Please vote!

Please go to facebook.com/partnersforhumanity and vote for the Urban Ecology Center. If the ad we created for them has the most votes by Dec. 6, the Urban Ecology Center will receive a $500 donation.

Partners for Humanity is an annual program that’s centered on giving back to the community. Advertising agencies in Milwaukee — like us! — create pro-bono ad

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B2B losing the laggard label in digital marketing — leads use of Twitter

Rally all you B2B marketers around this nice infographic from the 2011 Webmarketing123 State of Digital Marketing Survey because it’s a great peek into the changing worlds of B2B and B2C. Notably, this is the second data set I’ve seen in the last week where B2B can be classified as in the lead for some digital marketing segments.

SEO is King
It’s interesting that arguably one of the oldest and most mature segments of digital marketing — SEO — is cited as the one that both B2B and B2C marketers agree has the biggest impact on

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Taking a cue from Minor League Baseball

“The Goonies’” Chunk (Jeff Cohen) does the truffle shuffle. Cohen participated in a promotion with the Lakewood BlueClaws last summer.The Peoria Chiefs, a minor league affiliate of the Chicago Cubs, recently honored LeBron James and his failed attempt at winning his elusive first NBA title. The Chiefs gave each attendee to a recent game a replica of James’ NBA championship ring. Of course, this imitation consisted of nothing more than a fingerful of air.

This promotional stunt marked a continuation of an extensive game of one-upmanship among marketing departments throughout Minor League Baseball. These folks work in an industry that seemingly has no boundaries. No promotion is too outlandish. Absurdity, if anything, is encouraged.

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Branding is nuts

I recently read the Forbes article “Comeback Brands of 2011” which lists 10 well-known consumer brands poised for a comeback this year. These brands never went away; they just lost the public eye. Why? All brands struggle to stay fresh; if they can’t they are in trouble. The comeback brands—including Chevrolet, Levi’s, Pert, and Planters Peanuts—failed to maintain a dialogue with their audiences, they failed to keep the conversation going. That’s why they need to make a comeback.    

What unites them is their effort to tap into nostalgia branding. When we reflect on our past, we tend to have warm memories and positive associations. Our attitudes toward brands are no different. All of the brands featured in the article have long histories and hope to evoke their past brand equity while making it relevant for today. The result aims to reconnect with older audiences while attracting new ones. 

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Teach the world to sing…about your product or service

Forty years ago this month, an idea blossomed into a television commercial jingle that would capture an important era in history and help define a generation.
 
Written in January 1971 in less than 24 hours for a Coca-Cola radio spot, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” was originally sung by The New Seekers. Later that year, Coca-Cola brought the song to life in a television commercial filmed on an Italian hillside with a diverse crowd of 500 extras. After hitting the airwaves, the jingle became so popular that a full-length version of the song was quickly produced, renamed, “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.” The tune quickly climbed the charts to become a No. 1 hit single. Another group, The Hillside Singers, released a second recording of the song. In one year, both groups sold a combined 1 million records of the song.

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Double “Holiday”

The season of buying is upon us and that means endless holiday commercials on TV. Large consumer brands are trying to break through the clutter to deliver their message. Brands like Coca-Cola, Target and Best Buy have caught my attention for varying reasons, but Tommy Hilfiger and Honda have me thinking about the “holiday” a little more.

The Tommy Hilfiger commercial of an outdoor feast features Vampire Weekend’s song “Holiday.” I thought it was the perfect pairing of promoting the preppy style of Tommy Hilfiger clothing with the indie music of Vampire Weekend.

Imagine my surprise when I heard the same song on TV again but this time in a Honda commercial for its Honda Days promotion. And, there’s a radio ad featuring the song as well.

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The power of a brand

I drive a great car to work everyday. It’s not a flashy new car. In fact, it’s 20 years old and currently has over 340,000 thousand miles on the odometer.

It’s slightly battered and bruised. But I don’t think people feel sorry for me having to drive it. Because you see… it’s a ‘Lexus.’ An old one to be sure but I think it’s just getting broken in.

I’ve never had to touch the engine or transmission. It’s a model from the first year Toyota introduced the new Lexus luxury brand to the world. Yes it is old, and sure, its value rests somewhere between a new self-propelled lawnmower from Home Depot and a 10,000 BTU window air conditioner from Sears, but it is still a ‘Lexus’. That’s why people will never feel badly for me cruising down the highway in it. That might not be the case if I was in an old Ford Pinto, AMC Matador or even a late model Pontiac Aztek (I just had to include this modern day classic on the list) people may wonder about me. But they don’t.

