Tag Archive for ‘Marketing’ rss

You Can’t Hide Your Reputation

Anytime you cross someone in a bad way they will remember.  Your reputation is your business.  We have the ability to communicate online with thousands of people instantly, it is what those people say about you that becomes your reputation.

Humans remember the bad things much longer than the good, if you have broken someone’s trust in the past I’d suggest working on making it better soon because it’s going to take a while.  Think of the last person who broke your trust, have you worked with them since?  How do you feel about him/her?


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Cause marketing: a diamond in the rough

Cause marketing is utilizing a non-profit organization as a means of putting a for-profit brand or product in front of someone in return for fundraising and awareness.  Anytime you partner with a charity for anything it is a win-win situation.  The charity gains funding and exposure to a group of people it may not have been able to touch and the company gets to show people that they actually do care by helping out a charity.

Cause marketing is growing in part because some large players are getting involved such as Pepsi with it’s refresh project.  Other companies have the charity aspect as a part of their day to day business like Toms Shoes, their fascinating business strategy is worth a read.

The example I love to tell people about is a local company.  Coda Clothing & Shoes (@CodaClothing) throughout the year does not promote the store or sales via any mass media type other than the large billboard on the side of their building shown here:

Instead of telling everyone in Regina to come to Coda, they host Charity fashion shows where a large amount of money is donated to a specific charity and Coda gets to show off their new
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Different Dog, Same ol’ Bark

“You can be traditional in a non-traditional medium and as well, you can be non-traditional in a traditional medium.”

I heard this for the first time on the Six Pixels of Separation podcast.   Joseph Jaffe said it to Mitch Joel talking about what is currently taking place across all mediums.  I think that statement is very applicable for areas such as Saskatchewan, that have a much slower adoption rate for online technology and media.  Let me explain.

In Saskatchewan companies need to focus on bridging the gap between traditional and new media.  It would be ignorant not to be exploring what you could be doing online as well, to spend your entire budget on internet marketing.  If you can figure out how to be non-traditional in a traditional medium you already have a head start on the competition.  So how could you go about doing this?  Simple.

Begin by knowing that your customers have the most marketing influence in the World, give them the tools to spread your message.  Put your web-site on all printed material, if you’re on Twitter put your username on your business cards and e-mail signature.  Start producing content that your followers would want to consume
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The Bonnie Raitt Philosophy of Marketing

“Let’s give them something to talk about”

If you go about your marketing efforts keeping this philosophy in mind you can’t go wrong.  Let me explain.

If your target audience sees your billboard and it doesn’t strike them with any emotion, you’ve lost.  If someone hears your latest radio campaign and it doesn’t standout in their mind, again, you lose.  If your marketing campaign can’t give someone something to talk about, what are you doing?  Just making noise, that is all, and we are extremely good at ignoring advertising noise.

Get creative, be provocative, evoke emotion, pick a fight, disagree, challenge a norm, standup for something, show your passion, give me something to talk about.


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Saskatchewan Ministry of Health Misses the boat…again?

In March of 2010 this was posted to the Nudge blog, explaining why social norms are a proven method to curb binge drinking among teens.  The post features an advertisement from the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health attempting to use guilt and shame to convince teens not to drink.  The other example is from the National Institute of Social Norms campaign at Georgetown University.  From this case study you can read about it’s effectiveness.

The same day of the Nudge blog post, Advertising Age published this article on a study done at Northwestern University.  Using guilt or shame can actually influence the intended audience to take part in more of that behavior, says Kellogg marketing professor Nidhi Agrawal;  ”People who are already feeling guilt or shame resort to something called “defensive processing” when confronted with more of either, and tend to disassociate themselves with whatever they are being shown in order to lessen those emotions.”

It didn’t bother me much knowing that the Ministry of Health did that one set of ads, but to my astonishment they are producing more and now short videos too?  The new campaign is titled: “What else got wasted?” Well it appears your marketing budget was.

Just because
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Mosaic + Foursquare=Match Made in Heaven

The business applications for Foursquare seem to be increasing.  As more people join, the more attention the platform is getting from businesses.  Albeit Saskatchewan is a little behind the “checkin” train but that doesn’t mean some businesses are trying Foursquare on for size.  Just today I found this on Twitter.  

Coda Clothing may not explode with business but I went and bought a shirt to get in the draw, will you?

I believe those who could benefit the most from Foursquare are events like Mosaic.  In a three day span, thousands of people will be traveling to and from nineteen different pavilions.  Like the Haggis at the Scottish pavilion?  Leave a tip for everyone else who checks in there.  Want to know which pavilion your friends are at?  Or better yet, which pavilion is the most popular?  Check Foursquare.

For the Mosaic organizers, create special badges for those who checkin to ten, fifteen and all nineteen different pavilions.  Offer a prize to people who checkin at all nineteen pavilions.  The pavilions themselves could have a swarm badge where if over fifty people checkin, all food is 50% off for an hour, just as an example but you get my
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