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.
- Brownstein used Google AdWords to target Ad Agency Creative Directors on Madison Avenue in New York
- He bet 15 cents per click that these Creatives were no different than the rest of us self absorbed people who Google ourselves
- What the CD’s saw when they Googled themselves was a personal ad from Brownstein – BRILLIANT!
- 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 don’t have many favorite politicians – check that – I don’t have a one! And, I’d bet most of you don’t have one.
Until maybe now.
Republican candidate for Congress and former U.S. Army lieutenant colonel Allen West is someone I’ve been following throughout his race in the Sunshine State!
And you should too.
Allen West, is a former U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and is running this November as a Republican candidate for the United States Congress in Florida’s District 22.
Watch this video of West in action. No notes – pure passion and conviction – clear message coming from experience – a complete mastery of the power of video and the mastery of the public speech!
When the Republicans and McCain and Co., got outgunned and derailed by the Obama campaign in the last presidential election, there’s no question that one of big contributing factors was that they were far behind in mastering the New World Order of interactive and social media marketing tools.
In the next election/s, you’ll see that everyone will be on the SMM bus. And, it will be somewhat of a level playing field in terms of marketing execution since most everyone will be wearing a pretty nice SMM tool belt and carrying a well equipped toolbox.
Check out West’s Web site and you’ll see its complete with all the appropriate SMM tools however, his talent, integrity, character and clear brand message and performance rules.
Certainly money helps, but in this online, always on world we live in, citizen journalists can help West even out the playing field for his underfunded brand.
Watch out for the Allen West’s of the world (performance based brands with character, integrity and trustworthiness) and remember that tools are cool, but tools don’t rule because anybody can buy them and learn how to use them.
To excel these days, recognize that for today’s informed consumer, what truly matters is a clearly communicated and meaningful brand promise delivered from a trustworthy, proven brand. Guaranteed.
P.S.: I call Lt. Col. Allen West a Marketer’s dream because it’s so easy to promote a brand you believe in. I’ll bet West wins in November – this American Patriot prays and hopes that he does – we need more good people like him in government.
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
I just love this lawsuit kicked off by The North Face – an premium preppy outdoor apparel and gear company – vs. The South Butt – a skunk works operation run by a college kid.
The North Face giant is suing the kid – Jimmy Winkelmann, a University of Missouri college student for trademark infringement, dilution and unfair competition.
The logos and clothing are a bit similar. And, The North Face’s lofty slogan, “Never Stop Exploring” is positioned against the far less lofty and comfortable mission of The South Butt’s which is, “Never Stop Relaxing.”
For The North Face to win, they have to prove that the two brands are confusingly similar. They’ll lose…I’d bet on it. There’s no doubt that the two companies are different. I think the average person knows the difference between a face and a butt. Don’t you?
In the meantime, The South Butt is smoking hot and taking advantage of being bullied – their Web site has earned nearly 20 million Google hits. The South Butt smartly recognized that everyone loves the underdog so they’re making the case well known. And they’ve launched a cool The South Butt Challenge Facebook App to boot!
Jimmy’s going to ride this all the way to the bank and I’ll also bet that he graduates from Mizzou with no school loans!
What’s the marketing lesson? Well, it’s an old and simple one.
The North Face should have left sleeping dogs lie and left Jimmy alone. They’re flaming his fire and contributing to his success by airing their grievance.
This is a classic case of market share leaders making the stupid mistake of identifying and attacking competitors no matter how big or small. They have nothing to gain and more to lose.
Class dismissed.
Today is a special day of remembrance for me because I’ve admired Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ever since I was a young boy.
King’s life’s work was to create a formidable movement of change and progress on the issue of civil rights in America – which he most certainly accomplished. In fact, his legacy has expanded to encompass not only the advancement of civil rights, but human rights throughout the world.
Dr. King and others in the Civil Rights Movement taught me a lot about living my Christian faith and American patriotism out loud, and both taught me lessons about marketing a meaningful cause.
First and foremost, their brand message was true, right and good – they operated from a solid foundation of truth and righteousness.
From having a spot-on brand message – equal rights – the Civil Rights movement created support (buy-in) of their cause with personal, touching, motivating and powerful storytelling imagery such as:
- Segregation signs at water fountains, rest rooms, restaurants and hotels
- Elderly women in their Sunday best being turned back from voting
- Rosa Parks sitting in front of a white man on a bus and then being fingerprinted
- White firemen turning high pressure water hoses on the old and young alike
- White policemen leading German Shepherd attack dogs through black crowds
- Innocent black children being escorted by soldiers on their way to school
- Unarmed, peaceful marchers getting viciously beaten by armed police
- Disgusting Ku Klux Klan marches, and burning crosses
- Rampant black church burnings and bombings
There are certainly more, but I’m sure you get the picture.
All of these powerful images of factual accounts and experiences combined, provided a motivating case for drastic and immediate change.
Certainly, many images were created, but more often than not these images were created and spread virally because they were true, authentic and emotional which makes for a far more reaching impact.
The positioning message was a simple one of good vs. evil.
