Category: Blog

Smunday.

It is a new thing hopefully coming to a work-place near you! This idea is coming from Heinz Ketchup as an ad strategy for the Super Bowl. Instead of telling you about their latest product, they are associating themselves with a fun idea, like not having to work on the day after the Super Bowl.

Here are reasons I like this:

1. They are putting their money where there mouth is. Heinz reportedly gave their employees the day off on Smunday, which is really taking their ad campaign to the next level. This also helped them win the day on social as well, giving them the credibility and probably introducing a new word into our social vocabulary.
2. They got people to act. They funneled interest in this campaign to a Change.org petition where, at time of writing, they garnered 64k signatures.
3. It was a soft sell with humor. The video has gained more than half a million view on Youtube (it was also embedded on their change.org page) and several hundred thousand on Facebook as well. The video features a family(?) of Heinz products celebrating Smunday together.

Click here to sign the petition.

 

Empower your team to be creative on social media.While in some situations a centralized social media creator is a good idea, more and more the idea of having members of your team be empowered create seems like a better idea.

While you should have a gate keeper to ensure that all content is appropriate and on message, that does not mean you can’t allow other’s good ideas to surface. One of the things I see when working with different organizations with social media is that a lot of non-marketing employees have really good content ideas. It is a very old school business model to keep people siloed in how they contribute to the business. If a production employee has a good marketing idea they should be allowed to be shared with marketing and given the time of day.

Silos prevent collaboration and collaboration creates amazing results! Communicate to your team that their ideas are valuable and try them every once in a while.

It could be a lot of fun to work with a big brand. In this spot, Budweiser capitalized on a long-suffering franchise winning the world series. They released this video, before sunrise on the morning after the Cubs won.

Let’s just pause and think about that: They took video during the game and had the footage up in a fabulous spot the late late late the same night. This took a lot of planning and execution. This Google case study is a great breakdown of how Vayner Media was prepared to execute on this video.

The video garnered a lot of attention and unless you are a Cardinals or Indians fan, it will warm your heart! What a great brand association! Winning and warm feelings are great things to associate your brand with! Check out the video below and the case study here.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nApTGkLd2hs

https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/case-studies/budweiser-world-series-campaign.html?utm_medium=email-d&utm_source=weekly-insight&utm_team=twg-us&utm_campaign=20170116-twg-us-think-letter-weekly-insight-a2-OT-GM-CS&utm_content=Video-img&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTnpVME9EYzBaamhqWlRnMyIsInQiOiJ1ZjZqXC9cL3dvRjRWeUY1czlzcUtYaFhOdmtMWkVkZVdieXFBaHpGRzlqd3VhQjVlSDF3bVhVajVcL3E3K2I4aHgxQmljMmMzNnQ2M0UzKzZFcFRydElLTmFVNWc5eCtkaVlqa3k2QlBCbmdtRXRsR1J2SmdvSEhuOFpSc0xMVUtmOCJ9

This is one great way to create content in our digital age. This video is every bit of a right hook that Gary Vee talks about. This T-Shirt brand creates videos of communities showing support for memebers of their community. The kind of videos that go viral and bring up all the feels. Like this one:

 

What a super cool thing. But Dude Be Nice takes it to the next level and uses it to sell t-shirts! Connecting your brand with these types of feelings is a great move to help the brand grow. What amazing advertising! This video had over 6 million views on Youtube and almost 4 on Facebook.

Additionally you help your purchasers feel like they are apart of a movement. Good feels and a movement? That is a great recipe for a strong brand and strong sales!

What kind of good feelings can you associate your brand with?

 

2017 is getting into full swing and it’s a great time of year to start looking at how we can do things better! One of them is on our social media. Social Media is no longer just for young people or the next big thing, it is the big thing and is the best form of marketing and has been for a few years.

But it does require that you put in the time or hire someone to do it for you (I know a guy). Creating content takes a lot of time so I wanted to share three quick tips that I gleaned from GaryVee.

