somersault

Jim Gilmartin, president of Chicago-based Coming of Age, Inc.: Interactive Baby Boomer & Senior Marketing, offers quotes from advertising “wizard” and “father of advertising” David Ogilvy who died in 1999:

·         “I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information. When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting you buy the product.”

·         “You aren’t advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade.”

·         “Specifics work better than generalities. When research reported that the average shopper thought Sears Roebuck made a profit of 37% on sales, I headlined an advertisement ‘Sears makes a profit of 5%.’ This specific was more persuasive than saying that Sears’ profit was ‘less than you might suppose’ or something equally vague.”

·         “What is a good advertisement? An advertisement which pleases you because of its style or an advertisement which sells the most? They are seldom the same.”

·         “There have always been noisy lunatics on the fringes of the advertising business. Their stock-in-trade includes ethnic humor, eccentric art direction, contempt for research, and their self-proclaimed genius. They are seldom found out, because they gravitate to the kind of clients who, bamboozled by their rhetoric, do not hold them responsible for sales results.”

·         “Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science, and in business. But your conscious has to be well informed or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process. You can help this process by going for a long walk, or taking a hot bath, or drinking half a pint of claret.”

·         “Repeat your winners. If you are lucky enough to write a good advertisement, repeat it until it stops selling. Scores of good advertisements have been discarded before they lost their potency.”

·         “Don’t keep a dog and bark yourself. Any fool can write a bad advertisement, but it takes a genius to keep his hands off a good one.”

·         “When people read your copy, they are alone. Pretend you are writing each of them a letter on behalf of your client. One human being to another, second person singular.”

·         “The best way to improve the sale of a product is to improve the product.”

·         “They (general advertisers) worship at the altar of creativity, which really means originality — the most dangerous word in the lexicon of advertising.”

·         “When you advertise fire-extinguishers, open with fire.”

Read this in full.

Also see our blogpost, “The Advertising Mind of David Ogilvy.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you advertise effectively to your target market.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard for publishing and marketing professionals.

The above Infographic (enlarge it) is by Marketo (@marketo).

According to this article on All Twitter (@alltwtr), inbound marketing is the concept of “capturing the attention of prospects and helping them find your brand (or products) before they're ready to buy. This can be done in a variety of ways, but search, content marketing, and, increasingly, social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, are found to be the most effective.”

The approach differs from traditional marketing in that the campaign makes it easier for leads to find the brand, as opposed to the other way around.

A successful inbound marketing strategy will usually implement the following:

1. The creation of a central theme to anchor efforts each month

2. The creation of 2-3 small pieces of content around said theme

3. Regular updates on social media channels to get the word out about this content

4. The production of one major piece of content to support the theme

5. Blogging

6. Analysis and optimization

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you plan and execute effective inbound marketing strategy for your brand.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

Chairman of Thomas Nelson Publishers (@ThomasNelson), Michael Hyatt’s (@MichaelHyatt) new book is Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World (#PlatformBook). It offers practical advice for anyone who wants to effectively communicate any kind of a message in today’s media-saturated world.

He says properly building a platform for your brand (either you or an entity you represent) provides visibility (elevation above the crowd), amplification (extend your reach to people who want to hear you), and connection (engage people with relevant and valuable information).

Hyatt maintains an active blog and Twitter stream. He says it took him 4 years to attract more than 1,000 readers a month, but today he has more than 300,000 visitors (and 130,000 Twitter followers). Read his post, “4 Insights I Gleaned from Building My Own Platform.”

Hyatt also conducted a teleseminar for Platform. You can hear it here.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically and effectively build your platform.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

In a column for BBC Business (@BBCBusiness), Coca-Cola (@CocaCola) CEO Muhtar Kent cites 5 global mega-trends from a Consumer Goods Forum report on the "Future Value Chain," and stresses how fundamentally important they are to the future of retail and consumer goods.

2020 Future Value Chain Webcast Presentation

1.    Mass Urbanization. The proportion of people living in cities has now surpassed 50% worldwide, and should reach 70% by 2050, necessitating new supply chain and logistical models.

2.    We're Getting Older. By 2047, the number of individuals over 60 years of age will be higher than those under 15 years of age, a shift presenting substantial possibilities for suitably adaptive organizations.

3.    The Middle Class Cometh. The world is experiencing the greatest economic shift in history as the global middle class grows by another billion people in the next 10 years. By 2030, over 90% of this audience are set to reside in emerging nations, compared with 50% today.

4.    Consumers in the Driving Seat. Evolving technologies are transforming customers’ expectations and ability to influence companies. By 2013, for example, there will be 2 billion mobile users, while a third of purchases are due to be completed online by 2020. Among the requirements on companies will be finding the right channels through which to converse with shoppers, alongside leveraging big data and embracing collaboration.

