When Obama first came out with his logo in February of 2008, people in the blogosphere noted the striking resemblance between it and Pepsi’s logo. In articles such as Slate’s “Obama the Pepsi Candidate,” James Ledbetter discussed the connection not only between the candidate and company’s logos, but used the comparison as an analogy between the Coca Cola like establishment of Hillary Clinton, and the Pepsi like outsider appeal of Obama.

It remains debatable if the Obama camp ever intentionally modeled its logo after Pepsi’s. Although the comparison of Obama to Pepsi, and Hillary or even Mccain to Coke is an amusing one, it’s doubtful that the President elect’s camp consciously chose to emulate the brand. However, in light of the new pepsi logo contained in the ad below, it is undeniable that Pepsi’s reinvention of its logo is now banking on an association with Obama. This ad was released as a New Year’s wish from Pespsico, but on first seeing it, I, as well as many people I know initially thought it was an Obama ad.  

Brand association is nothing new. Think of a few of the most prominent examples that we use every day, Kleenex, Xerox, where the general product is called by a brand name. No one is going to ask for an Obama when they want a Pepsi, or vice versa, but the company is embracing the association between the candidate “for a new generation” and it’s own similar market position.

Brand association is a powerful yet subtle device that small business can easily incorporate into their marketing efforts. Here are 5 steps to create your own brand association:

1.       Identify the demographic(s) that you are trying to reach

2.       Identify a brand, product, or image that appeals to that demographic

-          For instance if you are  a real estate agency selling homes to upper middle class income families, picture a model home with any of the following images:  children playing soccer out front, a Mercedes Benz SUV in the driveway, or Golden Retrievers in the yard.

3.       Use language that incorporates that brand association to solidify the connection.

-Ex: Safety to Play, Affordable Luxury, Freedom to Roam, respectively with the above image associations reinforces that brand association.

4.       Incorporate these associations into your PR, Website, print and online ads, juxtaposing your company with these images and language whenever possible.

5.       Continue the dialogue, using the language you create to reinforce the association until it becomes an integral part of your brand.

Marketing Tools

Relating to an earlier post about Twitter, a relatively new website, 12seconds.tv, has just gone into public beta. The site is the video equivalent of Twitter, offering microvideo, as opposed to microblogging. Tech crunch discusses a new iphone app that enables Iphone users to upload 12 second videos. However this app is more limiting than normal camera equipped mobile phones, in that Iphone users can only submit 12 second slideshows, while mobile phone users can email 12 second videos to the site which posts them automatically.

The success of Twitter, as in any social network, is the community adoption. Millions of people are now using twitter and it continues to grow in popularity. It remains to be seen whether 12 seconds will have the same success. From an early perusal of the site, it does not appear that there is a great deal of exploration of the format. People aren’t uploading videos that they’ve spent a great deal of time on, rather they press record and hit send 12 seconds later. It seems like there’s an opportunity for some more creative usage than simply pointing your webcam at yourself and uttering a sentence, although presumably if you continually utter interesting/insightful/hilarious sentences that may be all that is necessary.

Like Twitter, the value of 12 seconds may lie in it’s preview/teaser offerings, as a way to entice people to click links to more content rich sites. Many twitter users are also bloggers, and will post interesting links they find to their twitter account, which then reinforces their value as bloggers, because they are seen as purveyors of interesting and “follow worthy” content. (For those unfamiliar with Twitter, users can follow people, giving them real time updates of that twitterer’s ”tweets,” 12 seconds includes this same ’follow’ function ). By the same token, 12 seconds may have value for Youtube users, as a means of promoting new videos, or as content filler for the time in between their more substantial videos.

Most importantly, this seems like a golden opportunity for any small business that has news to announce. In much the same way as Zappos (a fantastic company by the way) emails announcements of their latest and greatest products, this format would be great for retail companies looking to show off their newest items. Travel agency’s can announce their new great travel deals. PR companies can make quick announcements. With a little creativity the 12 second format could be utilized to great effect, and if if it’s both interesting and valuable content users will appreciate it. One of the other great assets is the main page automatically displays every new video that is posted in chronological posting order. New videos will be posted for all to see, as well as a user’s followers. As always with social media, good content is of the utmost importance - create good, informative, entertaining/interesting content, and they will follow.

