Posts Tagged ‘marketing’
It absolutely drives me insane when people utilize the word utilize when the teeny-tiny itty-bitty word use is just fine.
I stumbled across this post when I googled “don’t use big words when little words are fine”:
Apparently this little gem was handwritten in an old Bible.
DON’T USE BIG WORDS
In promulgating your esoteric cogitation’s or articulating your superficial and sentimentalities and amicable philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous panderosity.
Let your conversational communications possess a clarified conciseness, a compact comprehensibiliness coalescent consistency and a concatenated cogency. Eschew all conglomerations of flatulent garrulity, jejune babblement and asinine affectations. Let your extemporaneous descantings and unpremeditated expatiation’s have intelligibility and veracious vivacity without rodomontade or thrasonical bombast.
Sedulously avoid all polysyllable profundity, pompous prolixity, psittaceous vivacity, ventriloquial verbosity and magniloquent rapidity. Shun double entendres, previnient jacosity and pestifereous profanity, observant or apparent.
In other words, talk plainly, briefly, naturally, sensibly,truthfully, purely, keep from slang, don’t put on airs, say what you mean, mean what you say and DON’T USE BIG WORDS.
Remember, The great artist is the simplifier.
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Posted by Donna Bowling on March 4, 2010 at 3:31 pm
Filed under: Ramblings
Tags: big words, marketing, writing
Coinciding with the rise of social media is the reorientation of marketing towards tribes. Unlike push marketing, tribe-based marketing strives to gather people around a particular idea or concept, fostering a sense of community. As Seth Godin points out, this approach is not so much about imposing an idea upon a group as forming connections among people who already have an interest in something. Using the tribe metaphor, Godin focuses on the ability of a single person (or business) to organize that tribe, creating a movement and changing the status quo. In essence, a good tribal leader identifies a point of connection among a group of people and then controls the distribution of that connection.
However, a lot of social media has created the opportunity for groups to coelesce without a figurehead in the form of a single leader. There may be an instigator (such as the person who initially creates a Facebook page), but as a group grows it’s tough for the initial creator to control the direction the tribe takes because when it comes down to it, tribes aren’t former around people, they’re formed around ideas. We can see this when spontaneous networks show up without a figurehead. Recent examples have included “citizen journalist” reporting of disasters such as September 11, the 2004 tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the Mumabi terror attacks, and the spread of swine flu. No single entity organized individuals to start sharing their experiences, but the availability of the technology and the immediate, apparent need for expression caused the emergence of the networks.
What’s even more interesting about these networks is that they arose in spite of a figurehead-driven outlet delivering information on the same topic. News organizations were forced to put away their authoritative, “push” means of working and adopt the grassroots, tribal way of working. On the one hand, this would bolster the idea of the symbiotic relationship of tribe and leader. By encouraging the growth of the tribe reporting on the tsunami, for example, MSNBC was being a good tribal leader by not forcing a product (in this case its own reporting of the news) on its constituency and instead facilitating connections between people in the midst of the chaos and people wanting to gather information on the tragedy. On the other hand, however,this situation shows how little the importance of the leader is as a result of social media.
In this particular case – news media coverage – Twitter, Facebook, and other social media applications provide the actual distribution method for the product (news coverage). The actual news outlets only provide a venue that is, traditionally, the go-to point for news coverage. By repurposing the citizen journalist-created content, the news outlets may appear to be tribal leaders that can direct a movement, changing the status quo of how news is reported, but in actuality they are becoming another conduit in the stream that has no director. In fact, the worst thing that these outlets could do to the stream would be to try to be such a figurehead, damming up the stream of information and the resulting tribal connections.
While in the news world, it would seem that social distribution networks like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc. are quickly overtaking the traditional types of news story distribution and making tribal organization difficult, there are other possibilities for being a successful, sustainable tribal organizer. Most of these opportunities involve finding a tribe that cannot create an effective network with the general tools at their disposal. Obama’s presidential campaign is one of the most often-cited examples of this, and with good reason. In past elections, information has been push-based. A candidate would tell his position and feed information outward rather than try to bring people into an idea and engage them. Any sort of tribal organization would be done outside of the official campaign with no central leadership. The Obama campaign, however, provided that figurehead and moved the marginal tribal organization to the main stage. It created a social network that could not have emerged without a figurehead coordinating all of the different parts. The Obama-specific social network could not have been replicated through a Ning network and keeping official updates on the campaign circulating would have been difficult if not impossible without a central Twitter and Facebook account. Now that he’s been elected, change.gov is also an effective venue for organizing feedback and official updates that could not be duplicated through non-directed, general use of other mediums (general discussion boards and mass emails, for example).