1. Document and create. Creating is crafting this blog post or filming a new video. Documenting is taking a picture of meetings that are happening or showing what the day to day is like in your business. Documenting doesn’t have to be super polished to have an effect. Gary uses both to build his platform. Documenting on social and with the DailyVee show and creating with his team of creators to pump out fresh content.
2. Repurpose. Creating content takes a lot of effort, so make the best of it. Turn a comment in a video into a blog post, into quote pictures, into a podcast. Ask the question, how can I get every ounce of life out of this content while providing value to my listeners.
3. Just do it. Start now and build it into your schedule. When running your own business, it can be hard to make time to work on the business instead of just in the business. In the immortal words of Admiral Ackbar, “it’s a trap!”.
   via GIPHY

   This will stifle your long-term growth. Investing in creating content is a long term play, but long term plays always pay off more!

   Here are two super valuable articles from Gary on this topic: Content on Content on Content and Document V. Create

 

Burnout is a real thing. It affects people in all walks of life and in all different industries. If you are anything like me, the holidays are such a busy time, I can increase your stress levels and make burnout more likely. I am a big fan of Planet Money and recently they had an episode on burnout and what one call center was doing to curb it. 

If you are an entrepreneur or a leader in your business, you need to be proactive about preventing burnout. How can you do that?

There are some great lessons from the Planet Money podcast but I would lay some out like this:

1. Take breaks. Especially as an entrepreneur it’s hard to take breaks. If you lead a team, make sure they have the opportunity to take breaks without guilt or punishment. I take one day off a week. For me this is Sundays, Sundays I do not do any work (unless it is an emergency). My wife and I take one vacation that does not involve staying at families houses. During that time, I plan ahead to do as little as possible.

   This also means not checking your email all the time! Try and make a good clear distinction between being at work and not at work.

2. Reward Sucess: If you or your team has a win, ie: new contract, big press win, customer loves your work, celebrate it! Go for a nice lunch or dinner, take an afternoon off, or even a bonus/gift. We need to all celebrate success! It will help stave off burnout.
3. Realize failure is real and can destroy morale. Think about ways to help people who have failed. Give them a light load or some easy wins to help them get back on the right track mentally. Take an afternoon off to take focus off the business for a while.

If you get burned out it could spell the end of your business. If your employees get burned out, it could spell the end of customers! Be proactive.

 

Here is a little heartwarming social media win for the holidays. (Hat tip to Lanie Sewell for sharing this with me.)

OskKosh B’gosh hired an agency to get talent for their holiday ad sets. Seems pretty innocuous, right? The Nash family went to audition their child for the part. One of the unique things about the Nash family is that their son, Asher, has down syndrome.

The Nash family found out later that Asher was not selected for the shoot and reportedly was told that the agency was not told to look specifically for children with special needs. Ouch.

A facebook group called, Kids with Down Syndrome, caught wind of this and shared a post talking about Asher’s rejection and it went viral. 120k shares and 104k reactions on Facebook.

Now to be clear and the Nash family pointed this out as well, it was not OshKosh rejecting the child it was the modeling agency. But OshKosh was still probably going to take the brunt of this as well because they are the big name associated with the story.

This shows the power of social media to connect people. In years passed a family would have just had to deal with the rejection and possibly have a small pool of support in their immediate family and community. In the social media era, 120 thousand people who are about this can get together and work for change

What was headed to be a social media loss for OskKosh turned into a win. OskKosh reached out to the Nash family and worked out a deal to feature Asher in their holiday campaigns. How great! They got a second round of press attention for featuring Asher and their post with him on facebook has been at least 5 times as popular as the average post on their page.

 

This is also a win for humanity. Featuring children with conditions like Asher in media like this can help to show the world that Asher is just another kid with a big smile and hopes and dreams. I hope we can see more of his smiling face in future OskKosh campaigns!

We have already talked about the three other P’s: product, price, and promotion. We come to the last P: place. Place has to do with the distribution of the product. Do you know how you are going to sell your product?

