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Breaking Down the Bowl Sponsorship Season:New Mexico Bowl

First Bowl up is the New Mexico Bowl. With Title Sponsorship from the New Mexico CVB, owned by ESPN Regional Television and of cource braodscated on ESPN. Here is a link to the list of Bowl Partners
http://www.newmexicobowl.com/index.php/another_test/bowl_sponsors


Results:
Not sure if you sat down to watch the New Mexico bowl it would make you want to go to your computer and book a New Mexico vacation? But with commercial spots on the ESPN broadcast and on field signage maybe someone booked that trip to Sante Fa for the holidays.

Sponsorship Grade: C

President Clinton can still work a room.

Politics aside President Bill Clinton can still work a room. This past Friday the former President was at the White House to meet with President Obama. They decided to talk a stroll to the press room only to find the door to be locked! President Obama asked who had the keys and how long it would take to get the press corp to fill up the room...well it took all of 5 minutes to become standing room only.

President Clinton said he felt awkward addressing the media, that ways a great way to set expectations low and over deliver in his words and control of the room. He still has the magic and again Politics aside if he ran again I believe he could talk his way right back into the office that is oval.

Who's Using Twitter

72% of Twitter users say they post updates about their personal life, activities or interests.
62% post work-related updates.
55% use Twitter to share links to news stories.
53% use the service to retweet others’ material.
40% use the service to share photos with others, while 28% use it to share videos.
24% tweet their location.

Source: The Pew Center: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1821/twitter-users-profile-exclusive-examination

Bob Hope Classic inks sponsor deal

LA QUINTA, Calif. (AP) — Franklin American Mortgage Co. has agreed to a three-year, $1.5 million sponsorship deal with the Bob Hope Classic, whose 52nd edition will be played Jan. 17-23.
The mortgage company based in Franklin, Tenn., first participated in the PGA tournament this year.
Franklin American will receive a variety of benefits, including pro-am playing opportunities, tickets, hospitality and signage at the event. The company will underwrite the tournament's celebrity dinner and be the official sponsor of the event's Celebrity Jam Session.

Cool site of the Day...Mad Men Yourself from AMC

Want to create your very own MadMen avatar and join the Advertising world....check out http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/madmenyourself/

Double dip advertising...Geico & Helzberg Diamonds

If you watched NFL football this Sunday you may have seen a Geico commercial featuring a guy who proposes to a girl who opens a jewelry box that has a Helzberg Diamonds logo on it.? Then it cuts to the lizard and old guy and they say "Oh, Helzberg, he must have saved money on his car insurance". Well I have gotten to the bottom of this "odd marriage" both companies are holdings of Berkshire Hataway...yes that little company run by Warren Buffett.

So a very interesting concept of "budding" up to save some money but at what cost to the TV networks? Not sure the networks aring the games want all these brands getting together to share air time do we...or does the NFL?

Thoughts?

Taking Social Media to the next level...actually meeting a person?

One of the biggest mistakes marketers make with social media marketing – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter – is they think it means they don’t have to talk to people. They think if they’re posting to Twitter, updating their status on Facebook or posting videos to YouTube that’s it for social media marketing. But making posts without any real connection to real people isn’t really marketing. The truth is everyone is doing that. There are 450 million people on Facebook, and while a significantly smaller number are businesses, everyone is doing the same thing. They’re all busy posting away and hoping that it will get them business. ....well lets look at taking it to the next level.

The real secret of social media marketing is that these online networking tools only allow you to get into the mind space of other people. It’s rare that somebody who follows you on a social media tool comes along and buys something. There has to be a step in the middle.......and that step is a real conversation.

You have to either get face-to-face with prospects or at the very least get them on the phone. The big difference with social media marketing is these are not cold calls. These are people you had conversations with, they’ve gotten to know you, and now the two of you are ready to take your business relationship to the next level. Please don’t misunderstand me, I don’t think you should start calling all your Facebook and LinkedIn connections and set up sales meetings. In fact please don’t do that. What I am saying is when you meet somebody online and they are interesting, and the two of you have an ongoing conversation online, why not take the conversation off-line?
Over the years, I’ve done this several times and the results have been phenomenal. I haven’t always known what the results were going to be, but I took the chance and talk to these people.

Once you have spoken with somebody in the real world, your online conversations take on a more personal note. They’re more likely to pay attention to what you have to say, and are more likely to send referrals your way. If things work out really well they may even become a customer.
So look for your list of connections on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Make a note of the ones you’ve had the most interesting conversations with. These are the ones you should get in touch with and continue to build a relationship with.

