A new year is upon us. It happens so fast. And to this we say…

YES!

When faced by the dismal economic outlook we dare you…just DARE you to say YES. Yes you can grow your business. Yes you can find new opportunities. YES you can get more out of your marketing in 2009. To get you started off right, we’ve written down our Top 8 Marketing Insights for 2009. Why not 10 Insights? Who cares…

Take this as our challenge to you. Make 2009 great!

Enjoy our insights and recommendations for the coming year and most importantly have a happy and safe New Year!

8.Become a Storyteller

Marketing messages loose their luster when we’re forced to choke down mouthfuls of clichés. Simplify your life. Find a way to tell your story. Consumers resonate with truth. Be original.

7.Explore Social Media

Your kid’s myspace page is not what we call “Social Media.” Nor, is Social Media simply a few entries on a few sites. One flower does not a garden make. Social Media is a way for you to create a NEW type of relationship with cusomtomers, the curious and crowds. Handle Social Media with care. Drop the sales pitch and create an online persona.

6.Ah, Video!

It’s shocking how little is understood about video and its value for business communication. Whether B2B or B2C, there is substantial opportunity out there if you do it correctly. Video provides a higher conversion in most instances than simple text so why aren’t more people leveraging it? Lack of understanding is really the key. Be sure to find a resource for how you can leverage your current communication with video. You could be shocked with the results. It’s easier than you think!

5.Integrate Your Communication

Its seems “integration” has been a nice buzzword in the conference room, but it is not something to sweep under the rug. In fact, it is more imperative than ever to have a cohesive plan for integrating various touch points. For example, if you have a news story hit the wire, then be sure to leverage it through your Social Media campaigns, newsletters, blog and web site. Allowing your marketing messages to blend and work together is critical.

4.Look To Smaller Teams

From a business process standpoint, look to outsourcing with smaller teams. Working with large companies has its merit, but for most of your marketing, branding, adverting, PR, etc. your marketing can be nimble by working with smaller teams with a high level of expertise. Never underestimate what a small group of committed professionals can accomplish for you.

3.Be Real, Be Genuine, Be Yourself

A lot of companies have built their brand around a story that is not entirely genuine. Some have become quite successful doing so. However, others have failed miserably because consumers are getting smarter and more aware of BS. You must tell your story and be real about it without sensationalizing ideals you may not possess. Shelve the bull, and your target market will respond better than you might expect.

2.Differentiate

Or die! Test yourself to locate one item in particular that your competitors are doing and do the exact opposite. Find the hole. Sure, it may not work right off the bat but it will lead you in a direction of differentiation where you can actually get noticed. Redefine your business in way that places you FIRST. Imagine being noticed over your competition? How odd.

1.Innovate

Innovation is going to be the number 1 way to create new value for your customers. Perhaps the product you sell today will be the thing you give away tomorrow? Let your competition “wait for things to turn around.” Move ahead. Set a monthly “what are we doing new” meeting. Explore “Not created here” ideas. Get uncomfortable and you might be surprised with how much ground you cover.

After a tedious internal discovery process, trips to Babies R Us, hanging out at local daycares (not the creepy type of hanging out) and a variety of chats with moms we have landed on a winning mark for our client, Kangaroo Quilts. Kidding, we didn’t go to Babies R Us or daycare. Hell, I spent plenty of time at that store when my wife was pregnant and feel I have enough credits for the next child.

Kangaroo Quilts has been really easy to work with and understands the value of our process. This relationship truly helps develop a far better product in the end.

The product itself will be released early 2009, but I can tell that it is a luxury product geared towards children 3-8 years of age. The quilts are handmade, completely unique and have variety of pockets. This led us to a powerful tagline of “Hidden Treasures”. Short but succinct, we feel this conveys the story we are going to tell in various touchpoints of the brand.

Without boring you with too many details on the strategy behind the mark, we wanted to create something powerful like a patch on a shirt, but playful enough to entice both mother and child. Tying the mark to the product through the shape and the dotted lines was tricky to avoid cliche’s but we have nailed it.

We will continue to share as the engagement continues.

I really enjoyed this article about other ways to connect with your consumer in times of economic turmoil. Stephanie Kang provides both sides of the equation for a great read. Enjoy!

Designating Shortcuts to ‘Happiness’

Warmth Gets a Workout as Marketers Grope for Pitches That Will Resonate in a Recession

Original Article

By STEPHANIE KANG

Be happy. That’s one message marketers are trying out, with ads evoking warmth and good cheer, as they cast about for ways to appeal to consumers amid a recession.

Best Buy’s holiday campaign, created by Omnicom Group’s BBDO, includes TV spots featuring true stories of how Best Buy touches its customers’ lives. Employees of the consumer electronics retailer submitted stories, and documentary filmmaker Errol Morris filmed them telling their tales.

