These videos are fantastic examples about getting customers interested and drawn into your product. The one we should be looking for as marketers is differentiating our product so it does not fall into the “same ole same ole” category but instead we want to see our customers smiling, enthusiastic and most importantly enjoying themselves. Putting your ad campaigns above the rest is what leaves a memorable impression of the product. The angry birds game is something that really is a great, tangible way to involve your audience in the game. The Oreo really solidifies the milk cookie relationship. Both videos and techniques are different and yet equally effective. Thinking outside the box will get you far!
- Tag Archives marketing
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“Lifes too short for the wrong job” Talk about an eye catching advertisement!
Talk about an eye catching Ad Campaign, but oh so true! Sometimes its amazing what thinking out of the box could do for a simple advertisement, it’s interesting, gets the message across and humorous all at the same time. When working in Marketing those are the key things, maybe instead of just words on a billboard, a little visual stimulation might be just the cure to help your advertising stand out in a sea of monotony!
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How do you keep people coming back to you website? Take a lesson from “WOW” and make your customers QUEST
Just like World of War Craft but swap the magic and swords for…cleaning supplies? This is real life now and just like any kid, adults like to have fun too. Use company products to involve customers on a whole new level. Why not create incentives to explore company websites with quests and missions, interacting with products and giving us all a break from the lusterless lifestyles of middle America. That’s what some companies are starting to explore.Online quests have proven to be tremendously popular. The trick is: how do you harness that level of engagement for something that’s not a game?
Some websites do this by applying quests to different types of activities. Chore Wars turns household chores into an adventure. Players can earn 20 experience points and 10 gold pieces just by emptying the dishwasher. The Extraordinaries, an iPhone app, has quests for mapping neighborhood playgrounds or locating defibrillators for the First Aid Corps.
Recently, companies have tried increasing customer engagement by adding game mechanics to their website like badges, points and leaderboards. Quests take it a step further by allowing businesses to guide visitors through a custom series of high-value actions — also rewarding users for their engagement.
Rewarding customers for time and attention
Quests are about rewarding people for spending time on your website, and more importantly — paying attention. Time and attention are getting increasingly hard to capture, so why not reward for it? Assuming you have quality content on your site, what else can you do to keep people around? What if there was an extra stickiness layer to engage visitors? That’s where quests come into play. It’s not just about the rewards; it’s about the journey that your visitors embark on.
Visitors that engage with quests are up to three times more likely to revisit a website. Why? For one thing, they enjoy the gratification of winning, and they would like to repeat it. These visitors might have also gained points or virtual currency that they can use towards a reward. The airline industry uses this method in the form of frequent flyer miles. In a competitive industry, it’s a staple for gaining customer loyalty.
If your quests are entertaining and well executed, visitors are more likely to return. It can be about the experience and not as much about gaining points. Be warned, however, that it’s imperative to refresh your quest content. If someone has completed 50% of your quests, but the others aren’t of interest, they may decide to go elsewhere.
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Funny or Failure? Adding Humor to your Marketing Campaign
We all love a funny ad, that’s why we watch the Super Bowl right? Humor in advertising is an art form, we have all seen a funny commercial bomb terribly and we have seen advertisements which stick in your mind with colorful characters, sarcastic humor and even animated geckos which preach to you the good word about car insurance. But that’s the point I’m trying to make, you take a company that is completely humorless and turn it into a memorable advertisement.
Memory plays a big role in the effectiveness of a video marketing campaign and funny videos have a way of sticking with you. Humor triggers an emotional reaction to your brand’s message. This is what makes it so memorable for the viewer. It is this same emotion that inspires them to share your humorous advertisement with their friends and family.
True humor is often hard to hit squarely on the head and all too often attempts at being funny do more harm than good. There is a difference between invoking a smile and producing a laugh out loud response. So what makes funny, funny? One key ingredient is the element of surprise. The tough part is making that surprise relevant to your brand.
Take a look at this video here, what do you think about when you hear “learn a language”. Personally, I think of boring. In an industry where Rosetta Stone has become synonymous with learning a foreign language, Berlitz is using humor to catch up to the competition. While the videos produced by Berlitz are knee-slappers, each delivers the message of just how important it is to know a foreign language-even if that language is English. Not to mention how that language can help you out of some pretty serious situations.
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Playing Dirty in the Business World
So you want to be smart in the business world? They say a company is only as smart as their competition so what happens when people get creative with getting the edge? Well this is the result of some clever corporate trickery:
1. When Security Pacific Bank merged with Bank of America many Security Pacific branches were closed. First Interstate Bank rented trucks and parked them in the lots of the branches that were closing. Then First Interstate employees in those trucks then helped people open new accounts as there were leaving the banks.
