Marjorie Clayman’s Writing Portfolio

Professional writing profile of Marjorie Clayman

Margie Clayman

Myth: Quit advertising because it just doesn’t work

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A lot of people enmeshed in the online world like to refer gruffly to other types of marketing as “interruption marketing.” Predominantly, they are talking about advertising. Advertising “interrupts” your reading experience. It can certain interrupt your television watching or your radio listening (do people still listen to the radio?). On social media platforms, advertising can fall into the downright annoying category. Yes, a lot of arguments are floating around about why you should stop advertising. As far back as 2009, Business Week noted, “The vast majority of ads don’t register with consumers.” In a recent post for Business2Community, Patrick McDaniel notes that many people go up to him and say, “Yeah, I tried advertising. It didn’t work.”

In fact, a simple Google search for “advertising is dead” yields quite a few results:

Are all of these folks right? Is advertising dead? Does advertising just simply not work?

What does “work” mean?

Not to be glib, but exactly what were you expecting your advertising to do? False expectations can be a big problem for businesses and marketers. If you were expecting your advertising campaign to pull your company out of the recession, you probably found yourself disappointed. Similarly, if you thought advertising would make people like your product more, you were likely not satisfied with the results. As Gini Dietrich and Geoff Livingston note in Marketing in the Round, advertising is really best for direct marketing and building brands. If your objectives and measurement systems aren’t in alignment with those types of tactics, you’re going to run into trouble.

Why do people think advertising doesn’t work?

The most common reason advertising doesn’t “work,” I might hypothesize, is that people don’t really understand how to make advertising work. Advertising is more like a puppy, not like a cat. You can’t leave it alone and assume it will take care of itself. You need to plan your media placements carefully. You need to make sure you are hitting the right audience with the right kind of creative. And yes, you need to find ways to measure everything you’re doing.

When we recommend advertising programs to our clients, we present online ads as akin to billboards. People don’t click on banner ads much anymore, but they notice them, and if you are going to an industry website, seeing companies you want to learn more about can create an environment where clicks are more possible than in other places (like, say, CNN). We also recommend not using banner ads for sheer promotion anymore. Give people a REAL reason to click. Offer something that can answer a question or that can help your potential customers meet their objectives. If you are led to believe that an online banner ad will increase traffic to your website by leaps and bounds, you will probably end up believing that advertising doesn’t work. If you don’t capture click-throughs via a special landing page, you’ll end up on the same boat.

In print advertisements, it’s important to make sure your ad makes sense for your audience. Does your audience like copy-heavy ads that are more like advertorials or do they respond to graphic-heavy ads with very little copy? Do they like straightforward presentations or does their eye get caught by out-of-the-box creative? There are plenty of ways to test these kinds of approaches, whether it’s running two different ads in very similar publications or timing your ads for a Reader Study issue, where people can respond directly to your ad and say what they think about it.

Again, if you do not have a methodology for capturing leads from your print ad, you are likely going to believe that advertising doesn’t work. You need to find a way to attract readers to your website, and not just to your homepage. You need to drive traffic to a page where you can capture information. Incentivize this part of your program. Again, offer readers something that will entice them to click, whether it’s a free white paper, an e-book that answers a key question, or something else along those lines.

If you engage in a print advertising program with an expectation that you will immediately be inundated with sample requests and sales, you will again end up believing that advertising doesn’t work.

You can do social media and still advertise

Many people seem to draw a black-and-white contradictory picture between social media marketing and advertising. If you are on Twitter for your business, you clearly can’t also advertise. Right?

In fact, this kind of thinking is leading companies away from some really intriguing integrated marketing opportunities. Print ads could drive traffic to a Facebook page. A QR code on an ad could lead to a YouTube video. You could even invite people to answer a question they see in a print ad by contacting you on Twitter. The possibilities for translating interest in a print ad to engagement elsewhere could be almost endless, in fact. But the “this or that” mentality overshadowing marketers these days may cloud over all of that potential.

