Marketing Talk

April 21, 2010 by Margie Clayman Leave a Comment

Post #5: What Jim Henson can teach us about marketing

I have been a muppet fan for as long as I can remember. One of the most tragic days of my life, however, is when I watched Muppets Take Manhattan for the trillionth time and really dug the scenes where Kermit (aka Phil Phillip Phil) is working for an amphibian-owned and run advertising agency.

Youth, where art thou?

Still, I’ve been thinking a lot about those scenes and then other general Jim Henson knowledge, and I’ve decided that marketers and people in general can learn a lot from the muppets.

You don’t believe me, huh? Or you just can’t believe I’m doing this to your muppets. I sympathize. But take a look.

Remember yesterday when I was pondering whether we can really talk human? Jim Henson was already covering that topic close to 30 years ago. “you mean just say what the product does? Nobody has tried that!”:

Yep, he definitely said what he meant.

Of course, one could also argue that Rainbow Connection could be equated to a modern day Facebook page (join the lovers, the dreamers, and me). But we won’t go that far, will we?

April 20, 2010 by Margie Clayman 3 Comments

Post #4: Is it really possible to talk human?

Yesterday, I watched Harry Gottlieb’s webinar on talking human (It’s called Corporate Blahblahdiblah) and how corporations generally don’t do it. His point was well taken. Corporations seem to use words that have been proven to be good sellers, kind of like the word “ambitious” or “dedicated” when it comes to applying for jobs. It has gotten to the point where it’s hard to tell what a company actually does or what they are actually trying to say. Fair enough.

However, coming at this issue from the marketing side, I have to say that there are a lot of obstacles in the way of “talking human.” For example, there’s Search Engine Optimization. Everybody wants to be on the first page of search results on Google or Bing, right? Well, you need the right keywords, among other things, to accomplish that goal. Unfortunately, keywords do not always jive with how people talk. If you are a medical company, you might want to talk human and talk about headaches, but SEO demands that you talk about “pain in the occipital region.” Who talks like that? Not many people. But maybe a lot of people search like that.

Facebook, Twitter, and texting have me worried too. Have you ever tried to carry on a conversation using 140 CHARACTER statements? I haven’t. As you probably are learning from my blog posts, 140 characters for me is like the calm before the storm. However, this kind of limited communication is what corporations are facing on increasingly regular occasions. They are having to update fan pages (or is it “like” pages now?), they are having to update Twitter accounts, or they are sending out text messages. Is this how they would normally entice customers? Probably not. Is that talking human? Probably not. But it’s the new reality.

That has me wondering. Are we in danger of having more human contact but being less human about it? A fan page can have hundreds of fans, but if you can’t *really* talk to people the way you’d like to and the way Gottlieb recommends, how effective is your marketing going to be in the end?

I guess, being a human, this all just gives me something to ponder.

April 19, 2010 by Margie Clayman 2 Comments

Post #3: The fine line between Shock & Awe

I saw an ad the other day while I was watching the Cleveland Indians game…it was for one of those trivia companies that you can text to get random answers to dumb debates in which you are engaged. You’ll note I can’t remember the company’s name. I”ll get to that later.

The main visual of the ad was two guys with their heads stuffed up into their…well, butts. I found the image rather uncomfortable and gratuitous, and that’s saying something because I’m a fan of shows like South Park. The visual was shocking in that you don’t usually see those kinds of things, and it was gross, and clearly it stuck with me. But again, I can’t remember the name of the company who did the ad.

I’ve noticed lately that a lot of ads are like this. They try to gross you out or weird you out. Have you seen that Viagra ad where the guy’s reflection is begging him to talk about his “E.D?” Creepy. In that case, I do remember the name, but that’s only because the ad seems run during every show that I watch. Clearly I’m a surprise demographic.

Is there really a point to these ads? They might get people talking, but if people are just talking about “that gross ad” it’s not going to do you any good. Does anyone still remember what that Betty White commercial was for during the Super Bowl? It was great for her brand, that’s for sure. But did it do the advertiser a lot of good?

Sometimes there are ads that stay with you and you know why. The ads for animal rescue charities are good examples of this. Seeing abused animals isn’t easy. It’s shocking and uncomfortable, but there’s a reason for showing it. I can’t really think of any good reason to show a person, literally, with their head up where the sun don’t shine. I’d tell the advertiser that if I could remember who they were.

April 18, 2010 by Margie Clayman 4 Comments

Blog #1: The Tale of the Indian Bead Loom

Lately, I’ve been thinking about an event that happened over a period of months when I was a little kid.

You have to understand, in order to “get” this story, that when I was real little, I found out I had Cherokee blood in my family. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. To think that this rich culture I had already kind of liked was part of my family tree was just too amazing. I wanted to learn everything I could about all Native American cultures.

So with that in mind, the following might make a bit more sense. One day, I went over to a friend’s house, and she had a little loom like the one in the picture there. She was making a bracelet that had a beaded pattern in it. I of course was enchanted. She showed me how to use it. I knew that I had to have one of these.

I asked my mom if I could get one. Her first vision was not the beautiful jewelry I’d make but rather the millions of tiny seed beads that she would get to step on. Despite these obstacles, one Christmas, I found a long, rectangular box under the tree. I had gotten my Indian Bead loom.

After Christmas breakfast I ran upstairs to my room and ripped open the box. I already had visions of what my beautiful “authentic” jewelry would look like. But what was this? What came out of the box was not a fully functional, put-together loom. It was in pieces. You had to put it together. Being a kid, I didn’t think I needed to bother with the directions. I had seen the loom in action. I had worked with the loom. I started fitting pieces together and…broke it.

I’ve been thinking about my Indian Bead Loom a lot lately because I have found that there are a lot of experiences in life that could potentially go better if you bear such lessons in mind. In life, one could apply this to something like relationships. Everyone seems to have a great relationship. You see it, you think you are pretty sure how it works, so you rush to get one, but it doesn’t come all put together. You have to work for it.

In the business world, this comes to mind when I think about marketing through Social Media. Everyone is pretty sure they know what Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are by now. Heck, teens can use this stuff, so it would seem like a business could. And everyone is talking about how great Social Media can be. But Social Media, corporate identity, whatever it might be…these things don’t arrive all put together. It comes through bits and pieces of information and experience, and yes, some directions. But like a relationship…like my Indian Bead Loom, if you try to rush into things without doing the research….if you try to put things together haphazardly, you can end up breaking it.

Years later, by the way, when I was an adult, I bought myself another loom, determined to learn from my mistakes. I did put the loom together successfully, and I got a third of the way through making something. I realized I didn’t know how to change the tension on the strings. I moved that in-progress bracelet to three different abodes before finally throwing the whole thing away. With a little more research, a little more care, well who knows. I could have been a Native American bracelet guru by now.