Create your own occasions and holidays

Greeting card companies have been creating nonsense holidays and occasions for years. Marketers have gotten into the action, too.

Most recently:
September 19th was “International Talk Like a Pirate Day.” — Who knew? I discovered it accidentally because Meebo enabled a secrete pirate speak function to translate instant message text into pirate gibberish.

July 15th was “World Firefox Day” – World Firefox Day gives everyone who uses and loves Firefox the chance to introduce Firefox to one other person they care about. If your friend starts using Firefox on or before September 15, 2006, both of you will be recognized on the Firefox Friends Wall, and in Firefox 2.

June was “Backup Awareness Month” (according to Seagate). Too bad, many people I’ve spoken too didn’t hear about it until July.

Point is, other marketers are taking liberties, so why shouldn’t you? Go ahead and create an occasion/event! But first:

• Make sure it has perceivable value.
• Make it shareable.
• Make it worth someone’s time to briefly engage with your brand.

Then spread it out over the Web. Make it hip! And use good old fashioned grass roots promotion all the way.

Have fun.
-Roland

Brand loyalty and influence

Media Post reported the results of a new study: Some 13-34s Show High Brand Loyalty

A new study of 10,000 respondents confirmed that a portion of the 13-34 age group are opinionated and passionate to the point of influencing friends and family.

15-20% of the respondents fell into a category dubbed “Brand Sirens.”

“Those sirens have a profound network effect on marketing through their ability to influence friends and family via word-of-mouth, viral video and applications such as instant messaging and blogs, among other media.”

Here are a few other key insights confirmed in the research:

• 2 in 3 “Brand Sirens” care about the brands they use
• 7 in 10 say they love some brands
• 43% of the Brand Sirens wish they could find brands they could stick with and more than 40 percent would switch brands if another brand came onto the market that seemed more enticing.
• 82% indicated that they talk about brands with their friends.
• 70% of those surveyed send e-mails to friends about products and services
• 77% post reviews and product feedback online

One of the most surprising findings of the research is that while Brand Sirens are skeptical about corporations and marketing, they can also serve as a marketer’s strongest advocate via blogs, word-of-mouth, social networks, and other largely consumer-generated new media platforms. “There is this juxtaposition between skepticism and advocacy.”

My banana connected the dots

I found a sticker on my banana this morning. It wasn’t for Dole brand or a price code. What made me look twice was that it was the head of H.A. Rey’s Curious George.

It made me curious…

Was it for the recent Curious George movie about to be released on DVD?

Was it for the new Curious George TV series on PBS?

Was it a plot by the Global Board of Banana Growers United Liberation Front to tap into my inner child and stimulate me to subconsciously buy bananas?

It probably doesn’t matter since I’ve obviously been exposed to these things unconsciously. And all it took was a cheap, little sticker placed on my banana by some clever marketer to trigger brand recall and make me connect the dots. Ding! My banana is part of an integrated brand campaign!

-Roland

Brands in virtual worlds

It’s hard enough to reach audiences in the real world. We try to deliver what the consumer wants, when, where and how they want it. Now we have to chase them to virtual worlds. Virtual worlds have taken great strides in recent years as computing power increased and more households have switched to broadband access.

Even more virtual worlds are coming. In addition to Second Life and There, MTV just made a big splash with it’s virtual adaptation of the “hit” series Laguna Beach.

Second Life now has a special version for teens under 18:

Point is, users can shop in these environments to outfit their virtual selves. They have currency to spend in these worlds to do all sorts of things like:

• buy clothes (think retailers, jewelery, shoes, accessories),
• change their eye color (contact lenses),
• build a store to sell virtual stuff,
• buy/build a house to decorate,
• attend online concerts,
• visit baseball stadium (MLB),
• play games to learn financial responsibility (Wells Fargo)
• buy a vehicle (Ford) to get around the virtual world.

All of this provides the opportunity for brands to allow potential consumers to explore and experiment with digital versions of their products — afterwhich adoption/loyalty can be extended to the real world.

You should check them out. Free, basic accounts are available for all.

-Roland

Update 10/18/2006: Laguna Beach episodes debute in Virtual Laguna Beach first.

Update 10/19/2006: News.com reports that Second Life now has over 1 million registered users, of which 41% are active users (active in the past 60 days).

Is brown is the new black?

Seems like brown is becoming the new black. Fashionistas are trying to make brown hip (again).

In the past month, we’ve seen the launch of Coca-Cola Blak (which is really dark brown).

Microsoft announced they will release the new Zune music player in brown.

Verizon is briskly selling the LG Chocolate mobile phone.

The color scheme of Ubuntu, the popular free linux operating system, is predominately brown.

A word to fashionistas: Please don’t influence us to wear a blue shirt with brown pants. It didn’t work in the 70′s and it still wont fly today.

Does your client really need a content management system?

A client challenged us the other day, and it was intriguing. Our Web site redesign project scope of work clearly indicated that a content management system was not included in the budget. Our client never said he wanted it in all the preliminary scope conversations.

