Interesting NYTimes article about the annual marketing exercise in subverting expensive sponsorship rights while cashing in on the cultural context. 

It is an American marketing ritual, a kind of nudge-nudge, wink-wink around existing trademark law.

Only the N.F.L.’s authorized sponsors of this product or that service can use trademarks like “Super Bowl.”

Those without official ties to the league — even the ones spending at least $2.4 million for a 30-second ad on the CBS broadcast of Sunday’s game — are banned from using trademarked terms for fear that they will ambush the sponsors.

Stay tuned for March Mayhem too. 

The public gets it.  Sponsorship, marketing, etc.  You can’t own social context as a trademark; a big game is a big game by association with this time of year.  But per the example above, Super Bowl sponsor says something different than Big Game. And for those in the official sponsorship game, I do think there is a consumer sense of premium-ness or authenticity for those brands associated with the actual sponsorship. But I also think that alone rarely justifies the expense of the property. 

The better assessment is related to how the property or sponsorship can appropriately build the consumer takeaway one is reinforcing about one’s own brand.  Awareness is one thing, but the right awareness can be another all together.  The sponsorship should reinforce your brand as a tool; one’s brand and benefit should not be retrofitted to make sense for a sponsorship.

This campaign for employment of American’s with disabilities (thinkbeyondthelabel.com) made me think about a common point we make to clients all the time.  No touchpoint should be underestimated, and every one is an opportunity to make a memorable impression for a brand.  Oh, it’s just a direct mail piece.  Just a business card.  Just some body copy. Psh. 

 Well the folks in charge of this campaign for state agencies might have said the same thing - just a Public Service Announcement.  Instead, they are paying for media and trying to send their message into people’s heads in a creative way. (Plus, The NY Times Ad can’t hurt - good employer target and all)

Typically, ads that seek to make a case for employing people with disabilities run as public service announcements. That makes them dependent on the kindness of media outlets to place them prominently on television, in print or online.

“We’ll never have enough money to oversaturate the media,” said Barbara Otto, executive director at Health and Disability Advocates in Chicago, which is overseeing the campaign, “but we wanted to do something different, something that didn’t look like a P.S.A.”

To that end, the campaign takes a light-hearted tack rather than a sober or earnest tone. The ads try to challenge conventional wisdom about workers with disabilities by offering humorous examples of people with “differences” already employed.

For instance, in a television commercial, a worker in a wheelchair points out her colleagues who “you could label as ‘different.’ ” Among them are a woman dressed in a nightmare wardrobe of clashing patterns, who is “fashion deficient”; a klutzy young man at the copier, who is “copy incapable”; and a shouting man who suffers from “volume control syndrome.”

 

Coke is a brilliant marketing machine - you’d have to be to try and "own" something like happiness.  All with simple, gleeful executions like this. 

This video just happened to climb beyond 1MM views in less than 3 weeks. Took a brand-centered, buzzworthy event and packaged it for the world to see over and over again. 

Interesting video showing the how/why of Facebook success for IKEA.  The promotional overlay is an interesting twist to get the buzz ball rolling.

This video I heard about from TechEBlog made me think. It shows real people (how real, you never know - thanks CGI) encountering one-in-a-million occurrences, all clipped together for 3 minutes of "Huh, can’t believe it." 

It reminded me of this as it might pertain to marketing and consumer engagement:

When our lives are all truly connected like this as never before in the world, one-in-a-million happens more often than the common cliche is supposed to mean.  So, it’s important that we build brands that can communicate about and respond to those one-in-a-million consumer encounters with our products and services. Good and bad, these encounters are available for the world to see. And they can take on a life of their own if we don’t earn the consumer respect as real, honest brands that get the benefit of the doubt - as echoed here by Seth. 

Marketing is the mouthpiece of the brand.  And it is also the earpiece.

Tough economy meets elevated retailer expectations meets Holiday volume period. The annual game is on, and this year, online retailers are getting all woot.com, the Dallas-based company that created a cult following around the one-a-day deal. We have mentioned how we like what Woot does and how they do it, and now the big dogs are taking notes.  From The Dallas Morning News (full article here):

Countdown clocks are ticking all over the Internet with deeply discounted 24-hour deals this year.

J.C. Penney Co. has added a "daily deal" to jcp.com, and Target.com has one-day-only "daily deals." Penney created screenbusters, playing off the brick-and-mortar world’s doorbusters.

Walmart.com calls its urgent deal the "value of the day" and offers several online-only specials "while supplies last."

Plano-based Dealtaker.com, an online coupon site, recently launched Newatnoon.com to feature 24-hour specials from retailers looking for more of a multi-channel reach. It recently featured 24-hour deals from Gordon’s Jewelry, Overstock.com, Kohl’s, Penney, Aeropostale, buy.com and others that have Web sites but want a bigger reach online.

