Blog posts
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posted by Freddy Guitron on Wed, 05/15/2013 - 10:27
Put Your Brand Up In Lights In Times Square For Only $600!
A highly effective marketing technique that many MarCom pros may not be aware of is the ability to place your company or clients' names up in lights on a huge electronic billboard in New York City's Times Square for only a few hundred dollars.PR Newswire provides a service that will guarantee your photo is placed on their huge electronic billboard during rush hour for $595 and then provide you with a photo of it that you can use for marketing purposes. You have to be a member, which costs a couple hundred a year, and pay for a copy of the photo, another couple hundred, but for around $1,000 you get a very powerful marketing tool.We have used this service a couple times very successfully for our client the Brand Activation Association. The first time was a few weeks ago when the 102-year old association changed its name from the Promotion Marketing Association (PMA) to the Brand Activation Association (BAA). The announcement was being made at their annual Marketing Conference in Chicago to several hundred members and attendees. We arranged for the Times Square photo shown here congratulating them on their new name to also be shown on the huge screens in the meeting in Chicago. The attendees were very impressed. At the same time, we distributed a news release and photo about the name change to the key trade and business media and received great coverage among thousands of their target audiences.The second time we used it was to congratulate the winners of the BAA Super REGGIE Award. BAA sponsors one of the most prestigious and sought after awards in the marketing industry and they promote the fact that the winner of the top award will be featured on the Times Square billboard. It is another effective incentive to get agencies and brands to enter. This year's winner, Leo Burnett/Arc Worldwide was thrilled that the picture of them receiving the award was on the Times Square billboard. They helped BAA develop a great case history that BAA will use to promote next year's winners and attract new members.These are just two of the many ways companies are using this marketing tool to promote their brands. We'd be happy to discuss how this works with you, and we are interested in hearing if you have used this service.Happy Marketing. -
posted by Roger Halligan on Thu, 05/09/2013 - 12:53
The Value of Crowdsourcing - The Old Fashioned Way
I'm sure most of you are aware of crowdsourcing and how it is used to gain collective intelligence or much needed funding. Many of you are also probably familiar with some of the more publicized crowdsourcing success stories:- Ben & Jerry's campaign to find a new flavor of ice cream
- NPR's Kickstarter Campaign that has already raised over $300K
- A variety of financial success stories ranging from financing Indie films to improving health care
Nine of the world's top 10 brands use crowdsourcing and companies like Dell and Starbucks use it on a regular basis to solicit new ideas on how to push their businesses forward. Many of our clients also use it successfully for a variety of purposes.However, what made me stop and ponder about crowdsourcing recently is that shortly after discussing a crowdsourcing strategy with one of my clients, I received an email reminder about an upcoming meeting of the CEO group I have belonged to for more than 10 years. Called the Synergy Group (Syners for short - not necessarily because of our activities at the meetings), we are a group of CEOs from MarCom agencies of all sizes around the country. We meet twice a year to discuss how we can drive our businesses and help our clients improve theirs.My wife calls it my therapy group as we share success stories and challenges and get into details and discussions that we don't have with anyone else - even our spouses and business advisors. We also share client success stories and discuss new technologies and techniques that are very invaluable in keeping us at the cutting edge. I can honestly say I have gained more good ideas that have benefited both our clients and us than I can count on both hands.We even wrote a MarCom book using crowdsourcing techniques with the other 50 agency members called “Secret of Agency Owners: Our Best Marketing Advice” (Please let us know if you would like a copy). I'm proud to say that my submission was selected as the first chapter. It dawned on me as I read the details for our upcoming meeting in New York City that these Syner meetings were also crowdsourcing - just with a smaller crowd and a much more focused group.I guess the point of this blog is that crowdsourcing can take many shapes and forms and can be extremely valuable, or not, regardless of how big your crowd is.What has been your experience with crowdsourcing? -
posted by Roger Halligan on Fri, 05/03/2013 - 12:47
Industry Round-Up Newsletters - The Subtle Success Strategy
One of the most effective but often overlooked marketing tools available to communications professionals is the simple "industry round-up" newsletter that aggregates interesting news items from leading business publications and shares them via a provocative headline, a brief synopsis and a direct link back to the source. We always present these e-newsletters to our target audiences as "valuable industry intelligence you can use to perform your job more effectively."Of course, you also want to include a couple news items on your product or service that link back to your website and provide an incentive for taking a specific action. For example, you might run a news item based on an article that appeared in a major trade publication about your product or conference and link it back to your website where they can read more about it and get a discount for linking to a special landing page.We have used this technique for a variety of our clients and have gained tremendous success in terms of increased web traffic, leads and sales. We always call the e-newsletter "MarketPlace Monitor" and there are several reasons they are so successful:- The brief news items are valuable to your target audiences as they deal with interesting and timely industry issues - it is not the regular sales pitch they are used to getting from you. Recipients can quickly scan the newsletter and see what stories they want to learn more about and then click to read the entire article. They don't have to read through e-mail text or be put-off by a blatant sales pitch.
