain Candy for Health, Brain Candy for Wealth, Brain Candy for Wisdom, Branding
Tags: advertising, Advertising Week, icons, slogans, taglines
[Borrowed and edited a wee bit, yet strongly believed, from Cam Foote, editor Creative Business]
The main product of our business is our “mindpower” — creative solutions to the issues and opportunities facing our clients and prospects. And, good ideas — creativity — can be tough to define, or agree upon.
One person’s passion is often another’s poison. So, it’s no wonder that potential clients often ask us to take a project on speculation. That is: To “test” our creative product in much the same way they may try out other types of products before purchasing.
Unfortunately, we must turn down such projects. This [post] may explain why NOT doing spec work actually makes us a better, more stable and reliable partner for whom to do business.
It lets us keep our prices low
We make money mostly by selling our time. Unlike businesses that sell products, we can’t take time back and resell it. Thus, the less time we actually sell, the more we have to charge. So we attempt to hold our prices down by keeping busy.
We also have substantial fixed overhead costs — rent, utilities, computers, peripherals, software, etc. So the higher the percentage of our time that is productive (billable), the more we can spread those costs, and the less each individual client gets charged for them.
In addition, the only way we can recover our overhead costs is through what we charge our clients. If we accept speculative projects, the overhead for these non-billable hours would have to be added to the factor we charge our regular, long-term, appreciate, paying clients. We don’t think this would be fair.
We want to give you only our best
We are very proud of our track record of helping many different clients with many different challenges. In doing so, we have come to understand the crucial components in producing outstanding creative work.
First, outstanding creative work requires good, complete input from our clients. It takes time and effort that’s tough for them to justify unless they are committed to awarding an assignment. Yet without it, we can’t show how good we really are. Or our best effort may well be misdirected; a great shot that hits the wrong target.
Equally important, great creativity requires enthusiasm. We need to be excited enough to pour all our energy into a project. Frankly, that’s impossible without knowing whether we will be chosen to go all the way, or even get paid.
And, finally, developing creativity is very labor intensive. Although we wish it were otherwise, good work seldom comes in a flash of inspiration. Rather, it usually requires research and thinking time, then the working through of many different ideas and approaches. This makes it difficult or impossible to do good work in a compressed time frame.
Speculative projects, whether done by us or some other firm, usually require cutting every creative corner. That’s hardly in your best interests, or ours.
We’re a small firm, in business to stay
We hope our small size is what attracts many to our firm. Because we are small, you get to deal directly with those actually doing your work; there are no “middle-men” to muck things up. It also means we’re more flexible, and able to turn things around faster. We can offer better, more personal service, too. And, because our overhead is lower than that of the “big boys,” so are our fees.
Another reason for our success is that we are good business people
We know that a small business like ours (probably yours, too) has to watch costs carefully and can’t afford to give much away. If we weren’t careful — if we did give away our time — it is likely we wouldn’t be here next time you called, which means you’d have start all over again bringing someone else up to speed learning your business. We doubt you’d want that, and we know we wouldn’t. We believe we should both be looking to build a long-term, mutually-productive and cost-efficient business relationship.
Truth is, small organizations like ours can seldom afford to accept speculative projects. If you find one that will, be skeptical. They may be desperate.
As for larger organizations and agencies, yes they can afford to do speculative projects, and often do. But that’s the very point. If they do have the volume and staff that makes it a small risk for them, they’re probably too big to give you the personal service and outstanding creativity you’re searching for.
We hope you’ll give us the opportunity sometime soon to prove just how good we really are. In the meantime look at our portfolio. The work we have done for many other clients with many other challenges speaks volumes about our abilities.
Unless you’re willing to offer what you offer for free, don’t ask me to.
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Posted by Donna Bowling on September 1, 2009 at 10:00 am
Filed under: Brain Candy for Health, Brain Candy for Wealth, Brain Candy for Wisdom, Ramblings
Tags: spec work, speculative
Have you heard about “The Rescue”? It’s a grassroots organization aimed at shining a spotlight on the humanitarian emergency — invisible children — occuring in Uganda. Uganda is facing Africa’s longest running war (23 years) with the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) led by a man named Joseph Kony. To make his point to the Uganda goverment he abducts children in middle of the night and turns them into child soilders. That’s the short version.