What do you think about advertising? Should people just give up on this type of marketing or is that crazy talk? What are your experiences with advertising? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

PS, this post is letter Q in the Alphabet of Marketing Myths series. You can catch up on the series here.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/colleen-lane/4989879689/ via Creative Commons

Let’s Play: How to Pull Off a Nationwide Giving Event

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This post is by the admirable, kind, and awesome Ifdy Perez. Ifdy Perez is the community manager at Razoo, an online fundraising platform, to help create a community for nonprofits and individuals wanting to make a difference in the world. A believer in the power of social media to produce change, she helps nonprofits do the important good works they do. She’s also editor of Inspiring Generosity, a community blog that gives resources to nonprofits on how to succeed in their fundraising.

 

Pulling off a nationwide fundraising event where over 200 nonprofits are competing with each other requires a solid outreach strategy to guide the missile. Strategy and structure is what’s making the Twive and Receive clockwork run.

Twive pits local-serving nonprofits across the U.S. against each other to see who can fundraise the most within 24 hours. The top three orgs to fundraise the most win a share of $30,000, and all of the fundraising is online, driven by each nonprofit activating their social networks to rise to the top.

So to make a gamified fundraising event like this work, we knew the most important starting point was a commitment to make it all about helping the nonprofit.

Outreach: Inviting Them to Play

For people to join you in something they have to hear about it first, right? So reaching out to the target audience and inviting them to join is a great first step to recruitment but also developing personal relationships with each of them. Nonprofit staffers are already too strapped for time that a friendly invitation to play will be most welcome for those who are perfect for your fundraising campaign.

Communications: Showing Them How to Play

So the kids came over to your sandbox. What now? Show them how to play your game. Twive has specific though simple rules of engagement, so explaining in clear, concise, and consistent messages to them will help them get a hang of it. As soon as a nonprofit’s signed up to participate, you start communicating with them often—one on one if possible—to walk them through the new space.

Resources: Giving Them the Toys to Play With

Sometimes it’s not as fun playing pirate if you don’t have the props. A lot of nonprofits are getting the hang of social media and fundraising online, so prepping them with the tools they need will help them be successful in their fundraiser. Basic social media how-tos (like how to use Facebook as a page or how to organize a Tweet Chat) can be tremendously helpful to them in on the giving day, and in the long run.

Reward: Winning in the End

It doesn’t hurt to offer an incentive, so a prize in the end—a goal—will help nonprofit staffers who are already interested in your campaign give value to the time they spend on your event. A giving day like Twive is a win-win for all nonprofits who fundraise; they get to keep whatever they raise sans the 2.9% processing fee. They can also use a competition like this to secure matching grants from partners they want to build relationships with. And if they are one of the top fundraisers, they get an added cash bonus.

You can check out to see if your hometown or favorite local-serving nonprofit is participating in Twive and Receive here. If not, you can sign up to fundraise for the nonprofit serving your community! Spread the love!  

 

Be Someone For Kids Who Have No One

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When I was still a pretty little kid, I saw a show about foster kids. It must have been 20/20 or something like that. I still remember one pivotal part of the story. Kids who were around 12 years old were standing in line because people interested in adopting children were coming to visit the foster home. The kids talked about how they always wanted to give the best possible impression. They smiled as much as possible, they were as nice as possible. But because they weren’t cute little babies anymore, they knew that their chances weren’t real good. Indeed, none of the children featured on the show were adopted that day.

This is a story that is being lived out by kids all over the nation. The thing is, these kids are on a clock. If they are not adopted by the age of 21, they actually “age out” of the foster care system. With no more existing connections in the foster care system, no family, and no solid foundation to turn to, these young adults often suffer very difficult lives.

The stories of these lost children are finally being highlighted by a group called SalaamGarage NYC. This group is gathering stories and photographs for a photography exhibit, a website, and a book. The stories reveal, as the group’s kickstarter page indicates, “sobering odds.” “Nationally, 1 in 5 will become Homeless.  1 in 4 will be incarcerated within two years of aging-out.  About 1 in 2 young women will be pregnant within one year and only about half will graduate high school.”

