"Wheel of Fortune" Loss is a Big Brand Win for Audi

Not everyone gets to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. But Audi did in giving a car to the "Wheel of Fortune" contestant who lost that prize due to a technicality. 

Here’s the clip of the fateful decision that launched thousands of tweets and the hashtag #GiveHerTheQ3:

The public booed that decision as unfair and used the hashtag #GiveHerTheQ3 on social media.. Of course this came to the attention of the manufacturer of the car in question, and then the company won over many hearts and minds by using the same hashtag and saying it would make it happen. 

That Audi tweet  generated 3,543 Retweets, 735 Quote Tweets, and  33.1K Likes. It also generated a string of positive reactions from both existing Audi customers and those who said they would now consider it for their next car purchase. Read more in Audi Turns a Loss into a Win.

Dr. Seuss adds a word to the dictionary

In October, Merriam-Webster announced that it had added 455 words. Many of them come from new terms associated with the pandemic and some from general popular culture. My favorite is this one:

"Oobleck : a mixture of corn starch and water that behaves like a liquid when at rest and like a solid when pressure is applied. Oobleck gets its name from the title of a story by Dr. Seuss, Bartholomew and the Oobleck, and is a favorite component in kids’ science experiments." 

This is almost like seeing the book Frindle come to life. No spoilers. If you haven't read it as a kid, you could still read it as an adult. 

This is not the first word coined by Dr. Seuss to make it into the English language. The word "nerd" first appeared in If I Ran the Zoo published in 1950.. He used it rather like Lewis Carroll used Jaberrwocky -- a made-up name for a made-up creature. 

And then, just to show them, I'll sail to Ka-troo
And bring back an It-kutch, a Preep and a Proo,
A Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker, too!

In 1951, the word had already taken off with th emeaning that we assign it today. Merriam-Webster recounts:

  Newsweek carried an article about the latest slang that includes the word nerd. "In Detroit," it notes, "someone who once would be called a drip or a square is now, regrettably, a nerd, or in less severe cases, a scurve."

 Unfortunately, the book that book is among the 6 that are no longer published pictured here:

. 

Related: The literary origins of robots 

Copy & Content Writer Inspiration: A Timely Reminder from the Past

Copy & Content Writer Inspiration: A Timely Reminder from the Past: Leo Burnett's reminder to his ad agency to strive for excellence by putting the client and the creative first may have been delivered in...

Most memorable brand slogans

What do brands aspire to when they set out to create a slogan? They want to be remembered. I was inspired to make my own list of memorable slogans to identify my own favorites get the dates down for each. The baker's dozen below are selected to represent some ranges. I don't mean to endorse any of the products or stores listed only to applaud excellent copy.

1. Apple – “Think Different” The slogan was introduced in 1997, way before most of the world adopted the ubiquitous smartphone. It was born as a decided twist on  IBM's "Think",  the brand identity established in 1915 when Thomas J Watson expressed his frustration at the lack of thought:

“The trouble with every one of us is that we don’t think enough. We don’t get paid for working with our feet — we get paid for working with our heads,” he intoned in a noteless lecture that continued for several minutes. “Knowledge is the result of thought, and thought is the keynote of success in this business or any business.”

Watson then wrote the command "Think" on a blackboard. The rest is history, literally IBM history that was the backdrop for Steve Jobs' differentiation of his computer brand.

2. The California Milk Processor Board — “Got Milk?” Goodby Silverstein & Partners originally came up with that slogan in 1993, and it was such a hit that it was licensed for use by milk processors and dairy farmers.



 

3. De Beers — “A Diamond Is Forever” A woman named (Mary) France Gerety came up with that
slogan back in 1947, and it has been used ever after and been further immortalized in a James Bond novel and film.  It was named ‘The Slogan of the Century’ by Advertising Age in 1999.

4. FTD — "Say it with flowers" This one dates all the way back to 1917 when people were generally familiar with the connotations of different blooms. See The Language of Flowers.


5. Greyhound — "Go Greyhound and Leave the Driving to Us" dates back to 1956



6. M&M's  — “Melts in Your Mouth, Not in Your Hands.” The slogan was trademarked in 1954, though that was the goal of developing this form of candy in the 1940s. The unlikely source for this information is the explanation of a work of art on the MoMA site.

7. Maxwell House — “Good to the Last Drop” slogan dates back to the 1920s. The company played up the attribution to one of the most memorable presidents,  Theodore Roosevelt.

