Category: Marketing Trends/News

By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , , ,

Several big, big brands were able to think and act like nimble small businesses and seize the moment when the Superbowl went dark yesterday:

Oreo, with a picture of an Oreo on a dark background and a teaser that said:

Power out? No problem. pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC

Lowe’s and Walgreen’s both went directly to their own product lines:

Hey dome operators at the ‘Big Game’, there are a few Lowe’s nearby if you need some generators.

We do carry candles. 

We can’t get your , but we can get your stains out.   pic.twitter.com/JpQBRvjf

Several nonprofits and PBS also jumped in. Here’s one I particularly like, for its higher-message consciousness raising—and for the smart way it draws traffic to its own website:

half a billion people in Africa NEVER have power. Learn more at https://www.one.org/us/2012/11/13/what-makes-you-angry/ …

Social media marketing maven David Meerman Scott commented on the instant chatter using the hashtag #blackoutbowl. Scott liked the Oreo ad a lot, but noted that Lowe’s lost an opportunity for vastly higher readership by not using a hashtag. Umm, neither did Oreo, actually, yet that got retweeted thousands of times. I wonder if it got so much play because Oreo had actually run a Superbowl commercial earlier in the game? This is something worth investigating: whether traditional advertising can build social media participation, and thus engage the prospect at a much deeper and longer lasting level. It would be fascinating to know how many new followers Oreo got between the time of its original ad and the time it tweeted about the blackout—especially considering the exorbitant price of Superbowl advertising.

What I find most interesting about the whole thing is that the people who run these big corporate Twitter accounts had the freedom to respond instantly. Nobody convened a meeting (good luck with THAT on a Sunday and during the Superbowl). Boom, the Tweets went out. I don’t normally associate that sort of amazingly nimble behavior with the likes of Audi, Procter & Gamble, and Nabisco, especially since there have been many instances of companies taking big flak for Tweets that did not help their brand (Johnson & Johnson’s Motrin baby-wearers fiasco comes to mind).

I’ve been advocating pegging pitches and messages to current events for about 35 years—but social media gives us an instancy that we didn’t have in the 1970s, or even the 1990s. We can expect to see this sort of “newsjacking” (Meerman-Scott’s term) more and more often.

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By Posted on Posted in Green Business, Green Marketing, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News Tagged with , , , ,

Marc Stoiber, in his article, “Seven Crazy Reasons Consumers Won’t Embrace Your Green Innovation,” argues that many green initiatives fail because humans (to make sweeping generalizations) are too inertial:

  1. we don’t like change
  2. we resist new facts that contradict our worldview
  3. we prefer the familiar
  4. we’re more scared of losing what we have than excited to gain something new
  5. we are biased toward what we already know
  6. we judge innovation based on comparison to what we’ve already experienced, rather than on its own merits
  7. we prefer immediate gratification to long-term benefit

Stoiber explores each of these a bit in his article, which I recommend reading. And I basically agree with him, at least when talking about the majority culture.

Which is why, in my work as a strategic marketer and copywriter working frequently in the green marketing world, I always do my best to:

  • include both emotional and rational benefits,
  • root my arguments in both self-interest and planetary interest,
  • match my message to its intended audience

Let’s make this concrete.

Say, for example, you want to market a “magic” all-natural enzyme that neutralizes the odor and stain of urine, and thus dramatically reduces the need to flush. The environmental benefit is saving water, a supercritical but very much underappreciated (and underpriced) natural resource. But to someone without a deep green consciousness, living in a place where water is close to free and appears to be inexhaustible, saving water is not a benefit they can wrap themselves around. A traditional green marketer would go to people in big cities and laboriously educate the audience on why it’s important to safe water (people in rural areas often already recognize the importance of water).

But an easier approach, based in appeals to self-interest, might take the marketing campaign to places that restrict water use—with arguments like “your bathroom can smell as clean as it did when you were allowed to flush”, “good-bye to icky yellow toilet stains”, or even an economic argument aimed at large-scale users (including landlords and property managers at large residential complexes—let THEM educate their residents, as hotels did with the towel-washing issue), like “cut your water and sewer bills in half.”

Those kinds of arguments open your product up to those who are caught in the kind of rigid thinking Stoiber describes.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Green Marketing, Marketing Trends/News Tagged with , , , ,

22 years ago, the first known CSA (community -supported agriculture farm) organized in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, US; now, there are somewhere between 4570 and 6500 US farms selling shares ahead of the season.

During the same period, the number of farmers markets in the US exploded roughly 500 percent, from about 1350 to 7864. The local food sector in general has seen an astounding 24 percent annual growth for 12 consecutive years! This while the economy for the past several years has been far from robust.

All the above stats come from this slowmoney.com summary of a talk by Gary Paul Nabhan, considered by some “the father of the local food movement.” And the article didn’t even mention such numbers as the growth in Fair Trade and organic, or the way terms like “locavore” have entered our vocabulary.

