Hilarous Marketer-Bashing Video

I honestly think this video is the brainchild of someone in either sales or legal - classic marketer “enemies”. Hilarious stuff - I particularly enjoyed the buzzwords pepperred throughout (yes, I have a deep, deep, DEEP hatred of buzzwords). Unfortunately, with all humor is a kernel of truth, and this video touches upon all the stereotypes of the qualities of a bad marketer.

Krispy Kreme’s Demise

Ever since I’ve noticed that all the stand-alone Krispy Kreme locations were shutting down, I’ve been fascinated with the demise of Krispy Kreme. They sell a great product - cheap, delicious, well-known, everyone loves them. How have they failed so spectacularly?

I found my answers recently in an article by Carol Kopp on Yahoo Finance titled, The Tragedy of Krispy Kreme.

Per the article, it appears that Krispy Kreme fell victim to classic business mistakes: over expansion, too much debt, and rumored management misconduct. Additionally, they weren’t prepared for the increased interest in healthy foods, and many of their franchisees suffered.

However, Kopp also writes that with new management and a rise in both its share price and Standard & Poor’s junk credit rating, Krispy Kreme may be on a bit of an uptick. It will be interesting to see if they can turn it around - if they can utilize their great product and fix their business and marketing missteps.

2009 Chesapeake Conference

The 2009 Chesapeake Conference and Best in Maryland Awards on Tuesday, October 6 was a great day of learning, networking, connecting, and planning. It was a jam-packed day of multiple same-time sessions, covering topics including Twitter and PR, How to Get Big Agency Results from a Small Shop, Defending Corporate Reputation in the Age of Social Media, and Networking with New Media, among many others.

A keynote speech by Sandy Hillman of Sandy Hillman Communications started the day off - sessions by Jeff Davis, David Warschawski, Dave Imre and his panel, Bill Atkinson, Peggy Hoffman, and Dave Harrison, among others, followed. At lunch, the Best in Maryland Awards were announced and given out - congratulations to all the winners, incluging Best in Show winner Sandy Hillman Communications for their work on the 39th Annual World Series of Poker.

Overall, attendees had glowing feedback - some even calling it “the best conference I’ve been to since 1999!”. Many others raved about the Learning Journal given out instead of the usual binder and bag. The day was packed with learning and networking opportunities - including the happy hour after the sessions were over.

There were a few reporters in attandance for the Speed Pitching sessions, including Liz Farmer (who brought a photographer!) from The Daily Record.

Want to attend the Conference after the fact? Follow up on via the Conference’s Twitter stream under #Chessie09.

Setting up a Shingle

I’ve written before about the hit that marketing, advetising, and public relations takes during a recession. I serve on the Board for PRSA-MD, and half of the Board members have gotten laid off this year. This statistic is also high for our members. With a plethora of talented advertising, marketing, and public relations professionals glutting the workforce, hitting up against a limited number of available jobs, particularly for senior-level professionals, it’s no wonder that more and more advertising, marketing, and public relations mavens are deciding to set up shop on their own.

Some advice:

Find your niche. Have you dealt with alot of restaurants? Maybe a larger percentage of your past work has been with automotive? Do you have alot of experience planning large events? Small events? Whatever it is, find your niche, and market it. Just like any large company, you need to differentiate yourself from all the other sole practitioners out there.

Professionalism. Answer voicemails and e-mails promptly. Put together a slick Web site. Have business cards made up. From day one, put your best foot forward - after all, in this industry, more than any other (other than the straight beauty industry), impressions have a huge impact.

Hit up your contacts. Hey, it can’t hurt, and it may even help. Get the word out that you’re providing your considerable knowledge and experience under your own name. You never know who knows who, or who has heard of what opportunity.

Network. Join a professional group, join a local networking group, attend career educational events. Come armed with business cards.

Elevator speech. Have your standard ‘elevator speech’ - a one or two sentence description of what your company does, and why you do it better than anyone else - down pat.

Essentially, start out with how you want to finish. Take the time to put together a business plan - it will guide all your decisions.

Good luck!

Advertising in a Recession

It seems that when a recession arrives, the first things to go are marketing, advertising, and public relations: the staff, the budget, the strategy. However, this is probably the worst move a company can make in a down economy.

This is proven fact. The companies who continued to advertise during the 1980 to 1985 recession had a 256% growth by recession end over their competitors that had stopped or decreased ad spending, per a study by McGraw-Hill Research.

By ’staying in the game,’ you’ll be the lone gunman, so to speak. You’ll be the voice the customer sees, versus your competitors, who have all stopped advertising. Talk about cutting through the clutter!

Plus, not only will you be able to attract more customers by 1) being the only ones advertising and 2) offering them deals, but you’ll also be able to get some deals yourself on ad spending. When no one else is doing spending ad money, the radio stations, TV stations, and print publications cut their costs in the hope of attracting customers - you.

Don’t fall victim to the lure of saving money by cutting your marketing, public relations, and advertising budgets. Rather, keep that budget in place, and actually earn more money - and  more long-term customers - for your business by keeping your brand in the forefront of your customers’ mind.

Gain an Advantage in the Tourism Marketplace

Attention, all travel and tourism PR practitioners!I don’t know about you, but I’m always interested in hearing tips and tricks from industry insiders. Thursday morning, September 17, is the day I will be hearing from three of the region’s premier travel and tourism marketers and PR practioners!

