The Tendo View » marketing

Is it time to take humor more seriously?

Jillian Kurvers — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 22:16:01 +0000

Have your customers laughed at with you today?

Advertisements come at us from every angle—on television, in print, even bordering our favorite websites. As consumers, we are exposed to hundreds of ads per day, many of them direct and informative, but fewer that are funny. If your goal is to get your brand noticed and influence consumer response, humor can be an effective marketing technique.

Connecting with your potential consumers is key. Humor can be a valuable device in doing so because, when done right, it helps them bond with your brand on an emotional level. I know, sounds deep. But making people laugh has positive psychological effects, which can correlate to brand trust. Humor is also attention-getting, relatable and most importantly, memorable. How could we forget Wendy’s “Where’s the beef?” lady? Or more recently, the dueling new and old Old Spice guys?

But before you slip into your standup routine, do not overlook the one thing you need to know: your audience.

Not every brand is humor-ready. Think Rolex—its target audience reads The Economist (I am looking at a print ad right now), enjoys golfing (the ad is about golf) and frequents yacht parties (or sails around the world). And while the watchmaker may get to laugh all the way to the bank, generally there’s nothing funny about a Rolex-wearer.

Now take Virgin America. The airline, which starts each flight with a comedic safety video, recently began direct service from select cities to Dallas-Fort Worth. To promote the news, it displayed ad copy that read, “Virgin America Does Dallas.” Offensive? Maybe to some crowds, but not Virgin America’s. It’s a bold move, but Virgin understands that its audience is younger, edgier and comfortable with pornography references.

Knowing your audience also means knowing yourself. Are you selling a product or service that’s relatively low cost (like a plane ticket), or something that would require research and contemplation (like a luxury timepiece)? Brands will have more leeway with humor if what they’re offering requires little emotional involvement from the purchaser. Which is to say shelling out for airfare shouldn’t give you night sweats, at least not the way shelling out for a GMT-Master does.

If you’re going to try your hand at humor, starting with social media is a good idea, as the demographics tend to skew to a younger, more open-minded audience. Still, humor shouldn’t be taken lightly, even in a less formal social media forum. Of late, there have been a number of Twitter blunders where brands from Entenmann’s to Kenneth Cole have taken trending topics too far in an attempt to be…clever?

As always, humor in marketing is a risk. It’s especially hard to know if your newfound jocular style—even if you’re not capitalizing on controversial events—will be well-received. So don’t rock the yacht. Instead, let the process happen naturally. Concoct some clever tweets or posts. Upload a hilarious YouTube video that’s destined to go viral. Most of all, know your audience—they’re the ones who give your company money something to smile about.

Is it time your company started taking humor more seriously?

Social media: It’s all about timing

Siobhan Nash — Fri, 06 May 2011 01:21:27 +0000

We all do it. In our efforts to engage with our audience and provide them with quality content, we post what we have, when we have it, to all of our social media outlets without giving a second thought as to timing. You should. Timing your posts and updates to better coincide with a particular platform’s peak usage increases the likelihood that your content will be read and, more importantly, acted upon—whether that’s opening an email, sharing a link, or commenting on a blog.

I recently attended two presentations that discussed this issue of social media timing—one from HubSpot and one from our own Tendo social media expert Charlotte Ziems. Here are some highlights about timing for four key social platforms—Facebook, Twitter, email, and blogs:

Facebook
• Content posted before noon gets 65 percent more engagement than contented posted later in the day
• Friday posts generate the most engagement, followed by Monday and Tuesday
• Saturday and Sunday posts generate the least engagement but the highest number of shares

Twitter
• Twitter updates are retweeted more often when posted later in the day, as well as late in the week
• Click-through rates (CTRs) are highest mid-morning and early evening
• Mondays and Tuesdays yield the lowest CTRs

Blogs
• Twice as many blogs are read in the morning than at night
• Viewing is highest on Mondays and lowest on Saturdays
• Commenting is highest in the morning and on Saturdays, and lowest on Wednesdays

Email
• More email is opened on Saturdays and Sundays (early in the morning) than during the week
• Sending emails more frequently improves click-through rates and doesn’t result in higher unsubscribe rates

The takeaway from this research confirms something we’ve all heard before: the more frequent your activity, the better the response—and that can be further improved by timing your updates and posts accordingly. Try experimenting with the timing of your social media activity; for example, consider sending an email early in the morning and on a weekend and see what the metrics reveal.