5.    What About the Planet? Sustainability will assume heightened importance. By 2030, the global population should hit 8.3 billion, while the demand for food and energy is anticipated to leap by 50%, an acceleration standing at 30% for fresh water.

Read this in full.

Coca-Cola also shares it’s branding vision:

How do the above mega-trends impact your publishing plans? Write your comments below.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you identify and maximize trends impacting your brand’s message.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

The above video demonstrates the value of a company taking a consumer’s question seriously and answering it honestly. A consumer asked McDonald’s (@McDonalds), “Why does your food look different in the advertising than what is in the store?”

The hamburger chain responded with a behind-the-scenes tour of a McDonald's Canada photo shoot showing how Watt International (@Wattisretail) preps a Quarter Pounder to look edible for ads. In 3 days, the 3½ minute viral video had 3.5 million views.

Lesson? Answer your customers’ questions with transparency and it will contribute to your brand’s positive reputation.

Also see our previous blogpost, “The 3 Qualities That Make A YouTube Video Go Viral.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategize public relations and produce videos that effectively communicate your brand’s message to your target audience.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

In Forbes (@Forbes), Jacquelyn Smith (@JacquelynVSmith) writes, “We live in a world where word-of-mouth is the No. 1 driver of sales and competitive advantage — and because there’s a strong correlation between a company’s reputation and consumers’ willingness to recommend it, businesses need to focus on building those strong bonds with stakeholders. Companies should of course strive to earn the trust and esteem of consumers in its native land, but given that a multinational gets a majority of its revenue from international markets, it really needs to be liked everywhere else, too.”

A newly released global reputation study of more than 100,000 consumers shows that who you are as a company is more important than what you produce, with BMW, SONY, and Disney topping the list of the most reputable companies.

The third annual Global RepTrak™ 100, by reputation consultancy firm Reputation Institute (@Reputation_Inst), identifies how stakeholders perceive companies and how those perceptions affect purchasing behavior.

The companies with the 10 best global reputations are:

1.    BMW

2.    Sony

3.    Walt Disney Company

4.    Daimler

5.    Apple

6.    Google

7.    Microsoft

8.    Volkswagen

9.    Canon

10. LEGO

Each company earned a “Global RepTrak Pulse” score of zero to 100, representing an average measure of people’s feelings for it. The scores were statistically derived from calculations of 4 emotional indicators: trust, esteem, admiration, and good feeling.

Reputation Institute also analyzed what it calls the 7 dimensions of corporate reputation. That’s where it found that perceptions of the enterprise (workplace, governance, citizenship, financial performance, and leadership) trumps product perceptions (products and services plus innovation) in driving behaviors.

Read this in full.

Read the news release (pdf).

Also see our previous blogpost about the value of brand reputation, “Ford Gets Its Logo Back.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you manage your brand’s reputation.

Be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard, especially the Marketing/PR tab.

Traditionally, the metric used to assess return-on-investment for public relations efforts has been Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE), defined by Marketing Metrics Made Simple (MMMS) as “what your editorial coverage would cost if it were advertising space (or time).”

To calculate the AVE for one month, measure the space (column inches) occupied by a clip (for radio and television coverage, you measure time). Then multiply the column inches (time) by the ad rate for that page (time slot).

After you do the same for every clip for that month, add up the costs to get a total cost. The total cost is the cost of the ads that theoretically could have occupied the space (time) occupied by all your editorial coverage for that month.

However, MMMS explains how AVE numbers might be an inaccurate tool:

Consider that a highly positive article can be worth much more than a single advertisement in the same space. That's because readers consciously or unconsciously think of an advertisement as an instance of a company boasting about itself (and paying dearly for the privilege of doing so), and an article as an implied endorsement by a presumably objective and knowledgeable third party (the editor who approved the copy on that page). So, from this perspective, AVE underestimates the value of editorial.

...Generally speaking, advertising tends to command attention and create awareness. Publicity tends to build credibility. Normally you need both.

In an attempt to more precisely gauge a PR campaign’s influence on the decision-making steps of a consumer (awareness, knowledge, consideration, preference, action), the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (@AmecOrg) (#Amec2012) has produced The Barcelona Declaration of Measurement Principles:

1. Importance of goal setting and measurement

2. Measuring the effect on outcomes is preferred to measuring outputs

3. The effect on business results can and should be measured where possible

4. Media measurement requires quantity and quality

5. AVEs are not the value of public relations

6. Social media can and should be measured

7. Transparency and replicability are paramount to sound measurement.

Public Relations is a broad discipline that requires multiple metrics tied to well-defined objectives. These guidelines provide many alternatives to AVEs and are intended to help practitioners identify a palette of Valid Metrics that will deliver meaningful measurement to reflect the full contribution of Public Relations.