What Obama did right and the news organizations did wrong is identifying an area that actually needed a tribal leader. Not every industry and not every product will lend itself to existing as a directed tribe. While it may be inspiring to believe that true change and movements occur by one person coming forward an organizing, social media has begun to change that dynamic. Some industries may be temporarily able to support a figurehead at the top of the tribe, but unless that figurehead is providing a medium of organization that is unavailable elsewhere, the tribal figurehead structure is not sustainable.
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Posted by Todd Woodlan on June 10, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Filed under: Ramblings
Tags: marketing, new media, Seth Godin, social networking
As an internet developer (that’s the English translation of the Mindpowerese term “Oxymoron”), a large part of my job entails looking at how information’s organized. Now, this “hobby” entails a lot more than what you’d assume at first. It’s not just sitting around staring at graphs, charts, and outlines all day. It’s looking at how people set up their websites as a whole. Most of the time, the client (and even sometimes the people creating the website) spend most of their time on the design and just assume the old standards of organizing the actual content, which usually entails a very categorical outline of all the pages in the site. But, there’s a lot more to it than that.
As Clay Shirky pointed out a while ago, there’s no need to carry on the idea that information can only live in one place. In the physical world, a library for example, pieces of information can only be in one place at a time, so it’s necessary to fit them into pre-defined categories made by someone who knows how all this stuff fits together. But, on the internet, information can be called up and recategorized at any point, with any degree of specificity.
As search engines (as opposed to directories) have shown, hierarchy can be created ad hoc. The scary thing about this? When we’re building sites, we all-too-often advocate a strict, unchangeable categorical structure without realizing that websites can function in a completely different manner than books in the library.
To keep with the book metaphor, a book has all the information it’s ever going to have, nothing more and nothing less. But, it’s far from being a “complete” work (I think the fancy term for this is the oeuvre). Really, there’s no such thing as a complete work; all the information on a topic is endless and changes constantly. What’s more, when most people turn to a reference book, they’re usually searching for a specific little bit of information or a single chapter to combine with other chapters. That’s a lot of extraneous info and words surrounding what they’re really getting at.
Now, there’s the misconception that a website has to be organized like a book, giving the appearance of an oeuvre or complete work. But, frankly, we’re just stuck with this frame of mind because we’re used to reading, writing, designing, and printing books, which can’t change once they’re sent to press. What someone reads is what was originally set down on paper. In recent years, we’re beginning to understand that websites can change and can be modified on a person basis. This is evident everywhere from the most basic login and account systems to the Google Adwords advertisements that are automatically generated based on the content of the page. So, what’s the next evolution of all this? I’d say that it’s something along the lines of instantly mutable websites that change content based on what the user’s viewing.
Every time a person visits a site, his moves are tracked (not as a “person” per-se, but more of as a number). From these moves, it would be possible to calculate what that person’s interested in.
For example, I’m a prospective student going to a university’s website. I keep looking around at the Admissions page, the English department, maybe Comparative Literature, and maybe, say the cycling club. That’s all valuable information that’s not getting used. Since I’m interested in Comp Lit, there’s a reasonable change that I’d also be interested in Philosophy and probably stay as far away from something like Pre-Med or Business school as I could. At the very least, all the callouts and side areas could change, advertising some of the related programs, amazing faculty, or recent student accomplishments. Even better, the content of the whole site could change.
From those four pages, we know that I’m a prospective students interested in liberal arts and maybe pursuing a sport. All of the extraneous lower-level information geared towards current students could magically disappear. The site could become entirely customized to the visitor. I’d no longer have to visually skip over links for Alumni, Giving, or the latest form I have to fill out for advising. I’d only be directed towards an in-depth exploration of what I was originally on the site to find out. If we want to get even creepier, we can take a look at the browser history (I think this is an option that would require permission on the part of the visitor) to see where else the visitor has been and delimit the results even further.
