Marketing lessons from the tradeshow floor
May 18th, 2011 § 1 Comment
As you can see—and I hope you have noticed—I have been less than diligent in my postings for the last month. It’s not that I have forgotten about you all or that I have nothing to say about branding, but quite simply that I have been busy. I know, I know, lame excuse. We are all busy. So, to make up for my lack of insight, I have decided to write a post incorporating what I learned while I have been gone. This way you won’t feel so left out. For the past several weeks I have been on the road exhibiting at tradeshows for my company. These shows, alongside running our regular marketing initiatives from the road, have given me incredible insight into what everyone already knows: sometimes the simplest things are the easiest to forget. So in honor of keeping it all in perspective, I am going to offer you three pieces of wisdom straight from the tradeshow floor.
Make your message accessible: We all know that in order to gain our audiences’ attention we need to make a splash. A strong overall marketing plan brought to life via engaging visuals and copy will take you a long way (refer to several of my old posts Brand Audience: Bored or Floored, for example). However, catchy will get you nowhere if your material is not read. As marketers, it is our job to ensure that the message and the WAY in which we present the message are consistent with how our audience will be gleaning the information. For instance, if you know your audience is being inundated by emails, DO NOT email them. Send them a mail piece that contains a call to action. I used a plastic card they can swipe at my booth to win a prize—giving them a reason to stop and a reminder in their pocket at the show. No matter what your content is, it will not be effective if it is not received. This article sent to me by my friend Sarah made this point into a more humorous light.
Keep it simple: This speaks for itself. On the tradeshow floor, much like when your recipient opens an email or mail piece, your time is limited. Tell them what they need to know, and no more. Make sure your message is easy to digest. Didn’t get the whole message across? That is OK. All you need to do is give your audience a piece of the puzzle—let them know the most pertinent piece of information. Leave them wanting more. This tactic is a natural fit for catchy writing, and when they know what you are about they will follow up if it interests them.
Save your breath: Let’s face it, not everyone is a good fit for our products, services, or places. Some people just don’t want to vacation to Des Moines, Iowa, no matter how hard I sell its wonderful qualities. So stop forcing information on uninterested parties. Thank them for their time, tell them you’ll be around should they change their mind, and move on. Spend your time talking to people who are interested in what you have to say. They may be fewer and farther in between, but that is the nature of the beast. Targeted marketing ends up working wonders, as the days of spamming success are dead and gone.
Hopefully as you read this post, you said “Duh, I already knew that.” However, I hope that even though you knew these points, that tomorrow when you get back to your desk and start your next marketing campaign you stop to think about the basics. Because ‘back to basics’ is an age old mantra for a reason—it works.
World Food Festival=Free=Get There
October 8th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
In lieu of one long post, this week you are getting two short posts! You can thank my work schedule for this, and thankfully, as the week wraps up, my productivity has lasted and I am free for a weekend full of no obligations and beautiful weather—and the U.S. Cellular World Food Festival in Des Moines. This festival is one of several put on by the rock stars at the Downtown Events Group, and consists of food and beers from around the world, complete with live entertainment and shopping.
The Food Festival is my favorite event of the year, and I am very excited to get down there to start tasting and drinking my way around the world. Fall is one of the best event seasons, and the weather this year has really held up nicely, making the perfect setting for good food and friends. If you live in Des Moines, check it out at www.worldfoodfestival.org and come down to the East Village and see what you can find for yourself.
If you don’t live here, think about the positive effects that a festival like this can have on your place branding initiatives. Festivals are a huge opportunity to create local traditions, showcase local fare and goods and create a podium for you to tell others how good it is to be in your place. People get excited about festivals, and more often than not they get news coverage in local outlets. Next week I plan on doing a longer post on the positive place branding effects that events can have, along with a guest post on the topic. But for now, relax, enjoy the weekend and get to the Food Festival!
Oh Chevy, I mean Chevrolet.
