by Nedra Weinreich | Feb 20, 2007 | Blog, Marketing
While reading this week’s Jewish Journal (the main LA Jewish paper), I was pleasantly surprised to see a sponsored article about health in the classifieds section. Titled “A Doctor’s Word: Health and Wealth are Earned, Not Won,” the article was by Tat S. Lam, MD, who is a family practitioner at Kaiser Permanente here in Southern California.
Upon reading the ad, I realized that it was the result of a poor decision by a media buyer (or an inexperienced marketing person assigned this task). The article would not have been so out of place had it not been so clearly written for a Chinese audience. Sentences like “As the Year of the Boar begins, I wish you good health and prosperity!” and “Talk with your doctor about how to make healthy choices in this New Year” are undoubtedly geared toward those celebrating the Chinese New Year. While Jews are known for liking Chinese food, we had our own New Year back in September, and we definitely do not celebrate a year dedicated to a pig.
The bottom of the article, in tiny print, states, “This advertorial is part of a monthly series for New America Media’s ethnic media partners written by Kaiser Permanente physicians based on their experiences. Sponsored by Kaiser Permanente and produced by the NAM InfoWire.”
I think it’s wonderful that Kaiser is developing health information targeted to the many different ethnic communities that live in the Southland. But to publish these very specific ads for general consumption makes no sense. It’s as if someone at Kaiser said, “We have to show our commitment to diversity. Quick, send these ads out to all the ethnic media!” Not only is it a waste of money, but by not making themselves relevant to readers the first time, they risk having their intended audience tune them out the next time, even if targeted appropriately.
Lumping all “ethnic” media categories together makes as much sense as assuming that all Asian ethnicities can be reached with a one-size-fits-all approach (do Japanese Americans care that it is the Chinese New Year?).
I do applaud Kaiser’s efforts to customize their content for various ethnic communities (even if the 5-point or so font size was so small that half the population cannot read it), but the next part of the equation is to make sure that the ads are placed in appropriate media.
To my Chinese friends, shana tova! Oops, I mean gung hay fat choy!
by Nedra Weinreich | Feb 14, 2007 | Blog, Marketing
My latest post is up at Marketing Profs Daily Fix. What do funny face pancakes and IHOP waitresses have to do with your marketing? It’s all about the face your organization shows in its interactions with the people you are trying to reach.
And for the romantics among you, who like to find inspiration in the little things, here is a Valentines Day treat:
by Nedra Weinreich | Feb 13, 2007 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media
I read a couple of recent posts that I wanted to share that both touch on the idea of influence, but in different ways.
In the first by John Bell, who is currently traveling through Asia for his work with Ogilvy, he shares their very useful model for rating “influence” among bloggers.
The elements include:
- Affiliation of blog writer(s)
- Number of links to the blog
- Number of feed subscriptions
- Search engine results position for relevant keyword searches
- Last update
- Industry mentions/lists of top blogs
- Inclusion in Technorati Blog Directory and other online directories
- Discussion Analysis – true discussion or bantering
In English-language, US-centric content, we can generally start the process of identifying potential candidates via search; usually either Technorati, Google or Google Blogs. Then we can refine down into highly linked sites (“most authority” in Technorati lingo).
According to a digital marketing agency, the list would be quite helpful in identifying appropriate bloggers to include in a PR campaign with a social media component. Any one of the indicators of blogger influence by itself would not necessarily provide a full enough picture of whom to target when you need to narrow down what can be resource-intensive outreach. But combine two or more (or all) of these and you will see the degree of influence become clearer.
I would also add to the list the appearance of the blog on other influential bloggers’ blogrolls beyond links within posts, and the numbers of comments left on other people’s blogs.
They do not include any indicators that measure the amount of traffic to the blog, perhaps for a few reasons: First, the current publicly available ways of measuring traffic (i.e., Alexa) are not entirely reliable, though they can at least give an idea of the scale of traffic (e.g., rank of 1,000,000 vs. 100,000 vs. 1,000). Another reason is that the blogger may be may be influential for a very specific niche of people that is too small to be measured accurately by traffic but still desirable from a particular organization’s point of view. Finally, the number of feed subscribers is a better indicator of loyal and interested readers than the traffic numbers, which can vary wildly based upon the spread of just one post.