With this changeability and mutability, websites can truly be dynamic. The challenge, though, is to make the mutability completely invisible. The goal of any website is to direct its users to the information that they need without having to think about navigating around. There should be no breakdown of the interplay between design and organization that makes someone step back and say to themselves, “Hey, I’m looking at a website. How do they organize these things?” If the website can shift beneath the surface and reorganize itself as necessary to accommodate the particular user, all the better. We may end up finding out that our ways of organizing information aren’t what we thought they were which, consequently, can have a great effect on more traditional forms of media.
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Posted by Todd Woodlan on April 7, 2009 at 9:00 am
Filed under: Brain Candy for Wisdom, Ramblings
Tags: admissions, Clay Shirky, information architecture, marketing, university, website
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
It was nine months ago when we published our very first blog post:
Well it looks like you can teach an old dog new tricks! So, here we go: the folks at Mindpower have made a commitment to join in the fun. It seems like everyone is blogging. Well, either they have a blog or are reporting on them. As a matter of fact (according to Technorati as of June 10, 2008) there are now over 112 million (and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media) blogs on the blogosphere. Are they a fad or will they revolutionize communication? Only time will tell, but we do know this, having a blog may not make or break you, but not having one is not good especially if your competition is out there blah blah bloggin’ and telling everyone how they are soooo much better than you. We’ll just wait and see what happens.
We’ve done “okay” I suppose. Some posts are better than others. But I still struggle with purpose. Why do we really have presence? Does Mindpower’s Brain Candy Blog only exist because we’re supposed to? Have we generated any incremental revenue or signed on a new client from our blog? Nope. Not yet. Are we sharing relevant content? Or interesting commentary? Or, like so many folks with blogs, are we simply being boring as hell and entertaining only ourselves?
Do we even need a blog? when there are microblogging options like twitter. Yeah. You betcha: We’re there. And Facebook. (Won’t you become a fan? That would be progress.) And LinkedIn. Yup. We’re there, too.
Don’t get me wrong. Blogs have a place. Many — if not most — of our clients should have a blog! I’m just wondering if we should. It’s akin to the Powerpoint option of spinning logos: just because you can, does not mean you should.
It’s been nine months. (Cosmic blogosphere irony — the birth of our blog?) As I mentioned back in June, I’m still waiting and I’m still watching. I’m not so sure that blogs aren’t a fad. There are so many blogs now, how can anyone ever decide which ones are worth revisiting? Very few days pass when I don’t bookmark or subscribe to a blog, but I can’t say there are more than two or three that I actually visit on a daily, even a weekly basis.
Should we keep blogging? What would interest you? What would keep you coming back? Better yet, if we’re going to take the time to keep on keeping on, how can we make some money? After all, we’re in the middle of a recession.
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Posted by Donna Bowling on February 22, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Filed under: Ramblings
Tags: blogging, blogs, Facebook, Huffington Post, LinkedIn, marketing, mindpower
Aside from confusing a Collegiate Gothic architecture exhibition with an actual campus tour, one of the main issues with virtual campus visits are their propensity towards technological overdose. As a part of the site that necessitates a lot of images, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement and go overboard by adding slideshows, videos, 360 degree tours, talking avatars, Second Life recreations of the inside of the American Studies department, etc. Too often a lot of digital media becomes the focus rather than a supplement, providing a distraction from a lack of useful information.
The problem is that no matter how many pictures, videos, and digital recreations you include on a virtual tour, you’ll never come close to duplicating the experience of actually being on campus. As I mentioned in my last post, the campus tour actually serves as a vehicle to expose prospective students to your brand, not your architecture. With the objective of brand exposure, it would be better to take all that effort (not to mention money) and put it towards adding new and different media to the rest of your site, especially in higher traffic areas, so that your whole site reflects the brand of your campus.
One of the benefits of using digital media like video, audio, etc. online rests in the ability to show something rather than just tell about it. That “new media” implementation should involve showing off your brand and giving prospective students an idea about the experience of being at your institution at every possible opportunity, not just the designated campus visit area. Take the opportunity to use media to show what students are doing and how they interact with the campus and with each other. Putting short videos about student life, the character of a particular dorm, or various academic programs and departments can actually go where the offline visit can’t: inside the culture of a school.
