Marketing Archives - Page 58 of 67 - McLellan Marketing Group

Marketing Lessons from Walt…the PDF

January 24, 2007

It started innocently enough.

We were on vacation at Disney World.

I write a marketing blog.

I am fascinated by Walt Disney’s imagination and genuis.

Add those factors together and voila — blog posts about the marketing wisdom of Walt. It evolved into an 8-part series that was a blast to think about and write.

Then the marketing whirlwind that is CK posted a very kind review of the series and said "Drew, here’s an epiphany if you’ve not yet thought of it: repackage this content into a PDF for your clients and prospects (and we bloggers) and send them a special-delivery holiday package from Mickey!"

She then went on to suggest a slight variation to the infamous ears to better reflect the content.

Who could resist? So slightly after the holidays, here’s the Marketing Lessons from Walt PDF. I hope you will not only enjoy it, but nod your head once or twice and maybe even make an inspired shift in how you’re marketing.

Download marketingwalt.pdf

Update: CK honors her promise and dons a snappy set of ears and pig tails to promote the PDF.

And Gavin Heaton adds his take on opening your ears and really listening at Marketing Profs Daily Fix.

Thanks to you both for using your voice to share the PDF!

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Hey there, hi there, ho there…Marketeers Club!

January 23, 2007

The Mouseketeers reined supreme in the late 50’s as the ambassadors of the Mickey Mouse Club. They sang, they danced and they were the symbols of all that was wholesome and good.

They hosted the Mickey Mouse Club and if you remember, each day had a special theme.

Mondays: Fun with Music
Tuesdays: Guest Star
Wednesdays: Anything Can Happen
Thursdays: Circus
Fridays: Talent Round Up

Well, fast-forward about 50 years (gulp!) and I’d like to introduce you to a new club and its ambassadors – the Marketeers!

Like their predecessors, they gather together to celebrate what they believe in and the tools of their trade. Here are some of the Marketeers themes.

Fun with Senses. These Marketeers understand that to engage their audience their marketing efforts must use words, ideas and visuals to tickle the senses.

Guest Star. Our Marketeers are smart enough to realize that the real guest star in any marketing is the consumer. They deserve the spotlight, the attention and the applause. Rather than hogging the mic, they wisely hand it off to the consumer, so they can share in the conversation.

Anything Can Happen When You Use Your Imagination. You can count on a Marketeer finding an inventive way to think creatively and tap into a human truth or two.

Surprise! Yes, like the circus theme of the original club, this day is all about not communicating in a trite, tired cliché just because its easier, cheaper or the client will buy it.

Talent Round Up. An easy way to spot a Marketeer is that they’ve surrounded themselves with other smart, funny, clever, thought-provoking marketing pros. Better yet — they reach out to help and support one another. A Marketeer understands that the age of cooperation and sharing is a part of the new day.

A tough club to belong to, eh? I agree. But, the benefits are well worth the effort.

So who do we know that’s worthy of being named a Marketeer? Who has earned the right to wear these hallowed ears?

Keep an eye right here for our inaugural honoree!

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A marketing tip from my Italian grandma: Count your bay leaves

January 20, 2007

No doubt you look at my last name and say Italian? But rest assured, on my mom’s side I’m your amico! Like all Italians, I had an Italian grandma. And like all Italian grandmas, she had an opinion about everything and wasn’t afraid to share it or the life lessons she had collected along her colorful life.

What she didn’t realize is that she also taught me some great marketing tips that, in her honor, I’d like to share with you.

If you come to my house for dinner, odds are you’re going to get spaghetti. I make the sauce from scratch, just like my grandma taught me to. Now when I use the word recipe, that’s not quite accurate. We do a lot of “a pinch of that” and “season to taste” sorts of measuring.

Except for the bay leaves. My grandma always used to say, “count your bay leaves.” Why? Well, for spaghetti sauce to be incredible, it must slow cook on the stove for at least 24 hours, if not longer. But when you finally take it off the stove and are going to freeze a bunch (because you always cook enough to make at least 6 dinners) you need to very carefully retrieve ALL the bay leaves. Otherwise, when you finally eat the sauce, there’s a very bitter taste to it. In making our sauce, you need to know what details matter enough to measure.

Marketing is like that too. It’s an imprecise science at best. We do a lot of seasoning for taste. We know what all the main ingredients need to be, but the measurements are usually not exacting. Much of it is gut instinct, experience, taking a taste and adjusting accordingly.

But, we can get so paralyzed by measuring and counting and analyzing that we lose track of our purpose. We measure just to measure. Because it feels safe. We know we can count. Bigger numbers mean better results, right? Not always. It depends on what matters. It depends on why we’re doing it in the first place.

So straight from my Italian grandma — figure out what has the potential to make your sauce bitter if you don’t keep track. Count your bay leaves. But don’t sweat the rest.

Here’s the entire Marketing Tips from My Italian Grandma series, for your enjoyment:

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Good Reads

January 16, 2007

I’m not sure how you can even stay current, let alone try to stay ahead of the curve, if you’re not doing a fair amount of reading. Whether it’s books, blog posts or a great website packed with ideas — I think we all need to keep feeding our brains.

Here’s a couple thought provoking reads that are easily accessible.

Carolyn Manning is hosting another Carnival over at Thoughts & Philosophies. Lots of good reads but the one I found most thought-provoking was The Science of Success from Craig Harper.

Over at Marketing Profs, Mack Collier has posted an excellent article called Ten Steps to Creating a Brand Ambassador. You need to be a premium member…but honestly, you need to be one of those anyway.