The other interesting post on influence was by Chris Sandberg, and touches on the idea of social proof. This is the notion that people judge the value of something based on how they see other people respond (and is the reason behind the use of laugh tracks in sitcoms; when others are laughing, it makes the show seem funnier). Chris shares his experience at a basketball game, where Albertsons grocery store ran a contest only available to people who waved their Albertsons club card around at one point in the game. When people who did not have one saw how many others did have a card, they may have started wondering whether they were missing out on something.
Chris explains the concept’s usefulness in marketing:
Social proof can be a powerful marketing tool. If you can get your customers to vouch for your product (or at least make it look like they are) and find a way to advertise it to your potential customers your job as a marketer becomes a lot easier. People don’t want to feel left out and often look to others when making decisions they are unsure of. By being aware of social proof and taking actions to leverage it you can be there when people are looking around to others when trying make a purchase decision.
To bring this back to the discussion on influential bloggers, social proof plays a big role in how topics are covered in the blogosphere. When one or more influential bloggers writes about a particular news story or issue, that often sets off a flurry of other posts because the topic has been validated as being important. One influential blogger can provide the social proof that an idea or product has merit, paving the way for many others to adopt it as well.
Technorati Tags: blogging, PR
by Nedra Weinreich | Feb 12, 2007 | Blog, Marketing
I’m probably the only marketing person who did not watch the Superbowl – for the ads or otherwise. But I find it interesting to see the aftermath of what by many accounts was a less than stellar line-up of ads. As advertisers tried to go over the top and make an impact, they ended up alienating various contingents of of their viewers.
The GM suicidal robot spot, which was one of the few ads I was intrigued enough about to watch online, ended up being pulled after the company met with representatives of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The group felt the spot was offensive and potentially dangerous:
“The GM ad is insensitive to the tens of millions of people who have lost loved ones to suicide,” said Robert Gebbia, the group’s executive director, in a statement issued on Wednesday. “The ad also suggests a troubling and potentially dangerous message: that suicide is a logical and rational decision should one experience failure or lose their job.”
The Snickers commercial featuring two guys accidentally kissing also got pulled after many complaints, including from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the Matthew Shepard Foundation, that it was homophobic.
Even people in the restaurant industry found something to get upset over, with the “demeaning and offensive” Nationwide Insurance spot that showed Kevin Federline as a fry cook dreaming about being a rap star.
The Mad Scientist over at media brain discussed an article on what brain scans of individuals watching the superbowl ads can tell us about their effectiveness. He says:
The brain scan data indicates that advertisers went over the top on trying to develop edgy, attention grabbing content at the expense of achieving a positive communication effect for the advertised brand. As I tell my students, attention is a necessary but not sufficient condition for an ad to have a positive effect on the target. The FMRI data reported on this year’s superbowl ads indicated that several of the ads evoked very strong response in the Amygdala, an area of the brain responsible for processing threat and anxiety, but very little activity in other areas. Apparently, stimuli that evoke a strong response in the Amygdala are likely to be memorable but the memory is NEGATIVE! Not exactly the best effect for a client who just spent 2.6 million dollars placing a superbowl ad!!! The brand that “wins” the award for demonstrating this negative effect….drum roll please…..Snickers (2 men kissing ad). This ad evoked the strongest Amygdala response in viewers with little other activity in other brain areas.
This sounds about right to me, and I would suspect that the suicidal robot ad also evoked similar brain responses — lots of feelings of threat and anxiety.
Seems like the winners in terms of getting good free publicity from this year’s Superbowl ads were the advocacy groups who put their names in the news by protesting various multi-million dollar ad buys. Watch for this tactic to spread as nonprofits and trade associations scrutinize every commercial for possible offensive content related to their causes. Not a bad strategy, as long as a compelling case can be made; otherwise organizations risk a backlash as “the cause who cried wolf.”