The 24-hour concept is similar to that popularized by Dallas-based Woot.com, a Web site that offers one-day deals. But Woot also has branched out to offer limited-time discounts from other retailers. On Friday, it featured a $15 men’s waterproof, quilted puffer vest from Macy’s.

Consumers aren’t parting with their dollars like they once did (way way back when, it seems). And the brands that will capture their attention are ones that go beyond a transaction and into a memorable experience.  Deal-a-day brings a little suprise and delight (and urgency) worth talking about to the shopping process. It worked for Woot, and now other retailers are hoping for a little Holiday magic of their own.

Lesson to all marketers: How can we get beyond the transaction and add a little value to the experience our brands can offer?

A printer we work with once asked me a question: what’s the difference between junk mail and direct mail?  The answer: the person reading it.  Very true - value is defined by your audience, and our job as marketers is to connect value between the target and the product/service. In fact, we’re not picking on direct mail here at all - the tactic really doesn’t matter if it doesn’t connect relative to the investment. It’s just junk.

So, this week I got a piece of direct mail’s virtual cousin, an e-blast.  I get them often, and the ding is usually followed by Delete.  But I played this one out, with added curiosity since it’s from an online usability resource - got to be good, right?  So I’ll ask you - e-junk or e-mail?

[NOTE: This is not an endorsement for Omniture - Ignite has not worked with them to date]

The email:

Click to play the game: (couldn’t see the whole screen when I played, so I missed out on some info)

Likes:

1. Well targeted, and qualifies the audience upfront in the subject line

2. Challenging (with no commitment) call to action to learn more

3. Clever, interactive way to prove expertise - a lot better than a boring series of case studies

4. Unique enough to tell a friend - heck, I’m talking about it here

Opportunities:

1. Dial up the creative - I know you’re going for Pac Man era, but still

2. Use a more graphic-friendly introduction in the email itself

3. Not formatted for small screens, and I imagine a lot of the audience is rolling laptop

A lot of fire over Pepsi’s iPhone App called AMP UP BEFORE YOU SCORE is causing the maker of AMP Energy Drink to consider pulling the app off the shelf due to its inherent sexist descriptions, suggestive content and objectifying language toward women.  Read more here from the Wall Street Journal online.  For those unfamiliar with the application or those iPhone-less like myself:

Can these stereotypes be offending? Sure. Was it off color to promote placement of descriptions of sexual "conquests" on Facebook? Absolutely. 

Yes, the core of this app says lots of disgusting things. And that’s the very reason it appeals (and will continue to appeal) to their core energy drink drinker long after this app has been kicked out back door, slapped on the behind and banished from grandma’s house. Because the brand arrived loud and proud and unapologetic, like that guy.   (Until Pepsi apologized.)  And many folks out there can see right through it.  And many more know there might be bigger threats to our ethical integrity found a simple click away.

I’m not saying I would have recommended the same campaign, because this has some risky elements to weigh against.  But I can tell you the lively pursuit of a young, skeptical target inundated with thousands of marketing messages weekly is a tough road.  And it can be a fine line between giving them something disruptive and relevant to talk about vs. something that is stupid and simply offensive.

We’ll see who wins long term.

Social media is on everyone’s hot list.  Lots of marketers are moving full steam ahead into this space and pushing out the same ol’ messages, calling it "nontraditional."  Yikes.  Targets engage in social media for different reasons and have different expectations than say flipping through a magazine or cruising the aisles of a store. Lots of bad examples out there.

But, then again, lots of companies are getting it and using this medium to create a conversation and a more passive way of earning a target’s mind share. Here’s an interesting example of using social media to draw social media attention. Thanks for Trendhunter for turning me on to this good example:

Is there an industry fighting for their product’s relevance more than newspapers?  Washington Post got creative and gave people content worth talking, tweeting and linking about.  Consumer takeaway - maybe this newspaper does get it.  And such relevance improves consideration.

New! Never been seen! Innovative! One of a kind!

Having launched many a new product, I can attest that such sentiments make marketers drool.  Sometimes, the marketing challenge is identifying which benefits in a new product are truly worthy of such descriptions.

But other times, the product can be so innovative with so much "news", the challenge is trying to streamline the communication and provide real-world context so customers can quickly get it. Customers will only give us so much time to make our case.  And that attention gets tougher to earn every day with the chaotic state of daily consumer life.  It’s our job to make every moment, impression, word and image drive home efficiently how this product is truly innovative and relevant to customer’s lives.  And do so in simple-to-process, engaging ways. A challenge no doubt.

This article from the NY TImes discusses how transportation innovations are good examples of this challenge, and how consumers process, categorize and analyze information when trying to decipher (quickly) how relevant innovation really is.  Enjoy.