The Doritos ad with the boy slapping his mother’s date was the most memorable during the first half. It was simple, witty, and effective.
While Anheuser-Busch had several good ads for Bud Light and the human bridge for Budweiser beer, I think the Doritos commercial had more stickiness and will stand the test of time.
I’d be curious to hear other thoughts. Do you disagree? Was there a better commercial?
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Toyota is facing a major recall crisis. The Prius is the latest Toyota model to experience design flaws. Unlike the faulty accelerator pedal being recalled in several Toyota models in the United States, the Prius is being recalled for faulty brakes in other parts of the world.
Toyota has been somewhat nonchalant about these recalls. In a press conference today (shown in the video to the right), Toyota’s managing officer is almost denying that there is a problem with the faulty brakes. “If you don’t press harder on the brake, the distance taken to stop will increase… It is a natural human response to push the brake more, if it doesn’t respond. So I don’t believe that this will lead to an extension of the stopping distance.”
With over 4 million vehicles recalled globally, Toyota is compounding the situation by making excuses and trying to cover up the problems. Instead, Toyota could have handled this unfortunate situation in a much more professional manner. If Toyota had been upfront and honest with the public, I don’t think people would be reacting so emotionally. They should have immediately stepped forward and offered a rebate or some type of compensation to their stranded and loyal customers. They could have done a better job of damage control and stopped the bleeding much sooner.
The lesson for Toyota is that social media has a powerful voice. If you fail to respond quickly to a massive issue – such as this – you will face severe brand degradation. While Toyota is the world’s car manufacturer, it’ll be interesting to see how they restore faith in many of their customers. Any enraged Toyota owners out there?
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We were curious what it would be like if Apple entered the Super Bowl frenzy with all the buzz over iPad. It might be the peak time for Steve Jobs to keep riding the wave. Since the actual reveal of the iPad was somewhat anti-climatic, could Apple create more buzz with a 30 second spot in the Super Bowl? After all, there is already a ton of controversy with Tim Tebow and ManCrunch. Should Apple buy a $2.5 million spot for iPad?
What do you think? If you were the creative director in charge of Apple’s 30 second commercial for iPad, what would you do? We want to hear from you…
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Ever wanted more control over your Google searches? Perhaps filter and highlight relevant information from your network of friends, family, colleagues, and online contacts. Basically, have the ability to filter out a lot of the noise and take advantage of the knowledge of your network. I sure do. Well, this new beta release of Google Social Search is intended to do just that.
By releasing the facilities to enable social networking search, Google is adding more purpose to all of the various social communities being created online. You can quickly setup a profile and link social content. Let’s say you’re in the market for a new Gibson Les Paul guitar. Traditionally, you may go to Google and do a random search for “Gibson Les Paul” guitars (or some variation). You may get results from Gibson, Guitar Center, eBay, Craigslist, and many other distributors. Ok, that’s great… but wouldn’t it be cool to instantly search your network of musical friends who may have some personal insight or photos uploaded right from the Google search results page? You could interact with your contacts directly to answer basic questions that they may have already experienced. See for yourself at google.com/profiles
While this is an early release, certainly there is a lot of future potential… especially as more people embrace the various social networking tools. It allows integration with blogs, Picasa, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, etc. I just gave it a test drive… pretty slick. The video to the right gives a nice brief overview.
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Steve Jobs has just announced the introduction of the much anticipated Apple iPad for only $499! While it had been dubbed the tablet for a while, it has officially been named the iPad. I have been following along on gdgt’s live coverage.
Here are some features:
At a glance this device appears to be an overgrown iPhone. I should admit, I am a huge fan of the iPhone, I like its portability and slick design. I also like my laptop for what it does. Do I really need a new “netbook” device to combine the best of both features? It seems to be eerily similar to the infamous Chevey El Camino – that mutant-like hybrid of a car and truck that some people had the nerve to buy. Let’s be honest, the back had enough space to fit a 30 pound bag of dog food.
I don’t know that I would consider the iPad a replacement for either device. Instead, it appears to be forging a new market. A market catered to gamers, scholars, and hobbyist. It is a device which allows reading of books, textbooks and changing of fonts, etc. It seems to be in direct competition with Amazon’s Kindle device. Although it has a lot more to offer – and a much more robust interface. While the market has been somewhat slow to embrace the Kindle, we’ll see if things speed up now that Apple has entered the game.
I’m curious to see how the market will respond to this device. Would you buy one?
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Successful email marketing incorporates a combination of strategies. I’ve condensed a long list to what I would consider the top five best practices
Compelling content
Effective email strategy starts with intriguing content. Don’t just send emails preaching about how great your company is. In order to captivate the attention of your readers, you first need to fully understand your audience. It’s a good idea to do some research and identify topics that will be of particular interest and timely. Share your knowledge of the industry or a unique perspective on an important subject. Continually mix up your creative messages and styles. Feel free to use a rotation of different templates to give your newsletter a fresh look.
Segment your audience
It takes a lot more time and preparation, but segmenting your list of recipients allows you to speak directly to your customers and prospects. You’ll be able to clearly identify common business problems and cover topics that truly captivate you audience. The key is planning, organization, and testing.
Delivery dates
You can significantly increase the effectiveness of your newsletter by determining the best day of the week and time to send. Know your audience. For many businesses, Tuesday or Wednesday are the best days to deliver. Mondays can be hectic and Fridays can be busy or people may be rushing to cut out early. Know your audience and more importantly know their schedules. This will help you to determine which day they will be most inclined to open and read your e-newsletters.