Technorati Tags: superbowl2007, superbowl, advertising, ads, commercials, nonprofits, GM, Snickers, Nationwide
by Nedra Weinreich | Feb 7, 2007 | Blog, Marketing
The Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown LA took a while to grow on me. Frank Gehry’s landmark building at first looks like a jumble of metal cans and boxes haphazardly piled on top of each other. But look at it more closely — both inside and out — and you start to see how the swooping curves mix with the sharp angles to create amazing synergy and negative space. It’s whimsical and functional at the same time. I once sat at a conference in one of the rooms there and tried to sketch the contrasts between the concave and convex curves on the interior but gave up because it was so hard to capture the unique play of light on the surfaces. That was when Disney Hall started to win my heart. [Fun Fact: Last year, they had to sandblast some of the stainless steel surfaces of the exterior because they were so shiny at certain times of day, drivers were being blinded.]
All this is to preface the fact that last night I went to an amazing performance of the Israel Philharmonic at Disney Hall. Each piece was perfect, and I even got weepy at Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture. To add to the experience, a high school friend is the house manager there and he upgraded our expensive but lousy balcony tickets to seats right in the middle of the Orchestra section. It’s nice to have friends in high places.
And, sad but true, as I sat there with the gorgeous music washing over me, I started thinking about how I could relate the experience to marketing for this blog. Perhaps this is one of the 10 signs of blog addiction. In any case, while watching the musicians it all came together for me as an excellent metaphor for how to run an effective social marketing program.
- Nothing happens without a plan. The music score lays out exactly what will happen when the piece is played. Every musician knows what his or her role is, when their part comes on, and how to carry it out. So too, we need a marketing strategy and a workplan for how to implement it.
- Someone needs to take the lead. The conductor sees the big picture, how everything fits together. He keeps things moving and prompts the appropriate parts of the orchestra when it’s their turn to shine. He also gives immediate feedback, adjusting volume and tempo as needed. Similarly, an effective marketing program needs a manager overseeing it and making adjustments as needed along the way.
- Everyone has an important role to play. From the first violin to the guy playing the triangle, each musician adds his unique voice to the performance. Everyone is not playing the same notes at the same time, but the melody, harmony, counterpoints and percussion come together to create an amazing sound. In a social marketing program, we might have many different stakeholders participating in different ways, including our staff, funders, partner organizations, the target audience, secondary audiences that influence them, the media, advocates, etc. Each of them makes a contribution that adds to the effectiveness of the campaign.
- You need to know your audience. The music director of an orchestra must have a good idea of the types of composers and pieces that their audience most enjoys, and makes sure that the programs for each concert includes them. If they veer too far from the type of music the audience wants to listen to, that orchestra will start losing customers. We also need to understand our audience so that the products we offer are what they actually want.
- The audience will tell you how you are doing. For an orchestra, applause is immediate feedback that they are doing their job right and delivering what the audience wants. At the concert last night, the Israel Phil received a standing ovation after each piece and went beyond what they said they would do by performing an encore (which in turn received another 5-minute standing ovation, but sadly, no more encores). Feedback from our audiences (you are soliciting feedback, right?) either reinforces what we are doing so we can go above and beyond to deliver more or tells us that we are hitting some sour notes and need to figure out how to get back on track.
An interesting cap to the evening came on the drive back from Disney Hall, when the downtown weather suddenly changed within one block from a clear starry night to a thick bank of fog that appeared as though on cue from a Hollywood fog machine. This lasted until we passed Westwood, when the wall of fog disappeared and left us with the stars and the hills as if it had never happened.
Photo Credit: DonnaGrayson
Technorati Tags: marketing, disney hall, music, orchestra
by Nedra Weinreich | Jan 31, 2007 | Blog, Marketing
A couple of things converged today that got me thinking about how we — as a society and as marketers — set standards for what is considered acceptable in marketing campaigns.
I got a note from Chris Kieff at MSCO’s Unconventional Thinking pointing to an interesting and lively controversy unfolding on the blog. The company had leased two billboards leading into Manhattan from Clear Channel to promote MSCO CEO Mark Stevens’ book. The billboards simply present the book’s website address: www.YOUR MARKETING SUCKS.com, with no other copy or graphics. Clear Channel approved the billboards, they signed the contract, and they went up with what sounds like a good response from people who want to improve their current marketing situation. Then last week, he got a call from an exec at an affiliate of Berkshire Hathaway, who was irate because he said his 6-year old daughter saw the word “sucks” on the billboard, and threatened that if it was not taken down, they would “feel the full wrath of the Berkshire Hathaway empire.” A couple of days later, one of the offending billboards was covered up without any notice or explanation. When they called Clear Channel, they found out that someone in the New Rochelle Mayor’s office had called in with a complaint about the billboard, so they had pulled it.
