Helping young marketers climb to the executive marketing management ranks

Dockers.com/Freepants Promotion Gone Wrong!

Just watched a great commercial on television for Dockers during the Super Bowl …I really like these pants. 

The television commercial directed audience viewers to go to http://www.dockers.com/freepants to enter in their promotion for a free pair of pants (loved the commercial by the way…pretty funny).

Anyways, here is where the promotion went wrong. 

First, I pulled the site up on my iPhone.  The site timed out. -even though I had 3G coverage.  

Second, I decided to go to my laptop (that has high speed cable internet) and waiting for about 2 minutes for the site to download.  It finally did and I got the below screen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I just wish that if a major brand like Dockers goes through all of the trouble to spend so much money on an advertisement that they are 100% ready to handle any and all traffic that the site will receive…this game has the highest ratings of any show on television year in and year out.

Please make sure you are ready for your customers.  Dockers obviously wasn’t ready.  I hope the thousands (or millions) of others trying to respond to their great offer weren’t as disappointed as I am.  

I’ll bet this happended to a LOT of people though.   We’ll see how much press this promotion gets over the next couple days.

What To Do When Things Don’t Go Your Way

Today, I wanted to share something about what to do when you hit a career roadblock.  I’ve provided 4 steps to get you back on track with your marketing career.  Learn them and apply them.

 

 

So to recap the four steps are:

1. Acknowledge.

2. Learn

3. Make Adjustments

4. Move Forward

Congrats again to my alma mater - Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School.  The Full-Time MBA program earned a Top 10 ranking among MBA programs at public universities as well as #1 ranking for ”Value for Money” in the United States by Financial Times.

Get Your Poker Face On!! Let’s Brainstorm.

Palms Resort in Las Vegas recently launched a new television campaign utilizing the hit song “Poker Face” by Lady Gaga.  Details of the campaign can be found in the Casino City Times

Ok, the spot does EXACTLY what Palms intended to do with it and creates a sense of fantasy surrounding the resort – typical with the style of Las Vegas.  Given that Palms has rights to use this song, what are some of the things you would do with this to drive even more viral activity with this new theme.  Currently, on Palms website, http://www.palms.com they display the video and have calls to action to “book your room” or “book your fantasy suite” in addition to watching the video… Have fun with this in the comments section.

A few examples could include:

• upload your “poker face” and placing it in some kind of cool scene next to Lady Gaga
• Allow you to upload your picture and have it placed somewhere in the video
• Palms Casino facebook page that allows you to send a message to your friends when you are in Vegas along with the video that includes you.

Let me know what kind of ideas you would have.  Again…share your thoughts below and send this post to your creative friends.

Happy Thanksgiving from MarketingClimber.com! Video message.

9 Ways to Decrease Negative Word of Mouth and Increase Customer Advocacy

A raving fan.  A madly loyal ambassador.  A customer advocate.

Marketing professionals live to create customer relationships with brands that have emotional bonds so tight that they are almost impenetrable.  We LOVE these customers as they are the brand’s advocates.

Last week, I participated in a webinar entitled “Influence the Influencer: Creating Brand Advocates with Social Marketing” led by two panelists,  Jill Griffin of The Loyalty Marketer and Allen Silkin of Atkins Nutritionals.

Jill presented a list that I found to be very simple yet very important.  It was called 9 ways to minimize detractors and maximize advocates.  I’m sharing the list she presented below; however, I wanted to add to what Jill shared by providing a few concrete examples.

