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Have you committed a Cardinal Zin?

January 6, 2007

This marketing truth stings. Just because you care about it, doesn’t mean anyone else does.

Whether you are the creator/inventor, business owner, assembly line foreman, sales manager or marketing genius — what matters to you may very well not matter one iota to your consumers or potential consumers.

In other words, they don’t want to buy what you’re selling.

That doesn’t mean they don’t want to buy. It means you need to get out of the way. It means you need to be smart enough to learn what matters to or influences them.

Roberta Rosenberg over at Copywriting Maven talks about the need to understand your audience before you open your marketing mouth.

Let’s look at a concrete example. 90% of wine drinkers know or care very little about varietals (vine types), bouquet (aroma), depth (layers of taste) or any of the factors that wine makers and connoisseur think are most important. If you owned a winery, because it matters to you, you’d assume it matters to the consumers. You’d be 90% wrong.

For a very long time, wineries seemed to market their product based on either quality (which most of us didn’t understand or know how to evaluate) or price. But, as Valeria Maltoni tell us over at Conversation Agent, product packaging is changing the way wine is evaluated.

Admit it, you’ve bought wine simply because of the name or label. They make us laugh or we think they’re cool or they create an aura we want to be a part of.

We can’t tell a heady bouquet from a cloudy composition. But we can tell whether our friends would be amused by sharing some Cardinal Zin or Cat’s Pee on a Gooseberry Bush!

The wineries are starting to get it in a big way. Are you?

Do you sell your product or service based on your level of knowledge or interest? Are you using terminology that makes your consumers feel like an outsider or stupid? (Anyone else ever feel the clutch of panic when the waiter pours the dribble of wine and then waits for you to evaluate it?)

Maybe it’s time to look at your sales materials, website, presentations and other marketing tools. Are they written based on what matters to you or your customer?

UPDATE: Seems like we are all talking about wine this weekend! Check out what Lonely Marketer Patrick Schaber discovered on a recent wine bottle.

Perk up those ears!

January 6, 2007

I like to absorb and learn in a lot of different ways. I’m a big believer in reading (more on that in a bit), love to learn by doing and talking through ideas outloud and I love to learn by listening.

There are some really insightful marketing podcasts/audio files being put together and I thought I’d just point you to a few of them.

Viral Garden’s Mack Collier has started a new podcast series called Minding the Gap. The premise of this new weekly series is that Mack will identify a specific company and their communities and the gap between the two.

Converstations’s Mike Sansone is sharing his insights via BlogTalk Radio. His most recent episode talks about finding your authentic voice and asks the question “would Rocky Balboa blog the way he talks?”

Managing the Gray’s C.C. Chapman explores new media, “no control” PR and consumer created content in his podcast series. His most recent postcast talks about blasting off in ’07.

These are all great ways to infuse your thinking with new ideas, new voices and best of all, you can listen to them while you are sweating on the treadmill to honor that New Year’s Resolution!

Brand yourself with a ringtone!

January 5, 2007

How a person brands themselves changes over time. Clothing labels, playing certain positions on sports teams, and Girl Scout badges evolve to the type of car you drive, your personalized plates and today in our all-tech world — cell phone ringtones.

Remember when you thought having personalized ringtones were a crazy fad the kids were into? Now, it’s absolutely mainstream. So here’s my question.

If you could only use one song for your universal ringtone (so everyone in your world and your general vicinity) would hear it and associate it with you — what song would you choose? Let me give you a running start.

My fellow Iowa blogger Doug Mitchell mentioned PhoneZoo at breakfast this morning.

Look at some of the ringtones you can have sent to your phone for free.

Are you an intense guy who’s life is sort of 24/7? How about the theme song to "24" or Mission Impossible?

Are you whimsical and short? How about the Oompa Loompa song from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory?

I know…feeling silly and colorful? Why not sound like Fred Flintstone or Peanut Butter Jelly Time from The Family Guy?

Go ahead….brand yourself with a song!

More packaging brain candy

January 5, 2007

Again…evidence that you can take the most ordinary elements of your business and your brand…and make them something worth talking about.

Do you have any idea what he’s selling?

January 4, 2007

I received this direct response solicitation today via e-mail. Other than my comments (in red), I swear to God, I did not alter a thing. Truth is funnier and sadder than fiction. I checked. This is a real business in Des Moines.

I have changed the names to protect the guilty. But, this is why we all have jobs. People actually send this garbage out.

Mr. McLelland, (Not how my name is spelled)

My name is Name Here and I (am?) the new Principal (is it a school?) at Vague Name Here. Vague Name Here is a company with over 20 years or (of?) serving the region. We recently have taken a new direction and with the new year are re-introducing ourselves to our communities. I want the name Vague Name Here to be synonymous in your mind with quality service. More than synonymous–I want them to be one and the same. In fact, when you think "quality," "reliability," "versatility," or "power," I want you to think Vague Name Here. (How aboutâ¦telling me what the heck you do??)

We are a leader. We work with leaders. And our history of innovation and support to keep you ahead of the curve. (Is this a sentence that makes sense to anyone?) Our experience in the management, finanical, (Is that a spelling error from the company who wants to be synonymous with quality?) technology and other fields proves (prove not proves?) this and our unique approach to helping your business succeed through our management seminars and strategy sessions is always a way to start the new year to help focus your staff on their goals and directions in the new year. (The longest sentence known to man. And I have no idea what he was trying to say.)

It is my pleasure to introduce the new Vague Name Here Management. It’s focused on the customer, listening to his or her issues and challenges, and finally meeting those challenges with products, services, and resources unmatched in quality and functionality.