Lunch anyone!

Branding is more than a Logo

The Importance Of Branding

In a competitive market a business must have a brand to stand out. Branding is highly important whether the business operates on a small or a large scale and whether it is a retailer or operates business to business. No matter who the customer is, he has to have something to identify with and recognize.

Any branding should be chosen very carefully. It is the image with which the business is associated and needs to convey the appropriate message to the customer. A logo shouldn’t be picked at random, instead it needs to be professional and reassure the customer that the business offers quality products and services. Once chosen the logo appears on everything from packaging to websites and needs to create a feeling of trust.

Branding is a marketing and advertising tool. The business will garner attention and attract customers with a professionally designed, well thought out logo. Before deciding on the branding a business must define its aim, as well as the features and products of its services. The opinions of current customers need to be taken into account, as well as their future needs and desires. Potential clients should not be forgotten. Once settled, it is advisable to hire a designer to get a professional, polished look that will be a part of the business’s identity forever.

The defined and professionally designed brand can, and should be used everywhere and anywhere. It should be on letterheads, packaging, websites, staff uniforms and badges to name but a few. Wherever it appears it is seen by existing and potential customers, who come to recognize it and remember it. Branding extends to employees and the message they give to customers. It incorporates how a business answers the telephone and signs its e-mails. The brand is a company’s ‘voice’ and has to be consistent to build up a good relationship between the business and its customer.

It takes hard work and dedication to build up a brand, but the rewards are worth it. A customer base that trusts a business and what it stands for is priceless, as is the repeat business and the power of word of mouth. Once established, however, a business can’t afford to rest on its laurels. The brand represents quality, reliability and much more and the services or products have to live up to this reputation to survive and prosper.

The Brand Building behind Food Network

Behind the kitchens at the Food Network, they’ve been cooking up some vey savvy branding – for the Network as as well as for its individual hosts.

Rachael Ray and Sandra Lee are the two biggest brands. The way they are mareketed provides a good branding lesson: you can occupy the same positioning within a niche, yet own a distinctive brand that sets you apart.

Distinct Brands with the Same Positioning:

The positioning these two stars occupy is one of dominance in home-making convenience: swift and easy, calibre meal preparation for busy women (mostly). Yet apiece has been healthy to carve out a separate and distinct brand within that same space.

Taglines that Build Brands:

Rachel Ray’s empire is build on the foundation of her very emphatic tagline – “30 minute meals.” The study states it all. Sandra Lee’s tagline is “semi-homemade meals” – preparing meals with the aid of pre-packaged ingredients.
It is essentially the same positioning, but without the exact time period that Ray uses. The implication is the same: you’ll be healthy to prepare calibre meals at home faster.
While both have been healthy to establish an dominance position within the convenience field, interestingly, their dominance does not come from industry credentials. The sense of dominance they have been healthy to build comes from their one-of-a-kind personalities and presentation, as well as their individual stories.

They learned how to cook on their own, either because they had to (in Lee’s case) or as in Ray’s case, her mom was in the food service business, and an avid cook

Leveraging a Brand Into Multiple Products:

Both have been been healthy to leverage their brands to create and promote multiple products. Some of Lee’s branded products include: Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade Cooking, Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade Desserts, Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade Cooking II, Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade Grilling … she even ventures into Rachael Ray’s turf with Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade 20-Minute Meals.
Rachael Ray’s branded product line includes cookbooks, such as 30-Minute Meals, 30-Minute Meals 2, Rachael Ray’s 30-Minute Meals: Cooking ‘Round the Clock,Rachael Ray’s 30-Minute Meals for Kids: Cooking Rocks!, Rachael Ray’s 30-Minute Get Real Meals: Eat Healthy Without Going to Extremes, among others.

And because both of their brands have been established in a highly scalable niche – home convenience, they have been healthy to easily grow their product lines beyond food, into the further reaches of home-making, on TV, in print, etc. (Lee actually started her brand in the home-making field and then went into food).

Finding Different Marketing Angles Within the Same NicheIn their products as well as in their shows, their distinctive personalities, look, and style etc. further differentiates their brands from one another. But the difference is built on a foundation of strong taglines that embody one-of-a-kind marketing angles within the same niche: 30 minute meals vs semi-homemade.
The lesson here is just because someone else might have established an dominance positioning in a niche you want, doesn’t mean you can’t create a different, yet successful brand within the same space.
However attempts to copy or merely imitate a brand within a niche position will not only fail, it will mark you as inauthentic. You need to be healthy to take one-of-a-kind angle so you can carve out your own space within the niche you want.

