April 21, 2010
In a move that seemed to surprise no-one except Lakeport workers, Labatt has announced that it is closing the Lakeport Brewery in Hamilton. Shaking up the market and selling beer for closer to what it should cost made Lakeport a great story. Like Napster, Lakeport offered an alternative at a cheaper price. And like Napster, it was only a matter of time before the big money saw the threat and took control back. Considering the due diligence that Labatt would no doubt have undertaken, this plant was likely slated to close about 9 minutes after the acquisition was finalized. So now we’ll have to wait and see if it is the end of buck-a-beer or an opening for another upstart. It might be nice to see more micro-brewery action in Canada. All we can do is crack open a cold one and watch the show.
January 18, 2010
Measuring sentiment and conversation has come a long way since the first tweet or status update. Technologies have been developed by organizations, such as, Sysomos and Radiant 6, which systematically measure business intelligence. But is measuring sentiment even possible?
The answer is yes and no.
Social media is built on sentiment (positive, negative or indifferent) and many will argue that software can not measure how a person feels and expresses. I, for one, agree that a computer could easily create a false impression when having to deal with the complexities of human opinion (which includes emotion, sarcasm, regionalized dialects, slang, etc…– none of which is straightforward).
A post would have to directly correlate to the organization/company/brand/campaign with simple positive or negative words (i.e. good, bad, great, etc…), for there to be no room for interpretation. But as we all know, even a 140 character tweet can be subversive and laced with sarcasm and innuendo.
This is not to say that measurement is still as large of a detriment to social media as it has been. It has come an awfully long way, and eventually should evolve to the point where we can successfully manage our reputations in the digital world and measure ROI as we can offline ventures.
January 11, 2010
As social media grows not only in popularity but as a genuinely effective marketing method and arena, there are 3 distinct ways in which it has improved how brands are being marketed and communicated.
The Lost Art of Listening
Social Media’s lasting legacy on brands/companies/organizations might be that it finally forced them to listen instead of just selling. A lot of this might have to do with the fact that most social media forums are not their arena to preach about their brands. In actuality, conversations are taking place and they’ve realized that they have to monitor and participate before they try to market and sell.
A Voluntary Think Tank
If a brand approaches it right, throughout the online world, there exists an active think tank that is expressing their thoughts and desires, and whose opinions could provide dividends if properly harnessed. How much were companies paying for focus groups, where most people joined just to receive free giveaways or cash?
Real Time Research
Before we execute any tactic a solid foundation of research must be in place, and social media provides a constant stream of real time research. Of course, many argue that we can’t properly measure sentiment as it is subjective, but social media still provides a window for us to see how our brands and reputation are discussed in public forums.
December 2, 2009
It’s a marketing director’s dream: imagine having access to everything you wanted to know (but were afraid to ask) about splitting atoms or deep frying Mars bars. Last night while Larry King was desperately trying to cover the Tiger Woods ‘cheater or cheated’ story and the Salahi’s White House party crashing exposé, 20 million people had already scanned You Tube for the latest videos – not to mention being exposed to over a dozen ads per view. Sorry Larry, but when the average consumer wants their daily dose of sublime content they’re not going to sit in front of their oversized, over financed flat screen TV’s – a marketing director’s nightmare. No, they’re going to their preferred social media network and pushing out links and feeds to their personal network – a marketing director’s dream. When I dream about creating our client’s perfect brand promotion or B2B product launch I dream about a connected hub of like minded people who feel empowered to share what they have just experienced with their peers or colleagues (it’s perfectly natural, we all dream about work). Image your two minute commercial, infomercial or product demo being broadcast for free, advertising impressions are systematically tracked and you only pay if a prospective buyer clicks on your ad. Now integrate that same video (commercial) post with a social media campaign that goes viral within 48 hours of launch. Time to stop dreaming, from ball bearing maintenance video’s like Sima-Tool’s to full consumer promotions from Mountain Dew, social media campaigns are changing how marketers reach their audience. I recommend you wake up to one of the most persuasive mediums available today. Good night John Boy!