July 7th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Everyone knows that GM has had its fair share of problems as of late. With the debt, the borrowing and the cutting of jobs they have not been left in a very good light. Yet people want to see them back where they used to be. They want to remember them as an all American company, making cars for Americans by Americans. But that image is lost in a pool of other stuff, and as Chevy is trying to rebuild what they had they keep digging deeper and deeper, never fixing the true issues but sticking on band-aids left and right hoping to keep enough blood in to stay alive.
And actually, if you come right down to it, maybe this is the best strategy for Chevy right now. They can make smaller dollar “fixes” to their image while slowly working on the bigger issues that plague them…but in any case, they need to be careful. They need to work on getting back their customers trust, and they need to pick their battles—this is not on my list of important ones. While this article is about a month old, and they have already clarified their intentions, I am not a believer in a strategy like this. These are hard times, and the focus needs to be not on what name people are using to refer to Chevy but that they are choosing to drive a Chevy. I think that in order for people to come back to Chevrolet they need to take a look at the root issues they are facing, and then bring the brand full circle from there.
This isn’t the only reason why the first article seems insane to me. Not only does it go against everything that I have written in this blog about brand strategy and building trust, but it proves that fixing things from the bottom up is the only way that a brand will see results. People get tired of being lied to, and in the end a company’s goal should be for people to own their brand. We as marketers strive for this every day, by trying to get people to live, eat, breathe and speak our brand. The idea of calling the car a Chevy is a prime example of this in practice—people were so in love with this brand they created a nickname for it and used it all over creation, from pop culture to literature. If I were Chevy, I would be supporting that relationship with my public, and using it as a bridge to connect customers back to the happy place that they were in when that nickname was formed and the brand was in its heyday—keeping the American public interested in buying American cars.
For brands, experience is essential
July 1st, 2010 § Leave a Comment
People want to buy experiences, and as a place you need to be in the business of selling them. Visitors want to know that they are going somewhere not for the “I love Xplace” t-shirt, but for the parasailing, fine dining, white water rafting, quirky neighborhoods etc. These things are not tangible, but they are the things that drive people’s travel decisions. This is difficult for some places/people to swallow. You might argue that people choose vacation destinations based on shopping, and shopping begets tangible items so the experience theory is wrong. But I would say that they chose that destination based on the shopping experience—being able to go to many exclusive shops, eating in nice restaurants that usually accompany said shops and being around people who are holding themselves to the same experience standard. Sure when they go home they have that shirt they bought, but that item is just a segue into a story about the experience—I got this shirt at Saks, and they gave us chocolate in the dressing room and then we ate a delicious lunch and then we blah, blah, blah. See, the tangible faded after the initial introduction, but the experience lasted for the rest of the conversation.
This is an important lesson for places to learn, and even more important is the fact that messaging, experience and upkeep must bein-synch. If you have read the posts below, you know that I am a huge believer in the fact that brands need to live up to promises. Flashy campaigns get initial responses, but once a brand doesn’t live up to expectations it is doomed for failure. I was reading this article about brands that have talked the talk, but not walked the walk. Very interesting points, and all relevant to the idea that in order to be trusted and valued as a brand, you have to be real. And even when real is ugly, if you hold yourself to the standards that you would expect other companies to have, then you will weather the storm in a much better fashion.
Take BP. I know, I know, everyone is using BP. But, the article points out that they recently changed their slogan to “Beyond Petroleum” touting their green energy initiatives (and inadvertently touting their environmental consciousness). Then the gulf oil spill comes up and they falter, big time, erasing the confidence in what was a strong brand image. They did not live up to the talk, and in essence provided a bad experience for consumers—both in the actual spill and in the way they handled it. This has happened to dozens of big brands, but another interesting one is Starbucks. They had it right from the beginning, and they knew that people came to Starbucks for the experience—not the coffee. People can get good coffee at a lot of places, but when you go to Starbucks you get the unique, eclectic coffee house experience wherever you are. Then they started to grow, and when they did they forgot about the experience. Business told them it was about the coffee, and they over expanded and lost what made their brand unique. Now they have learned their lesson, and are going back to the experience. It works.
