Take It Face To Face

As a former Texas Tech Red Raider, I had the unfortunate opportunity to watch Heisman and Championship dreams die in the same night and on national television no less. I had been riding the Red Raider high for 11 weeks until it all came crashing down.

But that is a story for the ESPN message boards and not a marketing blog. However, a topic to discuss is the interesting website put up by Texas Tech University in an effort help promote Heisman hopefuls Graham Harrell and Michael Crabtree.

The You Choose 2008 campaign offers all the information on the two candidates and a few brilliant marketing tactics that should not go unnoticed. Production quality videos produced by Tech outline the candidates’ abilities and talents in a way I have never seen before.

Not only do these videos tackle on a serious campaign, it has just the right amount of humor and creativity that makes an interactive marketing campaign successful. It started with two short videos staring each player which has now grown to over ten.

In light of the recent election, the videos’ themes have taken a more political approach with a series of spoofs on how both candidates have contributed to the success of Tech Football and NCAA BCS challenges.

Though comedic in nature, this site and the videos on it, have a serious goal. Because the Heisman Memorial Trophy is voted on, it is important for a candidate to run a good campaign along while putting up the numbers required.

This brings me to the changes for the future. Thanks to the internet and the strategies that interactive marketing employs, future Heisman Campaigns may be won on the internet as well as the gridiron.

Imagine the ROI associated with a Heisman Marketing site should the candidate win. Not only will he potentially earn millions in the pros, the University will reap the benefits of a Heisman Trophy winner. And even if said candidate doesn’t win, imagine the pub for the University that goes above and beyond to support its athletes. Talk about recruiting.

Facebook is becoming more than a place to track down those people you do not really keep in touch with. Now Facebook wants to take word-of-mouth marketing to a whole new level. Their new approach is to pay for ads that have your profile picture attached to it. It is another way to market your brand preferences. By getting Facebook users to recommend products to friends, they are narrowing down their targeted audiences.

Not only does Facebook allow you to post your interests on your personal profile, but now whenever you make a purchase or a rental, it will ask you if you would like to attach your picture to the brand or type of product that you just ordered. They will basically try to partner with companies and keep up with the activity of Facebook users on those sites. Facebook is not giving the information to marketers and they are just letting it roll.

It is true that nothing means more than when it comes from a friend. This is the easiest, and smartest way to market a brand and to easily target those that will most likely be interested in the same things. By accompanying the ads with friends’ comments, this takes away a largely commercial feel from the Facebook site as well. This concept is social marketing at work.

However, is this really what we want our future to look like? I mean yeah, marketers will be getting a gain out of it and your friends will be able to see what you are interested in. But it could turn your face and comment into an advertisement. Like most social network dealings, you must be careful what information you have made available about yourself and who you offer it to. You could become a “brand ambassador.”

This sounds like an effective marketing idea, but will it really hold out this way without marketers eventually getting involved?

As we look back on THE most historic election race the world has ever seen, it creates a need deep inside me to ask how each candidate won or lost an election. On the heels of economic meltdown and a war that seems endless, Barack Obama rode in to save the day on a horse he calls interactive marketing.
Reaching out to America’s youth through text messaging, email blasting, social networking sites (Facebook) and others, Obama created a benchmarked campaign on how to win. The simple answer is, put yourself out there any way possible and if you can control the message, great. If not, don’t worry about it.
This election was not won on the back of trains, at town hall meetings or political rallies, it was won in cyberspace. Through vehicles like YouTube and Facebook, Obama captured the heartbeat of a nation and aggressively sent the young voters to the polls. Every presidential candidate has struggled with the same question, how do we get these kids to the polls?
Obama’s answer: make it cool. It was that simple: connect to the youth of a nation by entering their world. With all the work in advertising shifting to interactive marketing, political candidates will now turn to this for salvation. And the beauty of interactive marketing is that it not only connects with a growing demographic, but connects to older generations taking advantage technology.
Now we all know that controlling the message is crucial to a successful campaign but, in this day and age, it is also important to let the message grow some legs of its own. Most of us know of Obama Girl, and though she probably doesn’t offer much to foreign policy, she did get the attention of a country.