The team organizing “The Rescue” is using a similar marketing approach to that used by the Obama campaign. In a carefully orchestrated way, they are using text-messaging, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, email, promotional gear and word-of-mouth to build buzz and share information about their cause.
A favorite blogger of mine, Rohit Bhargava, studied how “The Rescue” organizers are harnessing the power of viral marketing and even developed a slideshow entitled “8 Marketing Lessons: The Rescue Of Joseph Kony’s Child Soldiers Campaign” to illustrate their smart approach. Rohit developed this presentation because he appreciated the organizers’ marketing savvy. A savvy marketer himself, he also knew that by sharing his commentary on their marketing tactics, he could help them reach an even broader audience.
If you’re searching for good examples of how to develop an integrated viral marketing campaign, spend some time studying “The Rescue” effort. Now, let’s hope their good work made a difference.
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Posted by Jenny Brower on April 28, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Filed under: Brain Candy for Health, Brain Candy for Wealth, Brain Candy for Wisdom
Last week, I had a conversation with a prospective client about his plans for launching an exciting new project. It’s a great big project and amidst all the economic doom and gloom we’ve experienced lately, hearing about it was like a ray of sunshine. He had the option of putting the project on the back burner and waiting out the recession or going for it – in the process creating new jobs, good news and hope.
I’m always delighted to encounter another recession buster. And this gentleman was just that. Someone willing to move forward with a great idea. Whether it means starting a company, launching a project, hiring someone, or even kicking off a new ad campaign. Some days you have to look hard for it, but there is good news out there.
At some point, the tide will turn, and when it does, organizations that made smart, bold moves during this downturn are the ones that will emerge as market leaders when the economy begins its ascent.
So, recession busters unite! The game might be a little different now, but the greatest leaders are ones who rise up in the face of adversity.
Are you a recession buster? We’d love to hear your story.
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Posted by Jenny Brower on April 1, 2009 at 6:18 am
Filed under: Brain Candy for Health, Brain Candy for Wealth, Brain Candy for Wisdom, Ramblings
Tags: marketing, recession
I typically try to avoid repurposing a post from someone else’s blog, but this morning the lesson is just too good to ignore.
From Seth Godin’s blog:
Fitting in vs. standing out
You won’t have any trouble at all finding someone who can tell you how to fit in.
They can tell you what to wear to that restaurant or this conference or that funeral. It’s not that difficult to figure out how to fit in. If fitting in is your goal, you should be sure to get great advice on how to do that.
Standing out, of course, is trickier. Stand out too much and you’re a jerk or a fool.
Clothing is not the point. You have this choice to make in everything you do, from your career to the words you use in a sales letter.
The point: choose.
Are you doing this to fit in or stand out?
After reading Seth’s blog, I opened my email. There was yet another reminder to stand out. To be amazing. (Mindpower was included on the inaugural Inc 5000 list of fastest-growing privately held companies, so we receive Inc’s Partner Newsletter profiling other stand-out (excuse the pun) companies.)
No Advertising. No Discounts. Just Amazing Beer.
It’s safe to say that few entrepreneurs pitch their product like this: “You probably won’t like it. It is quite doubtful that you have the taste or sophistication to be able to appreciate an ale of this quality and depth. We would suggest that you stick to safer and more familiar territory…”
But those words appear on every bottle of Stone Brewing Co.’s Arrogant Bastard Ale. “Most companies approach their business by asking ‘What do customers want want?’, and then trying to do that,” says Stone Brewing CEO Greg Koch. “We don’t. We ask ‘What do we think qualifies as amazing?’ Then it all boils down to our ability to execute—and to being right.”
Koch and crew do seem to be getting it right. Since it was launched in 1996, Stone Brewing’s revenue has increased an average of 47% a year, hitting $26.1 million in 2007—enough growth to land the Escondido, California company at number 2,635 on last year’s Inc. 500|5000 list of the fastest growing companies in the U.S.
My question to you: Does your organization stand-out or fit-in?
Come on folks. Stop being emulative. You can stand-out and not look like a jerk. I promise.
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Posted by Donna Bowling on March 20, 2009 at 8:05 am
Filed under: Brain Candy for Health, Brain Candy for Wealth, Brain Candy for Wisdom, Mindpower's Fun Friday Poll, One-minute Mindpower
Tags: "Fun Friday Poll", dIfferentiation, Fun Friday, Inc 5000, Seth Godin, Stone Brewing
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