Marketing Wisdom

When did Twitter and the number of followers determine the “success” or “failure” of a brand?

So many brands, companies, and products are now being “spot branded” with the number of Twitter followers that are listed. Why?

Because Coca-Cola only has 46,000 followers, they are a failure? That Nike, with less then a million, is a success (or is it a failure also)?

The pendulum is swinging again and frustratingly it is going to the next extreme – how many Twitter followers do we have – which will determine budgets and strategies for far to many companies.

As marketing executives, the temptation to make Twitter and Facebook followers “set” your budget is great, but, it WILL set a precedent that will cause far greater damage then originally believed.

I’m sure many of you have read the news about how internet advertisements are dropping in value (i.e. lower cost) and the reason being that FaceBook and MySpace ad costs are so much cheaper then the rest of the advertising space on the internet, the true costs of an ad are not being reflected correctly.

Duh!!!

I run ads on FaceBook at $.05 per ad, and I get my ads shown to millions of users for pennies. Who wouldn’t do that? WHY wouldn’t they do that?

There is obviously going to be a dichotomy that is going to occur – where management and reporting of ad spend will be split between Social and ROI (Rest Of Internet); and even considering Social Media advertising, that will become split also – as Twitter enters the market with ROI ad rates vs. Social ad rates (again, Facebook and MySpace).

There is no answer and there shouldn’t be – users of FaceBook, for the first time in their lives, can run ad campaigns for as little as $50.00. When they want to open up the rest of the internet market, they will have the awakening that $50 a month won’t even touch one day on the ROI.

Don’t fall for an agency (or the media) saying that the rates are wrong – they aren’t – they are different based on what and who the market is.

As the economy worsens and companies continue to save money by cutting their work force, marketing is front & center for the first thing to be cut; be it employee’s or budget’s.

As I continue to counsel companies that marketing is the last thing to be cut, they, as usual, cut marketing as fast as possible. As this occurs, I continue to experience and see one thing in particular and that is employee’s think that they are being laid off because of their performance, not because of the economy. They can’t believe that they are being laid off because marketing is so important to any organization, but, it is not the case, it is because most management teams don’t understand the value that marketing can bring a company during tough economic times.

If you have been recently laid-off, please remember that 99% of the time is because of the economy. Keep your head up and start looking for that next job. Nine out of ten times, your employer already told you that they would give you a great recommendation – TAKE IT!

Take anything that your company is offering; put ego to the side and accept whatever is being offered. Life is not fair but you must get over this and move on as quickly as possible – you were not let go because of your performance!

What am I saying? I’m saying that you are a good worker and you do put time and effort into everything you do – it is the economy that is causing people, just like you, to be laid off. Go enjoy the two years of unemployment that you can get (or get back out there and bring your expertise and knowledge to a company that has not been adversely affected by this economy).

Talk with any CEO or Entrepreneur and you will hear them talk about how mentors helped them through difficult as well as growing times.

Unfortunately, many young CEO’s and General Managers think that having a mentor or many mentors are a sign of weakness. I cannot disagree more.

A mentor, especially during the “young” time of your company, is ideal for the following reasons:

1) He/she can bring focus when it is needed.
2) He/she can strengthen a weakness that you may have (i.e. they can bring accounting help if you don’t have any idea of how to set up your accounting practice).
3) They are a great sounding board.

The last is ideal for the young CEO. So many young managers are embarrassed or think that it is a sign of weakness to ask for help (or just brainstorm) internally in the company – a mentor cannot be seen in this light, as they are not with the company and are not linked to the success or failure of the company – they are linked to the success or failure of the individual.

Don’t believe that your “Board of Directors” or your “Advisory Board” is made up of mentors for you, the CEO. They are not. Yes, they want to help and want success, but, not you specifically. They want the company to be a success. They will just as quickly remove you from your position as they will walk away from a losing proposition.

As I have written so many times before – surround yourself with mentors that a) want you to succeed, b) help you see the forest and not the tree and c) strengthen your weakness’s. If you do this, your odds for success have increased dramatically.

I’ve been waiting for the advertising to begin from “non-affected by the oil” states.

One, Michigan, has just introduced theirs, called “Pure Michigan”, showing the beaches along the Great Lakes, the rough shoreline, waterskiing, boating, and all the other watersports that can’t be done in a Gulf State.

Who will be next? And will any of them make the ultimate leap and say “Why go to a beach that’s covered in oil, come to our state where….”.

It will happen. There are other marketers out there like me that will take advantage of situations like this. It won’t and shouldn’t be wasted (I just hope that they do it in good taste!).

I wonder if Pepsi has any regrets about it’s logo (BRAND!) change to that of Candidate Obama’s logo two years ago?

Will there be another “change”?

So many executives say “We must have a positive ROI and a positive ROAS!”.

I’ve written about this before; so many executives that have none or very little marketing experience all think that marketing can be easily measured by running an ROI (or ROAS) formula.

Marketing managers are very adept at spinning the ROI and ROAS to their benefit, especially as internet grows and becomes more important to the spend. Is this dishonest? Absolutely; it allows them to keep their jobs.