It’s viral marketing campaigns and user generated material that sent him straight to the White House. Heck, he even had an iPhone Web App. Interactive marketing took down the Clinton Machine which was once thought of as an impenetrable force.
The most interesting point of all is, though Obama raised record campaign funds, his viral campaign came at nearly no cost to the Obama camp. Now that is what I call ROI…

MGM is coming out with full-length movies that you can watch online also, but at the small price of small advertising interruptions throughout the film. With all of those quasi-legal online options out there, who knows if this idea is going to catch on fire. However, for all of those strict law abiders, this could be the best option. People could feel more comfortable knowing that they are watching something that is fully supported by the law.

Going out to rent movies from the store is almost a forgotten activity. With sites like Watch-Movies.net out there, people have become used to signing onto their computers and watching movies online. Although sites like that are not legal in the United States, it still provides a free opportunity to watch full-length movies with no interruptions.

Netflix had a similar approach to the online movie world. As a customer, paying $20 a month for rentals, you can get free streaming movies online. This “value add” approach has worked for many and even trumped Blockbuster’s similar attempt. They even sell a set top box for your TV that connects to the Internet so that you can watch all of those same movies on your TV set instead of a computer. So for only $100 you can watch streaming video on your television.

Would you be more likely to watch full-length movies online if you knew that the movie companies were still making money?

A couple of colleagues around the office and I have been kicking around the idea of putting up “How To” articles. For the most part these will tackle small but important marketing and public relation steps you can implement quickly and easily. The majority of these will be short and easy to follow with a problem, a handful of steps, and the desired outcome.

This article is to help you generate better results from your website. If you built your website yourself, or if you’ve had an outside company (that wasn’t us) build it - this will provide a good litmus test as far as the ease of use on your website.

Step 1: Call or email a number of friends, and if possible, friends of friends - people unrelated to your business. Ask for their email addresses, and tell them you’ll be sending them a request for a small favor later in the day. Try to get at least 10 or 15 participants, but the more the better.

Step 2: Create a list of results you want from visitors to your site. Whether it be to gather information, buy a product, register for a newsletter or mailing list, etc. Try not to select generic results, no “call us for more information” and no simple task that don;t benefit your business. i.e. find our address, see our press release, etc.

Step 3: Select the most important 3 results your site can produce. Let’s assume your company sells tree saplings. The three most important steps may b (in order) 1. Buy a sapling, 2. Sign up for the ‘Plant A Tree’ Project newsletter, 3. Request more information on a sapling through an online form.

Step 4: Send an email to all those you collected before asking the following: Dear Friends, we would like to test some aspects of our website and hope you’ll take a few minutes to complete this favor. Please go to our website www.SaplingHut.com (just an example) and try to do the following; (Here list the top 3 results we went over in step 3.) Please let us know if any of the task are difficult to accomplish, or if you had to abandon any of them all together. We would also appreciate any feedback you can provide about how easy it was to accomplish each task.

Step 5: Await the responses. Not everyone will perform our little exercise, but you should get some valuable information from the responses that do come forth. If anyone had a hard time using the site, or accomplishing any of the task, then your website could probably use some work. If everyone accomplishes the task easily, then pat yourself on the back for a site well done.

Step 6 (If needed:) If there was trouble achieving the results you desire with your test subjects, then you’re going to want to tweak, or fully redesign your site because it isn’t working for you. The most important part of any site is the results it provides for you.

Bonus! Step 7: If you perform this test and get less-than-stellar results, let us know. We’re happy to provide some free pointers to help your site, and should you need it we’re able to redesign it in a way the gets results. We’ll guarantee that!

If you’d like more information on any of our services, feel free to email me, or any of the FaceTime Team.