At The Motley Fool, we (the marketing team) watch CNBC constantly. When we moved to our new office last summer, we switched over to their “HD+” channel. It was a little disappointing — I was excited to watch Cramer in all his hi-def glory, but quickly realized their HD feed is actually pathetic standard def with an info sidebar on the right side (see pic).

As you can see, the sidebar is filled with current quotes and historical data — all important information for people following the market. However, if you think about it, it’s a complete waste of space.

The thing is: all the data that is shown on the right hand side of the screen is repetitive. Currency info and indices information is all available on the top of the CNBC screen on a rotating basis. Also, the historical info is something that can be easily found through Google or Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg, or even the iPhone stocks app. In my opinion, it really doesn’t add much value for the amount of space it takes up on the screen.

In a world where information equals profits, CNBC could easily use this space to track what the community is talking about at any given point. They could pull in StockTwits about the companies that are being discussed at that given moment, monitor the #CNBC discussion thread on Twitter or start a Facebook page where (similar to CNN’s coverage of Michael Jackson’s memorial concert or the Inauguration) people could comment in real-time about the market or CNBC’s coverage, or even pull in YouTube videos that viewers create to comment on the day’s events (and put the audio on the SAP channel).

If news organizations are looking for ways to stay relevant, a simple mantra comes to mind: “If you can’t beat them, join them.” Old-school news coverage is quickly being eclipsed by real-time community reporting. With this simple change in its sidebar, CNBC could take a major step toward joining the “new world” while providing more complete and interesting coverage for its viewers. Seems like a much better call then what they have now.

Hearing about this from Mashable, I just wanted to comment on this…

Facebook has come up with a social way of saving people trying to deactivate their accounts. What a great tactic to use for a social media site — it’s quick (lets the person continue deactivating his/her account if desired) and effective (pulling in people on your friends list and inviting you to send a goodbye message). Great idea.

Someone said to me the other day, “Dan, why is your blog called ‘The Fresh Marketer’? I mean, you say that you’re new to the marketing scene, but in reality, you’ve grown up with people marketing to you for your entire life.”

So — is she being accurate in this statement? Yes.
Will I change the name of this blog? Nope.

She does make a good point however. I have grown up constantly bombarded with marketing messaging — so has everyone else. You know what? I think we’re tired of it. I think we know when we’re being marketed to (at least, when it’s done through conventional methods) and we close ourselves off to the message.

If our audience keeps shutting off our marketing messaging before it has a chance to tell them our story, how do we successfully continue to promote ourselves?

• Build a relationship with your audience so that they want to hear what you have to say. Give them information that actually means something to them — actually has value to them instead of simply promoting your product/service. If that information is truly worth their while, then not only will they devote time to reading it, but they’ll probably send it to someone else. Virally spreading your message.
• Delivering them a marketing message in such a way that they don’t realize what they’re looking at is actually an ad. Some great examples are what Facebook is doing with their NCAA Tourney (see my previous post), Capital One’s Mascot Challenge, and (even better) NBC’s Grease — You’re the One That I Want. If you think about it all of these promotion tools are delivering a strong marketing message to their audiences while engaging the audience with a fun activity so that they don’t shut off to the messaging.

It occurs to me as I’m writing this that these two areas might be able to be combined into a single category of marketing. They seem different, but if you think about it, aren’t they really the same thing? When you create an fun activity that captures the attention of your audience, aren’t you also making the time they spend with you worth it for them? Doesn’t the audience of “Grease — YTOTIW” have a relationship with the show? Won’t 80% of the people who watch every Sunday (who live close enough to NYC) go see the show? I bet they will.

Riiiiiight. So remember how I said that a blog is a conversation with an audience and the only way for it to be successful is to update it at regular intervals? Basically, this is Blogging 101 here. Well guess what — I dropped the ball! The past two weeks have been crazy busy with some new campaigns coming out from the company as well as an additional volunteer project I’m working on. I’ll tell you a little bit about that later — meanwhile, we should talk about something that’s on everyone’s minds right now:

The NCAA Tournament.

So you’ve probably already filled out your brackets and submitted them to your pools, as have I. For those of you on Facebook, you might have noticed the new “Pools” feature on there. It’s great — it allows all of the previous social interaction that this event would bring to happen online at this site.

Even better (for us marketers), have you seen how they’re monetizing it?

This is a pool sponsored by STA Travel. What a great way for a company targeting students and young adults to penetrate this market. It’s viral, it’s relevant, and I would bet that no one thinks “Oh great, another ad” like they do while watching TV.

This is where I think marketing and advertising is headed — serving ads to people who don’t recognize the fact that what they’re looking at is actually an ad.

What do you think?