1. Identify talkers.   Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibraryTV.com does this better than anyone I can think of.  Gary goes into the trenches and utilizes search capabilities of many different social platforms to identify people talking about wine and/or his show.   He then immediately reaches out to them and helps them find an answer to their problem.  This has lead to Gary having a tremendous following.  Given they are active users of social media, they are also the ones who can quickly spread word of mouth.   Check out the recent succcess of his book, Crush It! , which landed on the Wall Street Journal’s Best Seller list with no traditional advertising.
2. Query new buyers. This one is a standard in the hotel industry.  I think of the Ritz Carlton as being best in class in learning about its new customers and utilizing this information to give them even better service on their next visit. 
3. Thank referral. If in step #2, you learn of customer who referred this new client, PLEASE thank this personal who referred them.  Many companies have “Refer-A-Friend” policies that give them a specific type of reward for the referral.  This is good, but make sure you go out of your way to say “Thank You”.   Alice.com, an online retailer of common household goods, gives you 3% of your friends order not once but for an ENTIRE year.
4. Get testimonials and use them. Red Robin Gourmet Burgers utilizes a recommendation application on social networking sites such as Facebook that allows customer to “recommend” Red Robin.  They utilize this as it spreads positive word of mouth very quickly.  With most users averaging 150 friends, getting only 1,500 people to recommend Red Robin can account for about 225,000 positive, unique impressions.  Think of the value of this versus a fan page with 1,500 fans.  (Source: Adage.com 9/28/09 issue)
5. Greet “talkers” on service visits.  If you have a physical location, you NEED to treat these talkers special when they are inside your “brick and morter” building. There is no excuse not to.  Greet them enthusiastically!  I particularly like how I am greeted at Discount Tire Company (Twitter: @DiscountTire).  I typically can’t get out of my car before I am approached by a friendly salesperson who diagnoses my problem immediately and then walks me to the waiting area where I can enjoy a cup of coffee while they fix my tire problem.  My advice – assume all customers are “talkers”.
6. Send periodic notes to talkers. Harrah’s Casino’s utilizes their Total Reward’s program to keep in touch.   They have found so much value in staying in touch with their most valuable customers that they have slashed traditional advertising by over 50% over 2008 and 2009 . Instead, they invest heavily in non-acquisition direct marketing to these members of their Total Reward’s prgram.  (Source: Adage.com - 10/5/09 issue).
7. Host special events for advocates.  LEGO does this very well.  They have an ambassador program picked from the most loyal advocates of LEGOs from the non-affiliated Adult Fan of LEGO (AFOL) community.  LEGO brings these ambassadors to special event to help in new product development. 
8. Acknowledge when things go wrong. When you are with a customer and something has gone wrong, you should fess up and acknowledge it.   A customer will see right past excuses and know that you are insincere.  A good example of this may include anything from a personal example such as a restaurant messing up your order and correcting it (versus blaming the chef or someone else for punching the order in wrong) to the CEO of KFC acknowleding they erred during the Free Grilled Chicken promotion on Oprah earlier this year.  
9. Regularly re-inforce your value.  Amazon.com makes the most of the information that they receive from you and pair it up with customer’s with similar interests to better deliver “Recommendation” emails that describe a recommended book for you to enjoy (ahem…purchase).  Typically, these recommendations are very good and it re-inforces why you do business with Amazon online.

Think of this list as one where you should accomplish all of these items.  The tactics by which you execute on each of these can vary substantially but you should put into place a system that addresses all. Let me know if  you have any questions.

Where will Brand Managers go?

This afternoon I received my print edition of Advertising Age at work.  I sat down to skim the headlines and noticed a big one “Why it’s time to do away with the brand manager“. 

The article previews a research report to be distributed by Forrester titled:

Adaptive Brand Marketing: Rethinking Your Approach to Branding in the Digital Age

Specifically, this article hightlights the need for marketers to change their organizational structures.  The article identified that the role of “brand manager” should be reclassified as “brand advocate”.   The primary changes to the role would include:

• becoming more customer centric
• move from a generalist role to more of a “pure marketer”
• ability to rapidly adapt global brand platforms
• ensure local marketing conforms to brand equity and strategy
• ditch annual budgeting for earmarked funds for several initiatives
• shift alliances to media and other content creators (vs. long term partnerships with agencies).
• move from anchoring plans around 1-2 big hits to doing many smaller things quickly in real-time

Additionally, the research will show that market research and analytics teams should take a much more prominent role while focusing on predictive modeling.  These teams should become major team players for the brands versus hidden and largerly playing a support role.

