While I am never one to say image is everything… It is important. An image frames what your customers think of you and more importantly it frames what you think of yourself.
A little known fact about me was I served in the United States Navy (beat Army). While in the Navy I learned the value of ‘looking the part’. You wore a uniform that said what you would do. That is not to say if you were in a particular uniform you wouldn’t do what was asked of you, but you know what you were going to do by what you were wearing.
Marketing and PR is no different, if a firm wants to create a certain feel in the company culture it should take a look at the face it puts forward to clients. We at FaceTime have been going through a bit of re-branding trying to figure out what we wanted to present as our face.
We are planning to launch our new website with all of our new collateral in the near future but I wanted to put out a blog post to gauge what people thought. Not only do we have a new company logo but our site will be changing soon. But I wanted to start with the blog.
Any company’s blog is a great place to launch a rebranding campaign. It is a direct link to the people you are trying to reach and it allows for them to comment back on the changes you have made. I am hoping to gauge a bit of what the public thinks about our new look before we launch the official site.
Have any of you out there launched a rebranding campaign and started with a blog? What do you think of our new look compared to our older (scarier) one? Let me know.
I was reading Duct Tape Marketing this morning and I ran across a great article on how business can use Facebook as a professional tool. The article is of great interest to me because it only mentions marketing, as in look at my goods/service, in the last section of the list.
I go to plenty of client meetings who see social media as a tool for cheap or free marketing. I have to remind them that social media, for marketing purposes, takes a great deal of time and effort (neither of which are free). John’s list is great because it shows clients the value add of using social media.One of the great functions of social media is that every day usage turns into your marketing and public relations.
I have a mantra when it comes to marketing with social media, “turn your actions into your voice.” The idea is simple every day you do things that help promote you or your brand. By integrating social media tools into your work day you can help promote yourself by doing your everyday work. Blogging about meetings, asking twitter friends for advice on proposals, posting slide shows through slideshare, heck even creating a Pandora station for your office are all great ways to use social media as tool to promote your brand.
Social media fails when clients see it as an end all to their marketing needs. Social media should be an aspect of almost any modern day marketing plan, but it should never be the whole plan. The old stand-bys of marketing still have immense value and should not be ignored because a client thinks social media is trendy.
Have you had examples of clients trying to push social media projects because it is the new thing to do? How have you dissuaded them or persuaded them to seek other PR/Marketing options? Let me know.
As soon as I read this I realized how this applies to far more than just baseball. For those of you who don’t know, Jericho Scott (pictured left) was told he was too good for his little league team and was therefore not allowed to play. You can read more on it at
ESPN,
MLB,
Deadspin and many
others.
The best people in big companies often run into situations similar to this. They come in with new ideas, ways to make the company operate leaner, take advantage of new and exciting trends in technology or media, along with other outside the company “
box” ideas. And then they get slammed into the corporate grinder - bosses feel threatened by new ideas that aren’t theres and rather then join the team and build on the idea and it’s potential they choose not to play, much like Jericho’s peers in little league. They pack up and forfeit muttering excuses at the water cooler.
There should never be a case of someone being too good. Perfection is a goal we should all strive to achieve. And rather then become embarrassed and disappointed about someone being so good - raise your own personal bar and use it as motivation to better yourself, your department, your team and your company. Competition breeds excellence and collaboration breeds innovation.
When you have the right people (remember,
Who First?) and the right amount of the above you can create incredible results! Don’t encourage mediocrity - everyone should strive to be the best they can be. Use the talents of some to complement and leverage the talents and ideas of other. A competitive team atmosphere is certainly a way to spur success.
Have you, or someone you known, ever been stuck in Jericho’s situation in their company?
I like everyone else in the social media world loves twitter. I use it daily to communicate with friends, find out about my business and just keep up on gossip. I tend to write more personal stuff than business stuff and I have a decent number of followers. Not like some of those crazy people with thousands upon thousands of followers.
This makes me wonder about the professional stuff I put out on twitter. To a certain degree many of the pr/marketing types out there are spamming twitter with links and professional information. On one hand you can say that if a person doesn’t want to follow a pr/marketing pro they don’t have to, but on the other hand it makes me wonder if when I put professional stuff out on twitter does it devalue my online presence.
I have begun to wonder if pr/marketing people need to put a label on their twitter handle. Something along the lines of “I will spam you every now and then,” or “read my stuff.” I certainly don’t fell what I write, or what I twitter, is spam but I am certain there are people who join twitter just to send out professional information.
As a professional I find twitter an amazing tool for connecting to people who share similar ideas. As a fan of social media I find twitter to be a fun tool for staying on top of my friends lives. Finding the perfect balance seems to be a problem. I feel that if I were to start a second twitter account I would be setting up a false persona.
I am confident that the people who follow me on twitter don’t think I am spamming them, but sometimes I worry. Do you feel that you spam or get spammed too much on twitter? Have you ever stopped following someone because you felt their tweets were too spammy? Let me know
I am a huge fan of video games. I grew up playing my Atari 2600 and have played video games for the bulk of my life. I currently live and die by my Playstation 3. Always looking to combine my professional and personal life, I came across a great blog post about advertising in video games.
In case you didn’t know modern day video games are rife with in game advertising. Everything from TV shows to watches to energy drinks can be advertised by sponsorship or in game ads. I was reading some blogs and I came across a great post by Matt Story talking about how advertisers can do more than just product placement to make their advertising standout.
Matt suggests the following things:
Take Advantage of the Experience around the game
Most game launches are bigger than movie launches. A great example of this was the midnight Slushies from 7-11 when Halo 3 launched. 7-11 was able to tie in their product with the massive marketing that Microsoft was planning.
Provide valuable game goodies
When Tiger Woods 08 launched last year Target ran a promotion where you received a free downloadable golf course if you purchased the game at a Target store. Not only did Target get continuing advertisement in side the game, but they also increased sales by giving the gamer a real incentive to purchase at Target.
Take the Game out of the Game
Matt uses the example of World of Warcraft partnering with Toyota to in a joint advertising campaign. Both companies benefited form the shared brand equity and cross promotion.
The Playstation 3 is set to launch a new level of social interaction with its new social application called Home. Home will be a social network geared towards linking gamers around the world. This service will be paid for by advertisements and create a totally unique marketing opportunity for companies.
The real question is are companies ready to make that leap into social advertising? No one wants to be the first to try something. Now Sony is a powerhouse the Playstation has a huge brand, but will it be enough. Do you think Sony can make Home a profitable endeavor for advertisers? Do you think Home might go the way of Second Life? Let me know.