Dr. King persuaded, motivated and modeled the movement after Gandhi’s peaceful marches and protests with dignity and discipline. These non violent marches were impactful, but as impressive…if not more so…was the way in which he communicated his brand’s message of civil and racial injustice.
Two things I’ve always remembered in marketing are:
- People don’t join causes…people join people with causes and
- People typically buy first on emotion, then justify with facts
These two marketing maxims certainly apply to the Civil Rights Movement.
Do yourself a HUGE favor and listen carefully to Dr. King’s entire, “I Have a Dream” speech. The “Dream” speech is a masterpiece and it’s amazing how quiet the audience is throughout it too.
Here is a list of 10 Communication Tips from Dr. King that I picked up from his speech (see if you can pick them up and agree with them; and see if you can discover a few more):
- The perfect imagery setting of speaking in front of the Lincoln Memorial
- The use of simple, small, easy to understand common words
- The impact of the repetitive nature of select phrases (e.g., “now is the the time,” “we are not satisfied,” “I have a dream,” “let freedom ring,” “free at last”)
- The effect of name personalization (e.g., my friends, you, me, we etc.)
- The effect of location personalization (e.g., he lists key towns and cities where many of the members of his audience live)
- The clarity of his speech – perfect annunciation and diction
- The passionate nature of his voice – how can you motivate people if you’re not
- The perfect pacing and changes in speech patterns (e.g., high, low, quick, slow)
- The use of short phrases and sentences to drive home memorable key points
- The fact that he used notes sparingly because he spoke from personal experience, believed in his message and thus knew it by heart – teleprompter be damned
Much is made about President O’Bama’s communication skills, but he’s far from being the skilled orator of Dr. King. The president has the Internet, a ton of communication consultants and speechwriters and his infamous TELEPROMPTER (which he uses entirely too much as a crutch). Dr. King had none of the tools that the President has at his disposal, but created such an amazing, impressive long lasting presence.
The President and all of us can learn a great deal about tolerance, patriotism and doing the right thing from Dr. King AND we can all learn a great deal about how to be a Marketing Rock Star too!
Happy Birthday and Rest in Peace Dr. King.
Hockey great Wayne Gretzky is credited with the quote, “You miss 100% of the shots you never take.” It’s a good quote to keep in mind as you enter the New Year – and I believe it rings true for all of us.
In fact, this police sketch of a suspected murderer is a fine example. When you first look at this police sketch, you may think a three year old drew it, but an actual police sketch artist in Bolivia – whose work will never appear in the Louvre – drew it and two suspects were found as a result!
Life is all about results – not intentions.
It just goes to show you that you need to take a shot…you need to take more shots to score and win. But to shoot more often, you also need to show up more often too.
Hollywood Director Woody Allen once said that, “80 percent of success is just showing up!”
If you want to succeed more in 2010, take more shots and show up more often than you did this past year – this past decade – and you’ll be more successful!
In my 25+ year professional life, I’ve survived, thrived and worked through four global recessions. And, I am now working through my third U.S. recession and about seven periods of negative economic growth over one fiscal quarter or more.
I’m alive, enjoying my life and generally O.K. but certainly my business situation – owning my own business in the marketing industry – is a delicate one.
For well over a year, I’ve told my family, friends, business associates and continue to repeat to myself (to firm my belief) that recessions are a state of mind and we’re really in a time of reset not recession.
The economy is resetting people’s values of time, money, relationships and more. And, things will be different even after Wall Street settles down and hopefully a lot of people get back to work.
In my business, I’ve reset (and continue to do so) the solutions we offer and the value we provide. This recession has been a wake up call for me to hit my reset button and clean up my professional and personal life. But, I certainly saw it coming. Didn’t you?
We all had it pretty easy a few years ago – just about anyone was making good money at their job and on Wall Street.
I remember in 2000, young kids right out of college who had a little bit of HTML code experience (and no real life expereince and even less common sense and street smarts) were making high five figure incomes. Today, with Web technology advances making it easier for anyone to build a Web site – even for free – those days are long gone for those early 2000+ college grads.
This recession for me has been a good time of sorts. It’s made me work to provide more value to clients, increase my skill set in areas I never worked in before and bulletproof my tried and true skills.
And, as a result we’ve been rewarded with new clients, extended contracts and additional business from existing clients and industry awards from the Public Relations Society of America and the American Marketing Association.
Sure, it’s easy to blame others and the economy for why you may be struggling today, but if you’re honest with yourself, you saw the signs of the times changing a long time ago. The good thing is it’s never too late to change and keep making changes.
I’ll continue to hit my reset button when times get a little slow and tough and for now, in 2010 I plan to offer my clients:
- Quicker response times due to systems we’ve put in place
- New and improved marketing solutions due to re-investments in our team’s knowledge base and thought leadership
- New and improved Social Media Marketing offerings
- Marketing packages of value-added solutions
- Marketing Seminars, Webinars and Workshops
- Books and tool kits
- New Mobile marketing offerings and expertise
- More ROI – results driven solutions to drive customer acquisition, retention, winback and referrals
- More accountability in our actions
- More of everything – more nice, more helpful, more smart, more quick, more patient, more listening, more understanding, more seeking win-win opportunities
With the reset I’ve gone through, I feel I’m more recession proof and on a path of purpose and passion than on a road of obligation and duty.