Interestingly enough, two major advertisers are citing changes to their organizations that support the research and they include advertising powerhouses, Proctor & Gamble and Unilever.

So what does this mean?   First, understand that our industry is going through a lot of change and trying to figure out how to create an organizational architecture that supports the new role of marketing.  Given the changes that we are seeing, I’ve noticed a few skills that will be important to master in order climb the future marketing organization.  They include:

• Improve your quantitative skills
• Master ”content” creation online including online media and blogging  (and the process behind it)
• Find ways to improve your ability to think on your feet and adapt.
• Lead strategy – focus on the heart  and soul of brand

This research report should have the industry talking as Marketers have been demanding that agenices adjust and be able to adapt to this online world but we’ve seen little “major” organizational changes in our own companies over the years.  Be on the lookout for a lot of changes to org charts  over the coming months and next couple years as the major marketing organizations realign to ensure brand advocates take center stage. 

If you have any thoughts on this, I’d love to hear  from you on this.  I’ll be on the lookout for the report over the next couple weeks.

Riding the Wave: How Could This Change Online Marketing?

Google recently distributed invitations to the beta version of Wave and the buzz has started to spread like wildfire . 

Google Wave is described as an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration that allows people to work together using rich formatted text, photos, videos, maps and other tools.  If you haven’t heard about it, check out this video below.

Google Wave Developer Preview

Google Wave will allow marketers to create real time customer experiences online. Even better for marketers is that Google Wave fits well within marketing strategies and concepts that require targeting and measurement. The Wave may be the best way to push large advertisers to get more fully involved in social marketing. 

According to Dino Michetti of Chief Marketer!, marketers should start preparing for life with Google Wave by: 

· Shift focus from social networking towards social marketing
· Research cloud applications and Google’s Wave functionality
· Work with developers to begin testing social marketing applications in a Wave
· Focus and plan an online social marketing strategy – think about your industry and how you traditionally interact with your core audience. Think about making these interactions more interactive and dynamic
· Leverage your agencies or digital vendors to help you prepare for this marketing shift

So this is your homework.  I’d suggest you start preparing for life with Waves.

Walmart: Highlighting Value during Recession – Family Night Style!

Over the year, we’ve seen Walmart really turn up the dial in advertising to gain market share during this recession and showcase value to families. Earlier in the year, we saw advertising highlighting how families can make meals at home at a fraction of the price of eating out.

Recently, Walmart continued pushing value by highlighting “family night”.   This allowed Walmart to get synergy from Hasbro, one of its vendors, who has been advertising “Family Game Night”.    Walmart is expanding the concept to make it more of a one-stop shop adding options including  games, video games, movies, and snacks.

A few key highlights in the program that I noticed:

1. Television

Walmart has continued to invest in television as it continues to be a great vehicle for awareness.  Walmart has substantially increased television advertising during this recession.

2. Microsite:   http://www.walmart.com/familymoments

This website really allows the consumer to learn more about making the best game night possible. It pulls together several great pieces together for the consumer including:

-  Television commercial from Walmart allows for inspiration.

- Mom blog – Walmart highlights a blog written by a mother that discusses familygame night and offers families a chance to win a $40 Gift Card.  This mother is one of Walmart’s  11 moms (a select group of mommy bloggers).  This is a great way to utilize social media.

