For anyone looking for a new job (pay attention college grads) or trying to get that next big sale and running into a roadblock because you can’t get the attention of a key decision maker, check out this brilliant job search strategy by copywriter Alec Brownstein.

1. Brownstein used Google AdWords to target Ad Agency Creative Directors on Madison Avenue in New York
2. He bet 15 cents per click that these Creatives were no different than the rest of  us self absorbed people who Google ourselves
3. What the CD’s saw when they Googled themselves was a personal ad from Brownstein – BRILLIANT!
4. Young & Rubicam offered him a job!

Note: Brownstein’s Google Job Experiment YouTube video has been viewed over 500,000 times!  Rock on Alec!

I’ve been a practicing (and far from perfect) Roman Catholic and Christian all my life, and for over 25 years, I’ve been a practicing (also far from perfect) marketing professional.

For the past few months, I’ve been working on a lot of brand positioning exercises and marketing audits as well as attending a weekly bible study. As I’m preparing to enter Holy Week and Easter – my favorite time of the year – my professional and personal life is colliding in an interesting way.

I’ve been thinking about Jesus’ ministry and his time on earth a lot lately. And, I’ve been thinking about him as a brand too. And, when I think of him as a brand, his radical and remarkable message and unique selling proposition is clearly one of unconditional love, tolerance and forgiveness – but, love is his foundational core message. And, he demonstrated his core message of love by living it out loud through his actions and by making the ultimate sacrifice.

I say radical and remarkable because if you closely study The Sermon on the Mount, you’ll see what I mean. C’mon…turning the other cheek is one heck of a radical concept! Even today!

When I try to stand outside of my faith and look at Christianity as a product,  it’s amazing that it has spread throughout the world and has welcomed 2 billion adherents without depending on large scale ad campaigns, social media and the like.

Christianity has spread because one person – Jesus – started it by speaking his message of truth, being authentic, transparent and following a singular focused devout message of pure unconditional love for everyone.

It’s a great lesson for all of us people of the world and marketers too.

Happy Easter to all of you.

P.S.: With all due respect, this post is not meant to be sacrilegious at all, but merely an essay in effective branding/messaging. Also, for those of you interested in religious marketing lessons, I came across this Blog – Church Marketing Sucks – and found it pretty interesting. The site’s goal as stated is to…“frustate, educate and motivate the church to communicate, with uncompromising clarity, the truth of Jesus Christ.” Another interesting post is here, Jesus Is Not a Brand; Why it is dangerous to make evangelism another form of marketing, by Tyler Wigg Stevenson.

Over the next two days, we’re participating in two separate presentations to the Pittsburgh American Marketing Association at the Duquesne Club downtown and to students at Chatham University.

My client John Graf – co-owner of the Priory Hospitality Group – and I are co-presenting and will review the success of our Winter White Wedding program which has driven first quarter wedding bookings by 400% and continues to rock – it helped us win the Pittsburgh American Marketing Association’s Grand Marketer of the Year Award!

The Priory’s Winter White Weddings are a true testament to the success of  “Blue Ocean Strategies” that profitably transform brands by pursuing low cost brand differentiation that makes your competition irrelevant.

To help you sail in Blue Oceans, click this link to review the Priory’s PowerPoint deck:
AMA Pittsburgh Marketer of the Year Priory Hotel 3.16.10

As a 50 percenter of Irish blood and a serial marketing professional, I thought I’d offer you dear reader, my 15 Marketing Lessons of St. Patrick’s Day to help you find your little pot ‘o gold at the end of a rainbow!

And, I’ll offer them quickly because I shouldn’t even be working today – St. Patrick’s Day is one of my many “high holy days” - and there’s a Guinness pint with my name of it at one of my favorite Pittsburgh Irish pubs (Paddy’s Pour House) and it’s getting warm! So here you go!

1. Green Marketing Lesson One – Making Money. Always keep money (making it or saving it) front and center of any marketing campaign. If you know anything about the Irish (and I do growing up in a large extended family), the majority have experienced challenging economic times and know the value of a dollar. So, incorporating zero based budgeting into your marketing processes will help you become more creative and help you do a lot more for less. 

2. Green Marketing Lesson Two – Sustainability. These days when you hear brands talk about sustainability, it’s related to the environment, but the basic pure definition of sustainability is “the capacity to endure.” Using the same color in your marketing communications reinforces your brand, makes your marketing work harder for you and enables your marketing to endure.

3. Green Marketing Lesson Two – Color. Design and color can help you communicate a great deal. Red – hot, stop; Blue – cool. etc., Keep in mind that all colors also come in a great deal of shades so don’t be boring and predictable.  Green has about 50 unique shades.