But, the diservice to the company is also a diservice to themselves.

ROI is a simple measurement that keeps companies doing many of the same marketing practices.

Managers as well as executives are shorting the opportunity to pursue an alternative marketing strategy that could quite possibly push their company, as well as their careers, into the stratosphere. It is something that I continuously harp about here, for you and your marketing team to be successful, you MUST explore and pursue, if you can, any and all non-traditional marketing opportunities. Everyone does a tradeshow. Everyone offers $1.00 off on their next purchase.

Don’t be shortsighted – take a risk and present alternative marketing opportunities to management. The worse that coul happen is they say “No, we want to continue doing the same thing”. But, maybe, they may say “You know, we would like to increase our marketing share by 1%” and off you go.

Even if you can’t measure it, take a chance.

Have a wonderful client that is experiencing one of those difficult times that every start-up has, change.

Start-ups have many different times in their brief lives. They start and then collapse, they start and limp along and then collapse, they start and limp and then succeed, they start and become hugely successful.

There are also other “ways” that a start-up can go. I want to speak about the one that my client is going through right now. It is the one where they start, and they focus, and then focus again, and then focus again, and then become successful.

It reminds me of Thomas Edison – he didn’t make the lightbulb on the first try, he kept trying and trying and then succeeded.

This same company, each time it “refocused”, also changed its management team. It did NOT change it sales or product team, just it’s CEO. This allowed lessons learned to be kept but also allowed the “captain who was sailing the ship to change course and head in the correct direction”. Or, in their case, to refocus on a more direct approach to their potential clients.

I have written about this many times before. A start-up MUST change its management team numerous times as it grows from being young and immature to full grown and mature. An entrepreneur – who usually starts the company, rarely has the means, the patience, or the knowledge to turn a start-up into a global billion dollar company (yes, there are exceptions).

All I’m trying to point out and say here is this: FOCUS. Always focus. Look at your market, are you focused enough on them?

My client, because of its changing of focus, is becoming more and more successful – which is GOOD!!!

To you – it could be changing focus from the world, to APAC, to Taiwan. Or, it could be from using Gold, to Silver, to Aluminum. Or, it could be from using a blond, to using a brunette, to using a redhead.

Focus is research being put to practice.

By now, you know BP’s brand is crushed with the oil leak. Arizona Iced Tea has lost strong brand confidence because of Arizona’s government. What else?

For those of you who have been following me for the past few years:

1) Crisis documents had to have been finished and ready to go out (how can you NOT have crisis communications ready if you aren’t BP?).
2) Your spokespeople have already been determined and are ready to respond, within 24 hours, of any disaster (Arizona Ice Tea took four days to respond that they are NOT in Arizona, but in New York – way to long).
3) You already have spokespeople in place (or on their way), within 24 hours, to the local media as well as national media locations (i.e. here, in the U.S., it would be an individual in New York, one in Washington D.C., and one on the Gulf Coast (wherever all the media is stationed to report on the spill, in case of BP).

BP still has a chance to slow/stop the damage (yes, it is severely damaged) – they need to get out front and stop hanging in the shadows (remember my posts on the poisoned dog food? I still hear people asking about that).

Arizona finally has started putting spokespeople on the air saying that they are not from Arizona so please don’t punish us.

It all comes down to marketing fundamentals (like baseball or football). You don’t practice and update the fundamentals, you will lose the game.

Good luck!! (Again!!)

I believe that I have spoken about this previously, but, here is a little more info to help you.

Do you need to have a Scope of Work document to give to an agency (or RFD, etc.). Yes and no, depending on where you are in the process.

I am going to assume that you have not done this before and this will be the first time that your company has asked an Agency to “bid” for your business.

1.) Sit with your CEO, CMO, VP of Marketing and decide/determine what you want an agency to accomplish for you in the first six months and one year from date of hire.

This should be a simple statement (almost a mission statement) that address’ what you want – some want brand building, some want product awareness, some want damage control, etc.

2.) Write each of them an email and asked if they were interested – it gives great insight into how they react to the unexpected (and of course, if it took a week to answer, they don’t make the cut).

3) Have a conference call with them and lay out what you are looking for; this should be 10-20 minutes of you talking about what your want the END RESULT to be (one year from now). Then do 10-20 minutes of Q&A

4) Based on that discussion, THEN put together a scope of work and mail to them. The first page should state again your mission and what was already said in conference call; pages 2 & 3 are all the questions that they need to answer within “x” amount of time (I usually give 14 days business days). Questions should be like:

a. Who would manage the account (who, amount of time, what/who else do they manage on a daily basis)

b. How would they spend the $100,000 budget (example) (page one talks about what you want – so, say to them, “if you only had $100,000, how would you use that to accomplish our goals?”

c. What’s the reporting structure? Who calls whom when?

d. Who are some of their elite media contacts that could help you gain market awareness? (or share?)

You get the idea.

One last point – do NOT hire an agency until you and management have decided on the mission and what you want to accomplish. It is a waste of money to do anything else.