Here’s another great video from Michael Wesch (see previous post):
Talk about a great way to virally advertise Digital Ethnography at KSU. If you want to study this, where do you think your first choice would be?
Have you seen these videos yet:
This is a company who has managed to take a seemingly uninteresting kitchen appliance and turn it into a cult phenomenon. Blend-tec makes this uber-blender, but also creates videos of its president blending different items previously thought “unblendable” (i.e. a crowbar, lightbulbs, and even an iPhone). Their videos are all over the Web now and they’re managing to sell shirts to the devoted fanbase. Companies are even trying to piggyback on Blend-tec’s success. And now, according to InformationWeek via Mashable, these videos have led to an 500% increase in sales.
Still think alternative marketing can’t lead to real results?
Here’s the flip-side: Many companies have tried to create “viral videos”, with the expectation that they will take off in popularity only to discover that no one cares about their video. That’s because these videos aren’t remarkable. Social media is driven by a viral spread of information: someone sees something and genuinely is interested in its content, so he/she forwards it along. Just putting a video online doesn’t mean it will spread like a wildfire.
What a great idea for this holiday season:
From Boing Boing (Via Gizmodo):
Starting November 12, One Laptop Per Child will be offering a Give 1 Get 1 Program for a brief window of time. For $399, you will be purchasing two XO laptops–one that will be sent to empower a child to learn in a developing nation, and one that will be sent to your child at home. If you’re interested in Give 1 Get 1, we’ll be happy to send you a reminder email. Just sign up in the box to the left and you’ll receive your reminder prior to the November 12 launch date.
You mean people can purchase a computer for a kid in Cambodia while at the same time getting their child a great new gadget? All for only $399? Sounds like a win-win here. I think this will help these computers to “tip” and become extremely popular. I think a problem with these computers currently is that there’s not enough awareness in the States about them. This promotion will put more of these computers in homes of families that might donate. Plus, if I can see the computer in action and being used by my child, it’s pretty likely that I’d donate an additional computer down the road…
Good Morning. I woke up this morning with an email in my Gmail account. It was the same email that I’ve received every other day for the past month. It was from Joseph A. Bank’s Clothing store, wanting me to check out their new deal or sale or something. Whatever it was, after the first email, I realized that it wasn’t something I cared about, so I’ve just deleted all the other emails as they’ve arrived.
Here’s the kicker: I’m about to buy a suit. Maybe two. Will I buy them from Jos A Bank? No way. Here’s why:
1) They continued to bombard me with marketing messages, even after they didn’t convert me to a sale with five (or ten) emails.
2) I think it’s annoying and spammy to send me as many emails as they possibly can. It’s akin to throwing a bunch of stuff against the wall to see what sticks.
So the wonderful marketing folks over at Joseph A Bank has actually helped the company take a step back in my eyes. Where I would’ve made my first stop at their store to buy my suits, I now will not even consider stopping by.
Here’s what I would’ve done differently:
1) I would’ve segmented their email list so that the email I received was more relevant to me (they were advertising winter top coats and low-quality, cheap suits). Based on my purchases at their store, they should see that I buy a lot of shirts and sweaters from them — those are the deals they should’ve served me.
2) Offer me a way to express additional interest in the email or products without having to pull out my credit card. Whether this is an actual “Select products you’re interested in so we can give you some great deals” thing or more of a viral “send this deal along to someone else” (my brother is also purchasing a suit and I would’ve probably sent this along to him), let me interact with the company without making a purchase. This was an unsolicited email and to expect me to simply pull out the plastic was pretty presumptuous. Joseph A Bank doesn’t win the price battle in men’s clothing, so they need to develop a relationship with their customers, which occurs when you visit the store in person, but not through these email messages.
Has anyone else received these emails or similarly-annoying messages constantly? Do you think we can get a PR person from Jos A Bank to respond to this post? I wonder if they’re monitoring their reputation in the marketplace after this month-long email campaign.
…as in “I just flew back from Dallas”….
Sorry I haven’t posted in a couple days — I’ve just returned from a conference for fundraising professionals in Dallas. We were out there promoting the company to the association and nonprofit
executive attendees.
I also owe some gratitude to John O’Leary who wins the award for the first commenter of this blog. He responded to my post on Commerce Bank’s taglines and website. Thanks for your response John. I’m sure that Commerce Bank provides excellent service and I appreciate your bringing that to everyone’s attention. I was simply questioning the way they attract new customers. I’d be interested in knowing what percentage of new business comes from referrals like yours — if they have evangelists like you out there, then they almost don’t need to spend money on fixing their website. Almost. But either way, extra points to you for quoting Landeau on this blog.
This brings up an interesting point: have you ever stopped to think about how valuable a customer referral is to your company? The customer referral is an extremely strong promotion tool and is an important piece to a good viral marketing campaign. Think about it: viral marketing is basically facilitating your evangelists’ desire to talk about how wonderful your company is. The trick is to enable these customers in a way that doesn’t harm the credibility of their referral.
I have some more stuff to talk about from Dallas (including “Texas Edition” Ford Trucks, flying on American Airlines, and Lance Armstrong’s speech that I heard yesterday) but will have to post those thoughts in the coming days. Stay tuned.
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?
Just saw this from the guys over at Pronet Advertising. This ad was probably created not to be a joke, but when you take a look at it, you’ll understand how this video currently has over 220,000 views and more than 350 comments on YouTube.
Remember what I said yesterday? Interrupting people with content that they care about or in a unique way so that they don’t realize they’re being interrupted?
This guy apparently also got on national talk shows because of this ad. Imagine how much visibility he’s getting for such a cheap ad.
Are you ready?
Our idea marketing is in the process of changing. Previous to now, we’ve been able to simply place an ad in a location that our audience will see and wait for results. This is constant bombardment of a message will eventually cause a low percentage of people to become interested and follow the call to action. This could not be more true (and least effective) than in direct mail campaigns — especially when you’re mailing a flat postcard or something similar. You’re often lucky to get more than a 3% conversion rate for something like that — not very efficient, is it?
You can obviously see how Marketing can’t possibly continue to exist in a world like this — especially with companies taking a hard look at their cost centers to increase their bottom line. So how can advertising become more effective?
1) Slick use of interruptions: Interrupting someone (similar to what happens today in advertisements), but doing it in such a way that the audience doesn’t realize that what they’re looking at is an advertisement.
2) Develop a relationship with the audience. Start a conversation. Let them drive the messaging about your product or service. Help them make connections with other people in order to further your message.
What I’m Reading