8. Kellogg’s Rice Krispies — The words "Snap! Crackle! Pop!®" first appeared in a print ad in 1929. Four years later, the artist Vernon Grant created the whimsical elves named for those sounds associated with the cereal. They then began appearing on ads, posters, and, of course, cereal boxes.

9. L'Oreal — “Because I’m Worth It" dates back to 1971 to position the brand as a  premium one because it cost more than its main competition Clairol.

10. MasterCard — "There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard" 1997 was the year that the credit card first branded itself as "priceless" by capturing the thrill of experiences one can enjoy, thanks to the card. It was a brilliant play on the truism that money can't buy happiness. The elephant example is of the heart-warming variety, though many take a sassier approach.

11. New York State — "I Love NY" " was created by graphic artist Milton Glaser  to boost tourism to New York State (not just NYC) in 1977. But it only became the the official state slogan in 2009, the year that the "I Love New York" song by Steve Karmen was also adopted as the official state song. In the age of emojis, we're used to symbols standing in for words, particularly the heart for love, but likely we owe that to Glaser's vision.

12. State Farm — “Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm Is There.” Barry Manilow composed this memorable jingle for the insurance company in 1971.

13.Virginia Slims —" You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby" The cigarette brand launched this campaign in 1968 and kept it up for decades (of equating feminism with the freedom to smoke a cigarette made specifically for women and gain equal opportunity for lung cancer). New iterations came out to match changing fashions and to reflect on "bad old days" for women. 


If you're interested in what makes people like and/or remember a slogan, see A study of the antecedents of slogan liking. According to its abstract, "the liking for a slogan may be unrelated to media expenditure, and driven largely by the clarity of the message, the exposition of the benefits, rhymes, and creativity."

Do you think this level of content is beyond your budget? Think again. Poor quality content not only fails to deliver the ROI you get from high quality content; it can actually harm your brand by demoting the the site ranking you've invested so much in building up.

What you really can't afford is poor quality content. Hire a seasoned pro to craft the right message for your organization and your demographics. Learn more here and book a free consultation call.

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Amazon uses snail mail for direct mail

I got mail from Amazon. I don’t mean a package for something I ordered or the usual email marketing marketing message but an honest-to-goodness paper letter that was folded into an envelope and sent to me via the post office. 

So here’s my response:

Dear Amazon Prime Video,

I have received your letter and do appreciate your taking the time to reach out to me, though I do wonder at your inability to match the personalized envelopes with a letter that would address the recipient by name. 

 The real reason I don’t use Prime Video is because there is nothing on there that I would want to see.Let me correct that. There are a few movies that have caught my eye, but they all require another paid subscription on top of Amazon Prime. In other words, they would not be included free with my membership.

As with any business, don’t assume people aren’t using your service simply because they don’t know about. Consider the possibility that your service doesn’t meet their needs or interests.

Thank you,

Ariella Brown

To read my analysis of what Amazon got right, see Dear Amazon Prime Video Team

Related: Ryan George shows best and worst marketing practices

Seeing stars

Nearly everything you wanted to know about NFTs but were afraid to ask

Some non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have sold for millions of dollars, and experts expect the market will exceed the billion dollar mark by a couple of hundred million within 2021. What is this thing that is creating new markets and has captured the attention of creators, collectors, and crypto-enthusiasts?

An NFT is a specific type of digital asset. The token refers to a virtual entity. Cryptocurrency like Bitcoin and Ethereum are examples of tokens. However, cryptocurrency is by definition fungible. It is meant to be mutually interchangeable with other forms of money. In contrast, something that is non-fungible is truly one-of-a-kind.

It brings to mind the descriptive phrase in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, “unique in all the world” that the prince applies to his rose as distinct from all others. In contrast Gertrude Stein declared there is no difference among roses: "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose."

Money in all its forms, including digital tokens is the interchangeable rose. But an NFT is a token immortalized as something distinctive

 Read more in  NFT Explained: How to Make, Buy and Sell Non-Fungible Tokens

Marketing opportunities in Clubhouse

What’s in this article:
Audio platforms have exploded over the past year – Clubhouse is one of the best-known names
Clubhouse allows brands to connect with their customer through the engaging power of live events on a virtual platform that keeps the focus on the content of the words and ideas rather than looking good on the screen

With so many social media platforms out there, how do you select which one is a good fit for your B2C brand? The answer is the one that delivers an engaged audience, which may just be an audio platform.



