Good intentions

Oh no, not the new year!

Up to now, I’ve lived my life following two rules.
My friends know this about me and respect them too.
These are:

1. Woman are difficult and men are stupid.
   This applies to all situations where the relation between these two is the issue.
2. People are stupid but a person is intelligent.
   This is solely based on marketing. When devising a campaign, leaflet, poster … for a wide audience, just take the lowest factor of common sense en it will work. When targeting individual persons, they tend to be smarter than you think.

With this last rule in mind I call upon everyone in the marketing industry to enforce this in your campaigns. These are the things I would like to see happen in 2009:

1. Keep it real.
   I’m not talking about the hip-hop slang meaning. I’m talking about the actual meaning. Please don’t try to lure your audience into taking the desired action on a campaign. Just state plain and simple what is in it for them. E.g. “Buy this, work out and you will lose weight” in stead of “Give us your money and girls will throw themselves at your fabulous body.”
2. Don’t try to fool your customers.
   I’m talking to the agencies here. In bad economic times, like the ones we’re in, not only the consumer but also your customer tends to shop around. Now more than ever they will go for the cheaper offer in stead of the best one. So cut down on anything you can and give your customer what it really wants. They will remember it when times pick up again.
3. Focus on people not on product.
   I know I sound like a broken record on this point but it is still very valid.

I could post hundreds more but I think it’s better marketing that I stick to the basics.
Happy holidays!

the seven misconceptions of youth marketing

I thought this was an interesting presentation.
The seven misconceptions of youth marketing

By the way, if anyone knows how to insert a slideshare presentation in a free wordpress blog, please let me know.

Thanks

essence of marketing

I just found this image on another blog.
I thought it really captured the essence.

Enjoy

Why do we blog?

Back off, I'm blogging!

In search of some meta-understanding of myself, I looked for other blogs that tackle this  problem. To my surprise: there are a whole lot of them! So I skipped to a number of them and found a number of similar reasons but a vast majority of different ones. So in stead of trying to invent the wheel. I bundled my thoughts with the ones I found in this one post.

If you want to skip reading: the answer for most of us is “for pleasure”. But if you seek a bit more information: here are my thoughts.

recession marketing

When you said "back to basics", I didn't mean so basic...

Because there is a lot of emphasis on this recession, I thought it would be handy to gather some interesting articles to thrive in this tough economic climate.

Marketing in a bad market
The key take away is “remarkable innovation occurs in marketing and media — in the worst of times”. She actually makes a similar point as my earlier post on this.

Five Tips to Cope — or Even Thrive — Through Downturn
The article by AdAge is a very handy guide.

Marketing In Tough Economy
Some very usefull tips. It becomes apparent that digital media is one of the most obvious answers.

Marketing in a recession
Of course Seth Godin has something to say about this too.

6 Ways Content Marketing Can Help You Survive the Recession
As my former teacher used to say: content is king. An easy way to give your business more depth and thus more leverage.

Marketing Guide: marketing in a recession
Some useful insights that go along with some actions to take if you want to survive this climate.

Recession Marketing Strategies
Some small thoughts on the topic. Fun to read and easy to digest.

I hope this helps some of you and was interesting for all of you.

Do you have your own tips?
Don’t be afraid to comment.

solution for the crisis in marketeerworld

As you might have noticed. Marketing budgets are being slashes across the globe. For most of us, this is perceived as a

let's get you two together and "brainstorm"

threat to our business, but it doesn’t need to be. Here is what I suggest we should do.

Since the money problems put a strain on your company budget you will have less to spend on your campaigns but also on your workforce. I suggest you don’t cut cost on people but on time. Obviously, you’ll look for the campaign that has the most ROI for the least amount of money. This will probably result in smaller campaigns with less people working on it. Use the excess time to brainstorm or to get your staff re-educated. Your company will have a rough period going through this, but it will emerge as a new. You will have a step ahead on the competition by knowing the latest trends, best practices, newest methods and even think of some new things of your own, to be used in future campaigns.

If you have any comments, please don’t hesitate.

The seven R’s of successful blogging

Darling, please read my blog

Letter lists are an easy way to remember information. Some of them you might know. The most widespread one is the “4 p’s of marketing”. (product, place, promotion, price) Lesser known but nevertheless very interesting are the 6 c’s of web content and the 6 c’s of leadership.
I’m sure every one of you knows at least one or two other lists like these.
I’ve come up with the 7 r’s of successful blogging. Abide by these guidelines and you’ll have a great blog in no time. Try to find out if I used all of my points in this post.

Open letter to all “public persons”

I’ve been pondering the situation with Belgian minister Pieter Decrem.

I’m so drunk, I need your shoulder to keep me standing up.