Suddenly he called and seemed adamant that he wanted a content management system. He said that his current understanding was that all sites now are published using a database.

We promised to assess and get back to him the next day. We probably spent about 12 man hours of due diligence to evaluate what we knew about the client’s business so far, evaluate what content publishing they currently do, forecast the frequency of their publishing, consider the stakeholders, and assess software and custom programming solutions. All of this was eventually distilled into a one page slide for the client.

We called the client and laid out for him the reasons why a Content Management System might not be right for him at this point and what we felt was the higher priority to invest his budget in.

Fifteen minutes later, he was enthusiastic, agreed with our recommendation, and said he appreciated how we thought carefully about his business and his business priorities, rather than trying to sell him on an expensive solutions that might not meet his needs.

Result: client was happy, we came across as concerned and professional, and the project is back on track.

Is a Content Management System right for your project? Here are some points to evaluate:

• Flexibility — Once you commit, there is minimum flexibility after the system is in place. It can be costly to make changes in the future.
• Templates — Consider your needs for the near future otherwise you won’t have the ability to easily modify style or layout.
• SEO friendliness — Will the tool provide functionality to automatically generate code that is SEO friendly? What will you have to do manually? What wont you be able to do?
• Work flow publishing — Carefully define how your team will process, review and publish new content and make edits to existing content. Try to be realistic.
• Permissions — Define roles and capability for contributors, authors, editors, admins. Who has permission to do what and when.
• Training — Users need to be trained, not just initially but everytime a new user joins the organization.
• Expense — The more complex, the more time and money to develop initially. Also, consider long term costs to maintain, such as licensing and hosting.
• Scalability — Think about your long term needs? What will happen in the future if you add new content sections, create language versions, create country versions, etc.?
• Hosting — Will you have to change or upgrade your existing platform?

I hope you find this useful. Please post any additional suggestions.
Thank you.
-Roland

Tips how to write a professional blog

In my last article, I wrote about Reasons why you should write a professional blog.

Before setting out to write a professional blog, there are many things you should plan first. Here are some blog writing tips to consider.

Decide why you want to write a professional blog?

Is it for personal satisfaction? To share your professional experience? To demonstrate that you are a subject matter expert?

Pick the subject you want to blog about.

Personal experiences? Observations? Criticizms of your industry? Would you read it?

The best advice always seems to be to write about what you know or what you are most passionate about.

Define the audience you are writing for.

A specific niche? An industry? Your clients? Your colleagues?

Decide what you are willing to invest.

How much time a week will you commit? Do you want to own a domain name? Do you want to host yourself?

Commit to publishing your blog for at least 12 weeks. If you get that far, it should become a matter of routine for you and you’ll know whether you’ll stick it out for longer.

Owning your own domain name and hosting yourself provide more control, but come at a nominal annual cost.

Evaluate publishing tools.

There are plenty of free services to get you started: WordPress, Blogger, Live Journal. Compare features and decide what is appropriate for you.

Define a publishing plan.

Publishing quality content, at minimum once or twice a week, is important to keep your content fresh. That will encourage readers to treat you seriously and search engines to come back regularly.

Create your personal publishing rules.

To appear professional you need to act professional. I’ve decided that my two Web sites each have a specific subject matter and focus. Therefore, every time I write, I try to make sure the article topic fits appropriately. If it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t get published.

Get to the point. I try to write with a problem/solution mindset. If I’m writing about someone else’s article, I try to add solutions in addition to what the original author provided. That way I’m truly providing value.

Give credit where credit is due. The Internet is supposed to be a community to share and spark ideas. So cite your sources. Link to the originating article that gave you an idea. Give credit to where ever you got your artwork or tools from.

Keep it clean. While it may be easy to use profanity, step up to the challenge of getting your point across without profanity. That will make you appear more professional.

Don’t be afraid to experiment.

Use the pluggins that your publishing tools comes with. There are an amazing variety of free and open source tools available for you to add functionality and manage your blog. Check out Google Analytics for rhobust site statistics. Learn how to generate a feed and submit to Feedburner, Google Site Maps and Yahoo Site Explorer.

Stay objective. Avoid politics.

Keep politics out of the conversation. There’s no reason to polarize your audience. It’s a cheezy way to stir up controversy.

Don’t be cheezy.

The blog/Web site is an extension of you. Think of it as your personal brand. Don’t include amateur things like site counters, animated email icons, or bad usability and design — all of which discredit you as a subject matter expert. There are plenty of elegant and functional blog themes to choose from and modify with care.

Define how you want to monetize the Web site.

I’d suggest to write to define your credibility as a subject matter expert. Don’t worry about adding AdSense or other advertising. Instead, focus on publishing quality content and developing a subscriber base. Then you can evaluate different methods to run sponsor advertising in the future.

So please let me know your thoughts. It’s been quite a liberating experience. You should consider doing the same. Good luck!
-Roland

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