Read more in Why Marketers Are Jumping on Audio Platforms

First and best are not the same for holiday marketing

Snapchat already announced the launch of its  holiday resource hub for marketers in early June. to get marketers to start thinking December holidays before summer has even arrived, it offered an eight-page long US Festive Shopping Season 2021 Handout guide.

Within the handout, it offers some very flattering statistics for Snapchat. For example, “89% of Snapchatters are interested in try-on AR experiences.” While that number could well be arrived at through a selection of people loyal to the platorm, that doesn't mean that Snapchat would be the best vehicle for most marketers.

In fact, as Retail TouchPoints reports, Snapchat has the smallest market share for social shopping:

“Facebook and Instagram are the clear leaders in the social shopping space: 34% of those surveyed purchased on Facebook, and 23% purchased through Facebook-owned Instagram. All other platforms, including Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok and Snapchat, were in the single digits.”

Snapchat garners just 2% of purchases through a platform where TikTok and Pinterest garner 3%. Snapchat only goes up to 3% for the category of “clicked ad and later purchased” where TikTok and Pinterest garner 6%.

Read more ins Snapchat plans for December Holidays in June

What you need for imaginative play

"Timeless Toys. Endless Possibilities" is the title of the first-ever marketing campaign for Melissa & Doug. Of course, the brand believes that its toys are the key: “When playing with a Melissa & Doug toy, imagination runs wild — a toy broom isn't just a broom, it's a rocket ship heading to the moon.”

It’s a nice idea, and there is something, indeed, timeless about low-tech toys. However, in truth, even a real broom or even a stick that fell off a tree or an empty box left from another purchase could also serve as a rocket ship for the kid with imagination.

In fact, if imaginative play is your goal, less is more. It’s when you can’t buy everything you want to play with that you are forced to improvise and get more creative.

Read more in Toys Powered by Imagination

Related post: http://writewaypro.blogspot.com/2020/10/now-you-can-revisit-your-childhood-on.html

The Value of Zero: Accuracy and Trust

Data-driven marketing has always focused on getting as much information on your customers as possible through various channels. As privacy grows increasingly important and tracking becomes increasingly limited, zero-party data (ZPD) is on the rise.

Conventional marketing wisdom has always been that the more you know about your customer, the more effectively you can target them. For that reason, marketers have always been trying to get their hand on as much data as possible, relying not just on their own first-party data but even paying for second-party and third-party data. 

To clarify terms, here’s a rundown on the differences in data sources.
First-party data

First-party data is what a business receives directly from a customer typically as a result of purchases, subscriptions, or points of contact. It can be the result of what a customer actively fills in on a form or passively shares as a result of cookies that the customer accepts by using the brand’s site or the tracking that comes through use of an app.

While a complete record of information given by a customer is valuable, for businesses that haven’t had much time to gain a complete history, it may not suffice to inform truly tailored experiences. That’s why businesses will pay for access to additional information through second and even third parties.
Second-party data

Second-party data is first-party data acquired by another company that is then sold to a business that wants more information about its customer base. Drawing on the more thorough information can fill in more of the customer picture, but it’s still limited to what a single business has been able to gather on the customers, which is why some will pay a broker for data.


Third-party data

Third-party data is different from first and second party in that it draws on multiple sources of data that a separate company puts together into a single dataset to be sold to those in the market for that kind of customer information. Typically, the company in the business of delivering data will purchase first party data from a number of companies to create these data packages for others to buy through the data exchange marketplace.
Data drawbacks

While going from one to three increases your data resources, it’s not without its drawbacks. As anyone can buy third party data, what a business buys is not unique to it. As a result, it is very likely that all businesses competing for the same customers are working off the same data set.

Also since the establishment of GDPR in Europe and CCPA in California, marketers have had to respect consumer-set boundaries for the collection, use, and sale of their data.

The rise of such legislation has shed more light on privacy issues that has created pressure for platforms to stop enabling data collection without users’ knowledge. That is the story behind Google’s resolution to phase out third-party cookies and Apple’s new iOS setup for informed consent on apps.

The new frameworks don’t only curtail marketers from using data obtained from outside sources. They can even limit some first-party data that businesses have obtained without informed consent by tracking consumer behavior with cookies, pixels, or cross-device identification (XDID).