In essence, experience is the most important piece of the puzzle, along with having the conviction to make sure that the experience you provide or the way that you talk about your brand is the truth. If it’s not, people will find out. And they will be mad. If it is the truth, people will be impressed and ready to integrate you brand into their lives, which is the goal of every brand. Every place or thing has unique qualities, and the trick is to use them together in a way that provides more than just tangible benefit—build that experience. Once you know what it is about your destination that is special, and how to market it and make sure that it stays intact, you will reap the benefits of your labor and people will be telling their neighbors about the experience you had to offer.
Brand Audience: Bored or floored?
June 20th, 2010 § 2 Comments
The other day I posted about how important stakeholders are in the place branding process. Now chances are, if you found my blog, you already know the huge role that audience plays in any branding or communication effort. But here’s the thing, in branding the audience is so essential that they are the brand. If your audience doesn’t buy your brand, then they wont live it. And if they won’t live it, other people won’t catch wind of it. And if it isn’t being lived or spread, it’s dead.
This is troubling to some people– especially people who have dedicated their time (or even lives) to brands that have failed– because your audience is not always apparent. You may not know who they are, what they look like or what they want, and that makes failing very easy. If your audience doesn’t like your brand, it could mean back to the drawing board. Sometimes the brand needs some tweaking and can be re-released. Sometimes the brand is dead and a new approach needs to be taken. In either of the cases, your audience should be the one behind the wheel, telling you what route to go and why. Here’s an interesting post on the differences in branding, albeit not place branding, between Microsoft and Apple. Why does one brand struggle while the other flourishes? I’d say its the understanding of the audience.
This idea of audience plays an important role in our own lives, as well. Personal brands are something that have been coming up more and more in recent conversations, especially with the job market the way that it is. Your personal brand is becoming a way for you to open doors, or close them, and should be given the same type of consideration as a place brand or product brand would be. It is important to take your stakeholders into perspective when building a personal brand, because you never know what is coming next. You may think that it won’t matter that you posted pictures of binge drinking (buzz word) on Facebook until you don’t get a job because of it. Or that you ranted and raved in the comment section of a blog until you find out that blog is written by a client. You get the idea. Brands are meant to be enjoyed, lived and spread. Stakeholders are the medium through which that happens. Do right by your place (product, etc.) AND your audience in most any branding situation, and success will follow shortly behind.
Want to talk about social media? No thanks.
June 18th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
I am sick of talking about social media. There, I said it. Yes, I realize the irony of a post that talks about not talking about social media. But seriously, why must we talk about social media as if it is the only communication channel ever created? It is not the only one, and it is not always the best. I think that every webinar I get invited to, and every marketing magazine I receive is innately focused on social media. Get over it, people. Its old news. Social media is free and widely used. Some marketers have had success, some haven’t, and ROI is not ever going to be what your CEO wants to see. So this is my call to make your social media move, or move on.
Sure it has its merits, but come on—it is not the be all end all. For one, social media is not right for every person or brand. It depends on what kind of entity you are representing and how your brand is positioned in the marketplace. Maybe you represent a more conservative brand that builds a reputation on clean and consistent offline communication. Your customers may have chosen you for that reason, and I for one think that social media is a mistake in that case. It isn’t useful, your customer will not be looking for you there and you will most likely not be able to keep up with the insane amount of work that social media can create.
I realize the above situation is becoming more unique as the days pass, and that social media is an important part of some brand’s communications plan. That said, I still think that when it comes to social media you need to decide what is right for your brand and execute. Do not sit and talk it over for a month, because you could weigh the merits for two months, or two years. Form a plan (there are plenty of research materials) and then go with it. Use your common sense as to what is appropriate to post, but do not be afraid to go down a road that is less familiar. Test new ideas and be prepared for the conversation, but also be prepared for the lack of conversation. There is no guarantee that people will care what you have to say—just an opportunity to make them care about it.
This is my challenge to you, reader. Next time you discuss social media in your marketing/branding/place branding strategy meeting simply tell your peers it’s time to move, or its time to move on.