I’ve been a member for a long time and always thought it was a bargain. The content is top notch year round and now they are doing weekly case studies that are packed with ideas, insights and tough lessons. Now, an uber bargain.

Go grab yourself some brain food! The lollipop is optional but highly recommended.

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:60 ticks marketing tip: Close your eyes and say no

January 16, 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!

Close your eyes. Picture a can of Coke. Now in your imagination, make the can green. What happens?

It’s not Coke anymore, is it? The folks at Coca-Cola headquarters are probably so sick of red they could scream — but they know better than to mess with their visual identity.

Remember that next time you want to change your logo’s color, font or other distinguishing features. If a company with the resources of Coke recognizes the cost of messing with their brand — shouldn’t you too?

That’s it…go put it into action! (Or in this case…inaction — leave it alone!)

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Take a Taste!

January 15, 2007

I got a friendly note from a reader Jurgen Wolff who enjoyed the Five Tips to Increase Online Book Sales post. He shared a idea that he used with great success.

"Thanks for your blog’s five tips to increase online book sales. I have been using another technique, namely printing a "Writer’s First-Aid Card" for what to do when you get stuck, and offering it free to writing conferences. The card is the size of an index card, and it’s printed both sides (color both sides). It contains a list of tips for what to do if you get stuck.

I wrote to conference organizers and offered to send them as many as they wanted, to include in their welcome pack or to pass out at the conference, or to put on a ‘freebies’ table. Requests have varied from 40 copies to several hundred."

Jurgen clearly understands the philosophy of sharing your expertise as a way of letting potential clients "sample" you.

I think this is one of marketing’s most overlooked and underused tactics. Blogging will change that to a degree — but outside of blogging, how can you give potential customers a chance to take a taste? And if you don’t do it — why the heck not?

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2007 — My turn at offering a marketing prediction

January 15, 2007

The last week of December and the early part of January are always awash with predictions. I got a nice note from David Polinchock, pointing me to the excellent series he wrote for Brand Experience Lab. Then, I found Be Excellent’s Top 10 Business Resolutions for 2007.

Both well-written and wise posts. There’s not a bad observation in the bunch.

Want to hear my prediction for 2007?

I don’t think that most businesses will actually do any of it.

I don’t believe that most businesses are brave enough to step out from the shadows of "we’ve always done it that way" to try something new.
I don’t believe that most businesses have the courage to trust their own customers and employees to grow and share the brand.
I don’t even believe that most businesses understand branding enough to take a whack at it.
Sadly, I don’t believe that most businesses will even bother to listen to the blogosphere, let alone engage in it.

Are you brave enough to prove me wrong? I sure hope so.

Flickr photo courtesy of pastelginger.

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Baby, it’s cold outside (and inside too!)

January 13, 2007

Winter has finally arrived in Iowa. Unfortunately it has also arrived inside my house. As you can see, it’s a balmy 56 degrees right now. And dropping like a rock.

I’m home alone (everyone else has been farmed out to warmer homes) and I am weighing whether or not I want to suck it up and pay the time and a half or wait until Monday to get it fixed. So I call my furnace repair shop of choice and I explain to the woman who answers that the furnace will not come on and its getting nippy.

I ask her what the difference in cost will be if they come out tonight or I wait until Monday. She politely tells me and points out where the cost variations are the most significant.

Ouch. Okay, I tell her…I think I will wait it out. After all, I have everyone outplaced and I am from Minnesota. We live for this weather. Being this cold will help me stay alert and get some work done, right?

Then, she says, "don’t forget to fire up enough space heaters to protect your pipes from freezing."

Hold up a second! I hadn’t thought about the pipes freezing. There’s only one space heater in the house. My mind does the quick mental math and going out to buy 5-6 more heaters or calling around to our friends and neighbors to borrow a bunch seems like a bad plan.

See what she did? Sneaky. She cared about my situation. She offered good counsel. She didn’t push her service. She didn’t argue with my decision. She actually tried to help me avoid buying from her tonight. And in doing so, she let me figure out that I needed what she was selling.

The very best selling looks a whole lot like helping.

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Shhh! You’re being too quiet!

January 13, 2007

Sometimes we try too hard and inadvertantly create the very situation we were trying to avoid.

Check out this post I wrote a couple days ago. What, within the post, do you find your eyes drawn to or distracting you from the message?

Right — the flickr credit. I was trying to make it unobtrusive and instead my efforts have it sticking out like a sore thumb. I should have just not worried about the type size and let it be.

Much like someone in the theatre shhing someone talking and actually being louder than the original offender — as marketers, we can over think and over do. Sometimes…that focuses the spotlight right where we don’t want it.

Flickr photo courtesy of double cappuccino.

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Apprentice meets Survivor = Biggest Loser?

January 12, 2007

It’s fascinating.

What was this fringe thing that only the "kids" took that seriously is suddenly becoming very mainstream. We have magazines like TIME and AdAge paying homage to the citizen marketer and social media. And now, we have the NFL, Chevy and Frito-Lay asking Joe Citizen to create ads for them.

Duck…the pendulum is swinging!

How far will this new variation on reality TV/marketing go? What do you see as the upsides? The risks? Is it just another flash in the pan along this new road or are consumer generated ads the new norm?

And where is the strategic thinking underneath any of these consumer creations? Or in this new world, doesn’t that matter?

In case the NFL article goes away… Download NFLad.pdf

flickr photo courtesy of Cilest.

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