Everyday you have choices to make to be better than you used to be or remain the same. Choose to be better, choose to reset and be recession proof.
When I worked for a few major Fortune 500 brands, I hated this time of the year for this was when we’d be either writing or rewriting our Corporate Mission Statement.
Mission Statements to me lack passion, try to cover too much ground, use senseless $10 words and no one follows them and no one ever remembers them.
I’ve always preferred Marketing Mantra’s like those recommended by Guy Kawasaki as explained here Success Magazine.
Mantra’s create more meaning, reveal what you stand for and provide a transformational guidepost.
As my company has delved more deeply into the Hospitality Marketing Consulting arena, I’ve been studying all of the top performers such as Ritz-Carlton whose Mantra is magnificent, “We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen.”
It positions, provides a brand promise, anticipates behavior and is perfect. Not hard to remember either…right?
It’s no wonder they’re the Beatles of the hotel industry.
Read more about the Ritz-Carlton’s Gold Standards here!
My father started my brothers and me with family mantras when we were young. For example, right about this time in December, he’d create a family Mantra tied in to a rhyme for the New Year – it was fun. No matter how tough or good our times were our mantra gave us focus, direction and a battle cry for the family unit.
After my father passed away, I picked up the torch with my nephew Joey. This year’s family mantra is, “It’s not if, it’s when in 2010!”
This simple statement means that all of us plan to accomplish several goals (we list them annually) we have put off achieving for one reason or another. We know we’ll achieve them in the New Year, but we’re just not quite sure when! But, we will achieve them.
To quote the famous poet, marketing God, lead singer of the Doors and Lizard King himself, Jim Morrison…
“The time to hesitate is through,
No time to wallow in the mire,
Try now we can only lose,
And our love becomes a funeral pyre.
Come on babe light my fire
Come on babe light my fire
Try to set the night on fire!
My Mantra for my BrandMill marketing consultancy is simply, “We build strong brands.”
We don’t say we’re an advertising agency because we aren’t. And, when clients ask me what we do I simply tell them, “We build strong brands.” Then when they ask me, “How?”, it gives an opportunity to provide them with the myriad of ways and examples how we’ve done it repeatedly over the years.
Set your goals for 2010, but also create an overarching simple Mantra to add focus, meaning and provide direction for your team and for you too.
“Leave your Mission Statement behind in 2009,” and Rock On!
Naturalist Charles Darwin’s famous quote regarding stronger species and survival rates has been misrepresented for years.
What Darwin actually said was, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
Believing his truism, Darwin would be a fantastic marketer in these changing times! Will you?
So how do you cope with marketing changes?
Well, while I was pounding down my 3rd cup of coffee this morning (my Keurig coffee maker rocks), I came up with 50 ways to cope with all of the marketing changes swirling around you and to help you survive and thrive in marketing:
- Face the facts – change will always be a constant throughout your life
- Pay attention to warning signs, study trends and read a tea leaf or two
- Strive to remain calm at all times
- Anticipate change – learn to take advantage of it
- Accept control – control your controllables – that means controlling YOU
- Read, study, put a plan of study in process, chart your course
- Think more
- Worry less
- Do more
- Create a “to don’t” list
- Clear your mind
- Clear your desk
- Work out
- Go for long walks
- Meditate
- Take long baths
- Sit in steam room
- Do deep breathing exercises
- Do progressive muscle relation techniques
- Embrace Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Successful People
- Create good, positive reasons for change for your business (believe them)
- Create good, positive reasons for change for yourself (believe them)
- Think of yourself as an independent marketing assassin and that all of the changes taking place will only make you stronger and more valuable with more arrows in your quiver to deliver more success for your firm, your family and for yourself
- Get together with like-minded people to enable the changes you or management seeks
- Provide financial and emotional benefits when successful change goals are met
- Monitor your progress and celebrate achieving key milestones – small and large ones
- Make sure the people on your team share the same values
- Recognize that to get “there from here,” everyone may not get a seat on the bus
- Understand that your career and life is a marathon, not a sprint
- Understand that if you do not evolve you will dissolve
- Listen more
- Discuss more
- Be more open
- Join groups, chat rooms
- Read more
- Study more
- Create a plan of educational achievement
- Be a student of your profession
- Subscribe to online educational webinars, newsletters
- Be more in the present – don’t be so consumed with the future
- Don’t be consumed with having all of the right answers
- Be consumed with having all of the right questions
- Have fun discovering the answers
- Realize that you’re not perfect – you’ll never be
- Realize that you’re not an expert – you’ll never be
- Don’t give yourself unrealistic time periods to achieve your goals
- Don’t be unrealistic and give yourself too many goals to reach
- Focus on your desired outcomes, not just timelines and constraints
- Don’t be so hard on yourself
- Enjoy the ride realizing you’ve overcome past changes and you’ll succeed again
I’m sure there are more ways to cope with marketing changes, but I’m too busy to think of any more because of all of the changes going on around me!
Seriously, this list helps keep me grounded.
Hope it helps you too.
