Posts Filed Under ‘Brain Candy for Wisdom’
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
This Philadelphia Inquirer headline caught my eye this week: “Putting a price on Wharton’s prestige.” The story concerns a man who sued the University of Pennsylvania. Why? His graduate program, a joint effort of Penn’s engineering school and its Wharton School, gave him a management degree from the engineering school and a “certificate of completion” from Wharton. He wanted – and thought he was earning – the degree from Wharton, one of the top business schools in the country. He cried foul, and last week, a federal court awarded him nearly half a million dollars.
According to the article, Frank Reynolds, the business exec at the center of this, “said simply attending classes at the Wharton School had quickly proved its worth.” So, he got the education he wanted, but not the brand name he thought would come with it.
It seems to be, for him, a case of the packaging not being as good as what it contains. This happens all the time – heck, helping institutions better communicate who they are (so that their outside matches their inside) is what we do here at Mindpower.
We talk quite a bit, with our clients and among ourselves, about a brand being a promise. You have to be clear about what you’re promising, and then deliver it. And that promise, that brand has a value. In our consumer-driven society, some brands are “better” than others – the name on the label matters.
Was Reynolds right to sue because the name on his label wasn’t Wharton?
Does the name on the diploma matter more than the sum of the experiences you had earning it – the things you learned, the people you learned with and from?
What do you think? Is this a case of label-consciousness taken to the extreme, or just wanting to receive what you think you’re paying for?
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Posted by Kelly Rusk on October 19, 2009 at 8:35 am
Filed under: Brain Candy for Wisdom, Branding
Tags: Penn, Wharton
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
We couldn’t all possibly actually be in Baltimore for NACAC’s 65th Annual Conference, but I promise, the rest of us here in the office are there in spirit. [For those of you who have no idea about NACAC: It's the National Association for College Admission Counseling, founded in 1937. It's an organization of more than 11,000 professionals from around the world dedicated to serving students as they make choices about pursuing postsecondary education.]
We’re unveiling some of our clients’ latest works of art in Booth #945. And that booth mind you, is no mere conference space – it’s Mindpower: The Exhibit, showcasing a few highlights from our recent work. The exhibits will change daily, so be sure to stop by the Gallery each day to see what’s new.
For those of you not attending, here are links to some of the work we’ll be sharing.
Making Peace with Branding: Goshen College
Auggies Live for the Experience: Augsburg College
Reminder: We’re celebrating the opening of our gallery Thursday evening with an intimate gathering at La Tasca in the Inner Harbor. Be sure to stop by the gallery to pick up your invitation!
BTW: if you use twitter, the official hashtag is #NACAC09
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Posted by Donna Bowling on September 24, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Filed under: Brain Candy for Wisdom, Conferences, Events & Presentations
Tags: Augsburg College, Goshen College, NACAC
We’ve all read umpteen articles and blog posts on how online education is transforming the college and university landscape. I was reading this very one today: Will online education kill the university?. Despite its scary title – it actually paints a positive picture. One where colleges and universities figure out how to use the power of the internet to their advantage – by accessing more students, delivering more reusable content online, and generating new revenue streams (yes, most schools will experience growing pains as they figure out how to do this).
Online programs are expanding at a rapid pace and we might be getting close to a tipping point – where more schools offer a wide array of online programs than don’t. Programs that don’t required ever stepping foot on campus.
This transformation means brand-building is more important than ever. If you haven’t nurtured your brand in a while, it’s high time to think about it. With a strong, thriving brand, combating the competition becomes easier. With the adoption of more and more online programs, the competitive field expands, and as it expands, the importance of brand reputation increases.
My two cents? Don’t start thinking about it after your competition does – be the leader and have them chasing you.
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Posted by Jenny Brower on September 21, 2009 at 9:30 am
Filed under: Brain Candy for Wisdom, Branding
We came across a link on Mashable about a soon-to-be-published book about social media policies.
While the folks at Mashable have produced a number of their own articles and guidelines about social media policy, they’re still recommending you take a peek at what other organizations may be doing: A good resource is available from Chris Boudreaux, author of the upcoming book, “Social Media Governance.”
The soon-to-be-released book has a website where you can actually review the policies of 82 organizations from big-business to non-profits. You can even upload your institution or organization’s policies if you so choose.
Of particular interest to us were the policies of the types of organizations we serve: Higher-ed and healthcare.DePaul, Harvard Law, Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic’s policies are currently included on Chris’ list.
Just curious?
- Do you have a social media policy?
- Who was responsible for creating the policy?
- Who should have been responsible for creating it?
- Can guidelines go too far?
Oh, here are links to a few of Mashables’s posts about Social Media Policy:
Happy policy-making.
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Posted by Donna Bowling on September 20, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Filed under: Brain Candy for Health, Brain Candy for Wisdom
Tags: Chris Boudreaux, Cleveland Clinic, Clinic, DePaul, mashable, Mayo, policy, social media, Social Media Governance, social media policy
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
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