We live in probably the greatest time in human history to sell a product because there are so many places available! The internet has made the world more accessible to the unconnected, we no longer need the gate keepers. You no longer need to get Walmart to buy the product or GE to decide they want to buy your design. The internet has changed the game. If you are thinking about selling something here is a quick list of ideas to get started:

1. Etsy: It’s an online craft market. Find an uncrowded product and start selling or just make yours better than everyone else. Here are some friends who are doing great on Etsy.
2. Pop-Up Shop: Use an empty store front for a weekend or a week to sell your product. Use the internet to find like-minded people to come visit. If you are in Jackson, you know all about these folks. 
3. Patreon: If you want to be a content creator, this is a great way to start getting paid. You could be cool of CGP Grey and make $15k per video.
4. Kickstarter: Kickstarter can help you ensure people want to buy your product before you drop lots of capital into getting started.
5. Facebook Page Sales: Make something? Post it on facebook and message back and forth for the transaction.
6. Ecommerce Store: They are getting easier and easier to make and then your product is available to the whole world!
7. Ebay: Already built in E-commerce store and traffic. Great place to start selling stuff.You do not need permission to start! The internet age has brought new places to sell your product right now.

In honor of the election my social media win or fail for this month is a win by Gerald Daughtry. Gerald Daughtry is running for re-election on the Travis County Texas County Board. Here is the video:

This video is a great for a few reasons:

1. It is a positive ad. It doesn’t talk about his opponent, it talks all about Gerald and how much he loves the work of government. This is refreshing in our climate.
2. It is funny. Why is the last time you saw a political ad that was funny and funny is a not sad way.
3. Humanizing. That is actually Gerald’s wife and she delivers an amazing performance, get this lady a medal!
4. Non-partisan. In a policial climate that is completely partisan, this ad transcends that environment and is one of the reasons it went viral.

This video has over 3 million views on his channel alone. It has also been rebroadcast on many news stations across the country. This might be the most popular ad for a county commissioner ever. This video was produced by KC Strategies but I wish it had been me!

Here are the Daughertys on a news interview:

We have already talked about: Price and Product. Now it is time to talk about the most fun portion, the Promotion. Promotion is the act of letting people know about your product or service. Promotion is probably the broadest of all of the 4 P’s because it impacts every part of the business.

One of the first things I tell clients is that good word of mouth is the best way to build a business. Good word of mouth is the cheapest and most consistent way to grow. This relies on great service and a great product. Part of promotion is to ensure that you invest the resources to make sure that service is great and the product is great. You do not want to draw more attention to subpar levels of product or service. A good promotion is like putting gas on a word of month bonfire not starting a fire that does not exist.

Once we get past word of mouth, then the strategies for promotion start to change dramatically  Certain products, industries, and customer bases are going to use different promotions differently. These can be as mundane as an ad in the classifieds(are those still a thing?) to getting your brand placed in a Hollywood movie.

What are things to think about when considering promotion?

1. Audience- Who is your audience? If you do not know this, please come to a full stop in your marketing. You need to define who your audience is before you can talk to them. This can be as simple as observing your current customer base and noticing trends. It can be as complicated as highering a market research firm to get detailed information on potential customers and their likes and dislikes. This is an area where the old adage, “Measure twice, cut once” can be used. Take the time to make sure that you have an audience to target before you do any promotion.
2. ROI- How much are you spending and how much do you anticipate that returning in revenue? Sometimes this is hard to do if you are doing a branding campaign This can also be difficult because often the effects will not be known until after the campaign is over. But track ROI and use success and failures of the past to consider new opportunities.
3. Goals- What are your goals in your promotion? You need to think ahead of time what your goals are in order to make sure your promotion matches up with your goals. If your goal is in store visits, does the promotion lead to this? If the goal is branding, are you prepared to pay in the long term the cost of positioning yourself in your target audience?
4. Are you ready?- Are you ready for the new customers that may come out of a promotion? Do you have the infrastructure in place to ensure you have a chance to make a fan of the new customers? If not, hit pause for a little while to work on being prepared. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.Additionally are you ready with your branding to make good decisions on what kind of ads to use and where to place them? Are you creating promotions that help people think about your business the way you want them to? Be sure to think about that on the front end to not create brand confusion.

Do you have questions about how to use the 4 P’s for your business? If so, let’s talk.