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I've been slow to come around to the usefulness of Twitter. For me, it's another time-draining service with limited appeal, a la the Second Life fervor of 2006 (I abandoned my avatar sleeping on a couch in an empty island nightclub in March 2006--sweet dreams), and I don't plan on getting suckered in. However, evidence is mounting that marketers can indeed build and maintain relationships with customers through 140-character tweets. And if your customers are there and wish to be communicated with that way it may be worth exploring.

Helping make its argument to me, Twitter posted a Twitter 101 for Business guide on its site last week that is tailored to showing how businesses can benefit. It includes examples of how large marketers, like Dell and JetBlue, and small marketers like an independent Houston coffee shop are using the service.

I'm still a tough sell, I'll admit, but users of Twitter really seem passionate about it and if you can channel that passion toward your product or sevice, you're welcome to reap the benefits at no cost to you but your time.

By the way, Marketing News Staff Writer Elisabeth Sullivan wrote an excellent article exploring the business uses of Twitter last year (when Twitter's mere existence was fewer than two years old and drawing fewer than 3 million uniques per month--it now draws more than 21 million, per Nielsen.) AMA/MarketingPower also tweets at the hashtag #marketing_power

Posted by Allison at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sick of warm temperatures, cookouts and sunshine? You can always imagine its December, and marketers are here to help.

Retailers such as Sears and Toys "R" Us are trying to get shoppers in the Christmas spirit, waayyy early this year with special holiday-season style savings, layaway options, and even some holiday-themed events and displays. Given the economy, it seems stores will try anything to avoid another underwhelming shopping season, and to spark some sales during the summer. (For more on the trend, check out this Washington Post story).

Christmas seems like years away, and speaking on behalf of oft-shivering Midwesterners, that's the way we like it. But leave it to the creative marketing folks at Disney to make Christmas not only come alive, but endearing, despite a 0% chance of snow in the forecast.

The company is promoting its big 3-D animated November movie release A Christmas Carol, based on the Charles Dickens classic, with an ambitious, enchanting experiential marketing campaign. Starting in May, a movie-themed train started its trek across 16,000 miles, with 40 stops along the way, showcasing Christmas carolers, jugglers, high-tech interactive exhibits, and sneak preview footage. The train pulled into Chicago's Union Station and opened its doors to the public today. For more info, including tour dates, click here.

The free exhibit is reminiscent of a Disney theme ride. The first rooms showcased portraits of the animated renderings of Dickens' famous characters, models of Big Ben and Ebenezer Scrooge's head, and some artifacts on loan from London's Charles Dickens museum. From there comes a room showcasing how the animation was based on actual physical performances from leotard-and-sensor clad actors. Then came a tunnel lined with monitors displaying the differing levels of animation, from crude dotted figures to flesh-and-blood creations. And finally, a cinnamon-scented room, with a faux-fire burning bright, fake snow dancing beyond the windows, and a cooked goose waiting on a tabletop. Then there's the 3-D footage of Carol itself, showcased in a specially designed theater and playing every hour, featuring scenes of Jim Carrey as Scrooge confronting his nephew Fred (Colin Firth) and spooky Jacob Marley (Gary Oldman). But the coolest part of it all was a special face-morphing feature, where utilizing digital cameras, visitors' can see their faces transform into one of the movie characters. (Look below for a shot of a Piet Levy/Scrooge hybrid).

Carol director Robert Zemeckis, Disney Studios Chairman David Cook and Amtrak CMO David Lim were on hand for the ribbon cutting. At a press conference, Cook credited train travel as romantic, and a fitting method to market a movie based on a classic tale. Lim told Marketing News that the campaign is an opportunity to introduce train travel to young consumers and families.

Truth be told, Carol would probably be a hit whether this train campaign existed or not. But it's an ambitious attempt to get consumers deeply familiar with the film before its release, and a way to steal away some of the buzz that's been building for another 3-D movie release this Christmas season, James Cameron's Avatar.

Enjoy the pics folks, and have a holly, jolly weekend.