Have you noticed certain days and times work better for your social media activity on some platforms? We’d love to hear about it!

3 corporate blogs that set the standard

Siobhan Nash — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 19:17:38 +0000

Blogs continue to abound as companies realize their value as a marketing tool. Facebook and Twitter may be great for updating your followers (many of whom aren’t necessarily your customers) on your company’s latest news and offers, but blogs excel at supporting key business goals, such as lead generation and brand marketing. According to eMarketer, “…the percentage of U.S. companies that use blogs for marketing purposes will rise to 43% in 2012, from 34% in 2010.”

Much like communities, your blog isn’t all about your company. It’s not about telling your customers what you want them to know; it’s about engaging them on topics that matter to them and address their needs.

Some B2B and B2C blogs do this better than others. Here are three blogs that I think succeed at one or more best practices.

Salesforce.com: The company’s CloudBlog touts itself as “An industry view with altitude.” But this tagline is more than a clever turn of phrase. It delivers on the implied promise—higher-level industry insight. The tone is conversational but opinionated. The posts convey information effectively, using bullet points, graphics, and embedded rich media to break up the content. Finally, the writers successfully connect the topics to the company’s mission and goals without making a blatant “pitch.”

Dell: A lot of companies, especially larger ones, have more than one blog to serve various audiences and industry segments. But if your audience can’t find the blog they’re interested in, what’s the point? Dell has one of the better landing pages I’ve seen for organizing multiple blogs. In addition to a clean, simple design, this landing page offers a feed of the latest posts, a search option (which I haven’t seen very often), and a blog directory—both at the top of the page and in the right margin, which also includes brief descriptions of the various blogs.

O’Reilly Media: This one is a little off the beaten path, as O’Reilly Media is a technology book publishing company. But the company’s blog, O’Reilly Radar, excels at something I believe is essential to connecting with your audience—defining the writers. Just as many of us don’t like interacting with phonebots, your customers aren’t likely to engage with your company if your blog posts are penned by faceless (sometimes nameless) writers. O’Reilly provides a photo, a link to profile information, and a Twitter handle for every writer.

Room for improvement
Although these companies exemplify some of blogging’s best practices, no blog is perfect. Where I think most companies fall short is in burying access to their blogs at the bottom of the home page. There are a couple corporate websites, like HP and Salesforce.com, that provide links “above the fold.” GM does one better, making the “News & Conversations” link the first tab at the top of its home page. A link higher on the home page is good, but more, higher-profile real estate for promoting your blogs and inviting visitors to participate would be even better.

You can find more examples of successful corporate blogs on Mashable.

What do you think makes for a successful corporate blog?

Email still reaches customers

Siobhan Nash — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 17:35:15 +0000

In light of newer, sexier digital marketing media and channels, email may seem passé as a marketing tool these days. However, email remains a key fundamental marketing method because of its ubiquity. You can breathe new life into your email marketing campaigns and increase their effectiveness by integrating other online marketing channels, such as social media and video.

Here are some recent statistics about email marketing:

• Eighty-one percent of marketers agree that social media extends the reach of email content to new markets. (MarketingSherpa)

• Transactional emails can result in revenues from 3 to 6 times higher than bulk emails. (Experian Marketing Services)

• Approximately half of marketers are using video in their email marketing campaigns. (Web Video Marketing Council)

• Among marketers who consistently have successful email marketing campaigns, 67 percent include at least three calls to action. (JangoMail)

• As a means to recapture customers who abandoned an online activity, email remarketing is anticipated to increase more than 50 percent compared to other retargeting techniques. (eMarketer)

Is email still part of your marketing mix? If so, what are you doing to make your emails more effective?

What’s your Web video strategy?

Siobhan Nash — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:39:34 +0000

Given the overwhelming viewership of online video, marketers have a new opportunity. As more and more businesses realize the value of video and its ability to increase brand awareness and drive sales, marketers are responding. Video is also proving an effective way to facilitate conversations that help to win new customers and solidify the relationship with existing ones. And as devices such as smartphones and tablets (like Apple’s iPad) expand the platforms for viewing videos, consumers have an ever-increasing number of ways to view your content. That transforms video from a luxury to a marketing necessity.