Vague Name Here is better than ever.

With resources in four states we can cover you as you expand through the country.

With a unique insight into technology and business we can help you better utilize you (your?) technology within your business increase (perhaps to increase?) productivity, and revenues while decreasing your cost structure.

With our relationship with many financial (look, he spells it right here!) institutions we can assist you in keepin (is that folksy for keeping?) a sustainable capitable (seriouslyâ¦this is how he spelled capital?) base allowing your company to grow and prosper.

With our management and marketing resources we can assist you in delivering performace (some of us actually spell it performance?) to your business accelerating growth and reaching height (heights?) previously thought to be unattainable.

And that’s just the beginning. Take a moment to discover the new Vague Name Here. And then visit our new website to see how we’ve changed. I will be calling in a few days to schedule a time I can stop by your office and discuss with you ways we can assist you as you successfully run your business. We are committed to your satisfaction and welcome your feedback. We’ll do all we can to make your experience with us positive.

As always, thank you for choosing Vague Name Here.

Name Here
Principal
Vague Name Here Management Inc.
www.vaguename.com

That is not sad, it is pathetic. I still have no idea what they sell. The author should have checked out Grammar Girl’s post on proofreading tips!

Any suggestions on what I should say if/when he calls?

:60 ticks marketing tip: I spy

January 4, 2007

Grab it fast…it’s gone in about a minute. A :60 ticks marketing tip is 150 words or less…so read it in a minute and implement it in the next!

Research shows that nearly 100% of client decision makers check out the web sites of any service provider (B-to-B) they’re considering. Once a week, generate a report of the URLs that have visited your site and do a little homework in advance of their call!

That’s it….go put it into action!

More on how companies interact with bad blog press

January 4, 2007

Isn’t it great when the planets align? If you’ve read my post, Mack’s post or Paul’s post on Kohl‘s…this is the perfect next course.

Over at brandchannel.com, they’ve posted an excellent article on how corporations/brands should/shouldn’t react when a blog slams the company and/or product.

I’ve saved it as a PDF just in case its only posted for a brief time. You can Download brandchannel.pdf here.

You can also jump into the debate on their blog. Let the evolution continue!

Describe Kohl’s in one phrase

January 3, 2007

Paul over at Hee-Haw Marketing took some pretty damning photos at his local Kohl’s. He raises some great issues about advertising and saying one thing and living another.

Then, Mack Collier picked up the ball and posted this very interesting question: If the CMO of Kohl’s saw Paul’s post…what should he/she do?

I started to add my comment to Mack’s post and then I could hear Mike Sansone whispering in my ear “long comments should be posts on your own site.” So here we have it.

So….Kohl’s has a significant problem. There were lots of good comments on Mack’s site, suggesting what the CMO should do. I didn’t disagree with any of them.

But they all started at stage two — at the store level.

I believe the CMO needs to start at the beginning. The Kohl’s brand. That’s why I asked you how you’d describe the store. Most of us would use words like “cheap, knock offs, second runs, last year’s styles, shoddy production, disinterested employees.”

Every choice the store makes — the stock, the short-handed staff, the under trained staff, the crowded junked up retail ads…tells us that the employees who allowed that Dallas store to look like that were simply behaving as they have been taught to behave. They don’t show the store or the customers any respect because no one has taught them to respect the brand.

Punishing a store manager or answering a blog post isn’t going to fix that. That’s treating the symptom, not the cause. If an organization’s leaders are not willing to explore and uncover what their brand is all about — why they exist (and I do not believe any store exists to offer crap in a shoddy store staffed by disgruntled, short-handed staffers) then really, there is little hope. They will go down the path of K-Mart and others who thought “low prices” was enough.

If Kohl’s management could change the way they look at the chain by seeing it through a brand lens, they would change the way the employees see it. When the employees see if differently, they begin to take pride in their work and their environment. No matter how inexpensive the merchandise is. And when that happens — they change our perception.

Until then…let me recommend Target. By the way….Kohl’s tagline on their website…”expect great things.”

Yikes. They even bolded great.

5 Things meme makes AdAge

January 3, 2007

The blog meme "five things you didn’t know about me" has been circling the blogosphere for several weeks. I got tagged and ponied my five answers and as the game suggests, tagged a few other folks.

Well, our little game has made the big time. AdAge’s Digital Media Morph has referred to the game as"bringing a human side to online chatter." You can check out the story here or Download adage.pdf .

Could you get to Cleveland without a map?

January 2, 2007

Sure you could. You would head in the general direction and make course corrections along the way. But let me ask you about your journey.

Will you make some wrong turns?
Will you lose time?
Will you miss out on some things that happened — if only you had gotten there more efficiently?
Will you waste gas and other resources?
Will this method add to your stress?

It doesn’t sound like the smartest way to get to Cleveland does it? Why not just use Mapquest or AAA triptik?

Now, let’s refocus the lens and think about your marketing efforts. Same question. Could you reach your sales/marketing goals without a map? Sure. Head in the general direction, etc. etc.

But couldn’t you ask yourself those same questions and arrive at the same answers? That’s why having a marketing plan is so critical. You don’t have the time, resources or the TUMS supply to wing it. Yet…and this will either embarrass or amaze you — 95% of all businesses do not have a marketing plan.

Cindy Pinsonnault over at Pinsonnault Creative explores why people are so reticent to create a plan. She’s exactly right. My point is — it doesn’t matter.

Get over yourself. Get over your insecurities. Get over your time issues. Even if it is a one page matrix that outlines the five tactics, the three audiences and the timetable each tactic will follow, it beats nothing.

Get out of your car. Get to your desk. No more driving blind. Promise?

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