Undoubtedly prospects get a “feel” about a college just by being on campus, but they also only see what’s right in front of them. Without shadowing a student or spending a night on campus, they can’t go inside the culture of the school and see what it’s really about. Using digital media allows you to give prospects a glimpse inside your campus beyond the tour, not provide a substitute for the real thing.
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Posted by Todd Woodlan on September 18, 2008 at 7:00 am
Filed under: Brain Candy for Wisdom, Branding
Tags: campus visit, higher-ed marketing, marketing, new media
The campus visit is generally regarded as one of the deciding factors for prospective students. Once a student steps foot on a campus, they are said to have that magical moment where they know without a doubt whether or not they belong at a particular college. But, it’s becoming increasingly expensive to visit college campuses. In place of an actual visit, prospective students are being encouraged to take a virtual visit and consequently, a lot of colleges are creating virtual or online visits.
For the next couple posts, I’d like to take a closer look at the campus tour and see what makes it tick both online and offline. I think creating an “online tour” or “online visit” for colleges involves a lot more than putting pictures of your campus online. When prospective students are making their decisions, they’re not looking at the architecture so much as assessing how they like the feel of the campus.
If the “feel” of the college visit isn’t really found by scoping out the latest in Collegiate Gothic architecture, then where does it live? In a lot of different places: how the students are interacting with each other, the personality of the tour guide, and the general buzz on campus to name a few. The important parts are that the feel is found in living, moving people, not in the static buildings.
It’s a wonder, then, that most virtual tours don’t have any people in them. Instead, they stick to a format that more closely resembles the street view in Google Maps. Even dining halls are evacuated before they are recorded for virtual tours. These kinds of tours actually give an impression of college campuses that are far from what students are looking for. Prospects want a campus teeming with life, not a ghost town.
The solution for this doesn’t just lie in adding people to the architectural portraits. A better answer would be thinking about your whole website as a campus visit. When the prospective students are reacting to the “feel” of the campus, they’re reacting to your brand. If your whole website doesn’t reflect the campus environment, you’re missing out on an important opportunity to draw student in. Create a design that’s easy to navigate, but also make sure that it feels like your campus in every aspect: design, copy, and any “new media” additions you decide to add.
The college website is supposed to reflect the brand or feel campus, but not be a complete copy or replacement for the campus itself. One of the worst travesties would be for a prospect to think that after visiting a site that they had seen all the college has to offer. Give them a feeling for what your institution has to offer, but leave them wanting to make the investment in an actual, real life visit.
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Posted by Todd Woodlan on September 13, 2008 at 7:22 am
Filed under: Brain Candy for Wisdom
Tags: campus tour, marketing, new media
Once upon a time, Isaac Newton stole a phrase from Bertrand of Charles and said that he only achieved his success because he was “standing on the shoulders of giants.” A few hundred years later, we’re still progressing through the leverage of the shoulders of various giants that came before us. However, the task of identifying what shoulders to stand on is still an important task. There are lots of giants to choose from: those of philosophy, science, and marketing to name a few. In creating an authentic brand, narrowing that field is extremely important.
When developing a brand, there are a number of different routes to pursue, but the important thing to keep in mind is to choose the right giant as inspiration. We’ve written briefly about authenticity in marketing, but there’s more to the game. If you’re going to create an authentic brand, you’ve got to choose the right inspiration. There are many people “out there” proclaiming that you’ve got to follow a particular path to forming a brand, whether its integrating the latest technology or segmenting the specific audience that you speak to. When it all comes down to it, however, there’s no fast track to creating an authentic brand.
To develop an authentic brand, you’ve got to choose your own giants. The shoulders of giants, frankly, don’t support just anything. You’ve got to be able to build upon already developed principles in a particular area in order to contribute something unique and create a one-of-a-kind brand. This involves a rigorous process of questioning: “What do you stand for?”, “What are your long-term goals?”, “Are you pursuing the right methods to achieve these goals and develop these principles?”
While it’s easy to get caught up in the technological revolution, it’s also important to realize that only a segment of the population is really on the cutting-edge of technology. A lot of people blog and use RSS feeds and Facebook, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it fits your brand. A large part of creating your brand means admitting who you aren’t, however difficult that may be. I’ve seen a lot of institutions implement cutting-edge technology when their demographic isn’t ready for it or would rather see a more straight-forward approach.