Here are some interesting statistics related to the use of video in business:

• The number of people who view online video content monthly will increase to 147.5 million in 2010, up from 135.1 million in 2009 (eMarketer)
• 63 percent of U.S. Internet users watch online videos (Dynamic Logic)
• The use of video blogging among Fortune 500 companies with public-facing blogs rose 10 percent from 2008 to 2009 (Society for New Communications Research)
• Of rich-media features, video ranked highest at 46 percent with multichannel retailers (Multichannel Merchant)
• Among various online video types, more companies created branded video content in the last 12 months (TurnHere)
• This year, the number of mobile video viewers will grow nearly 30 percent (eMarketer)

So what’s your Web video strategy?

Editor’s note: The Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) is currently conducting a research study on the use of video storytelling in business. Share your experiences with video by participating in the survey.

Video veritas: Who’s watching?

Siobhan Nash — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 17:38:52 +0000

If you were asked who watches more video on their mobile devices, you’d probably say teens. I know that would have been my answer. Surprisingly, that’s not the case. According to the latest Three Screen report from Nielsen, 55 percent of mobile video viewers are adults aged 25-49. And on average, these users are spending from 2 hours 53 minutes to 3 hours 15 minutes a month viewing videos on their mobile devices.

Also according to the Nielsen report, the total mobile viewing audience “grew 51.2 percent year-over-year, surpassing 20 million users for the first time.”

This trend is supported by an eMarketer survey showing mobile content and Internet usage of U.S. mobile phone users. Although video streaming falls close to the bottom of the list in this survey in terms of content usage, it’s estimated to more than double this year from 2007, from 11 percent to 25 percent. And in 2011, that number will grow to 33 percent.

These statistics aren’t too surprising given the proliferation of smartphones and the introduction of other Internet-enabled mobile devices, such as Apple’s iPad. These devices present a great opportunity for reaching your audience in an engaging medium—video. With so many eyeballs on the small screen, the question is does video factor into your current or future marketing plans? If not, why not?

FLOR’s design contest wins hearts from carpet

Christine Zender — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:02:41 +0000

I’m obsessed with FLOR. Everything about the company—from the cool, slightly Scandinavian-sounding name, to the environmental friendliness of its products, to its inspiring catalogs—makes me want to cover every surface in my house with carpet tiles.

And now FLOR has given me yet another reason to love it. Last month the company emailed me about its first-ever design contest. Readers were invited to submit area rug designs using FLOR tiles. Winners would receive their FLOR design (complementary); have their winning design featured on FLOR.com; and have the chance of seeing their rug design sold through FLOR in the future.

In my mind, I can see the marketing meeting that engendered it:

Head Marketing Dude: What’s the biggest reason folks don’t buy our products?
Team Member: Most people can’t visualize things that aren’t in front of them. So, they don’t understand that they can use FLOR tiles to create an almost infinite variety of patterns—not just the ones we give them.
Head Marketing Dude: How can we fix this?
Team Member: Let’s invite folks to design new rugs for us. That way people will see the possibilities created by folks just like them. How about running a design contest?
Head Marketing Dude: Genius.

It is genius. It’s also a perfect example of audience engagement. Ask your audience to think in new ways about your product and build buzz around it. I know it’s not a new idea—food companies like Pillsbury have been using this tactic for years; I just appreciate FLOR’s take on it.

I thought about creating a new rug and submitting it, but I got sidetracked and didn’t do it. I did, however, vote for a winner by going to the FLOR site and checking out the finalists. Last week, FLOR sent me a follow-up email inviting me to check out the winners. And one of the ones I voted for won.

So, it looks like I’ll be getting a new area rug for Christmas. Thanks, FLOR!

2009’s 10 most embarrassing marketing & PR blunders

David Vespremi — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:13:21 +0000

Out with the old…

2009 was a rough year for marketers. Budgets were cut, heads rolled, and projects came under tighter scrutiny than ever before. So, in such a high-stakes climate, mistakes and missteps would be few and far between, right? Not so. The following awkward, painful, bizarre, and embarrassing marketing blunders show that even with the odds stacked against them, marketers both big and small will dare to dream the impossible dream (and pay the price in the end).

