Category: Marketing Ideas

I came across this on cheezburger the other day:

The rest of the tweets I’ve seen from them are equally as funny. I think’s it’s awesome when brands put personality and humor into their tweets. It makes them more approachable, showing that there are humans behind these messages.

This month’s book is a modern classic in leadership, Jim Collin’s Good to Great. He assembled a research team and spent several years seeking to answer the question, “what does it take to move an organization from good to great?” He looked at years of stock market history and found eleven company whose performance was fairly flat for a decade and then reached a pivot point where their growth beat the overall market by at least 2.5x for a period of over 15 years. These companies are: Abbott, Circuit City, Fannie Mae, Gillette, Kimberly-Clark, Kroger, Nucor, Philip Morris, Pitney Bowes, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo (although a few of these companies have since faltered, the principles still stand). He established comparisons companies in each of the industries of the “good to great” companies, conducted thorough interviews and pinpointed what each of these companies had in common that really made them great.

Here are some of the main points:

• Level 5 Leadership – Many companies have effective leaders but to really have sustained performance, the leaders need to display humility. Level 5 Leaders put their ego aside and give credit to their team. In short, they build a company that will survive without them.
• First Who, Then What – Before each company transitioned into greatness, they worked hard to assemble a great team: they got rid of the people holding the company back and got the right, committed people on the bus. After they had a great team, then they figured out where they were going.
• Confront the Brutal Facts (Yet Never Lost Faith) – Many of the comparison companies had leaders who were surrounded with “yes men” and didn’t have a strong sense of where they really stood. Great companies had a clear understanding of the market, where they stood, and what they needed to do strategically going forward.
• The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles) – Great companies focused on the overlapping of three area: what they are passionate about, what drives their economic engine, and what they can be the best in the world at. For many of the companies, this meant giving up some opportunities so that they could narrow their focus on other opportunities.
• A Culture of Discipline – Some companies spend a lot of time trying to motivate employees in order to get them to perform. Great companies found employees who were already disciplined, which enables them to have the latitude and freedom to try innovative ideas.
• Technology Accelerators – Great companies don’t relay on technology to succeed; they succeed because of their principles and objectives. Technology is merely a means to help them achieve their goals objectives.
• The Flywheel – Great companies don’t become great overnight; they take years to build momentum. It’s usually not a matter of making a few big changes but rather many small changes that move the ship in the right direction. After they have built momentum, the companies tends to perform organically on their own without having to be strongly forced.

This book is an interesting read for anyone looking to improve their organization or their own personal performance. I highly recommend it.

WestJet’s new Christmas spot is a great example of viral marketing done well. First, they setup a kiosk in one of their terminals where the passengers scan their boarding pass and have a live Santa appear on the screen, asking them by name what they want for Christmas. A fun experience by itself, but WestJet took it a few steps further and actually rushed out to buy all the things each person asked for while they were in flight! This includes some big ticket items like an xbox, android tablet, diamond ring and a big screen TV. Next, to the passengers’ surprise, each present appeared at the baggage claimed, wrapped and with their name on it! WestJet could have done a boring spot talking about how great their service is but by doing this act of over-the-top customer service, they are demonstrating that they really are committed to providing a great experience for their passengers, which is much more powerful. In a period of just 10 days, this spot has received over 30 millions views, which is phenomenal for a 5 minute advertisement. It all ties in perfectly with their ending tagline: “Merry Christmas to all and to all a good flight!”

Yesterday, Apple launched this spot for the iPhone 5s, which depicts a boy attached to his phone and seemingly uninterested in spending Christmas with his family. The twist is that he was actually using his phone to capture all these moments and create a video to show his family. It features Cat Power singing a stripped down rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” I think they took a few lessons from the John Lewis 2011 Christmas Spot by telling a story with a surprise twist and using a soft female voice to sing a familiar song; both of which create an emotional atmosphere which tugs at the heartstrings.

In this video for the Mimi Foundation, cancer patients are told to close their eyes while they are given a makeover. When they open their eyes for the reveal, their reaction is recorded as they see how ridiculously awful the makeover was. Take a look:

I have to admit when I first heard about this video, I thought it sounded super mean. A cancer patient seems like the last person you’d want to play a joke on. But ad agency Leo Burnett pulled it off, with a focus on the goal of allowing patients to “forget about their disease, if only for a second.” From the looks of it, everyone involved seemed like a good sport. It think it’s a great twist on all the traditional makeover videos you see out there, which are quickly becoming a cliche. It’s a fun way to promote an organization with a great mission.