What if Starbucks.....

What if Starbucks charged a monthly fee, but you could drink all the "basic" coffee you wanted? It cost Starbucks only a few cents a cup. It might even become cheaper for them if you had your own mug up on a shelf to pull down each time you visited. Think of all the paper they would save by not giving out a paper cup with each order?

My Condolences to Traditional PR....

It is a cliché that the Internet revolutionized our lives but as far as Public Relations are concerned, this is more than true. Thanks to the Internet , in general, Social Media in particular, old-school PR is becoming history. Of course, nobody forbids you to use old PR tricks to promote a site but if you haven’t discovered yet, social media are more efficient in doing so than traditional PR approaches. In a sense, social media are the upgraded version of public relations. Welcome to PR 2.0!

When I say that social media is better than old-school PR, I really mean it. Social media excel traditional PR channels in many ways, some of which are:

1.Social Media Is Cheaper

Most, if not all of the major social media sites you can use to promote your site for free. Even those sites, which offer a paid membership aren’t very expensive and they are still many times cheaper than, for instance, publishing a paid press release in a local newspaper or paying for the hosting of a PR site of your own.

2.Social Media Allow Better Targeting

Another advantage with social media is that it allows for better targeting. For those social media sites, where you have to approve people to get access to your profile (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc.), you have a lot of control over who are connected with. What is more, if you join a group (or create one) in your niche, you can get even more targeted in your messages.

3.Social Media Is Fashionable

Nowadays, everybody is on social media. Even President Obama and other top politicians are on Facebook and Twitter. Many experts believe that the skillful use of Web 2.0 sites was one of the main reasons why Mr. Obama won the elections. Some like to say that social media is just a trend that will pass, which just isn’t true. Social media is much more than that and it is certainly here to stay.

4.Social Media Have a Wider Reach

In comparison to traditional media, social media reaches a wider audience. Add the incredibly low costs to that and you will realize why social media is many times more efficient than traditional PR. With social media you can reach your audience 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (if of course, the hosting of your social media site doesn’t go down now and then).

5.Social Media Gives More Flexibility

Last, but not least, social media gives you more flexibility. If you have to broadcast an important piece of news, you just post it on your profile and the people in your network will see it right away. With traditional PR, it is not always possible to have such short reaction time and very often updates to an already prepared press release are not possible at all.

Conclusion

The list of advantages with social media over traditional PR could continue indefinitely but it is obvious that even to mention of a few of these advantages is enough to convince any old-school PR expert to jump on the social media wagon.

Eight reasons why direct mail still works

Multichannel marketers today tend to get caught up in the frenzy of the next greatest trend. What about Web 3.0? What's the hot social networking application? How do we make our e-mails more effective?

Sexy online strategies are and should be a big part of direct marketing. But that doesn't mean you should ignore some of the old-school tactics, like direct mail.

That's right, direct mail.

Sure, it may be true that mail pieces are much more expensive than e-mails, thanks to rising postal and paper costs. And many marketers and consumers alike often perceive direct mail to be old-fashioned and downscale.

But when used wisely and analyzed carefully, direct mail outperforms many tactics, particularly with prospects and certainly with many customer segments.

Newer technologies may excite and preoccupy the marketing team, but direct mail works.

Still not convinced direct mail should be a part of your overall contact strategy? Here are eight points that illustrate how and why direct mail remains alive and well in the 21st century.

1. Intrusive

   Unlike your Website, direct mail is an “active” format. Customers may find their way to your site, but a catalog or a direct mail piece in their mailbox is an intrusive tap on the shoulder that online-only activities don't allow.

   While e-mail shares the intrusive nature of direct mail, e-mails can get overlooked in a crowded inbox. Plus, consumers are conditioned not to open e-mails from unknown senders for fear of viruses or other technical catastrophes. And direct mail won't get caught in a spam filter.

   When done properly, a good direct mail piece will stand out even in a crowded mailbox, grab customers' attention and incite them to act. That's the intrusive nature of direct mail that no other marketing tactic can emulate.

2. Tactile

   There's something to be said for appealing to the senses. Direct mail delivers a tactile sensation that online activity can't.