That’s the power of a brand. The Lexus brand.

The relentless pursuit of perfection.

The carefully crafted image of the new Lexus brand began back in 1989 with a series of outstanding product demonstration television commercials on the LS400.

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In advertising, what once was will likely be again

Despite all the financial gloom, a recent article on Yahoo interested me when it highlighted four bright spots in our economy.

1. Farming – “U.S. agriculture remains relatively resilient.” We can attest to that.  Agriculture is still our largest category of business. While other agencies have experienced significant losses and/or reductions, our agency continues to grow and thrive with the help of our ag-based clients.
2. U.S. Corporate Buying Frenzy – It’s hard to get through a week without hearing or reading about an acquisition, merger or hostile take over between two major brands. Just the other day while making my prospecting calls, I talked with two such companies involved (or trying not to be) in an acquisition of some kind.  Thankfully, I was aware of their situations.
3. Detroit and the automotive industry - Having worked in an advertising capacity with General Motors for 14 years more than a decade ago, I continue to watch the automotive industry with interest. Witnessing what happened was no surprise but a very sad and frightening part of our history considering the economic impact. I am, however, happy to say I have done my part in helping in the automotive industry recovery with the recent purchase of a new vehicle.

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How honest are you?

This isn’t exactly the type of question you’d expect a brand to ask you. But for Honest Tea, it’s all part of having an experience with the brand.

I recently attended an event featuring Max Lenderman, author of Brand New World and Director of OuterActive at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, talking about experiential marketing.

The example he highlighted that stuck with me the most was from Honest Tea. When most of us hear the words “experiential marketing,” we think of a huge semi truck that rolls up fully outfitted with multiple ways for people to experience the brand its promoting. We also think about huge budgets.

That’s not the case for Honest Tea. They set up simple stands in major cities full of their product. There’s no company representative around, just a sign that asks you to pay $1 for a bottle of tea and a locked box to put the money in. It’s based on the honor system. It perfectly aligns with their brand. And it couldn’t be a more cost effective way to provide a genuine experience.

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After Hours: Three keys to marketing dairy cattle

During the day, I practice PR on behalf of the dairy portion of the Pfizer Animal Health business. On nights and weekends, I like to spend my time working with a group of Brown Swiss dairy cattle owned by my wife and two younger brothers which we call Brothers Three Brown Swiss.

Since we don’t milk cows, we rely on showing and merchandising our Brown Swiss to generate income and cash flow for our business.  One of the things I love about my job is being able to take the strategies and marketing recommendations we share with our clients every day and apply them to our own cattle marketing business.

In the video below, I share several keys to marketing our business that have proven successful in recent years.

My peek into the future of advertising

I’m very fortunate to work at Bader Rutter. While most of the ad industry has been hit incredibly hard over the past few years, we’ve been prospering. Still, more than 65,000 ad and PR folks have lost their jobs during these tumultuous times. So when I think about this industry that I love as a whole, it worries me. But I recently had a chance to look into the future of advertising, and let me tell you, it looks incredibly promising.

UW Oshkosh advertising students offer a peek into the future of advertising During this past semester, I worked with students in an ad class from my alma mater, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. I gave them an assignment to create an advertising campaign early in the semester. Then I worked with them throughout the spring, looking at their rough ideas and helping them nurture and develop those ideas into compelling campaigns.

I had the pleasure to see their final work in person a couple of weeks ago. While the students presented their campaigns to me, I not only saw some incredible ideas, I also got to see into the future of this industry.

These students are more creative, smarter and harder working than my classmates and I were when we were in their position 15 years ago. I think back to the quality of work I did in these same classes, and it was embarrassing. But with the help of their professor, Dr. Sara Steffes Hansen, these students are coming out of school equipped to take our industry to the next level.

So, thanks UW Oshkosh, for letting me peek into the future of advertising. And for giving me the opportunity to remember why I got into this crazy industry in the first place — for the passion, the fun and the creativity that makes getting up every morning and coming to work all worth it.