You can help turn the tide

Thanks to the wonders of social media and modern technology, we have a chance to spread the word about the SalaamGarage project, which means we in turn have a chance to help shine the light on these stories that are too often shoved into dark corners and ignored. The project is looking for funding of just under $13,500, and we have 33 days to make that happen.

Visit the Kickstarter page. Watch the video, which does a much better job than this of explaining the plight of these young people. See if you can donate a little, or if you can’t, just help me spread the word. It’s the least we can do for these kids, don’t you think? And after all, as the project so eloquently states – Everybody needs someone.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dvs/15495574/ via Creative Commons

What are you waiting for?

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Have you ever heard of Hildegard von Bingen? You might have heard her called Sibyl of the Rhine. Same person. Well, here’s the thing about Hildegard/Sibyl. She was one of those people who was good at everything. Among her accomplishments, she ended up writing at least 69 musical compositions (plus verse), 3 books of visions, and many letters to all sorts of correspondents. Hildegard created her own modified Latin alphabet, gained renown as a healer (she wrote a book about how to use different medicinal herbs to treat ailments), and was a respected woman at a time when this was almost an oxymoron. Indeed, although she has not been canonized, she is such a beloved figure that she is sometimes called Saint Hildegard.

You might think, given all of these accomplishments, that Hildegard would have been a pretty confident person. Maybe even a little full of herself. I mean, if people gravitated to you to hear your advice about things ranging from medicine to mysticism, you might feel kind of happy with yourself, right? Indeed, we experience this in the online world a lot. People come to our blogs, people tweet us with questions, and it’s hard to remember that we are still just our regular ole normal selves.

In the case of Hildegard, though, the world almost did not get to benefit from her amazing contributions:

But I, though I saw and heard these things, refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words, not with stubbornness but in the exercise of humility, until, laid low by the scourge of God, I fell upon a bed of sickness; then, compelled at last by many illnesses, and by the witness of a certain noble maiden of good conduct [the nun Richardis von Stade] and of that man whom I had secretly sought and found, as mentioned above, I set my hand to the writing. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildegard_of_Bingen).

That’s right. As talented as she was, as respected as she was, as amazing as she was, Hildegard almost did not sit down to write anything. Even though she had so much to offer, and even though it ended up that writing brought her great joy and peace of mind, she almost did not begin to write. The world almost missed out.

What are you holding back?

One of the great problems in life is that we don’t always know what we can offer until we sit down and start to *do* things. A writer does not know how good they are until they start to write. A singer cannot know how good her voice is until she opens her mouth and lets the sound come out. A musician cannot know how good he is until he sits down at the piano and begins to play.

Hildegard would never have known her capacity to affect people if she had not made the decision to write, despite any feelings of worthlessness she experienced.

What are you withholding from the world? What are you holding back? Are you thinking about blogging but you’re not sure you’re a good enough writer? Are you thinking you’d like to start a business but you’re not sure you’re cut out for it?

There’s only one way to find out. Let me fulfill the role of Richardis von Stade (but you can call me Margie). Go ahead and try it. Write something down. Let a song come out of your voicebox. Let music play from your fingers. You might find that you’re a lot better than what your brain is telling you. You might find you have one heck of a lot to offer. Who knows, maybe you are the next Hildegard von Bingen of the blogging world or the business world. Maybe it turns out you actually are fantastically good at a lot of things. Maybe it turns out you have the power to affect, in a positive way, a whole ton people. Maybe your work, whatever that may be, will be remembered centuries or even millennia from now.

But you’ll never know if you don’t sit down to try it.

What are you waiting for?

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/klaudi/5604377366/ via Creative Commons

Thank Goodness Hammurabi Is Not On Twitter

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Our final visit to the super ancient world for the History Lessons for the Social Media Practitioner Series takes us to Babylon in the year 1772 BC (or so). Hammurabi ruled the Babylonians for 42 years, and during that time, something inspired him to have some really important laws scratched on to 8′ tall rocks. We’re glad that he had this done, because Hammurabi’s Code remains one of the oldest known sets of written laws in the world. It’s a shame he doesn’t get to enjoy that part, huh?