   You can feel a mail piece in your hands. You can hear an envelope or tab tear open. You can see the images and key messages on the printed page. You might even be able to smell it! Websites and e-mail cannot compare to this experience.

   The physical nature of direct mail forces customers to take note. And if we do our jobs effectively, the piece will pique their interest and encourage them to spend more time with it.

   In bricks-and-mortar retail, the ability to touch and experience the product increases the likelihood of a sale. It's the same with direct: Even though it's not the actual product in the recipient's hands, a mail piece still activates the tactile senses.

3. Targeted

   At its best, direct mail is targeted to the customers most likely to respond. Whether you are speaking to prospects or customers, the best way to reach a specific audience is through direct mail.

   But many marketers do not take full advantage of print's ability to target — not only with lists, but with customized messages. With simple black plate ink changes, you can tailor your direct mail creative to different lists — best customers, lapsed customers, even prospects. You can target customers based on specific activities and microsegment prospects.

   The more targeted the message and the list, the better the response. In fact, if you're not customizing your print products, you may be wasting your efforts and creating “junk mail” that won't get noticed.

4. Varied

   While the cost of some direct mail, particularly catalogs, continues to rise because of postal increases, direct mail offers a wealth of other format options. Depending on the segment and on what you are asking the recipient to do, a postcard, self-mailer or three-dimensional package can get results much like a catalog — sometimes even greater.

   But few mailers think out of the box with format and function. Direct mail doesn't have to be solely about getting a sale.

   For instance, how are you thanking customers? One marketer sent a 3-D “thank you” mailing to its best customer segment, adding significant incremental sales without overtly promoting a sale.

   Explore the direct mail formats available to you. Work with your creative team and printer to see how you can find an innovative yet effective format. The more distinctive the format, the more it will stand out in the mail.

5. Measurable

   One of the key reasons direct mail remains a viable channel is that you can test hypotheses and measure results. While metrics are getting better for online efforts, direct mail still reigns supreme on testing, measurement and analytics.

   Even for companies that have difficulty tracking source codes, the use of matchbacks can still help you gauge a mailing's success and analyze overall results. But with the multiple online hits and touches added to the mix, how you measure must change. The question becomes, which of those online efforts are adding incremental sales to your direct efforts? You can't measure your mail efforts in a void!

6. Personalized

   There's no question that online technology has made amazing advances in personalization that print can't touch. But there is something magical about seeing your name in print.

   And when a name is cleverly incorporated into a mail piece, the result can be increased sales. Personalization techniques can include working the recipient's name into a headline, or calling attention to products he or she has previously purchased.

   There was a time when personalization was so expensive that it could cripple your ROI. But today's technology has made print personalization easier and more affordable.

   Check with your printer to see what new options are available. Think of personalization not just in terms of “your name here,” but also in terms of relevant and variable data.

   At a macro level you can “personalize” a cover of a catalog or an offer on an envelope, based on how a particular customer segment responds.

   Even better, integrating the online and offline world can really boost overall response. Consider those marketers who include a personal URL (PURL) printed within the piece. Not only can it increase response, it can also facilitate tracking!

7. Integrated

   Direct mail should not be the only piece of your contact strategy. You should build your mail plan with direct mail as a component, a cog in a larger machine.

   Use e-mail to pre-announce mailings or to remind customers of an expiring offer. Push traffic to your Website for convenient ordering. Tie in social media, using your catalog to promote the online presence.

   Get creative with integration by producing an offer requiring a tweet response or that asks recipients to sign up for an offer online — anything that pushes a response, not just a purchase. Don't think of it as a “circulation” strategy but as a “contact” strategy.

   Several channels working together is powerful, and there are remarkable advantages. One channel should never replace the other — all should work together to form a unified campaign.

8. Effective

   Direct mail works — period. A recent ExactTarget study conducted by Ball State University revealed that while e-mail plays a vital role in marketing communications, direct mail is still a dominant, prominent purchase driver for different types of customers.

   In some cases, 70% to 90% of survey respondents made a purchase based on receiving direct mail — for all age groups.

Direct mail may seem old timey, quaint or even irrelevant. But it's still an effective way to tap customers on the shoulder and push them into an activity. And while it may eventually be replaced by some newfangled technological innovation, rest assured it's not going away anytime soon.

But as the cost to produce and deliver mail increases, you can't continue mailing as usual expecting the same results. That's not going to work any more: You have to mail highly efficient, targeted and relevant messages that offer customers a true value.

TX ProStart Dinner coming in Dallas!