While Mark is framing this as primarily a censorship/first amendment/abuse of corporate power issue, I’m more interested in the very important questions this story raises about what the standards should be for the marketing images and words we put out there. How do we balance promoting our messages in an attention-getting (and sometimes intentionally provocative) way with the social norms around what is acceptable and what is offensive? A debate broke out within the comments of the post between those who think there is nothing wrong with using the word “sucks,” despite its sexual origins and rude nature, and those (primarily parents) who are not comfortable with their children being exposed to the word.
The other thing that happened today is the Cartoon Network ad campaign gone very, very wrong in Boston. Traffic came to a halt as police bomb units scrambled around the city to safely detonate and remove 38 electronic circuit boards with some components that were “consistent with an improvised explosive device” left around the city on bridges, highways and subway stations. They turned out to be magnetic lights in the shape of characters from the Adult Swim animated show Aqua Team Hunger Force (appropriately, in view of the chaos they wrought, raising their middle fingers). This is a larger-scale version of the Los Angeles news rack that was blown up by the bomb squad because the device that was rigged to play the Mission Impossible theme song to promote the movie when the door was opened had fallen on top of the pile of newspapers, protruding wires and all.
Ann Handley makes the very good point:
First, market responsibly. In a post 9-11 world, it seems near crazy to tuck blinking packages with wires protruding near major municipal hubs and landmarks. Fenway Park? Sullivan Square MBTA stop? What were they thinking? Last time I went through airport security, they confiscated my 10-year-old’s SpongeBob toothpaste. That’s how crazy the world is, and unfortunately that’s the lens through which municipal leaders view any blinking devices.
There are two aspects of our marketing we need to think about that these examples illustrate – the what and the how:
- What is the content of the images and messages? Is it worth being deliberately provocative — either in words or pictures — to get our audience’s attention? How will people outside of the target audience interpret the copy and images? What might be some of the negative consequences — to our organization or to particular segments of society — that could come from going forward with this campaign?
- How are we going to get the message out there? What could go wrong with the execution? Is there any way that the promotion could be mistaken for something more sinister? Could the promotion have the effect of inconveniencing other people for any reason?
These are all questions that may not have a clear-cut answer, and different people will answer them in different ways for the same campaign. You will need to decide whether the risks of the campaign going wrong somehow are worth the benefits you will get by getting noticed.
Keep in mind that it’s not all about you, your organization and your product. It’s not even all about your target audience. We operate within a larger world, and we do have a responsibility to the greater society. There should be a difference between what can be done in the public commons and what can be done when it’s just between you and your adult audience.
Social marketers work with many issues that have the potential to offend various segments of society, or are not appropriate for younger children. A campaign I worked on to promote contraception by young adults had several newspapers refuse to run our ads that contained basic facts about sex and birth control, and we received a few complaints from readers of those that did run them. But we decided that the blowback was worth getting the information out to the people who needed it. While being provocative for its own sake is not always the best approach, sometimes it takes something shocking to wake people up and get them to take action. There are no clear-cut rules except to think your marketing through as well as you can before you decide to épater les bourgeois so that it doesn’t come back to kick you in the derriere later on.
Graphics/Photos: Target-Sucks.com, AP
Technorati Tags: marketing, advertising, msco, aqua team hunger force
While reading this week’s Jewish Journal (the main LA Jewish paper), I was pleasantly surprised to see a sponsored article about health in the classifieds section. Titled “A Doctor’s Word: Health and Wealth are Earned, Not Won,” the article was by Tat S. Lam, MD, who is a family practitioner at Kaiser Permanente here in Southern California.
Nedra helps nonprofits and public agencies create positive change on health and social issues through social marketing and transmedia storytelling strategies at Weinreich Communications since founding the company in 1995. She helps organizations make a difference for the populations they serve by strategically designing programs that draw on state-of-the-art behavior change techniques, digital media approaches and the power of stories. 