The thing about Hammurabi’s Code that struck me the very first time I heard about it was that it was kind of…rough. Hammurabi’s Code introduced the world, for example, to the concept of “an eye for an eye.” In other words, if you gouge my eye out of my face, I can do the same thing to you, assuming I can see well enough.

Some of the specific laws contained in the code would be pretty helpful in controlling the online world so many many millennia later, but the punishments make me wonder if our behavior is really more reprehensible than I had previously thought. Here, let me show you what I’m talking about.

22. If a man has committed highway robbery and has been caught, that man shall be put to death.

Highway robbery. Well, you might think that this phrase would have nothing to do with the online world, but actually my friend Ameena Falchetto has experienced highway robbery first-hand. Would Hammurabi put the hammer down on her copy-catter? It seems so.

Now here’s another one. There is always a lot of talk about “a-holes” and “d-bags” in the online world, and one might rightly call this namecalling a series of “low blows.” Interestingly, Hammurabi had a lot to say about hits below the belt.

  • 202. If a man has smitten the privates of a man, higher in rank than he, he shall be sourged with sixty blows of an ox-hide scourge, in the assembly.
  • 203. If a man has smitten the privates of a patrician of his own rank, he shall pay one mina of silver.
  • 204. If a plebeian has smitten the privates of a plebeian, he shall pay ten shekels of silver.
  • 205. If a slave of anyone has smitten the privates of a free-born man, his ear shall be cut off.

Now, who wants to monitor the online world and make sure that for every low blow, there is appropriate retribution? This might reduce the online drama a bit, right? I think it’s a good idea, anyway.

218. If a physician make a large incision with the operating knife, and kill him, or open a tumor with the operating knife, and cut out the eye, his hands shall be cut off.

This is a lot of pressure to put on a physician. I wonder if Hammurabi would be equally tough on people offering business or marketing advice online. If your advice doesn’t work, I’m afraid your hand needs to be cut off. Ouch. Then again, it would be interesting to see if the advice being offered would suddenly change radically, right?

Of course, many of the laws contained in the Code of Hammurabi have to do with slaves and animals…oxen and….asses. Well, I suppose if we were mean-spirited we could draw some parallels there, but I don’t want to make a false claim, which would result in me having to ” leap into the river” and hopefully not sink, which would prove my innocence.

See? Hammurabi is making me behave better online already.

So what do you think? What can we learn about ourselves here in the 21st plugged-in century by reflecting on one of the first sets of laws ever to be written? I think it’s sort of refreshing to see that humans really haven’t changed that much. We’re still building houses that fall down. We’re still stealing each others’ spouses, pushing over oxen, and doing all kinds of other dumb stuff. Is that comforting, or an argument against evolution?

You tell me!

Sources for Hammurabi’s Code: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp and http://www.commonlaw.com/Hammurabi.html

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/un_cola/64424869/ via Creative Commons

In Defense of Agencies – Again

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I’ve read two posts over the last few days that really seemed to paint agencies in a negative light. Being an agency woman for an agency that bears my family name, I can’t help but take these attacks on agencies to heart. I know – it’s not personal, it’s business. But for me, business is all about the personal. So, let’s move on!

The Pitch is Not Representative of All Agencies

The first post, called “Traditional Advertising is Truly Dead,”  was written by Robert Bruce for CopyBlogger. Robert doesn’t tend to mince words like a lot of folks in the CopyBlogger family, so it’s not a surprise that he doesn’t handle his perspective with kid gloves here. Let’s take a look at this post carefully.

It begins with a warning:

“If you’re addicted to spending ungodly amounts of money in an effort to interrupt enough people into becoming “aware” of your product, service, or idea … skip this. You ain’t gonna like it.”

Well, I could write a whole series of posts about how this is not an accurate assessment of “traditional” advertising efforts, but suffice to say I am not sure this is framing the conversation in a 100% accurate or fair way.