2. In 1986 British Airways ran a promotion to give away 5,200 seats for travel on June 10th. Virgin Atlantic Airways ran ads that said, “ It has always been Virgin’s policy to encourage you to fly to London for as little as possible. So on June 10 we encourage you to fly British Airways.” The British Airways promotion generated a lot of news coverage, but most of (more…)
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Black Friday Getting Violent?…Check out Cyber Monday
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Black Friday has become the busiest shopping day of the year since the 1960′s. We all know and love this holiday, it’s the day after we just finished stuffing our faces with turkey. As the food coma starts to wear off we all climb out of our warm beds at around 3am to start fighting through traffic to get the best deals on our favorite holiday gift items. This year they tried a new tactic, opening at midnight and staying open all night and into the day. All I have to say is, poor mall employees. So now instead of sleeping some of that turkey off we can just jump into the car and spend spend spend. That is what life is about anyways, right?
This past weekend, “Black Friday” sales were $11.4 billion, up 7 percent, or nearly $1 billion from the same day last year, according to a report by ShopperTrak, which gathers data from 25,000 outlets across the country. It was the largest amount ever spent on that day.
U.S. retailers racked up a record $52.4 billion in sales over the Thanksgiving weekend, a 16.4 percent jump from a year ago, the National Retail Federation said Sunday. It also forecast a 2.8 percent increase in sales for the November-to-December holiday season, down from the 5.2 percent increase in the same period last year.
But “Black Friday” has been a blessing and a curse: In recent years, it’s become so popular that it’s known for its big crowds, long lines, and even disorder and violence among some shoppers.
“Black Friday has become a victim of its own success,” says Adamson, the branding expert. “It has been successful to the point where it has created the opportunity that if you don’t want to deal with the madness, come out on Tuesday or some other day.”
“Cyber Monday” was coined in 2005 when a retail trade group noticed a spike in online sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving when people returned to their work computers and shopped. While more people now have Internet access at home, retailers still offer discounts and (more…)
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Why You Hatin?
Haters, we know them well and probably have been one at some point against some company. These aren’t just people who are upset about an experience they have had with the company; they are the people who actively try to spread the negative word about your business just to make a point. Most likely these people will turn to social media to try and kick you down a few pegs by blasting out negative messages to influence their peers and colleagues. Here are are 5 reasons why a little hate can go a long way!
Haters expose vulnerability. No business is perfect and haters sometimes have valid points. It requires an open mind to be able to focus on the heart of a complaint and (more…)
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10 Best Funny Marketing Screw Ups
While surfing through articles I came across some hilarious examples of what not to do. So learn from the mistakes of others and before settling on an ad campaign and even if you are working for a business that is small and only on American soil, take into account that once that company grows they may want to expand internationally. It’s always good to be resourceful and think ahead before you are kicking yourself all the way back to the drawing board.1. Coors put its slogan, “Turn it loose,” into Spanish, where it was
read as “Suffer from diarrhea.”2. Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.”
3. Clairol introduced the “Mist Stick”, a curling iron, into Germany
only to find out that “mist” is slang for manure.4. When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same
packaging as in the U.S., with the beautiful Caucasian baby on the
label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the label of what’s inside, since most people can’t read.5. Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called “Cue”, the name of a notorious pornographic magazine.
6. An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish
market which promoted the Pope’s visit. Instead of “I saw the Pope” (el Papa), the shirts read “I saw the (more…)
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E-Commerce is NEEDED!
Everyone knows that the internet is now one of the biggest resources that companies have at their fingertips. Websites are a direct link between consumers and their favorite companies. When it comes to retailers, their website is another way to sell products. With that being said, more and more companies are finding that the head of the companies e-commerce department is a beyond valuable person. For example, in 2010, Kohl’s 18.4 billion dollars however only a slim 717 million dollars were from online sales. If they can increase the presence of the website while still maintaining the relevancy of the brick-and-mortar stores then the sales should see a huge increase.
These executives of e-commerce need to be able to create and manage complex websites and handle increasingly difficult inventory management. The more important a position becomes the salary obviously goes up. Just ten years ago heads of e-commerce made anywhere between 50K to 100K. Today however their salaries range from (more…)
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Facebook Going Public?
Who wouldn’t love to own a share of stock in one of the hottest trends today known as Facebook. For that to be a possibility Facebook would need to be open to the public. The topic sparked ears last night in a discussion Zuckerberg had with Rose last night about Facebook eventually becoming open to the public but will first reward investors who paid early stock options in the company. The thought of waiting for the investors to be rewarded may sound like forever to some eager investors.
After the possibility of a new law being passed, it may take even longer. The law would force any company with more than 500 shareholders to report their financial information within 120 days. With the requirement of sharing financial information companies may as well become public. If you are a potential interested investor in Facebook I would suggest keeping up with where this issue will lead. The law may just determine exactly how soon you will be able to pay into the company or not.
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