[10] Chevy Volt Dance

Click here to view the embedded video.

Embarrassing? Check. Awkward? Check. Painful? Check. Bizarre? Check And lucky for us, this was released before 2009 was up, so it makes the list.

Perhaps Autoextremist Peter D. Lorenzo put it best: A job qualification for GM’s new CEO would be “…somebody who would would fire everyone directly responsible for the ‘Chevy Volt Dance’ and even more important, understand the reasons why it never should have seen the light of day.”

GM killed the EV1, its ground-breaking electric car, with sheer marketing ineptitude in 1999. In 2009 GM did its best to abort its ground-breaking serial hybrid, the Volt, with this bit of marketing ineptitude.

[9] Windows 7 Launch Party

Click here to view the embedded video.

How to make an OS launch like a Tupperware party: a warm, fuzzy, diverse, and welcoming Tupperware party…

This is for those who thought that Gates and Co. could only move up after the company’s $300 million dud of an ad camapaign last year. Remember that campaign? It co-starred comedian Jerry Seinfeld and the man himself, Bill Gates, in a 90-second TV spot beginning in a shoe store and ending with the promise of a “delicious” future.

2009 delivered that future in the form of a Windows 7 launch campaign that, despite taking place in a kitchen, was anything but delicious.

[8] GM Reinvention (and its various spoofs):

Click here to view the embedded video.

USA! USA! Um… not so much. Here we have GM bouncing back from federally mandated bankruptcy restructuring with a message to the American people, its new owners.

And that message apparently had something to do with amputees and butterflies, but beyond that, we’re a little hazy on the details.

[7] Chia Obama

Click here to view the embedded video.

Really? The 2008 commemorative plate was too stuffy for you? Maybe you bought one and liked it, but just didn’t feel like it gave you enough Obama pride to carry you through 2009?

Well, our perennial friends at chi-chi-chi-chia came up with the answer in 2009, and boy did they hit this one out of the park.

[6] PETA Pet Shop Boys Name Change Request

Shoot for the stars, end up in the circular file.

While the Pet Shop Boys may have had a popular song (“I Want a Dog”), PETA, as is often the case, wasn’t satsified. In a bold attempt at rebranding by proxy, PETA made a teeny, weeny request of the boys. The result? Lots of free publicity for PETA, but not a whole lot of feel-good credibility to go along with it.

[5] Whole Foods CEO on Single Payer Healthcare Reform

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is Tendo strategy 101: Take the time to understand your audience. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey let all those commie, leftie, pinko Prius-driving shoppers of his know just where he stood on single payer healthcare reform, and the results that followed did not spur a rush to buy organic humus or premium, extra-firm tofu.

At least we give him props for taking a stand on something, speaking his mind, and being transparent about his beliefs–and frankly, that counts for a lot (and it kept him off the bottom of our list, despite the magnitude of this blunder).

(4) Visit Denmark, Conceive a Child

What better way to woo travelers to visit the Scandanavian land of fair-haired maidens than the promise of a one-night stand and a cute, illegitimate love child as a souvenir?

Tendo covered this in our blog when it first came out (that’s right, you read it here first), but the upshot is the Danish tourism board thought a suberversive viral featuring an attractive mother looking for the father of her baby was the hot ticket to encourage tourism to Denmark. Points for thinking outside of the box here, but…

[3] The Shake Weight

Click here to view the embedded video.

‘Nuff said.

[2] Amazon Deletes 1984 from Kindle

George Orwell predicted it. In what can only be called the consummate product marketing debacle of 2009, Amazon went Big Brother on its Kindle users–literally–by surreptitiously deleting what they believed to be unauthorized copies of Orwell’s classics, 1984 and Animal Farm, from their Kindle devices. This heaping bowl of “not good” had all the irony of, um, something with a lot of irony.

[1] Balloon Boy

Click here to view the embedded video.

When promoting your reality show concept gets away from you, as it were.