For those of you who didn’t know what happened: He was on an official trip to New York and had some beers at night. A Dutch/Belgian waitress, who worked there, blogged about it. What most reportings do not say, is that he told her he was in NY because he had not been there yet. A few days later an aid to the minister called the bar owner and had the girl fired.

Minister Decrem has handled the situation really poorly. One of the first rules of marketing is that any publicity is good publicity. By going directly into a reactionary mode, he invited everyone to blame him for what has happened.

Here is what he should have done.

1. If the minister was not responsible for the aid making the call, make him suffer the consequences. So fire the aid or at least make him apologize for doing what he did.
   If on the other hand, the minister was responsible (and he does not want to resign his post) offer an official apology and speak to the girl in person on the situation.
2. Get the waitress reinstated in her job. Or better yet, hire her as a social media specialist.
3. Go on TV and talk about what a good night that was, bonding with everyone of his entourage. Make it a positive experience in stead of a negative one. Appeal to the human aspect of the story.

So here’s the main tip for everyone getting into a situation such as this:

Every problem is also an opportunity.

If you don’t agree or have an opinion of yourself, don’t hesitate to comment!

webdesigners learn from print

This is a very interesting presentation:

What web designers could learn from print.

Quick flash: writing for the web

Surfers don’t read, they scan. That’s why it’s very important to keep you writing style up to date. As we all know, communicating for the web is totally different from communicating IRL. What I noticed is that websites keep publishing magazine articles from the written press identical to what is in the periodical. Don’t do this!

The first modern Christmas

Here are a few pointers for webwriting.

• Use highlighted keywords. Since the people visiting your site do not read, they will focus on the most prominent words in your text. Make the choice of the words you want them to see yourself. Make them read what you want them to read.
• Use short sentences. Your readers have the attention span of a humming bird so make sure they don’t get lost in a grammatical riddle.
• Write “inverse pyramid”. Important things should come first and opinions or elaborate text later.
• Use bullet points. This is easier to read. The easier it is, the less chance the reader will click away.
• Don’t be afraid to edit. Do not write too much but make sure the information is there if the reader wants it. You can do this by linking to other sites of earlier articles you have written.
• Be credible. As in the last point, don’t be afraid to link to other sites. If they have more credibility than yours, it will rub off on you. You might even get some readers from them too.
• Focus on the message and not the medium. The message is always more important. It’s like a Christmas present: no matter how pretty the wrapping is, people really only want to see what’s in the box.
• Don’t avoid humour. The web is social. You want people to like you and humour is a good tool for this.

These are some things you can do when writing for the web.

Writing push emails is a whole other thing. You can pretty much copy most of these “rules” but there are more points to keep into account. More on that perhaps later in an other post.

One last thing: don’t write articles that are too long.

So on that note: thanks for reading and don’t be afraid to comment!

My shortlist of products of 2008

I was thinking of doing a “best products of 2008″ feature for my next blogpost.

my mom knitted me an iPhone

But the response was a bit too low for it to be a global list. Therefore I decided that it will be a completely bias list of the products I think shaped 2008.

The Iphone

Let’s get the first obvious item out of the way. It’s a marketing product. I believe it has some good potential but honestly speaking, this product was pushed so much, it has lost all appeal to me.

what too much money can do

I’m rich

What most people would deem a footnote is actually one of the best products of the year. The “I’m rich” application for the Iphone is a work of a genious. The creator is someone who understands the purchaser of this “phone” extremely well. Of course the gadget can do a whole lot of amazing things but one of the main drives for sales is that it regarded as extremely cool. So the buyers are people who are very image-conscious. An application that doesn’t do anything really but costs $1000 just shows exactly what the name suggests. It says “I have so much money I can buy something that does not do anything exept show that I

downgrading as the best option

have the money.” Amazing.

Windows XP

When looking through other lists of best products I keep bumping into Windows XP. I thought this was hilarious. So this one gets on my list.

Whiiiiii....

Wii

Of course the Wii is now widely accepted as a genuine game console. I know it was launched in 2007 but with all the accessories (wheel, board, etc…) the real value becomes apparent now.

Yes, you are a rock star

Guitar hero series

Again, this is not a product that launched in 2008 but it is now so widely spread that you can’t get around it any more. This is a game that really changed the way we play videogames, so it made my list.

Lotus speculoos paste

I love to get smeared...

This is a regional product. For the readers that don’t know what this is I’ll elaborate.
In Belgium, there is a show called “de bedenkers”. (the inventors) A woman called Els Scheppers had the idea of creating a new kind of spread to put on your slice of bread. You can compare it to peanut butter but with the very sweet taste of speculoos. She didn’t win in the program but made a deal with the largest supplier of speculoos in Belgium. This product is so popular, they had to boost production twice to comply with the need of the market. I have a friend with two kids who told me 80% of the glass jars to throw away as trash are speculoos paste jars.

An honorable mention goes to the bras for men.

If you think I neglected to mention things; please comment.