In one ad, an employee talks about selling a Webcam to a man whose grandchildren are moving abroad. Another shows a Best Buy employee teaching a blind man how to use his home-theater system. The tag line for the campaign: “You, Happier.”

Carnival, the Miami-based cruise company, faces its own challenge in trying to persuade consumers to invest in sun and spray as their retirement savings dwindle.

Carnival and its ad agency, Havas’s Arnold Worldwide, decided to throw a party — to be showcased in TV, outdoor and online ads — around efforts to break two Guinness world records. Thousands of people gathered in Dallas to play with the world’s largest beach ball (about the size of a 2,500-square-foot home) and break the world’s largest piñata, six stories high and stuffed with four tons of candy. The tag line: “Fun for All. All for Fun.”

“If there’s ever a time we’re living in pressure and stress and not having enough fun, it’s right now,” says Ruben Rodriguez, executive vice president of marketing and guest experience for the company’s Carnival Cruise Lines. “Fun is good for your health.”

Other marketers, from JetBlue Airways to J.M. Smucker’s Hungry Jack brand, are slipping the H-word into ads this holiday season.

Marketing executives say it is a classic strategy during recessions, or after traumatic events like the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The idea is to break through to consumers who are being inundated by depressing news. “In all this doom and gloom, happiness is the obvious counterpoint strategy,” says Nick Bartle, director of behavioral planning for Omnicom’s BBDO North America.

It has obvious risks, too. Grinning through your ads in a rotten economy when consumers are deeply concerned about their financial future can seem insensitive or obtuse. “It does have immense pitfalls if executed improperly,” Mr. Bartle says. “You could look like a brand with its head in the sand.”

To do it right, he says, marketers have to be specific about how their products offer happiness, whether it’s a cigar that brings comfort to the smoker or a toy that makes the consumer smile. They also need to be careful about the placement and timing of the spots, he says, recalling a whiskey ad celebrating Ireland that ran in the London market shortly after an attack by the Irish Republican Army. Running an optimistic ad after a particularly steep stock market drop could also backfire.

“It’s tricky to pull off,” says Allen Adamson, managing director at Landor Associates, a branding firm owned by WPP PLC, “because being effective in advertising is communicating that you understand what’s in your customers’ heads. And clearly what’s in people’s heads right now is concern about the economy.”

Still, there are signs that consumers might be ready for a little fun. The comedy “Four Christmases” has been No. 1 at the box office for the past two weekends, beating the brooding teen romance film “Twilight” and the romantic epic “Australia.”

At CBS and NBC, comedies have been strong so far this season, and network executives take that as a sign that viewers are looking for lighter entertainment.

If the happy campaigns do spur consumption, it will be timely. Best Buy recently reported lower-than-expected sales and reduced its earnings guidance.

Greg Johnson, Best Buy’s senior vice president for marketing, says company executives debated whether the happiness theme would be effective when they began discussing holiday marketing strategies this summer.

“We knew things like price and value would be important,” Mr. Johnson says. “We also wanted to make sure we’re connecting emotionally at a time like this.”

Write to Stephanie Kang at stephanie.kang@wsj.com

This is a pretty cool concept. Check out this article I received in my email. What a unique way to creep people out.

Jameson Whiskey Texts Targets On N.Y. Streets

by Les Luchter, Friday, December 5, 2008, 4:47 PM

Insert live text messages directed at passersby into projected outdoor billboards and you’ve got an innovative new campaign created by Omnicom’s TBWA/Chiat/Day New York on behalf of Pernod Ricard’s Jameson Irish Whiskey.

The traveling ad show was set to launch in New York City Friday night, at high foot-traffic locations in Chelsea, the Lower East Side, Brooklyn’s Williamsburg–and a fourth site still undetermined as of late Friday afternoon when Marketing Daily spoke with TBWA/Chiat/Day Creative Director James Cheung.

The projected ad moves from place to place in search of Jameson’s target audience, Cheung explained. For instance, if the Knicks had been playing basketball at Madison Square Garden, that neighborhood could have been a target.

Once in place, the ad is projected onto a wall and a person begins typing real-time text messages aimed at specific people passing and then responding to their reactions (such as “Yes, you, in the blue shirt”). The projections are provided by event marketing agency City Eventions with–at least for launch night–the texting handled by Cheung himself.

As he awaited his debut on the streets, Cheung called the live ads a combination of “chatroom, out-of-home and conversation piece,” adding that he was unaware of “anyone else who has done this before.”

