Tattoo Projects Born to Blog

October 19, 2010

October is all about Pink…

October is breast cancer awareness month, one of the largest well-known charities that is important to a lot of people for many different reasons. The campaigns and ads for breast cancer awareness are awesome. Breast cancer awareness is seen and heard all throughout the country at places including restaurants, races, businesses, events, etc. This charity knows how to get the word out and raise money for a good cause. More >>

August 31, 2010

How Does Your Blog Communicate?

Following up on the idea of social media being one of the newest and most popular ways of communicating and marketing your products, blogs are not only important in getting an audiences attention, but also in establishing relationships. More >>

March 28, 2008

Social Media FrogPaper

This is an excerpt of a piece about the use of social networking by marketers, written by StrawberryFrog. Pass it on.

Social marketing DON’TS

1) Don’t violate the rules of social media. Often marketers and brands violating basic rules of social media. For Facebook no matter how targeted the message (or fancy or clever), it was still going to cause a revolt because Facebook wasn’t meant as a platform for marketing – it had a 100% social purpose. Brands and advertisers constantly forget this in their desperation to chase “consumers” down every dark alley and try and corner them into submission. With Scion, we ensured that we developed this site in collaboration with the Scion enthusiast audience. In fact, we used some of the leaders of the existing online Scion communities to help us to develop the Scion design language. We also ensured that this brand site was designed for purely social and expressive purposes and did not feel like a corporate or money generating venture.

2) Don’t duplicate established social communities. If your audience is using a strongly established community (i.e. recipe sharing), why re-create a duplicate, marketing based branded version of the same community? Why would your target leave the existing community for a branded version of the same offer? There are hundreds of existing Scion communities and socializing sites online. We knew from the start that we had to create a totally new kind of social tool for Scion owners to be a relevant and frequently used social tool.

3) Don’t hijack consumer’s social networks. One of the failures of Facebook marketing was that it hijacked the existing culture of the community. At the least marketers should be invited into the social culture, but even better marketers should create its own culture that consumers want to join. They should also be mindful of forcing friends to endorse products among their peers. Users should be voluntary brand ambassadors, not an enforced sales force.

September 14, 2007

F* Me Marketing

Was just about to blog about the latest survey on search results vs. print advertising. But then I saw the Marshall’s Shoe Mobile. Perfect timing. Search is awesome, necessary, and makes the world go ’round. But there’s NOTHING that can beat the impact of a cool stunt, in the right place at the right time.

July 9, 2007

Today: old-school.

RFID, Bluetooth, mobile this, interactive that— that’s the way we like to do it. But in the midst of all the avatars and WOM, let’s face it: sometimes nothing can do the job better than a good, old-fashioned :60 radio spot. Now: turn it into an original tune and lyrics, INSTEAD of a garden-variety radio spot, and you’ve got the next installment in our Sheetz radio campaign. It rocks, it’s fun, and as they say in the world of emerging media: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

June 6, 2007

Are you juiced about Joost?

All the things you love about TV and the internet, all mixed up into one tasty brew called Joost. I can’t see how you could possibly go wrong. We’re beta testing, and will let you know, of course.

May 29, 2007

Don’t just sit there– create a revenue stream!

Certainly, you’ve already heard the soon-to-be-famous quote made just a few days ago by Google senior VP, Alan Eustace and VP Jeff Huber: “(Google) accepts that some projects will never have an associated revenue stream.”

Companies challenge their talent to create innovative ways to engage consumers, and turn a profit from it. That’s what makes the world go ’round. Especially tough for the media/news world (consumers like their news and news brands FREE), but it is being done– Newspaper Next project is an example.

Let’s think about this for a second.

With Google’s acceptance of some projects NEVER generating revenue, they’re saying that those projects are meant only to build and serve their audience. And with larger, well-served and satisfied audiences– other projects designed to make money are destined to bring in nice chunks of change.

Sounds like simple logic, and a great way to enhance revenue streams. Wondering about all the gasping at the Google quote?