Scissors and tape meet Facebook — Marketing lessons from the Sex Pistols

My husband, Chris, was having computer problems. He was trying to design a poster for our upcoming show at Club Garibaldi’s, and everything was wrong — wrong program, wrong logo, missing photo, everything. I went to my computer, cranked open Pages, and started looking through poster templates. But I was still missing a logo and a photo and frankly I’m not a graphic designer.

“Do you have any of your pre-printed posters left?” I asked.

“Well, yeah, but it doesn’t have your band’s info on it.” My band, Fake Goddess Friday, is hitting the stage for the first time, as an opening act for his band, Shattered, a Rolling Stones tribute act. “I suppose we could take the Sex Pistols approach and cut letters from the newspaper,” he said. For those of you born after 1977, Chris was referring to this.)

For the next half-hour we cut letters from last Sunday’s New York Times and stuck them on the poster with double-stick tape. Re-enter technology, stage left: Chris scanned the now-completed poster, created a PDF, sent it to Kinko’s and got the posters printed and delivered to the club. The PDF, of course, has already been distributed via e-mail and Facebook (soon to hit MySpace, LiveJournal, and now Converge). So what can we take from this experience?

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NIKE. From humble beginnings.

With worldwide sales approaching 20 billion dollars, Nike is the world’s leading supplier of athletic shoes and clothing, but it wasn’t always that way.

The company was founded in a garage in 1964 by Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman. Back then the company was called Blue Ribbon Sports and they made most of their sales at track meets out of the back of Phil Knight’s car. The company didn’t become known as Nike until 1978.

The new company name was chosen by the employees. Each came up with a name and threw it into a hat. That’s when the iconic Nike “swoosh” logo was first used as the official company logo. I think the Nike logo rivals the Coca-Cola mark as one of the most recognizable in the world, but where did it come from? It must have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop and one can only imagine the gauntlet of focus group testing the logo went through, right? Well, not really.

The Nike “swoosh” was originally created in 1971 for one of Knight’s new shoe lines. Nike means “Greek goddess of victory” and the symbol represents the wing of the Greek goddess. To create the logotype Phil Knight hired a student from the design program at nearby Portland State University for two dollars an hour. Yes, that’s right, two dollars an hour. A week later the student presented several versions of the design, and the logo was quickly decided upon by Knight and his cohorts. Total cost for the mark: A whopping 35 dollars. This is where the phrase “bang-for-your-buck” must have come from.

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Martha serves lunch, lesson in engagement

Martha graciously posed for a photo opp with Gina after the MSO luncheonOn Monday, a BR contingent representing our Ball Horticultural client had the pleasure of attending a Martha Stewart Omnimedia (MSO) luncheon, hosted by the preeminent hostess herself. The event was MSO’s opportunity to share their audience insights and multi-platform marketing opportunities with advertisers. Martha and her team demonstrated their astute marketing and business sense by showing how advertisers could connect with customers where and how they want to receive information, while leveraging social media to get real-time feedback.

Playing off her mantra of “Once you stop changing, you’re done”, Martha noted that today’s most effective marketing is all about experiences and connections to a brand. She defined her MSO consumer audience as “women who do” — entertaining, crafts, gardening, decorating, cooking. 

To keep relevant to this active audience, the MSO team carefully tracks emerging interests and technologies. They listen carefully to their loyal consumer and build products around what they want. Here are some of their key insights:

• Increased interest in local and seasonal foods has stirred an interest in vegetable gardening, canning and preserving among the younger “tattooed set”
• The ability to interact more closely with their passions — through Twitter, their own blog posts or by participating in surveys/events 
• Interest in cooking with their children as well as the joy of cooking for their family 
• Discovering new treasures within their own hometowns; people, places and things that make their town unique 

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Global study: B2B underutilizes social media

A colleague of mine, Curtis Gorrell, wrote an article titled, “Getting in on the Social Media Conversation” for the latest issue of BizTimes Marekting + PR. The article references a study conducted recently by the Business Branding Network (BBN) — an international network of independent marketing agencies. The study suggests that B2B companies around the world are not taking full advantage of the benefits of social media, and that they largely view it as another delivery medium for advertising rather than a forum for creating dialogue with customers.

We’ve had such positive response from people requesting to see the full study, we thought we’d provide it to our blog readers as well.

We’re working on a series of posts based on the research and the list of five thought starters to consider when developing social media that Curtis mentioned in his article, so stay tuned!