4. Create Multi-Sensory Emotional Appeals (e.g., appeal to people’s five senses of sight, sound, touch, taste, smell). In a recent post about, “Marketing with Sound,” I discussed the awesome power of sound, but you should also consider all of the ways you can appeal to your customer’s five senses. St. Patrick’s Day appeals them all with color, strong visuals of parades, people having fun; taste of ethnic foods like corned beef and cabbage and drink (pints of Guinness and shots of Jameson) etc.,

5. Appeal to One’s Ethnic Heritage. There’s nothing wrong with appealing to people’s ethnic heritage – net, different strokes for different folks.  In fact, it’s a growing and popular strategy due to our mobile society, immigration, single parent households etc.

Some of this strategy’s keys to success include knowing your market well, being aware of unique cultural nuances, being respectful etc.  Disney’s Epcot Theme Park’s World Showcase is a great example of ethnic marketing, but Denny’s Restaurants’ recent Pancake promotion is not.

6. Be Inclusive with Your Marketing. As much of an Irish heritage appeal the holiday provides, St. Patrick’s Day is all-inclusive and welcomes everyone to celebrate – everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day!

7. Special Event/Thematic/Celebration/Holiday Marketing. Giving a unique thematic association to your marketing messages makes it easier for your customers to understand you and more immediately recognize you too. Tie-ing in to a major holiday celebration gives your promotion authenticity and a “reason why” you’re holding a sales event.

8. Limited Time Appeal. Having a hard date against a campaign creates urgency, excitement and traffic. Pretty obvious statement, but many marketers leave far too many campaigns without a clear end date and a sense of urgent appeal.

9. Spokesperson/figurehead/celebrity/image appeal. Having a Saint as your celebrity figurehead ain’t too shabby, but it’s the consistency of using the same appealing celebrity with a unique story is what works.

10. Iconic Marketing – Shamrock – brand, sell, profit. Mickey Mouse’s Ears, Ronald McDonald’s big red shoes, McDonald’s Arches and more.

Shamrocks do the same for today’s holiday – it’s the day’s badge of honor and identification. What’s your badge ID?

11. Rule of Threes. Legend has it that St. Patrick used the common Shamrock to teach the Celtic Pagans about the unique Holy Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – 3 in 1 Godhead.

However, the “rule of three” symbolism in the good man’s teaching is relevant today as well because people’s minds are noisy and limited. Using the rule of three enables you to get them to remember you and buy-in a presentation or product mix selection. Small, medium, large; gold, silver, bronze; 3 bears; 3 blind mice; 3 Stooges (see more examples/proof here) – trust me – the rule of three rocks.

12. Be Positive. You won’t find a more positive group of people that the Irish. Despite all of their “Troubles” who else tells you that you can find a pot ‘o gold at the end of a rainbow? At Pittsburgh’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade this past Saturday, people throughout the day referred to the cold constant rain as nothing more, “a little Irish mist!”

13. Be Nice. You’d be hard pressed to find a nicer bunch of people than the Irish on St. Patrick’s Day too.

14. Have fun and don’t take yourself so seriously. In this age of “political correctness” the Irish are for the most part a happy and fun bunch and most Irish demeaning jokes bounce of them like water on a duck.

15. Plan Your Luck by Working Hard. In my opinion, “the luck of the Irish” is based on hard work – simple as that. You’ve probably heard the saying, the harder you work the luckier you get!” Well, its true. The majority of Irish are no strangers to hard work and I believe – all things being equal – people that work harder and smarter than their peers will meet with more profitable success in a shorter period of time.

Got to run, my pint is getting warm.

Slan (Gaelic for “farewell for now”)!

As a brand marketing consultancy, people pay us to, “call their baby ugly” and discover profitable ways to make it more attractive. It’s not an easy thing to do, especially when the business owners or leaders you’re consulting with happen to be the ones who gave birth to the baby you’re critiquing.

A few months ago, I caught the news and television commercials about how Dominos Pizza executives blatantly called their baby – a pizza pie – ugly. They announced that they had listened to their customers (inside the company and outside the company) and had taken strong, bold steps to clean up their act and improve their product.

I applauded their authentic, open approach and knew if they were true to their words with actions and walked their talk, their honesty would be rewarded in spades.

Here are the steps Dominos took:

1. They first listened to their customers (internal and external) and agreed to take action because they believed what they were hearing – that is, their product was not good. They started to revamp their recipes more than 1.5 years ago following a ton of focus group and social media site criticism. Remember, the first step to transforming (see rehab) a brand or yourself is admitting you have a problem and need help.