- You establish and/or reinforce your relationship with the key industry trade editors as they want their stories and publications to get more exposure and their publishers want more web traffic to their sites. This "content-sharing" partnership can be very valuable when you are approaching them about publishing your articles or exploring new marketing opportunities.
- You build a loyal base of customers and prospective customers as they look forward to receiving timely industry intelligence on a regular basis.
- You capture their contact information that you can use for a variety of other marketing purposes.
- You reinforce your position as an industry leader by serving as the aggregator/content creator of valuable industry intelligence.
- You can track and measure the ROI of the newsletter by directing readers to a designated landing page with a special offer.
- Content is still king in marketing and most professionals are hungry for good information they can use in their jobs. These newsletters are truly the epitome of valuable content marketing.
We've had some clients asks us if an RSS feed would serve the same purpose and our response is always "No". RSS feeds based on keyword searches are becoming so ubiquitous on websites these days that they I believe they are becoming passe'. Many people don't pay much attention to them - I know I don't. However, when most people receive an email from a trusted source that features news items from the leading publications in their industry, they will read it. -
posted by Roger Halligan on Fri, 04/19/2013 - 12:38
The Rewarding Multidimensional World of MarCom Pros
One of the great things about being a MarCom Pro in an agency is the opportunity to work with a number of clients who cover a wide range of different industries. As we’re sure you would agree, we enjoy all of the work we do as it helps our clients achieve their goals. However, it is especially nice when one of the projects you are working on addresses such a timely and critical topic.We are fortunate to be working with client who has two conferences that are taking place next month that address the very critical topics of terrorists attacks (I.e. recent Boston marathon tragedy), school shootings and national security. Our client, 1105 Media produces - FOSE which is the largest, most comprehensive event serving the government technology community and GovSec, the market-leading forum for those responsible for securing our homeland against 21st century threats from terrorist attacks to natural disasters and other security threats.As both events, taking place May 13-16 in Washington, DC, address topics that are consistently timely news items, it is incredibly rewarding to be able to leverage that news to align with content that can increase their presence but also provide the public with valuable information. Both events will feature an extensive exhibition floor, a robust conference program as well as inspiring keynotes from notable names among security professionals such as General Stanley McChrystal, Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman and more.If you or any of your clients have anything to do with national or government security, you won’t want to miss out.Click the links below for more information -
posted by Roger Halligan on Fri, 04/05/2013 - 13:33
Creativity Can Trump Huge Budgets!
What a great evening we had last night! We attended the BAA REGGIE Awards ceremonies in Chicago where the best marketing campaigns from many of the world's leading brands and top ad agencies were honored for their outstanding creativity. Companies such as McDonald's, Ford, Target, Amazon, Nestle, Taco Bell, MillerCoors, Campbell's Soup and other industry stars won the prestigious Gold REGGIE Award for some incredible marketing campaigns.Many of these companies spent millions of dollars on highly integrated, multi-faceted campaigns that incorporated just about every marketing tool you can imagine - TV campaigns, print ads, social media, couponing, in-store promotion, PR, experiential marketing, etc. Many of these entries were for global campaigns that appeared around the world. However, the big winner of the evening was Arc Worldwide/Leo Burnett USA for the incredible integrated campaign they created for the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. They won four Gold REGGIE's and the Super REGGIE for best overall campaign for a local theater with a budget under $10,000.They accomplished this by creating a highly integrated campaign built around creating a fake copy of one of the world's most famous paintings, "Sunday on La Grand Jatte" by George Seurat, hanging it in the Chicago Art Museum and promoting it digitally, experientially, via social media, a traveling display, and much more. The campaign generated over 8 million media impressions in just 24 hours, and generated the highest number of first-time guests in the theater’s history. The theatrical production being promoted in the campaign was "Sunday in The Park With George", which had to be extended one week to meet ticket demands.The highly successful social media part of the campaign was created by Iris Mobile, our marketing partners. You can learn more about Iris Mobile here.The moral of the story is you don't always have to have huge budgets to create successful, award-winning campaigns - although it helps.
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