November 17, 2009
Came across an interesting news item the other day. Seems Canada Goose, makers of clothing designed for the world’s most inhospitably cold environments, will be teaming up with Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment. Soon, season ticket holders at the ACC will be able to store their coats at the Canada Goose coat check. Now the ACC is fairly inhospitable to the Leafs and Raptors, but it’s not that cold, just quiet lately. And you can look for your favourite Raptors basketball star sporting a specially designed Canada Goose coat, no doubt with pockets for the diamond encrusted cell-phone and keys to the Escalade. Well, I say, it’s about time. The oft-overlooked high-arctic scientists will now be rocking the same threads as the downtown T.O. set. Maybe add a little bling of their own and they’ll be beating them away with a stick at last call on an Alert Saturday night. But, to scientists everywhere, take advantage quickly. Once the urban crowd catches on to the Goose vibe, it’s gonna flame out before you know it. In a year, maybe two, you’ll be picking up your C-G at the local Costco, next to the $35 Polo shirts and bulk meat. Cheaper, yes but cool?
November 3, 2009
With more and more companies paying attention to the value of internet marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) is a hot topic. Using proper SEO methods can help drive a lot of traffic to your website and covert leads into sales. So how can you get SEO to work for you, and what should you pay attention to when optimizing your website?
Starting in the mid-1990’s, webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines. In the beginning, site owners only needed to submit the URL of their website to the various search engines which would send a spider to crawl the page and extract the meta tags and links to other pages. Links were in turn crawled by the spider to index the entire website. Meta tags provide list of keywords describing the content of the page. Early versions of search algorithms relied on these webmaster supplied keywords to provide the link between the searched term and the results page.
Since the success and popularity of a search engine is determined by its ability in providing the most relevant results to any given search, using meta data tags was soon found to be less than reliable because the webmasters choice and density of keywords could be manipulated to provide an inaccurate representation of the sites actual content. Soon search engines responded by developing smarter spiders and more complex ranking algorithms that were more difficult for the content providers to manipulate. About this same time, content owners started to recognise the value of having their sites highly ranked and visible in search engine results, thus creating the ever evolving techniques for both white hat and black hat SEO practices.
White hat SEO can be classified as any technique that conforms to the search engine guidelines and involves no deception. The search engine guidelines are not meant to be a series of rules or commandments, but a practice of good design. White hat SEO is about creating content for the users and not for the search engines, while providing content that is easily and properly indexed by the spiders. White hat SEO produces long lasting, relevant search results that bring intended traffic to your website.
Black hat SEO can be classified as any technique that attempts to improve rankings by deception or techniques that are disapproved by the search engines. Black hat SEO usually involves content that is not seen by the user. Some examples are hidden text that is coloured the same as the background, positioned off screen or hidden in a special HTML tag. Cloaking is a term used for displaying one set of content for users and a different set of content to be indexed by the search engine. Search engines can, and do, penalize websites that practice black hat SEO. Penalties can be a lesser page rank or the removal from the search engine results altogether.
Proper design and content writing is the first step to ensure best practices and relevant results of referrals from search engines. Develop your website to be relevant to your industry and write engaging content that is informational and industry specific and the search engines will rank you accordingly.
October 19, 2009
On October 9, 2009 at 20:00 (EST) the world experienced its first multi-city live event that unbelievably included participation from the International Space Station. The event’s stated purpose was to raise awareness about issues related to earth’s most valuable resource- water. Guy Laliberte the founder of Cirque du Soleil and the One Drop Foundation, introduced the event called “Moving Stars and Earth for Water” and declared it as the first “Poetic Social Mission” while floating weightlessly aboard the Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft. I have seen many of Laliberte’s Cirque performances which are well known for their dramatic mix of circus arts and street entertainment. Never before have I experienced an event that was so literally, out of this world.
Laliberte starts the event by claiming, “I am an artist not a scientist and that is the only way I can make a significant contribution to the mission and to raise awareness to water issues”. He then hooks our interest with a sobering statistic. A child dies every 8 seconds because of contaminated water. With the event now underway, we are welcomed into each of 14 cities (Montreal, Moscow, Santa Monica, New York City, Johannesburg, Mumbai, Marrakesh, Sydney, Tokyo, Tampa, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Paris and London). Each city takes a unique approach to present the message artistically. One dances, one sings, Montreal showcases all that is Cirque and Mumbai takes a perfectly white set and lets adorable children hand-paint themselves blue. Some of the guests included former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, Dr. David Suzuki, Peter Gabriel, Shakira, Mathew McConaughey and even U2.