Marketing Tools, Web 2.0 Social Networking

Constant Contact is our top choice for a bulk email manager. When choosing a bulk email provider trust is an important factor, due in large part to the importance of spam compliance when conducting an email marketing campaign.  The CAN-SPAM act of 2003 outlines a number of requirements for bulk emailers that small businesses might easily overlook when conducting an email campaign. A tool like Constant Contact ensures that all elements of the compliance act are followed, as well as providing powerful management and tracking abilities.  It facilitates contact management for different campaigns, and allows the sender to see how effective each email is by measuring click-through to links in the email.  For those who aren’t aware of the CAN-SPAM acts specifics, here is a brief summary:

• Header Information must be accurate. All information about the sender must be true and accurate, including routing information, email address, domain name.
• Subject Line- All information in the subject line must be accurate and cannot contain misleading information about the content of the email
• Opt-out method – Most commonly seen as an “Unsubscribe” button at the bottom of the email, recipients must be given a way to be removed from the email list. When someone does choose not to receive further emails the sender must honor their request. This feature is one of the most important for small businesses as it is one of the most easily overlooked aspects of email marketing. Constant Contact provides the link at the bottom of each email and updates all your contacts when they opt out, making it easy to comply.
• Proper Identification and Valid Postal Address – Emails that are advertisements must be labeled as such, and include the sender’s postal address.

Being a spammer not only has legal consequences, but damages your reputation with your customers as well. Using a tool like Constant Contact alleviates that worry, and makes email marketing that much easier.

Marketing Tools Marketing Tools

Guy Kawasaki, co-creator of aggregator juggernaut Alltop.com, has created an incredibly informative post on how to leverage twitter as a marketing tool. He goes in depth with specific tricks to maximizing “tweet” visibility, and discusses his successes using twitter for alltop, as well as highlighting the ways companies like Amazon and Wholefoods utilize twitter to maximize customer interaction.

For small businesses trying to reach consumers, Twitter, if used correctly, is undoubtedly one of the best tools available, and it’s free. For those unfamiliar with Twitter, it is essentially a mini-blogging tool, that allows users to create posts up to 140 characters in length. As a user one can post “tweets” as well as follow the posts of others in the twitter community. The value of this relational tool for marketing is really quite extraordinary, due to the exponential connectivity of Twitter followers.  Here is the most poignant example of Guy’s usage in numbers:

177 people agreed to repost all Alltop news as their own tweets. This took automated tweeting to a historical new high—or low depending on who you asked.

Then my new book, Reality Check , came out, and I made an offer of a free copy of it to anyone who signed up for the Alltop Twitterfeed. Another 280 people signed up—bringing the total to approximately 450 people.

We counted, and these 450 people had a total of 140,000 followers. This meant that whenever we announced a new topic, the 140,000 followers of 450 people received notification. These 450 people had followers in common, so their tweets didn’t reach 140,000 different people (see next section), but this was the Mother of Retweeting.

The post explains how to find followers, how to build a profile, everything you need to know about getting started with Twitter.

Social Networking, Web 2.0 Social Networking, Web 2.0

This week’s New York Times Sunday Magazine delved into the marketing and advertising world in today’s media saturated culture. They assembled an elite group of some of the top New York marketing people and had an open discussion about marketing centered around the theme of “screens.” The idea being that today’s consumer spends much of his or daily life interacting with information presented on screens, be it on a computer, a cellphone, tv, etc. and that this has changed the nature of advertising from a narrative created by the brand itself to one controlled by the consumer. What everyone on the group agrees on is that the static nature of television content and the tradition format for advertising ther is a dying trend. The rate at which the average consumer can find the exact information he or she seeks on the internet is far more rapid, and thus far more appealing.

The consumer’s interaction with the brand has thus become paramount. As opposed to testing advertising campaigns in focus groups where opinions can be easily skewed, Youtube has created a democratic sounding board for new campaigns. Advertisers can get instant feedback, and as in the case of the Tiger Woods EA Sports glitch, can incorporate such feedback into their marketing efforts:

EA Sports, the video-game company, is a good example. On YouTube, someone posted a clip of himself playing the company’s Tiger Woods golf game. He put it up as a joke, laughing at EA Sports, because he had discovered a glitch in the programming that allowed Tiger to walk right out onto a pond next to the golf course and shoot his ball from there. So the company saw the video, and in response, it uploaded this ad to YouTube that said: “It’s not a glitch. He’s just that good.” The ad showed the real Tiger, in live action, actually walk on water and shoot a ball. That’s a great example of responding to how consumers interact with your brand.

The challenge then is to interact with the consumers with the same immediacy that they interact with everthing else in the digital space, or at the very least providing the tools to facilitate such interaction. Companies are shifting money away from tv spots and focusing more and more on innovative ways of reaching consumers, everything from mobile apps and flash games to creating niche market products marketed directly to very specific groups.