In short, despite the defeat of GMO-right-to-know legislation in California, sustainable foods are definitely on an uptick.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Green Business, Green Marketing, Innovation, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, People Helping People, Socially Responsible Investing, Technology, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Heard of Carrotmobs yet? Consumers have used our buying power to avoid companies with the wrong values for decades. Now there’s a positive flip: actively making the effort to buy from companies that support your values. I only heard the term “Carrotmob”—so called because consumers use the carrot of positive business rather than the stick of withdrawing business to achieve social good.

I think I only heard the term a month or two ago; since then, I’ve run across it several times. This concept seems to be entering the language faster than anything I can remember since “Ms.” was invented as a gender-neutral alternative to Miss and Mrs., back in the1970s.

Here’s a particularly cool one with the odd twist that it was initiated by the company—and since I write about out-of-the-box people-centered marketing of green products and services, worth flagging here. I imagine this marketing strategy could get old fast if too many people do it, but the idea of having your customers pre-fund your sustainability venture is a good one. Think abou Kickstarter campaigns; this isn’t so different, after all.

A coffee company has decided that organic/fair trade coffee is not enough; the coffee should be transported on cargo ships powered by renewable energy. Specifically, using wind power.

Thanksgiving Coffee, a California-based artisan roaster, will arrange for wind-powered shipping if people buy $150,000 worth of coffee on Carrotmob. The goal is to prove demand for wind-transported coffee and research ways to make wind-powered shipping a reality in our own time.

It’s worth remembering that all cargo shipping from the dawn of history into the 19th century was either wind-powered or human-powered (by rowers). So there’s no need to prove that cargo shipping can be wind-powered. However, a transatlantic voyage by wind took many weeks, sometimes went way off course, was more susceptible to storms, etc. Steam and then diesel made shipping fast and reliable enough to create the modern global economy. So the real challenge is not to prove that they can use wind-powered ships, but that they can compete effectively using a modern wind-powered shipping fleet.

This of course could have a huge impact on the entire cargo shipping industry, if it can be done effectively and inexpensively enough to transport many different types of items. And certainly, it will inspire the shipping industry to add more sustainable practices even if using conventional diesel-powered cargo ships.

Meanwhile, if you’re a coffee drinker, you can help Thanksgiving Coffee test the waters for sustainable shipping. Go read the article on Ecopreneurist, or skip directly to the Thanksgiving Coffee Carrotmob page and buy a pound or two.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Business Ethics, Green Marketing, Greenwashing, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Yet another company has gotten in trouble for greenwashing. Raz Godelnik writes in Triple Pundit about cereal giant General Mills’ legal woes: multiple lawsuits over deceptive packaging, claiming for example that its Nature Valley brand of granola bars is “all natural” when in fact it’s highly processed and contains such ingredients as maltodextrin.

You’d think by now companies woud have caught on that honesty really is the best policy.

Of course, it would be nice if the word “natural” actually had a legal definition, and thus some teeth. But it would also be nice if a company that claims to be strongly guided by ethics would do a better job of walking its talk.

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By Posted on Posted in Business-general, Marketing Trends/News Tagged with , ,

Gary Hirshberg, who recently stepped down after decades as CEO of Stonyfield Farm Yogurt—the company he founded—carries a memory that would make any executive’s heart gladden:

Recently, I was standing in a Florida supermarket reading the label on a Yoplait yogurt cup because I was curious about a new ingredient the company was trying. An older customer walked over to me, touched me on the elbow, and said, “Young man, someone your age really should be eating the Stonyfield.” Her comment was akin to a religious moment for me. However, I regained my composure quickly enough to ask why she thought I should be eating the Stonyfield product. Her remarkably well-informed answer can be summarized this way: Since I apparently have a few decades left in me, I can make them more enjoyable and productive by eating organic foods. Plus, I will get the extra bonus of knowing that I am supporting a company that cares. This lovely woman certainly sold me.

Isn’t that every marketer’s dream? To have a total stranger come up to you and tell you that you MUST buy your own product, because it’s so much better? WOW!

So how can you generate that sort of love for your own products? How can you turn random strangers into fervent evangelists for you?

I give some answers in my latest book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green—but I’d love to make this a broader conversation. Please post your ideas in the comments.

(Author’s note: I heard Gary tell this story in his interview on the Spring of Sustainability series. I contacted Stonyfield’s publicity department to get the exact quote, as it appears in Gary’s book, Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World. Used with permission.)

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Diversity, Marketing Trends/News, Shel's Personal Life, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , ,

Hands down, my favorite commercial of the Olympics so far–and in fact my favorite TV commercial of the last several years, in any context–is Nike’s “Find Your Greatness: Jogger” (The full transcript,and the one-minute video, are at that link.)

The entire video is an overweight kid running at the camera, starting quite some distance out. Working hard, but not being fazed.

When I saw it on TV, I thought it was an  60-something overweight man. Looking again, I see it’s a kid. But the message of empowerment is the same.

Especially when the voiceover says (in part),

Somehow we’ve come to believe that greatness is a gift reserved for a chosen few, for prodigies, for superstars, and the rest of us can only stand by watching.