Posted by Piet at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Building and managing a legendary brand takes discipline. Defining a brand with voice and personality is the easy part. However, finding the consistent embodiment of these attributes in ongoing marketing efforts can be a difficult process. Over time, a brand begins to take on a life of its own so it is best if it is closely managed by a trusted steward.

An iconic brand equals a series of consistent impressions over time. Whether your customer is watching a TV spot, seeing your billboard or looking at your print campaign in a magazine, each touch point creates an impression. To establish legendary status, it takes support from the highest levels of a company to keep a brand healthy for the long haul. The more buy-in for brand building there is from senior management the faster a brand will become an icon.

Target, Nike, Coca-Cola are all examples of strong brands. The stewards of these brands take a deliberate focus any time a customer has an interaction with their employees, visits their Web sites, or purchases their products. They know that how their staff behaves or the feelings that their stores or headquarters evoke all reflect on their brand.

When management teams make poor decisions about customer experience, get careless in the look-and-feel of stores, or allow random product changes to be made, the erosion of a brand can happen quickly. This has occurred with many highly sought after brands such as Coach, Burberry and Kmart. Luckily, a strong iconic brand can rebound although it can be painful and expensive. Careful planning, buy-in from the top levels of the company and discipline can help your organization and brand avoid these mistakes.

---Carla Stratfold, OnRequest Images

About the author
As CEO, Carla Stratfold brings more than 20 years of experience to OnRequest Images, a provider of custom photography for some of the world’s leading brands.

Editor's Note: this is a guest blog post. Marketing News encourages its readers to submit guest posts to stimulate discussions on its blog.

Posted by John at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

How do you generate lifetime value or communicate with your clients during their various stages as customers? That was the key question of one of this morning's breakout sessions at the AMA's Nonprofit Marketing Conference in Chicago. A top slate of marketers, including Carrie Heinonen of the Art Institute of Chicago, Jan Albus of the Variety Children's Charity of St. Louis and Angela Geiger of the National Alzheimer's Association, explained how they each tackle the issue in the panel excellently moderated by UT-Austin's Meme Drumright.

The answer for all was rooted in uncovering insights from research into their customer base. For the Art Institute, it meant strengthening its outreach to schools to encourage the whole family to visit, because research found that kids who visit museums with their parents (rather than just on a school field trip) tended to become museum-goers as adults.

For Variety, research found that the charity's fans were aging-out; the charity had little recognition in the under 40 set and research found that most young adults pick their favored charity by the time they are 35. So in 1997 the group developed a young professionals outreach program and has more than 1,800 volunteers in the age group, which has led to increased giving, as well as a jolt of youthful energy and ideas for the board.

For the Alzheimers Association, it means appealing to not only the senior citizens suffering from the fatal disease, but also creating programs that reach the adult-aged children that care for their parents, and the younger-age grandchildren who are watching their grandparents fade away. As Geiger said, "Who do you matter to today? Who do you need to matter to tomorrow? And how do you draw the lines between the two?"

Posted by Allison at 4:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A blog post about coffee and doughnuts on a Monday morning seems pretty fitting. As do Canton, Mass.-based Dunkin' Donuts recent marketing efforts, which bring the focus squarely onto the coffee and snack purveyor's core offerings.

In March, Dunkin’ Donuts launched a $10 million doughnut-specific campaign, the first to place particular emphasis on the sugary rounds in more than a decade. The year-long integrated campaign included a “Create Dunkin’s Next Donut” contest, which garnered 130,000 entries.

“It’s not the first time that we’ve marketed [doughnuts], but it’s definitely the biggest,” says Cynthia Ashworth, Dunkin's vice president of consumer engagement. “People have a lot on their plates right now, [figuratively speaking,] and doughnuts are a fun, enjoyable little moment in people’s days. The times are right for doughnuts. The times are right for You Kin’ Do It.”

The times are also right for marketers to come up with creative and useful iPhone apps. Last month, Dunkin' unveiled an app and interactive Web site that enable users reach out to friends and coworkers online to take their coffee and snack orders. Users can then either print a copy of the order or transfer the check list to their iPhones so that they can have the order handy-- and complete-- for their trip to their local Dunkin' Donuts location.