The traditional definition of event marketing or experiential marketing is the face-to-face interaction between a brand and its audience via live events. The rationale is that when an attendee recalls the event experience they will make a positive association with the brand. This positive association will make them more inclined to take action, to make a purchase or to change behaviour. Did Guy Laliberte go to this expense and safety risk to selfishly promote his Cirque brand? Cirque is certainly quite visible during the event; including a spectacular acrobatic scene involving a wall of water and excerpts from the amazing Vegas performance of “O”. Or were his intentions genuinely to promote awareness of all things water? Watch it yourself on www.onedrop.org and make your own determination. I know that after my event experience, I’m committed to doing my part to make a difference. Thank you, Guy Laliberte for pushing the traditional boundaries of events. Who else would have ever thought of an event that included a clown in space?
October 9, 2009
You may have heard some of the fallout recently over a new advertising campaign from Mr. Sub. Dubbed “not everyone likes surprises,” these spots place an adult male in a ‘surprising’ situation followed by the suggestion that you can “count on Mr.Sub.” For what, we’re not sure. Mercifully pulled due to public response, one execution features a middle-aged man announcing, over dinner to his very large family, that he is gay. Super, super gay to be more precise. The revelation is answered with dumbfounded silence from the aforementioned family; a response that I suspect was mirrored by every Canadian who had the misfortune to see it. The negative response from the lesbian and gay community is not surprising. That the other spots in this campaign are still running is.
I’ll spare you the usual marketing-babble; and just say this: these spots are wretched. Rather than prompt a laugh, which I can only assume was the intent, each version elicits a feeling of acute embarrassment and awkwardness that surely no company would want to be associated with. Even the hockey/commodity beer/Megan Fox loving set, who are used to being bombarded with insipid ads, must be furrowing their collective, and purported low, brow at this lazy attempt. Kudos to the bods at Mr.Sub for pulling one spot, whatever their reasons. Let’s hope we really can count on them to drop the whole lot and spare us any further embarrassment.
October 7, 2009
That doggy’s tail just keeps on getting bigger…
That’s why I get out of bed every morning, well one of the reasons. What a great time to be in marketing. Just when the big brand players recognized consumers were wagging their tails at those mass linear ad campaigns and demanding more choice, more features and more value – along comes the internet. Yes, I used the word “internet”, it really is an ugly word – hey, just in time for the remake of Tron! But as a creative marketer, I’m all for choice, and now we have choice; choice in how we connect with those media savvy ravaging chawa-was we call consumers (I’m secretly a consumer too, but don’t tell anyone). I love the idea of being able to launch a product or service online through social media. Why shouldn’t they have a say, after all they’ll determine if the brand stays or goes to the dogs. Now I can interact in a two-way dialogue with consumers, post a social media campaign, collect creative expressions of the brand, target the very consumer I want to engage and create massive offline and online buzz. I say, let the internet run free, let the consumers become the dog and let us creative brand marketing pros watch the world spin from the comfort of our beds, after all isn’t that what my BlackBerry’s for?
August 27, 2009
General Motors followed their recent spiral into bankruptcy with a shiny new marketing campaign. Featuring television ads and some social media engagement, GM assures us that the reinvented company will emerge leaner and stronger and smarter and niftier. Along with less brands and less cars, it appears that the only chapter they are focused on is chapter one. Well, here’s a thought for GM. You might want to consider that millions of Americans and Canadians are actually still focused on Chapter 11 and the billions of dollars that we’re coughing up to save a company that we’re not sure we really need.
So, before we move forward and put the past behind us and all that nice fuzzy stuff, why not give us a new campaign that does one thing: apologize. Apologize for the lack of vision, for the failure to understand consumer needs, for the financial mismanagement and for the diversion of our attention, and our dollars, from education and healthcare and all of the other issues we face. Imagine. A new campaign with no glitz, no shiny cars or ad-speak. Just a straight-faced apology from the company, along with an assurance that we won’t see you, hat in hand, in a few years time trying to explain where all the money went. A campaign like that might actually help restore some faith in the General. And, by the way, don’t worry about the cost, we’ve already paid for it.