Read more about it at Business Insider.

Lately, I’ve noticed a trend of businesses simplifying the pricing of their products. For example, McDonald’s fairly recently made all their soft drinks $1, regardless of the size.

Denny’s has come up with a value menu where the all of the items are either $2, $4, $6 or $8. That’s a pretty memorable and catchy pricing scheme (“2,4,6,8, who do we appreciate?”)

Redbox more or less put Blockbuster out of business with their $1 DVD rentals (although they have since raised the price to $1.20). It worked because it was a sticky price that caught on.

I think customers appreciate the straightforwardness and can more easily remember whole numbers opposed to numbers that end in 99. However, for a company who sells higher ticket items like Apple, it might make more sense to stick with the 99s instead of rounding up ($199 for an iPhone, $499 for an iPad, etc.). Psychologically, when the price point gets to a certain range, a simple price doesn’t necessarily translate to a better value; people pay more attention to the first number (the 1 in $199, for example). I think most people usually round 99 up in their heads anyway; it takes an extra step to think about it.

If you run a business, think about your products and whether it makes sense to pursue a strategy of a simple price people can remember or one that ends in 99 (or some other number).

To promote the upcoming Anchorman 2 film, Will Ferrell has been appearing in character as Ron Burgundy on the actual news! On one station in North Dakota, he did the entire newscast. Here is a clip of highlights:

He also appeared on ESPN and interviewed Peyton Manning:

And again on ESPN, he covered a Curling event:

Another thing they’ve done is setup a look-a-like contest called “I am Ron Burgundy” where people enter to win a trip to New York for the premier. An acquaintance of mine, Trey Warner, is winning.

I think both of these are fun ways that tie together to leverage a highly recognizable character and promote a movie about the news on the news.

John Lewis is not as well known in the United States but in the UK, they are basically like a Macys or Nordstrom. They have a tradition of doing great spots for Christmas and this year is no different but I especially love their 2011 Christmas ad. It features a little boy who is slowly counting the days down for Christmas but not for the reason you’d think. It also features a great version of the Smith’s “Please Please Please Let me Get What I Want,” which really helps to make this an emotional and moving piece of advertising; one of my favorites. What are you favorite Christmas ads?

This is an excellent book for folks in marketing, business, education or really any field where you need to communicate an idea and have your audience remember it. The book is written around 6 qualities that make ideas stick:

• Simplicity – How do you strip an idea to its core without turning it into a silly sound bite?
• Unexpected – How do you capture people’s attention and hold it?
• Concrete – How do you help people understand your idea and remember it much later?
• Credible – How do you get people to believe your idea?
• Emotional – How do you get people to care about your idea?
• Stories – How do you get people to act on your idea?

One of my favorites parts of the book is when they discuss the story of Subway’s Jared Fogle. Jared was massively overweight and came up with his own weight loss plan of eating Subway’s veggie and turkey subs (hold the mayo and cheese) for lunch and dinner nearly everyday, and doing some extra walking. The result is that he lost over 200 pounds. A university newspaper wrote about the story, which caught the attention of a local Subway franchise owner, who in turn contacted Subway’s ad agency. They were excited about the idea but couldn’t get Subway’s marketing director on board (“I’ve seen that before. Fast foods can’t do healthy.”) The lawyers also saw potential liabilities in making weight loss claims to the public. The idea seemed dead but the agency persisted, created the spots for free and convinced Subway to do a small region test. The ads were a success and were rolled out nationally, which lead to several TV appearances for Jared, including Opera. The campaign has continued for the last 15 years and Jared has appeared in over 300 TV spots. The takeaways are:

1. Subway’s “7 subs under 6 grams of fat” was an good idea but it didn’t stick nearly as well as Jared’s story did. People won’t usually remember statics or facts but they remember good stories.
2. The franchise owner and ad agency recognize a good idea when they saw one. Other folks heard the idea and thought of all the reasons why it wouldn’t work. If you believe in an idea, be persistent.
3. If the local franchise owner wasn’t reading the paper, he wouldn’t have seen the idea. Pay attention to what’s going on out there. You don’t have to always create a great idea yourself, you just need to be observant so you can recognize them when they are in front of you.

I highly recommend this book. You can learn more about the book and it’s concepts at heathbrothers.com/books/made-to-stick/.