This article raises a few questions that I’ll be thinking about in the coming weeks. How can marketers continually come up with innovative new ways of reaching consumers? At what point does the consumer become too wary of all the innovations, and realize that content is just a means to promote commerce? There is definitely an ideal balance, as by now almost everyone has come to expect some ammount of advertising in combination with content, but how much is too much?

Web 2.0 Web 2.0

As I’ve talked about before, the success of a viral marketing campaign ultimately comes from the stickiness of the content, and the desire in the ‘host’ to willingly pass it on. Office max had an incredibly successful campaign last year with it’s “elf yourself” videos. The company employed a humor company, JibJab, to create dancing elf videos that anyone could upload their own pictures to, creating a video of dancing videos with their friends, family, or co-worker’s heads. At it’s peak, the website traffic rivaled that of Facebook, and in total was viewed by more than 100 million unique visitors. The company plans to recreate the magic this year, and to expand the features and available videos. Read more here.

Viral Media Viral Media

Seth Godin, author of Tribes, just wrote this very insightful article pertaining to the publishing industry. He makes a good case for the dynamic nature of ecommmerce, and how the market doesn’t owe anybody anything. Reaping the rewards comes from adapting to the climate, and not the other way around. Read the article.

Web 2.0 Web 2.0

Social networks can be leveraged in a way that was once dubbed ‘secret’ or “undercover’ marketing.  A few years back 60 minutes took a look at few guerilla marketing operations that put undercover marketers in situations where they appeared to be normal people. They were placed on street corners or in Starbucks’, and their task was simple; use a product and invite other people to try it too.  The ‘secret’ aspect was to combat the challenge that marketers face on a daily basis; people are so bombarded by marketing and advertisement that they are desensitized – ‘secret marketing’ allows marketers to reach consumers without them knowing they’re having a product pitched to them.  

Secret Marketing Secret Marketing

The Social Bookmarking phenomenon is one that has its marketing advantages. If you don’t already use social bookmarking, you are certainly aware of their presence if you’ve viewed the ubiquitous array of little icon “badges” that appears at the bottom of so many blog posts, or on the side column of this page displayed as the “add this” button. But what exactly are their advantages in terms of Marketing? Bill McIntosh, explores social bookmarks’ value for rapidly gaining the attention of search engines in his project to set up a ranked and search engine indexed website within a week. He proves his point that the trackbacks and pings that are achieved through social bookmarks give relevance to your site that could take months to otherwise achieve. While his efforts are impressive, they offer a somewhat hollow analysis as he uses them for a flash the pan effect, without exploring social bookmarking’s value, if any, for establishing repeat visitors. More to come on the long term value of social bookmarking.

Social Networking social bookmarking

Viral Marketing, an aptly named internet phenomenon whose term seems to have lost all sense of irony, is one of the great mysteries for the modern day marketer.  If anyone has an exact formula for how to achieve it I’d be happy to hear it, but for now it’s about all I can do to talk a little bit about the phenomenon itself, and perhaps glean some insights into what key factors might contribute to viral success.

 The term was first coined in the mid-90’s by Harvard Business School professor Jeffrey Rayport in an article for Fast Company.  The analogous relationship between a pathogen and viral media stems from the voluntary or perhaps involuntary spread of the media itself. When someone forwards you a funny video, that video can be considered viral. If you consider that video to be funny enough in turn to forward it to one of your friends, you have played host to and transmitted the “virus” as well. The marketing aspect of course comes into play when a certain brand or corporate message or idea is inserted somewhere into the mix.

There doesn’t seem to be any kind of definite rule of thumb about how the insertion takes place, save to say that it is different/original in each case.  Here are a couple of examples of successful viral videos. The content of the first, a Cadbury commercial featuring a Gorilla playing the drums to a Phil Collins song, literally has no connection whatsoever to the brand it is endorsing. Yet the video is so funny, original, and different that the viewer can’t help but associate some element of the gleeful experience of viewing with the brand itself. Conversely, the Smirnoff Raw Tea video incorporates the brand identity directly into the content, but juxtaposes preppy characters with rap video stereotypes to create another funny and memorable video.

These videos both share humor, which seems to be one of the most conducive qualities to viral media. They are both relatively short, and they don’t attempt to go into a great deal of depth about the product itself. Essentially they do nothing but associate an entertaining experience with the brand, which is what many ads do in the mainstream media. However the difference is that there is something definitively offbeat about them. These aren’t ads you would see on American television. Both of them make the viewer sit back and say “what is this?!” at first, and then the payoff comes. This element of initial bewilderment is fundamental aspect of successful viral media. It is the veritable x-factor that makes you want to send it to someone else. It is a common theme that will be the focus of many further posts.   

Viral Media Viral Media, Web 2.0