#40 The Future of Marketing is...Social.

Audiences today do not want to be talked at. They want to be engaged in conversation. Social media gives us the power to do this, allowing us to define and control our brand. There is a shift from corporations and institutions to individuals and communities. Here are a few tips to take advantage of social media.

• Facebook. To help spread the word about a new campaign, why not ask employees to change their Facebook status to announce your latest campaign? If you have 20,000 employees, most likely 10,000 of them have Facebook. With the average person having 100 friends, your announcement could receive over 1 million impressions for free. Ask employees to include their LinkedIn Profiles – now you have 2 million impressions for free


• YouTube. Create a YouTube channel dedicated to teaching people more about your industry. This channel would feature a series of short, focused videos that educate your audience on related topics that help position you as an industry expert. The videos could highlight benefits and features of your products.


• Twitter. To help build and establish your company as an industry expert, top executives should create Twitter accounts to help position your company’s executives as thought leaders in the industry. Tweets should be business-related topics that talk about industry trends and forecasts. Zappos CEO has 1.6 million followers and is following almost 400K people. A total of 430 Zappos Employees have Twitter accounts. This presence helps Zappos engage and participate in conversations about their company.


• Flickr. Flickr is a great way to help promote events that your company sponsors. Photos can be optimized to show up in search results and increase brand awareness. Using Flickr to increase branding opportunities for KeyBank’s sponsorship of a 10K race, the Key “Bank to Bay” gallery has alone received 6,000 views following the event.

W6M: People visit social media sites every day, why not join them in what they are already doing?

#39 WeReward Allows You to Measure Cost Per Purchase

WeReward, a mobile incentive platform that pays cash to consumers for actions they take in the real world, launches today in front of more than 1,000 technologists, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York City.

W6M: Basically you earn money for visiting/making purchases at designated stores. The visits/purchases are varified using your social media accounts (Facebook, Forsquare and Twitter).

WeReward could really help advertisers measure Cost Per Purchase. I typically recommend incorporating Pay Per Click into your marketing mix because it offers the ability to measure ROI when purchases are made online. Results get a little skewed when people research info online, but then purchase offline (in the store). WeReward could really help track a promotion through a store purchase. In a related story, NY Times reports on using Foursquare to replace all those rewards cards you have in your wallet.

#38 Five Tips to Get Your Audience’s Attention

With the average person being exposed to 5,000 branded messages every day, how do you get your audience’s attention? Here are five tips you should consider when approaching your next marketing project.

1. Be Experimental. If you continue to do the same thing, you will always get the same results. When you experiment, you can figure out what works and what doesn’t. Always try to test and learn. Check out the case study video on KeyBank’s Cavs Snuggie Night Promotion.
2. Be Your Own Champion. If you can’t get excited about your campaign, why would others? As soon as you complete a project, go online and tell your friends. Use your Email Signature, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or YouTube.
3. Be Quick to React. Traditional media may take a couple weeks to print and distribute. But digital media allows you to implement a new message immediately. Using digital outdoor boards, KeyBank was able to create billboards with custom messages before and after each Cavs game during the 2010 playoffs.
4. Get Attention. Which ads grab your attention when you look through a magazine? If you put your ad in the same magazine, do you think it would catch your attention? Do you think others will stop and look at it?
5. Take Advantage of Loyal Audiences. Convince one person with a loyal following to support you and that center of influence will convince their supporters to follow you. Seth Godin has a great speech about Why Tribes will change the world.

W6M: The best way to get your audience’s attention is to try something new.

#37 Brilliant Move Pepsi

By now you have heard that Pepsi recently became one of the first companies to pull its Super Bowl ad spend and redirect it to social media. Breaking a 23-year tradition, Pepsi instead will invest in a social media campaign called the "Pepsi Refresh Project" to help fund charity projects.

W6M: Whoever suggested that Pepsi not advertising this year would be the best way to make a splash on Superbowl Sunday, should be given a promotion. Seriously, I could only imagine the team that pitched that idea.

AE, "Are you ready for the big presentation today?"

Creative Director, "Oh shoot...that's today?!? Don't worry, I got an idea. Just play along. Instead of spending $50 million to produce and air a spot during the Superbowl, I am going to recommend we take the day off."

Well, they bought it. And strategically with all major brands fighting over a few seconds during the game, Pepsi seems to be a winner owning the media two weeks prior to the event.

#36 Google QR Codes

According the NY Times, in the coming weeks, Google plans to send out 100,000 of these stickers, each with their own QR code, to a new demographic of businesses Google is calling “Favorite Places”. These favorites are based on search results from users interacting with local business listings on Google Maps.

W6M: I knew that QR Codes had been around in Asia for years. I am really excited to see what happens when they hit the U.S.

#35 The Fun Theory

Volkswagen believes that the easiest way to change people's behavior for the better is by making it fun to do. They call it The Fun Theory.

W6M: Volkswagen tried something different and almost 2 Million people watched it in 6 days. Impressive. Even more impressive is the fact that they were able to change people's behavior, choosing stairs over escalators. How do you plan to change your audiences' behavior?

#34 Choose Your Own Ending

Digital Buzz: YouTube campaigns are changing and so are the ways you can develop interactivity with video. Since the introduction of video hotlinks we’ve seen more and more “interactive” videos & story telling campaigns emerging. This new campaign called “Choose Your Own Ending” by DropTheWeapons.org is an interactive film that allows you to decide what happens next. You can interact with it, choose what to do and decide how it ends!

W6M: This is a fresh idea that you will start to see more of. If you grew up reading "Choose your own adventure" stories, you are really going to appreciate these. The campaign created by DropTheWeapons.org is outstanding.