Above are slides explaining the Barcelona Principles measurement activity and effect in each of the following PR areas:

·         Brand/product marketing

·         Reputation building

·         Issues advocacy & support

·         Employee engagement

·         Investor relations

·         Crisis and issues management

·         Public education / not-for-profit

·         Social / community engagement.

Read the presentation in full (pdf).

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you plan and execute the right integrated public relations communications strategy for your brand.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

Marketers should make an effort to understand and cultivate so-called brand advocates as social media becomes more prominent. According to a Zuberance (@Zuberance) study, half of brand advocates make a recommendation online because of a good experience with a product or service. The second most prominent motivation for brand advocates: they want to help friends make better purchase decisions.

Though brand advocates are formally defined as making one recommendation a year, without pay – the highest percentage of them (38%) do so 5 to 9 times a year, with 16% making 10 to 15 recommendations and 16% making 15 or more. Other findings:

·         Brand Advocates are even more active than previously thought.

·         Brand Advocates have even larger social networks than previous studies showed.

·         Brand Advocates’ recommendations aren’t limited to consumer brands and products.

See the recorded webinar.

Also see our previous blogpost, “Consumer Trust in Online, Social, & Mobile Advertising Grows.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you identify and reach your brand advocates.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

Who says branding isn’t valuable? Yesterday, Ford reacquired its logo. Back in 2006, when other automakers in financial distress accepted government bailouts, Ford Motor Company pledged its assets as collateral – including its historic Ford blue oval logo – in a loan agreement with banks. The New York Times says:

Ford put up its logo, headquarters, factories and other assets to qualify for $23.5 billion in loans that helped it survive the recession without needing a government bailout like General Motors and Chrysler.

Read the Ford news release.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek offers a brief history of the logo:

The carmaker’s emblem first appeared in 1927 on the nose of Henry Ford’s new Model A. The cursive script inside it dates to at least 1906, when it appeared on the radiator of the Model N and later on the more famous Model T, according to automotive historian John Wolkonowicz. It was trademarked in 1909, the company says.

The script logo is not, as often thought, based on the founder’s signature. Rather, it was created by Childe Harold Wills, a draftsman for Henry Ford. “The font was similar enough to Henry’s own signature that it looked as if he was signing every car,” says Bob Casey, senior curator of transportation at the Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, Mich. “But that was more happy coincidence than by design.”

So what’s a logo worth as a guarantee for a multi-billion dollar loan? Ford hasn't placed a value on the trustmark. But Interbrand (@Interbrand), which tracks brand values, says the Ford brand is worth $7.5 billion, and it ranked Ford 50th out of its top 100 brands in a recent survey.

What are you doing to add value to your brand?

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strengthen and effectively communicate your brand’s message.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

An article on Marketing Charts (@marketingcharts) says QR Code scans by consumers were up 157% in Q1 2012 over Q1 2011, according to a report by Scanlife (@ScanLife), the mobile barcode solution provider.

Read this in full.

That’s good news for the town of Monmouth (Wikipedia entry) in Wales (pop. 8,877) which recently embarked on the "Monmouthpedia" (@Monmouthpedia) project — a community-wide 6-month project to affix QR codes to all its landmarks, organizations, and even people, and write Wikipedia entries on each of them, which the codes link to. Adweek (@Adweek) says:

The idea came from a TEDx talk in Bristol, where a Wikipedia editor suggested that Wikimedia's UK chapter should "do a whole town" using QR codes. Residents and businesses in Monmouth stepped up, did all the legwork (there are more than 1,000 QR codes in total), and introduced Monmouthpedia this weekend.

A Wikimedia blog entry says:

Lest you think this is a passing interest, the town of Monmouth is in it for the long haul. Many of the QRpedia codes are printed on ceramic plaques that should last for decades. The information in articles is backed by the Wikipedia community and will be continually improved and expanded. Physical guides and maps will become outdated, but the Wikipedia articles will always be able to be updated. This potential for on-site access to up-to-date information in any language is what makes the Monmouthpedia model so exciting.

A simple concept and coordinated effort put this Welsh community on the social media map. Does this spark any dreams you may have for your own brand?

Read the Wikimedia blog entry in full.

Read the Adweek article in full.

Read coverage by psfk (@psfk), by Amanda Kooser (@akooser) for cnet, and by Joseph Volpe (@jrvolpe) for engadget.

Also see our previous blogpost, "Small Swiss Village Hits it Big with Facebook Fans."

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategize unique promotions for your brand.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.