You can forget that.

Greatness is not some rare DNA strand, not some precious thing. Greatness is no more unique to us than breathing.

As a somewhat overweight guy who will be 60 in five years–and who has lost 15 pounds since upping my daily exercise regime from 30 to 60 minutes, to 60 to 120 minutes. The ad resonates with me. And not a lot of ads do.

 

 

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Just found this great article on traditional, marketer-driven outbound (“push”) marketing versus consumer-driven inbound (“pull”) marketing—and it had a really good insight I want to share with you:

Whereas outbound marketing often provided consumers with fantasies (think of Budweiser commercials or luxury car ads,) inbound marketing provides consumers with facts. People aren’t researching and gathering information on what fantasy a company is trying to sell them on, they are researching the efficacy of their products, and (with ever-growing regularity) the social and environmental policies of specific brands.

If you’ve followed me for a while, you know that I’m a huge believer in pull marketing, in putting the consumer in the driver’s seat to actively seek out solutions and find you. All the way back in 1985, when I published my first marketing book, I talked about effective Yellow Pages presence. Yellow Pages was the web browser of its time, a way to seek out and compare all the providers of a service and make a decision based on who could serve you best. By the time I did my most recent (sixth) marketing book, the award-winning and category-best-selling Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, I devoted significant space to inbound/pull strategies, from social media to Internet discussion groups. This kind of marketing is not at all intrusive; in fact, it’s welcomed.

But the insight that the reason it works so well is that it’s based in fact rather than fantasy is something I’ve never articulated. And I find it particularly interesting because the common marketing wisdom is that emotions do the selling, and intellect serves only to justify the purchase to others. I’ve never believed that; I have said for years that the best selling uses both emotion and rationality, complementing each other. To put it another way, selling is much easier when the buyer has both the need and the desire. Either one by itself is rarely enough to close a purchase.

By coincidence, I’m reading a book right now that says businesses don’t need to advertise—but it makes a huge exception for directory listings (including Yellow Pages and search engine ads). I was having trouble with that differentiation, until I read this article. Now I finally understand what the authors are getting at: advertising = fantasy, while listings = fact.

I’m not sure I agree, but at least now I see where they’re coming from.

What do you think—and feel—about this? Please share below.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Energy & Sustainability, Green Business, Green Marketing, Innovation, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , ,

A blogger on Sustainable Business, Marc Stoiber, wonders why a major sustainability milestone achieved by Translink, the Vancouver, British Colombia transit system, went almost unnoticed by local and national media.

The funny thing is…transit systems control their own media, one that reaches the two most important audiences they have. If I were the company’s marketing director, I’d put inside placards on the front and back of both sides of every bus and subway (four signs in each car) to reach the actual riders—and exterior signage to reach the next-most-important constituency: Vancouver-area residents not yet using public transit.

The interior placards would not just brag about the accomplishment—they’d say thank you to the riders for their part. And those exterior signs would recruit new riders to join the tribe, e.g., “become part of the greenest commute in North America.” And I’d supplement this with a nice social media campaign, which itself could be a subject for exciting press releases, etc.

Then, the local media and perhaps the national media would almost certainly pick up the story—but even if they didn’t, the message would be out there, and if done right, ridership would grow.

Stoiber goes on to discuss the very creative marketing of another transit advocate, Jason Roberts—who put up a website for the a nonexistent light-rail transit line in Dallas, Texas called the Oak Cliff Transit Authority—and was able to organize so effectively around this public vision that the project actually got funded! You might call Roberts’ story “If You Dream It, They Will Come—IF You’re a Marketer and Organizer Who Can Create and Gather a Tribe.”

Vancouver Transit execs: I’d love to consult with you on how to build big awareness. I already have one Vancouver-based green company as a client.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Copywriting, language, Marketing Trends/News Tagged with , ,

Yesterday, I blogged about the combination of vision, engineering, and marketing that made Apple and some other companies so successful. And for years, I’ve been a champion of putting reasons in your marketing.

This TED talk by Simon Sinek goes a step farther. Again using Apple as an example, he says it’s not enough merely to include the because; you want to lead with it. If you put your reasons why—your higher purpose—right at the top you immediately attract the people who are falling-all-over-themselves-eager to be part of your dream and your mission. This, he says, is why we don’t buy MP3 players or tablets from companies like Dell, but we salivate at Apple’s every product release—because Apple leads (and has led, since at least the original Macintosh introduction in 1984) with the deeper why.

Another of his examples is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech; King, he notes, did not say, “I have a plan.”

However, King’s speech actually had a bit of a slow build. The first 351 words (of 881, total) are about the plight of black people in this country from the Emancipation Proclamation to the day 100 years later when he gave his speech. Only then, more than a third of the way into his speech, does he move into his vision of the race-neutral future.

Still, I think Sinek is right—but I think it also has to hit on the benefits to the individual, unless you’re speaking only to the driven. I’ve often used this technique in my copywriting without consciously thinking about it. From now on, I will do it consciously.

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