We delve further into Dunkin' Donuts' integrated marketing efforts in the "Best in Class" story in this month's Marketing News.

Do you think the coffee and baked goods giant's recent marketing efforts stay true to the company's brand and product offerings? Is Dunkin' Donuts well-positioned to compete against McCafe? Let us know what you think.

Posted by Elisabeth at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

During these economic times it serves any company in almost any industry to maximize its brand assets. Most organizations develop brands materials for a specific campaign or promotion by channel – TV, print publications, social networks, etc. However, investing in copy, design and photography can be very expensive.

If these assets can be used across multiple marketing channels it reduces the cost per placement and affords a company savings or opportunities to invest in channels that might not normally be a priority.

For instance, a well-known apparel client had us (OnRequest Images) shoot in three international locations. The photos were going to be used by their HR department in collateral aimed at creating personnel moral and camaraderie. It was a successful photo shoot that produced images which could later be used online and in direct mail. This type of repurposing must reach across silos and divisional business units.

In addition, we are seeing a trend in the world of business photography where organizations are funneling photography purchases through corporate purchasing departments. This effort of issuing a request for proposal (RFP) for all global or divisional photography is helping organizations realize significant cost savings. With an RFP, we are seeing that more often than not, the various divisions can repurpose and retool their assets to be fresh and remain on-brand.

Moving forward, we hope companies will look for opportunities to leverage assets across multiple channels as well as issue RFPs. Today these activities tend to be happy accidents, but they are basic best practices which can lead to real financial benefits for most organizations. Whether through a formal RFP process or through two or three divisions pooling their resources, the gains will be great both financially and from extending brand exposure.
---Carla Stratfold, guest blogger

Editor's Note: this is the first of three posts looking at brand bulding strategies.

About the author
As CEO, Carla Stratfold brings more than 20 years of experience to OnRequest Images, a leading provider of custom photography for some of the world’s leading brands.

Posted by John at 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Editor's Note: Marketing News is inviting guest bloggers to post to our blog when they have news or views we think might interest you, our readers. This is the first in that series of guest postings. Please let us know what you think, and also let us know if you'd like to guest blog from time to time. Thanks. ---JNF

We at RSW/US recently completed our 2009 ½ Client-Agency Economic Outlook Survey with respondents including 200 marketing executives and 100 advertising agency executives. We had a nice range of agencies (Leo Burnett and Mindshare for example) as well as clients (Abbott, Kraft and Lego for example).

We found agencies are a bit more optimistic than clients regarding the economy and the ad business for the remainder of ‘09.

So what does that mean? A bit more detail into some other findings gives a clearer, if not more interesting picture. 53 percent of agency respondents said that client spending was down 11 percent or more in the first six months of 2009, while only 39 percent of clients thought the same. So, agency execs feel they’ve been hit harder than client perceptions of spending levels imply.

Another interesting finding: 30 percent of agency respondents said that client spending was down 21 percent or more in the first half, but only 8 percent of clients thought that spending fell by this much.

Obviously there’s some kind of communication or perception-reality gap here. Is this indicative of typical agency-client relationships these days or more a product of the downturn? From our perspective-that of a full-service new business development firm in the marketing services space, we're seeing more project work and less lead agency searches. So in that situation, it certainly makes it harder to have deeper, communicative relationships.

Agencies have to be patient right now and keep the lines of communication open and because that's easier said than done, keeping the new business pipeline full has never been more important.

On the other side, clients need to be upfront about what they expect and need from their agencies. They need to treat their agency like they would themselves want to be treated – with respect and an open line of communication. If things are getting tough, talk to your agency.

It will make for a better relationship, a smarter partnership, and better business in the end.

Lee McKnight Jr.
Director of Business Development
RSW/US (formerly Reardon Smith Whittaker)

Lee began his career in the early stages of interactive healthcare marketing in Nashville, Tennessee. Prior to joining RSW in 2007 as a New Business Manager, Lee was engaged in the grocery industry, based in Cincinnati, OH, aiding wholesaler grocers on the general merchandise side with in-store marketing and logistics capabilities.

RSW/US: RSW/US is a marketing-centric lead generation/business development firm.

Posted by John at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)