The conversational wall projections will move on to Los Angeles on Dec. 19, while projected ads without the live messages also begin this month in Boston, Chicago, Denver and Minneapolis. Jameson has also launched a new radio ad in 20 markets, and a trade campaign highlighting that the brand is “Defying the Economic Downturn.” Jameson cited AC Nielsen figures showing dollar sales up 33% in the six-month period ending mid-October.

Original Article

From time to time we plan to share our process with you. It is one thing to see the finished product, but another to see various pieces of the process. We hope you find it enjoyable and interesting. That being said, the above mark is the first step towards developing a brand for a high end children’s product. The product is launching early 2009 and will demand a high premium over other products in the market. That being the case we are working on creating a brand that exudes quality with some tradition behind it.

You feel we are on track?

Seriously, this is getting out of hand. I received my daily newsletter from a local publication of current stories and this is verbatim what it said in a section of their email. I did not strip anything out in between each story:

[Jeff Flake opposes bailout for U.S. automakers]
[California, Arizona take different approaches to fix mortgage mess]
[Van Velsor Wolf to chair American Cancer Society board]
[U.S. employment levels continue to drop]
[Lower mortgage rates fuel increase in applications]
[US Airways November traffic declines]
[Nation’s service sector shows November decline]

Is it any wonder people and businesses are freaking out right now?

I am not knocking the Business Journal because I feel they do a pretty good job. This has nothing to do with a particular publication. They all do it. It’s on the news, radio, newspaper, magazine, blogs, tweets, et al. You literally cannot get away from it. Being informed is one thing, but being inundated in completely different. If you want to feel better about where things are headed start by turning off the tv, close your email, listen to music, not radio and god forbid have a pleasant conversation with someone face to face.

Now, where is the marketing slant in this?

There isn’t! Turn your thoughts towards innovation and progress. Many great businesses are going to thrive in the coming years and those who turn away from this toxic thinking are certainly going to be the leaders. Market conditions aside, you cannot embrace progress when you are only diving deeper and deeper into the propaganda we call the “media”.

We share this thought with just about everyone we encounter from a marketing standpoint and it is amazing to see the response you get. I guess it will help to tell you what I mean by “make them uncomfortable”. Well, quite simply we want you to make someone unhappy with your business. No, we don’t want you pissing people off in a frantic rage, but we do want you to push your positioning in such a way that makes people despise you or at the very least wanna punch you in the face.

David, what the hell are you talking about?

Let me explain, so many businesses talk about targeting the right audience and “really connecting” with them. Bullocks. No they aren’t. They say that because its just what you are supposed to say. Odds are the message you are screaming from a mountaintop is so safe that although you are screaming loudly no one is hearing you. They aren’t hearing you because you are getting washed away by all the others. Your message sounds like a restaurant dining room….Great things are being said, but unless you are at the right table you aren’t being listened to.

If you try to appeal to everyone you will be compelling to no one!

Am I making sense? Solution! Craft your messaging in such a way that you truly resonate with your intended audience. Something that pinches their soul, knowing that others will feel pushed away and uncompelled. No, they won’t get their feelings hurt (not always), but they simply won’t notice you….Don’t worry! That’s ok. We don’t want everyone to notice you. We only want the specific niche you are shooting for. The others will not be your loyal customer in the end even if you grab their attention for the moment because your brand promise was never crafted for them to begin with.

I guess I could have been “SAFE” about this post and told you something like this “Make sure you have a really strategically, integrated solution for your potential customer base.” Would you have noticed it? Or even read it?

Go create some pins and needles!

Long standing Marketing and Internet veteran Scott Allen is partnering with us to provide Project Management, Copywriting and New-Media marketing services to new and existing customers beginning in December.

Mr. Allen’s professional experience in Marketing extends over 18 years and includes working with a wide variety of technical and non-technical companies.

Beginning as a proofreader in a Philadelphia advertising agency, he moved on to handle highly visible Internet product launch promotions including those for Internet pioneers such as Genuity, Backweb and Intel. In 1997 Mr. Allen’s creative team at won Shockwave’s “Site of the Day” for an online bridge building game they created for the Bechtel Corporation’s website.

In 2004, working for Symbolic Interactive, Mr. Allen managed over 20+ global hotelier websites including unique online solutions for all Hiltons in New York City, the Waldorf=Astoria, Marriott in Hawaii and Florida and a number of boutique hotels across the country.

In 2008 Mr. Allen, working with (company not disclosed), will be releasing a revolutionary new Distance Learning solution already regarded by industry insiders as “defining a new standard.”

“We are excited about the depth of experience Scott brings to the game. Scott’s creative instincts as a writer and his experience with cutting edge Internet technologies and Social Media make him an excellent fit for KODA as we look to accelerate the growth of our customer’s brand value.”