Maintain lists and keep them updated
e-Newsletters can only be effective if your customers and prospects actually receive them. In today’s economy, turnover rates can be high. Periodically confirm that you have the correct information – more importantly, make sure you have the most appropriate contact person on your list. If an assistant is receiving the information, there’s a good chance, it’s getting filtered into the trash bin. Also, clean out undeliverable addresses and respect those who unsubscribe.
Optimize landing pages
As your email links back to your website, take the time to optimize the landing pages and highlight the information that you want them to see. Take full advantage of the qualified traffic you are generating. Highlight upcoming events, new product releases, and other relevant announcements.
While there are many strategies which can improve the effectiveness of email newsletter campaigns, I have taken excerpts from our white paper which discusses in-depth best practices to boost revenue. We encourage you to share your success stories or challenges with email marketing.
For many small businesses, measuring the return on investment (ROI) for social media is a mystery. While some of these businesses actively engage in blogging, tweeting, and perhaps even Facebook, they have no idea on how to gauge the effectiveness of their efforts. The remaining businesses that have not entered the social media frenzy are hesitant to get started because they too are looking for an accurate method of determining the ROI or impact of their social campaigns.
Since this has been a burning question for many small businesses, I’d like to share my thoughts. For starters, let’s take a quick look at measuring ROI for a traditional marketing vehicle – direct mail. The first step is to determine the goal of the campaign. Are you trying to create awareness, generate leads, close sales, or drive traffic to your website? Once you have decided on your goal, establish an attainable benchmark and track responses against that baseline. For example, let’s say you are anticipating a 2% response to your campaign. It’s good practice to direct your recipients to respond to a unique URL or web address. Since this page is not part of your standard web traffic, you can easily determine the number of people that initially reply to your mail piece. Furthermore, if you have an offer, you can have them submit some basic information to access a whitepaper or other incentive. This will further screen your qualified leads and allow you to monetize the results of your campaign. From this point, you should have some metrics that determine your conversion rate – from interested prospect into valued customer. The most accurate ROI calculation takes into account a customer’s lifetime value, or the amount of sales generated by that customer over time.
So if measuring the results of traditional marketing is so tangible, why is social media different? The answer, it’s not. Many of the same principles of conventional marketing analysis holds true for social media campaigns. For example, let’s say you want to start a company blog. Unlike the options for traditional marketing, your goal should be to share, educate, and create awareness. In other words, you post information that is timely and of interest to your customers and prospects. You do this in a non-invasive manner to attract potential customers. You can create awareness and drive traffic to your blog with an e-newsletter and direct mail, but additionally you want people to seek you out and subscribe to your content on their own.
This brings us back to measuring the effectiveness of your blog (or Facebook page or Twitter account). There are many tools available such as Google Analytics which can generate a number of meaningful reports. You definitely want to monitor the traffic of your blog over time. This will help determine trends and most appealing topics. Again, without a clear benchmark, you won’t be able to accurately determine your ROI. Set realistic goals… perhaps set out to obtain 2 new subscribers to your blog in the first month, 5 in the second month, 10 in the third, etc. I won’t get into how to attract new subscribers in this article – but rather stay focused on the success-rate of the initiatives.
Using a combination of website traffic statistics, new subscriptions, and specific page views, can help you determine where to focus your energy – and the effectiveness of your social media campaign. Unlike a single direct mail campaign social media is an ongoing campaign. It takes time, knowledge, and patience to get it right. Over time, you can build long-term relationships and interact with customers and prospects in a friendly manageable format. With the proper tools in place, you can accurately determine the ROI of your social media efforts.
Don’t be discouraged. We can help.
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I thought this was an interesting article detailing how a small bag manufacture in Seattle – Tom Bihn – was able to leverage social media outlets to connect with fans and customers.
Darcy Gray is a VP at Tom Bihn.
Gray manages the Tom Bihn Facebook fan page, forums, blogs, Flickr and Twitter. She said updating them is a lot of fun and works on them whenever she checks her iPhone… She said engaging directly with customers began with the TomBihn.com forums.
“In 2006, it occurred to us that our customers and potential customers could get significant value from talking with each other as opposed to just with us. They could share their experiences of their Tom Bihn bags, offer advice for selecting the right bag to new customers, and post reviews/pictures of their experiences with their bags,” she said.
She said the company’s success on social media starts with their bags and that social media tools have given them more powerful ways to connect.
“Anytime a company is given more ways to directly communicate with customers, it’s an opportunity for growth. Tom Bihn designs all of our bags himself. Interest in a particular type of bag might encourage him in a certain direction,” Gray said.
By using a combination of blogging and interaction with their communities on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr, Tom Bihn has been able to build a sustainable business.
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After millions of people scrambled to get a Twitter account activated, they later asked themselves – ok, what’s next? While the underlying concept behind Twitter is interesting – stay connected with brief snippets, the software is still in its infancy. There are several companies trying to add more functionality and purpose to this infrastructure.
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In times of disaster, fundraising can be a tedious and time consuming task. Fortunately, social media technology is paving the way to instantly send relief money. There’s no better example of this powerful fundraising job than the American Red Cross’ texting campaign. By allowing anyone to text “HAITI” to 90999, they have been able to raise over $30 million in just a few days. My wife and I were quick to donate using this system as soon as we heard about it. It’s easy and instantly rewarding. While this is an impressive amount of money, it’s still a fraction of the amount needed to help rebuild Haiti.
Texting money for charitable purposes is just one of many new trends that I’m sure will be emerging in the near future as online communities continue to grow.
Additionally, my wife has been looking for information on how to adopt orphans from Haiti … if anyone has information, please post.