Next, Bruce quotes a person from one of the agencies in the first episode of The Pitch, a new show on AMC that pits one agency against another. The quote: “We pride ourselves on creativity, not playing it safe, doing things that no one has ever seen before.” Bruce is flummoxed by this quote. He says, “Creating things that “nobody has seen before” — aside from the hyperbole of that statement — could work well as ride in an amusement park, or a fireworks display, but it’s the kiss of death in the art of selling.”

I’m not so sure about that. I don’t know the whole context of the quotation (that’s right, I’m an agency woman and don’t want to watch this show) but as an agency woman, I can say that if you are in a niche business, it’s pretty hard to talk about things in ways that will stand out. I’m sure Subway has a similar problem (they were the ones being pitched in the first episode). How much can you say about a sandwich, anyway? I am not sure that the “entertainment value” is what is at stake here. Your agency should provide you with something that strengthens your brand and makes you memorable.

The next big statement in this post is this: “If you’re throwing brand advertising at the masses and hoping something will stick, you’re playing a game that’s already over. Consumers have taken their ball and gone home.”

Again, this is a pretty broad statement to make, and I am just not convinced it’s true. Our work indicates that a lot of professionals still prefer to receive e-newsletters that are nothing more than product announcements in their inbox. They WANT to know what’s new in their industry. There are people who subscribe, still, to every professional publication that is relevant to the. They WANT to read the newest thoughts. They WANT to see what’s out there. Yes, they even participate in ad impact studies. Which means they look at the ads. They recall them. A lot of them still act on those ads. Consumers have gone home – ie away from traditional advertising? Certainly some have. There’s a reason newspapers are going broke. But not everyone. And if you’re a company that has had success using traditional marketing, you shouldn’t stop based on the idea that the “game is over.”

One final statement that buzzed me wrong in this post:

The equation used to be: money x media = business.

The new equation is: time x media = business.

I think this is a false comparison, and it’s at the heart of why so many companies are struggling with social media today. Time IS money. If you are spending time blogging, you are paying your salary (or someone else’s) to do that. Time is money. Traditionally rooted or not, you have to cope with this basic business truth.

People won’t read a boring blog, no matter what

The second post came my way from Chris Brogan. His post is called Nobody Reads Agency Blogs – Or Why You Need Skin in the Game. Now, Chris wrote this post based on an article he found via Jason Falls – it’s over here. And that article includes the following quote:

“Nobody reads agency blogs, and there are so many out there it’s impossible for people to keep up anyway,” said Sam Weston, director of communications at digital agency Huge. “We put ours on hiatus while we figure out what we want to do with it. We do use Facebook and Twitter. We’ve figured out what works for us there.”

It’s a real shame this quote came from an agency person. It doesn’t make sense to make a statement like this.

Nobody reads agency blogs, or nobody read YOUR agency blog?

Now Chris sort of veers away from the agency thing and notes that nobody wants to read a boring blog no matter who it’s by, and that’s what’s missing from the quote by Sam Weston. You could be an astronaut, but if your blog site is more boring than a pale piece of milktoast, you’re not going to have a lot of readers. Period.

This is not an agency thing. This is a blog thing. This is a Web 2.0 thing. Was the Huge blog too self-promotional? Were they not getting good buzz because they’re only turning to Facebook and Twitter now? Who knows. But this is not good ground to say that agency blogs are boring and dead.

By the way, I have to point out that if you’re here reading this, you’re reading a blog post by an agency woman. As the kids say…#justsayin.

Yep, I’m harumphed

I really do not understand why agencies get bashed so often. Posts like these seem to be increasing, not decreasing. Factually, agencies are diverse with different missions, different ways of working, different…all sorts of stuff. Saying that “agencies are…” is like saying “People are…”  To me, painting with such a broad stroke, especially if you are not in the agency world, is just a gimme blog post or article. People will pass it along and unfortunately, many will agree. Traditional = yucky. Agency = bad.

Some agencies are yucky. Some agencies are bad. Some agency blogs are probably crap.

I’d venture to say the same thing is true those in the social media world. Or in the laundromat world. Or in the cooking world.

Give agencies a break, eh? Just this once?

What do you think?

First Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sincerelyhiten/6348866375/ via Creative Commons

Second Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/scragz/91147636/ via Creative Commons