2. They “started over” (total transformation) from scratch by revamping their pizza recipe (new sauce and cheese combination and herb-and garlic-flavored crust)

3. They launched an honest documentary style ad campaign (in short, “we’re sorry…we agree with you that our baby tastes like cardboard…we did something remarkable about it…we think you’ll love it…please try us again”)

The result? A ton of curious customers rushed to try the new Dominos pizza and rocked their sales. In fact, Dominos Pizza Q4 2009 profits more than doubled!

Here’s a great Dominos turnaround video explaining how it all went down.

And, here is a link to a current Dominos commercial challenging Papa John’s claims and a link to the story about their amazing results.

So what are some of the steps you should take when your company or client is performing poorly and you recognize radical change is needed?

Here are 2 suggestions.

1. Be careful and smart with your language. You need to be careful to not to just slam the poor quality of your brand’s systems, products, people, processes etc., because the people you’re trying to influence may be defensive. Have concrete facts.

2. Concentrate all positive energies on transformational business building ideas. Focus on specific business building ideas to help them achieve their KPIs (key performance indicators).achieve their business objectives. Discuss how you’ve experienced similar challenges and relay to them potential outcomes and blue sky possibilities.

Be a marketing ambassador of hope and handle those ugly babies with kid glove because when you do, their brand parents will adopt your way of thinking!

P.S.: I love all babies.

Did you ever wonder why all football field goals are worth three points or all touchdowns are worth six points? I have…and the more I think about it, the more outdated the tradition seems to me, and changing the values would make the game more exciting.

Aren’t 50 yard field goals tougher to make than 20 yarders? Certainly they are, so why aren’t their values different?

In gymnastics and other sports, the degree of difficulty is rewarded so why not football.

Here’s a thought…how about…

• Making all field goals between the goal line and 10 yard line worth 1 point
• 11-20 yard line = 2 points
• 21 – 30  = 3 points (probably today’s average kick)
• 31 – 40 = 4 points
• 41 – 50 – 5 points
• 51+ = 6 points (double the average)

Wouldn’t this single idea create cool new strategies and more game excitement in the NFL, College etc.? Yes it would – it would open up the game a ton. I’m not sure about changing the value of touchdowns, because the degree of difficulty getting a touchdown in the Red Zone (20 yards in) can be tough, but why not look into it.  Why always stay with the status quo especially when the environment you exist in has changed?

The NBA finally adopted the 3-point shot in the 1979-80 season after seeing it tested over the years, so why can’t the NFL change?

Bringing this marketing idea home to you and your business, what can you take away from this discussion?

Well, for starters take a hard look at your pricing and see if the pricing of the selling of your goods and services (goals) truly reflects what their real and perceived worth is to your customer.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself when reviewing your pricing policies:

• Do you offer better terms of service than your competitors
• Does your stuff last longer
• Is your stuff simply better
• Are you nicer to do business with – more trustworthy
• Do you offer guarantees – replacements
• Are you faster
• Are you cleaner
• Are you more thorough
• Do you offer more prestige
• Do you offer more value-added services
• Is it harder to do what you do
• Is your error rate smaller
• Does the quality you deliver reflected in the time and care you take to deliver
• Do your ideas transform businesses into more long term profitable brands vs. short term easy to lose small gains

Certainly this list isn’t exhaustive, but you get the idea.  You get the picture.

In my experience, over 80% of the pricing problems I see with brands, turns out to be that they should raise their prices and clearly demonstrate their true value .

The problem most brands have (if they have a quality product) is that they do not clearly communicate and demonstrate the value they offer, so they simply resort to lowering their prices until their customer believes their effort to be of some value.

I contend that 50 yard field goals are worth a lot more that 25 yarders and should be valued accordingly – it’s certainly easy to demonstrate the value because they’re longer and harder to make!

What do you do that’s better than your competitors, but your prices are similar?

Figure out what your dramatic difference is and clearly demonstrate your value-add and win! If you don’t have a dramatic difference that you can clearly demonstrate…get one!

Photo: James Clear

Sometimes I think marketing is a pretty easy business. Do right by your customers and they’ll do right by you – follow the Golden Rule.

One company that makes a hard business look easy and that rocks my marketing world is Southwest Airlines. Since 1999, Southwest’s domestic market share has increased by 48%, while the five network carriers have seen their combined passenger base shrink 20%. This year, Southwest will fly about 28 million more people than it did in 1999, while its rivals will fly a total of 62 million fewer passengers!