That is why a couple of years ago, we started hearing about zero-party data or ZPD. The term has been credited to Forrester, which presented it in Predictions 2019: B2C Marketing Report.

This approach has gained momentum over the past couple of years. AW360 predicts that a quarter of CMOs will be looking to implement ZPD in 2021.
The zero-party solution

As both zero-party data and first-party data take in information directly from the customer, there is some overlap between the two. The crucial difference between them is that zero-party data only includes what a customer knowingly and willingly shares.

That means that customers are in full control of the information they share with the business. They are willing to give their data if they feel they can trust the brand and are getting something of value in return.

Read more in  Zero to Hero: Providing Personalization & Privacy

The Pause that Refreshes Marketing Relationships

The old-time tagline for Coca Cola makes a lot of sense when applied to marketing, particularly for a holiday that they don’t want to be thinking about right now.

 

I just got an email from ShopRunner that really got my attention far more than anything I’ve ever seen in a marketing email. The subject line was “Skip our Mother’s Day emails this year.”

With so much clamor to sign up for emails, some of which have already pushed Mother’s Day marketing in mid-April, this subject line really stood out. So even though  I delete most of my ShopRunner emails automatically, just as I do most marketing emails, I clicked this one.  It showed me thsi: 

 

Pressing pause took me to a landing page that showed this:

It’s not like ShopRunner is giving up its raison d'être to promote brands that participate in its program.

As it says, the pause on Mother’s Day communication doesn’t mean that it is pausing all marketing messages. In fact, right under the banner acknowledging my pause were two banner ads for products it is promoting now.

It’s only offering to pause one specific marketing theme. It's actually a smart move not to push their Mother’s Day marketing in the face of people for whom it is just so much spam.

People can have any number of reasons not to have to deal with a bombardment of Mother’s Day messaging. They may find the messages to be irrelevant or, even worse, a sad reminder that they’ve  lost their mothers or their position as mother to children who are gone.

The move is smart because it offers to lessen email fatigue and reduce the irritation of spam. We all get more marketing message than we can even think of responding to. Certainly, customers who recognizes which occasion they'd rather not hear about would appreciate the consideration of a brand sparing them from that onslaught.

Really, this is such a great idea that it should be applied to all occasions typically taken up for marketing, like Father’s Day, graduations, back to school, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, etc.

Related: http://writewaypro.blogspot.com/2021/04/why-less-is-more.html

http://writewaypro.blogspot.com/2021/01/7-ways-to-grab-customer-attention-in.html

The Ad that Delivers What Women Want

 "What does woman want?" That question  perplexed that father of modern psychology, Sigmund Freud. It continues to puzzle marketers today, as we saw in What Women Want to See in Ads.

 The truth is that the answer was set out well over 500 years ago in one of the legendary knight stories, The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell: Spoiler alert: when the knight was given the choice of having his otherwise hideous-looking wife beautiful at night or during the day, he lets her make that decision and  was rewarded with beauty 24/7. 

But that insight of 1450 has been lost over the generations as marketers seek to push on women what they want instead of empowering them to make the decision for themselves. But one swimsuit company got smart about it and so has seen a very positive response to its ad on Facebook:

We proudly want to introduce ModLi.

A different kind of swimwear.

Sometimes - the usual bikini/one-piece is just perfect. Whether you are sun bathing, in a hot-tub with friends, going to the beach with your partner, etc...

And for "other" situations in life, ModLi is perfect.  Playing with your kids on the beach, going to the pool with family, swimming, water sports, or just walking on the coastline.

Benefits:

- Sun Protection (UPF +50 Reducing harmful rays by 98%)

- No wardrobe "Malfunctions"

- Comfortable "It's like the difference between wearing work clothes and sweatpants"

- Lab Tested Fabrics

- Designed by professional designers with customer requests in mind

The ad served on Facebook garnered 6.7K reactions, 683 shares, and 1.2K comments, a sample of which you can see below:

The large number of likes on many of these comments indicate that they do accurately reflect the feelings of many women. They like having  the option to choose if they wish to cover up or not without being judged for those choices. 

Read more in  The Answer to What Women Want in a Swimsuit Ad

Today's targeted marketing is powered by data and automation

 Marketing is always more effective when it is more targeted. As a result of integrating data and algorithms, marketers are able to now deliver a personalized customer experience at scale. 