For this Travel and Tourism PR session, PRSA-MD is gathering Margot Amelia, Executive Director of the Maryland Office of Tourism, David Warschawski, CEO of Warschawski, Inc., and Tom Rowe from Visit Baltimore to discuss the best practices and innovative approaches they are utilizing in today’s hypercompetitive domestic and international travel market.

With today’s economy affecting both corporate and leisure travel, an opportunity to hear tips firsthand from three of the region’s premier travel and tourism PR experts is a true advantage.  I’m looking forward to taking advantage of this extremely rare opportunity for an intimate “secret sharing” conversation with three of the area’s top travel and tourism public relations experts.

Want to join me (it’s only $20!)? Visit the PRSA-MD Web site for more information, and to register.

Purchasing Decisions

Per Public Relations Tactics’ August 2009 issue, a poll by Harris Interactive shows that 55% of consumers use marketing communications as a source of information to make their purchasing decisions.

To break it down, 36% use company Web sites and 19% use print media advertising. Face-to-face meetings with company rep accounts for 22%, while 21% is input from family, friends, and peers, and 19% are consumer reviews.

Once again, the importance of marketing communications is revealed - make sure yours are top notch!

Web 3.0

I recently read an article in The Public Relations Strategist, a publication of PRSA, titled “Envisioning Web 3.0″ by Jeffrey Barrett. I didn’t realize there was a Web 1.0, let alone a 2.0 and, finally, an upcoming 3.0.

A History Lesson

Contrary to popular lore, the acknowledged creator of the World Wide Web is Tim Berners-Lee and not Al Gore. Web 1.0 spanned 1990 through 2000, and included the launch of the URL and basic search capabilities. We are currently in Web 2.0 (2001 to present), and it is marked by social media and more extensive, and user-friendly, search capabilities.

What is Web 3.0?

Web 3.0 is coming next. Otherwise known as the Semantic Web, this will make what is a difficult search today a one-click search in the new Web. How, you ask? Obviously, just as with Web 1.0, Web 3. 0 will require massive R&D. In the words of Barrett, Web 3.0 will provide us with “access to a technology that incrporates the best of the existing Internet into an advanced system featuring computer-friendly language thta connects infinite sources.” Basically, “with Web 3.0, you would simply  need one search agent to assemble all of the relvant in formation that you need,” rather than a multidude of searches and examination of numerous links to find the information you’re looking for, as we do today.

Changing How We Live and Work

The implications of Web 3.0 are tremendous. Its impact on marketing and public relations, however, would be particularly extraordinary. We would be able to target audiences with laser-like focus, save us tons of time with our Internet searches, search for media coverage results for accurate media measurement, and create ’side-by-side’ one-to-one relationships with our customers.

Even if I may never have heard of Web 3.0 before Barrett’s article, I’m certainly looking forward to it.

YouTwitFace - Thanks, Conan!

“YouTwitFace.” I love it! Conan certainly got it right. Everywhere you go, someone is talking about who they’re friends with on FaceBook, while someone else is twittering away on their BlackBerry, and someone else is recording something on their iPhone to then post to YouTube.

All great PR and Marketing tactics, to be sure, but too often companies are forgetting that’s exactly what they are - tactics. They’re not an answer in themselves, they’re not a strategy on their own. They’re pieces of the bigger puzzle, and each can’t stand on its own. Twitter by itself is not an effective strategy; for some companies, it may not even be a good tactic. I know - I may be the lone voice in the wind out here with that one, but it’s true. Each company must evaluate its strategy and the goals of their campaign to determine what tactics work best for them - old school strategy creation.

Some companies utilize a social media plan, while others incorporate social media tactics into their overarching plan. Again, depending on your goals, each system would work if done properly. However, I’m seeing a troubling triend with clients (and even some colleagues) where the opinion is that Twitter/FaceBook/YouTube, you name it, is the be all and end all for them. They come to me with that answer in mind, without first considering what their goals are and if, in fact, Twitter would really be the best way to achieve them.

So, a word of caution - social media tools are amazing, and I certainly put them into use when needed, but proceed with proper planning. YouTwitFace, to be sure!

Apple’s Mac Marketing

Conceptually, has there ever been a better ad campaign than the “Hi, I’m a Mac” series? Seriously. These ads are engaging, entertaining, and creative, while also being informative - subtly - about the brand and the brand image they want to convey. You leave each ad in this series with a clear picture of what a Mac can do, as opposed to the negatives of a PC - at least from Apple’s perspective.

Microsoft has attempted a rebuttal campaign, which on paper I’m sure looked pretty good; it even looks pretty good on air. However, the strength of the Mac ads overpowers everything.  To be able to reduce your brand essence down to a T-shirted guy, and use this same guy to illustrate each strength of your product, is illuminating.

Now, there’s been debate as to whether or not the Mac ads are entirely truthful, and they are obviously selling their product on the ‘coolness’ factor. Plus, I’d love to see a study on how these campaigns have affected sales for each brand - for a time, Mac’s share went up, but with the economic downturn, their sales have been declining (the speculation is that while Macs aren’t losing customers, people aren’t buying them right now due to their hefty price tag). But have these ads helped to boost Mac sales? Not sure. Regardless, this is marketing and advertising conception at its finest creatively.