Robert Thomas, a Colorado State University student and paid assistant to Balloon Boy’s dad, Richard Heene, revealed the high-flying scare that captured worldwide attention to be a misguided, guerilla-style publicty stunt to promote Heene’s reality show pitch. According to CNN, “Thomas said that at one point they were talking about the Roswell UFO incident of the late 1940s when Heene said it would be easy to cook up a media stunt that would be equally profound as Roswell–and we could do so with nothing more than a weather balloon and some controversy.’”

When saying so little can deliver so much

Siobhan Nash — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:51:42 +0000

Much has been said about the benefits of using social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace for connecting with customers. However, there’s another much-less-touted although equally valuable vehicle for reaching customers—SMS or text-based messaging.

Nowadays, most of us probably receive text messages from someone with whom we do business; for example, a message from your bank regarding some questionable activity on an account or an appointment confirmation from your doctor. Currently, retailers have made the most use of SMS to engage their customers.

There’s a wealth of opportunity for marketers in other industries to incorporate text messaging into their communications strategy, not only to improve customer relationships but also to boost sales.

There’s no denying that mobile usage is up. In 2008 sales of mobile devices outpaced those of PCs 4-to-1. Because a majority of cell phones have text capabilities, SMS provides an ideal opportunity for communicating with your customers, especially when so many are inundated with email and may be missing your message entirely.

In its Mobile Market Survey 2009, Netsize reports on how some companies are using mobile as part of their marketing strategy to attract and keep customers:

“The vast majority of respondents (56%) currently use mobile to acquire new customers. But that will change as respondents follow through on their plans to boost customer retention and loyalty through mobile marketing (64%), streamline transactions (37%) and enable commerce and sales using a mobile device (37%).”

In addition to strengthening relationships with current customers and attracting new customers, text messaging provides a way to increase brand awareness. For example, Clorox ran a national promotion to connect its brand with Keith Urban fans by offering the chance to win a backyard BBQ with the singer.

At the end of the campaign, Clorox experienced total mobile activity of more than 300,000, and 6% of those participants opted in to ongoing Clorox brand promotions. And that’s one of the key benefits of SMS: You’re reaching your customers on their terms and at their request.

The simplicity of text-based messaging, though, creates the possibility for overexposure. You don’t want to abuse the privilege of having your customers’ permission to communicate with them. According to a recent Nielsen report, sending too many texts or not targeting them appropriately can adversely affect your ability to connect with your customers.

As with any social medium, SMS is another way to engage your customers in a conversation. As with all marketing activities, though, make sure that an SMS strategy fits in with your overall business goals.

Give an audience a social conscience, they’ll give you eyeballs

Siobhan Nash — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:54:08 +0000

As an eco-friendly furniture components manufacturer, Hickory Springs wouldn’t seem to have an obvious need for social media marketing. After all, they make the parts for furniture that no one ever sees; the company’s customers make the actual furniture. However, Hickory Springs has launched a clever social media campaign that succeeds on many levels for multiple audiences.

Hickory Springs’ EarthCare Challenge is designed to educate consumers about the importance of environmentally friendly furniture. Tapping into the general population’s affection for reality game shows, the campaign will chronicle six contestants as they try to live more sustainable lives.

To qualify, interested participants submit a video online that explains why he or she is “eco-oblivious” or “eco-chic.” The contest takes place solely on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, as well as the company’s own EarthCareInside.com site.

With the EarthCare Challenge campaign, Hickory Springs is building awareness of its products with consumers, a brand new audience for the company. And, in educating buyers about environmentally friendly furniture, the company creates demand for its components when customers start a dialogue with retailers about whether the furniture they sell is made with eco-friendly parts.

The social media marketing campaign also demonstrates to furniture manufacturers that consumers value “green” furniture, thereby creating additional demand for Hickory Springs components among its existing customers and (hopefully) obtaining some new customers in the process.

As a social media marketing campaign, EarthCare Challenge succeeds at something greater, talking about a topic broader than its own products. In promoting the benefits of living an environmentally conscious lifestyle, Hickory Springs avoids one of the typical social-media pitfalls that has stumbled many a company – gazing at its own navel.

Hickory Springs has created a campaign that not only benefits the company but also its customers and consumers. (Did I mention that the winner of EarthCare Challenge receives a collection of eco-friendly furniture, valued at approximately $5,000?) Everybody wins – even the environment.