Southwest is a leader – pure and simple. They’ve been zigging while the Big 5 have been sagging for years. They start by being friendly and have built their brand around LUV.

Southwest is gaining valuable market share, even as it reduces its overall flying, by exploiting a competitive weakness at other airlines. The universal competitive weakness among all of Southwest’s competitors is the perception that they are out to “nickel and dime” passengers with fees for services that were once part of the base airfare.

Southwest’s ‘bags fly free’ marketing strategy is pure genius and is proving to be another major success for them. Check out this story from the Chicago Tribune, Southwest landing flyers with its ‘bags fly free’ strategy.

Do like it when companies ding you for every little thing?

Do you ding people with your pricing?

Recently, I flew Southwest to Florida for a little golf vacation with my brothers and even my golf bag was checked in for free. Plus, the smiling, friendly faces and natural customer rapport they provide was pervasive throughout my experience – from service counter to stewards to pilots. It was a great experience.

And, as I thought about this Blog post and my favorable Southwest customer experience of saving at least $100 with their ‘bags fly free‘ policy, I thought about my BP gas station experience earlier in the day. BP charged me $1.00 to put air in my tires (see copy in bottom right corner)! Make that two tires – my dollar didn’t last long enough to top off the air for all four tires.

So, here’s the $24,000 question.

Do you ever hear of anyone raving about their recent experience at a BP gas station?

Didn’t think so!

P.S.: Check out how well Southwest’s stock price has outperformed BP’s stock price over the last 10 years! It’s obvious Southwest is a marketing rock star!

I caught this Chicago Tribune story about how Starbucks is combining its Gold Card program, and its Starbucks Card Rewards, into a new program called My Starbucks Rewards (MSR) on December 26th!

Merry Christmas to me?   Nope…don’t think so!

MSR replaces the Gold Card’s 10% discount and $25 annual fee with a tiered rewards program that offers free birthday drinks, free refills and free Wi-Fi.

Starbucks is hoping to drive brand loyalty with the new program, but I doubt it will work.

Driving performance with incentive programs is one thing (e.g., limited time offer to drive consumer trial on a new product etc.), but loyalty programs are a whole different matter.

I’m not a fan of loyalty programs.

Think about people and businesses and other things you are loyal to and ask yourself, “Why?”

For me it’s family, friends, clients, my BrandMill team – Stephanie, Sam and Angie my dry cleaner, Jackie who cuts my hair and the Pittsburgh Steelers and Penguins.

Why?

They all deliver on their promises which show care, concern and respect for me, my time and y investment in them. In addition, they all deliver remarkable, consistent favorable experiences.

Aren’t these the same kinds of reasons you’re loyal to someone or something?

You can’t buy or extort loyalty with MSR cards, Gold cards or any other card.

You earn loyalty by showing customers care and concern and delivering on your promises.

As for Starbucks, for them to earn my loyalty, I don’t need a card. I’m sure a great deal of other people don’t need another card as well. For me, they can drop prices on a straight cup of coffee or tea speed up their drive-through. I love Starbucks bold black coffee and teas with no frills, but I don’t love it THAT much to put up with slow service and high prices.

I never quite left the restaurant marketing industry, but over the past few 18 months, I’ve jumped back into it head first.  I’m loving every minute of it too.

I’m blessed to work with some great clients from first rate hospitality companies, to white table cloth power lunch places to traditional old school steak and chop houses.

Getting back up to speed in the industry has been fun and exhilarating and surprisingly not that hard.  With the Internet, it’s so easy to do research and one of the really cool Web sites I visit to get ideas is  Chow.Com.

I came across this video on Chow’s “Obsessives” Channel featuring John Nese the owner/operator of Galco’s Soda Pop Stop in LA. John offers about 500 pops all sourced by him from every corner of the world. He does such a great job of selling his merchandise because he offers pop he believes in and loves. And, you will too.

This 13 minute story is worth your time but, don’t watch it if you’re drinking a Pepsi or a Coke because you won’t enjoy what you’re drinking. If you sell “Pepsi-Cola like” products – that is, products like everyone else, John will motivate you to offer unique stuff that will make your customers smile and come back for more.

I’m amazed – you’ll be amazed – by how much he knows about his products (flavor profiles, sources, partners) and his industry (high fructose corn syrup vs. cane sugar, recycling etc.,) and how he uniquely caters to each of his customer’s unique niche/s.

Sure wish he was closer to Pittsburgh, because I’d be ordering from him all day long.

However, I do plan to place a few orders in the future. Check them out.

I love this guy!