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Posted by Todd Woodlan on September 1, 2008 at 9:24 am
Filed under: Brain Candy for Wisdom, Branding, Ramblings
Tags: authenticity, branding, marketing, social networking
Over the past few years, the social media phenomenon has taken off. There’s MySpace, Facebook, Digg, Twitter, Newsvine, Pownce, Twine, Livejournal, WordPress, Typepad, the new Netscape, del.icio.us, mag.nol.ia, YouTube, you get the idea. But, of all these social media websites and applications, one stands out to me as being the best example of what the web’s moving towards: Dodgeball. The site’s been around for a while and Google assimilated it a few years back, but it still hasn’t gotten mass attention.
The main deal with Dodgeball is that when you’re bored, you go out to a public place and send a text message to Dodgeball, which in turn sends a message to everyone in the area who will, hopefully, go join you wherever you are and hang out for a while. It’s a little complicated and almost bordering on the creepy invasion of privacy realm, but it’s got one important thing that most web application don’t explicitly have: the requirement of actual physical interaction. All the Facebooks and MySpaces and Craigslist Missed Connections are about being social and making friends, but they’re still a little antiquated in that the primary focus is on making digital friends and not real friends. Sure, Facebook has the event invitation feature, but the main point’s staying online and on Facebook. Dodgeball’s approach is the complete opposite: use Dodgeball to stay offline.
This is an idea that can be translated into marketing campaigns simply by looking at technology as a facilitator, not just an end in itself. Facebook groups or Twittering may be good because you’re “out there” where your audience is, but you can’t forget that they’re also”out there” walking around in the offline world, too. Unless you’re an online business, you really want to get people off the computer and into the “real” world using your product or service. When planning how to use technology, it’s best to look at all the new gadets, gizmos, and websites as a complement to your traditional marketing, not as a replacement.
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Posted by Todd Woodlan on August 1, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Filed under: Ramblings
Tags: Dodgeball, marketing, mindpower, social networking, twitter
Yesterday (Sunday, July 28th) The New York Times published the second in a series of articles about the growing number of people having cosmetic surgery — or in The Times words, “medical treatments designed to improve appearances.” The series is called the Price of Beauty.
The article reveals the growing trend among dermatologists who are creating a two-tiered business model: One for cosmetic patients; the other for medical patients. Some examples:
- Two office telephone numbers. One for “skin conditions” that more often than not, go to voicemail. The other number, for “improvement” is answered by a full-time staffer.
- Comfortable waiting rooms for the medical patients and lounges for the cosmetic procedure clients.
- Treatment rooms with paper sheets for psoriasis-sufferers and cotton sheets for collagen-seekers.
- In some offices, doctors even allocate more time for the out-of-pocket payers.
Not a whole lot different from flying first-class. Or is it?
Here’s my dilemma: As a “woman of a certain age” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve considered visiting my dermatologist for both medical and cosmetic reasons. (Lucky for him, I’m physician-averse, but we’ll save that post for another day.)
As a marketing strategist, I can’t tell you how many times I, or someone here at Mindpower have recommended a two-tiered marketing strategy. You know, premium pricing for premium service. We also tout, “the experience is the marketing” so I completely agree that the “upgrades” for cosmetic patients are quite necessary, especially given the price they’ll be paying. Our recommendations and strategies make perfect sense most of the time.
This time isn’t “most of the time.” I see absolutely nothing wrong with a doctor specializing in, or having, a cosmetic surgery practice. Lots of folks want (and some even need) those “services.” I don’t even see a problem with lounges and upgraded treatment rooms. I, like most business owners, am all about turning a profit.
However, I do take issue with offering a two-tiered system, one for the afflicted and another for the affluent. Particularly from one location. Either offer the same upgraded services to everyone — or be honest with regard to mission. Physicians may even find that their medical patients come back and pay out-of-pocket for elective procedures if well taken care of when insurance was paying.
End of rant. Don’t go getting all mad at your dermatologist. They’re not all “bad.” (My doc’s great, actually. That reminds me. I need to make an appointment.)
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Posted by Donna Bowling on July 28, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Filed under: Brain Candy for Health, Ramblings
Tags: affluent, experience economy, health care, healthcare, marketing
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