There are various ways to target specific customers, and approaches range from lumping customers into very broadly defined categories to getting a lot more fine-tuned about the segments and responsive to individual customer behavior .In collaboration with Google, Deloitte put out a Digital transformation through data: a guide for retailers to drive value with data that took a closer look at these gradations. 

It ranked them as follows:

• Limited segmentation: All users are analyzed in broad segments. 

• Basic segmentation: Uses standard characteristics (e.g., gender, geography) for segmentation.

• Detailed segmentation: Segments are based on personal and behavior

• Dynamic segmentation: The UX / UI can respond to a customer’s in-session behavior as he or she exhibits different segment characteristics.

Achieving the detailed level depends on much more data than the static kind that is used for basic segmentation, and advancing to the dynamic level requires a level of automation that will enable recommendations and responses to go out in real-time. 

 The coming AI revolution in retail and consumer products invoked the women’s clothing store,  Avenue Stores LLC as an example of dynamic segmentation. It explained that  it brings together “data across multiple touchpoints, including in-store activities and market trend analysis, to learn and reason about what customers want and when they want it.” On that basis it can reach out to customers with communication tailored to their situation in real-time, which makes it possible to capture their attention while in “‘shopping mode.” 

Marketing for loyalty

Being in touch with your customers to let them know you’re there for them without pressuring them to buy can pay off in winning their loyalty and business later. In this case, your automated messaging doesn’t have to respond to segment your audience, as you would be working off a general form of communication.

When you don’t have history

But what if you do need to sell your products now? Marketing recommendations can work even on the more basic level, not just for new customers for whom you have no history to flesh out a profile but for the type of marketing communication that depends on general trends. For example, a very broad segment of all people in the United States can work for promotions tied to events shared by all due to the calendar, whether it’s Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, July 4th, etc. 

You don’t need to know much about your customer other than that they’ll know what these days are because they are on their calendars due to living in the United States for the trending algorithm to work well. That makes using this approach ideal for customers for whom you don’t have first-party data.

It doesn’t matter so much what they are normally interested in or what they’ve bought before when you’re sending out a marketing message about buying their mother something before May 10. However, if you do have information about the customer, say you know they’ve ordered flowers for their mother last year, then you can combine the trending recommendation with what you know about their behavior.

Read more in

Advanced Segmentation and Automation Are Changing the Marketing Game

You've come a long way, baby, but you haven't yet arrived

The current state of marketing to women has a vibe that harkens back to the print ads for Virginia Slims cigarettes that ran through the 1970s and 80s with the tagline, “You’ve come a long way, baby.” The backgrounds were a representation of the bad old days of restrictions on women that contrasted with the confidently posed model holding her slim cigarette.

The bad old days for marketing featured blatantly sexist ads in which women aspired to nothing more than pleasing their husbands or on catching a husband by being pretty and ladylike. We have moved on, but not altogether.

Marketers have become aware of the need to move with the time and have adapted ad images accordingly. The way women are represented in ads is no longer limited to airbrushed models who exhibit the “right” figure, skin tone, hair, and age.

While ad imagery has come a long way, surveys of women indicate that marketing still has a long way to go.


Only 29% of American women believe advertising portrays them accurately is the title of Callie Schweitzer’s LinkedIn article posted on March 9, 2021. The statistic comes from Morning Consult. Even men weren’t fully convinced, as less than half (44%) said they considered women’s representation accurate.

That's not exactly passing marks.

A flame-broiled fiasco on International Women’s Day 2021

You don’t have to look hard for the brand that seriously misread the room in issuing a Tweet in honor of International Women’s Day, and the Internet made sure you knew about it even after the Tweet was deleted.



The extremely provocative-sounding declaration was meant to reference support for women who become professional chefs and its project called HER (helping equalize restaurants). But without that immediate context provided only within the print ad that you can see below, there was the apparently sexist declaration alone, and that boomeranged against the brand.



The backlash was so strong, that the account had to offer the combination of an apology and reason for deleting the tweet.



Burger King fell right into that marketing hole that Schweitzer complained about with an assertion that “perpetuates centuries-old cultural stereotypes of what society ‘expects’ women to be.” It should be obvious that marketers should steer clear of marketing to women in such forms. But it is still trickier for them to identify what women do want to see and hear in marketing.

Read more in What Women Want to See in Ads