 

- Tell us your tips:  Walmart makes it easy for Mom’s to share their own tips and other mom’s visiting the site can see and review these tips.   Again, this provides an example of social interaction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Product Reviews:   Walmart makes it simple for consumers to see a selection of games and points out the customer ratings of the games that are sold online.  Mom can read reviews and buy from walmart.com feeling more confident about her purchase. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. In-store:

Walmart continued to bring this concept to life in-store by creating a disply that pairs these products together (games, movies, and snacks) as they are not usually merchandised in the same location.   Moms should be able to easily pick up something for the family to do and save themselves some money on a Friday or Saturday night versus going out to the movies or going to the mall.  This is a great example of shopper marketing and merchandising!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let me know what you think. 

4 Rules for Jumping over those Job-Related Speedbumps.

Recently, I read an article in Men’s Health magazine titled “Overcome any Obstacle”.   In the article, Chris Majer, author of The Power to Transform, shared four ways to constantly change and learn backed up with examples of how some high profile individuals applied these rules in their life.   I wanted to share with you and give you my perspective on each of the 4 rules and how they can help you get over a ”speedbump” you may be experiencing.

1. Find yourself a coach.

Reading books and blogs can be great ways to get “self help”.   However, you are entirely subject to the way that you perceive yourself and are limited by what you know.  Getting a mentor or coach is a great way to get get feedback, spot your errors, and get advice tailored to you on how to improve.   My advice…get one.

2. Identify your strengths.

I think anyone who knows me personally, especially my employees, know full well that I subscribe to the feed your strength’s philosophy.  Make sure you identify what you enjoy, are good at, and the environment where this takes place.  Your next step:  Find ways to do more of this.

3. Recognize that success takes time.

This can be particularly hard…especially for those that are younger and have seen some immediate success.  At some point, you will learn that, yes, experience does count for something.  Sometimes it comes at you like a brick wall — promotions each year until you get into a position where a singular experience can take up to a year.  It’s just plain impossible to say you’ve mastered something if you’ve only experienced it one time. You learn by action – doing, failing, and succeeding.   Focus on finding small ways to get wins that build a larger foundation.  It will be noticed and recognized.  Learn and make sure you let it be known what you learned and where you are recommending/implementing as a result of those learnings.  Once you gain the experiences you need, you’ll be in the best position to succeed.

4. Embrace new challenges.

It is very easy to get comfortable once you’ve been doing something for quite some time.  People tend to like the stability or predictability of the knowing what is going to happen.  New does not equal dangerous.   Step out and take risks and embrace something that can seem overwhelming.  Grab that ’stretch’ assignment.   You’ll be happy you did.

Becoming a Dad Again- What Do I Do Now? (and great quotes for fathers)

On Friday, I became a proud parent once again to a second daughter, Caroline.   When you have a child, there is no stopping the big question that fills your mind:

What do I do now?

I once read a book called Becoming a Dad by Stephen James and David Thomas.   When we got home with Caroline the other day, I picked the book back up and thumbed through some of the pages that I read about four years ago.

The advice that stuck with me then is still relevant today.  It gives good perspective on life…what’s really important. I hope you find it helpful (it’s written with dad in mind of course). 

 What do I do now (four essentials for fathers)?

1. Love your wife well. 

2. Have good male friends.

 3. Risk your ego.

4. Learn from your kids.

Each of the 4 essentials are very helpful in being the best dad you can be.  I plan to re-emphasize them in my life.

I also loved these quotes as I got a lot from them as it pertains to being a father – they are just great in my opinion:

The best way to prepare is to begin to live.   -Elliot Hubbard

The Greatness of a man’s power is the measure of his surrendor.  – William Booth

I’m gonna be like you, Dad. You know I’m gonna be like you.   -Harry Chapin “Cat’s in the Cradle”

Some people skip through life; some people are dragged through it. -Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

Adventure, with all its requisite danger and wildness, is a deeply spiritual longing written into the soul of man. -John Eldredge, Wild at Heart

Ours is a world where people don’t know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it. -Don Marquis

Balancing work and family is important in your career-make sure you spend time with loved ones.  At the end of the day, life will be all about the relationships you have made.  I’m excited to have a new daughter…I can’t wait to see what my life becomes.

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