Take a look at the video here:

The phenomenon of businesses moving into fields that aren’t their expertise is not unique to fast food. Every day I come across places offering services that do not fall under their core competencies. Usually they tend to fail. Is this related to our struggling economy or are people looking for a one stop shop to solve all their needs?

So as marketing officers are rushing to stay relevant while trying to stay true to their inherited brand equity, they are forging ahead with a shiny new mandate to “revitalize, refresh and rebrand,” all while showing a better ROI and increased sales.

While all these new technologies are valuable tools for reaching consumers, marketers need to remember to continue to think about the brand – what differentiates it from the competition and what people are buying into.

New shiny ideas without a solid branding platform are only short-term spikes. Ask yourself if you have a true understanding of the most important branding questions, “What is the BIG IDEA for my brand?” What does it stand for in people’s minds? How does it make them feel?

For me, the answer lies firmly in creativity and information. Talk to those who love your brand and especially those who hate it to really understand a brand’s culture. Only then can you start to think creatively about the one idea that resonates throughout your brand.

Great brands, large or small, have a distinct culture and engage people in conversation. It strikes a chord with people based on truth about their lives, something they can relate to, and something they aspire toward or want to be a part of. They are true brand loyalists, who tell a friend, and they tell a friend and so it goes.

Do you know what is the one idea about your brand that truly resonates with people?

Identify and talk to the people who know your brand best, both good and bad. Look for the one thing that rings true among all the people you talk to and start from there. It is often so simple that you will kick yourself. The next step is simple, share your big brand idea with everyone that touches it, employees first, then customers and see the buzz that you create.

ParkerWhite has been pushing the use of data mining with all of our clients since 2005. While the promise of data mining relies heavily on the amount and collection of the data, the results have been extremely successful with those who were early adopters.

Current marketing practices, at best, employ the techniques of description, interpretation, evaluation, and prediction to produce marketing campaigns. Traditional and online agencies are being complacent and failures are blamed loosely on poor creativity, botched visions, and market dynamics. Successful campaigns are due to bold visions that come to imaginative realization.  But, in looking at other sectors of the business world, the tools and techniques needed to bring effective and efficient segmentation and accountability for success or failure, are now available to the advertising / marketing industry for B2B as well as consumer accounts.

Utilizing the tools and techniques that can be found in data mining technologies and integrating them into advertising / marketing practices will result in significant increases in revenue, satisfaction, retainment, and attainment, unquestionably due to the campaigns.

If you want to better understand the technology presently being used by some of the largest brands in the B2B and consumer marketing segments, then follow this link to download my e-book “The Fifth Quadrant: Using Data Mining technologies and tools to bring efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability to current marketing practices.”

As a result I find myself frequently making presentations to new and existing clients about how to implement email marketing into their overall marketing plans and recently I have had the same question asked of me multiple times.

Can we put video in our email?

My answer to that has been a resounding “No.” With the exception of Apple Mail, the most popular email clients do not display embedded video be it in Flash, QuickTime, Windows Media or any other popular video format. Recently, Campaign Monitor did some research on the subject of embedded video in email and came up with these same results. You can read the full document, “The Current State of Video in Email” on their website.

There is promise looming in the distance though. The introduction of HTML5 has led to an increase in email clients that can render video successfuly. Again, Apple is leading the charge with Mail, iPhone, Entourage and MobileMe all working seamlessly with the video tags in HTML5. You can read more about this in the article “HTML5 and video in email.”

As HTML5 is adopted by more email clients it will become a valuable tool for email marketing. We hope to start seeing it show up sooner rather than later.

Have you received any email with embedded video? What did you think? Is email a good medium for video or is it just one more thing to delete without reading?

Among their findings:

On the MSN messenger network of 180 million users, for example, the median degree of separation is 6. On Twitter, Kwak et al. hypothesized that because only 22.1% of links are reciprocal (that is, I follow you, and you follow me as well) the number of degrees separating users would be longer. In fact, the average path length on Twitter is 4.12.

What’s more, because 94% of the users on Twitter are fewer than five degrees of separation from one another, it’s likely that the distance between any random Joe or Jane and say, Bill Gates, is even shorter on Twitter than in real life.

They also posted this image as a representation of how re-tweets spread:

Credit: Kwak et al

Read the full article by clicking here.

How effective do you find re-tweeting to be? Do you find yourself using it more than regular tweets? How can re-tweeting be applied to businesses?

Nobody warned me I was going to be a new demographic, I had to figure it out on my own. My “Aha!” moment happened just a few days ago actually. With the upcoming release of Iron Man 2 I saw this ad for the Audi R8 during a commercial break:

It’s an awesome car and a fun commercial no doubt, but it didn’t really stick with me and it didn’t strike me as anything more than eye candy. 2 years ago I would have been online seconds after seeing the commercial to look up car specs, read more about it and watch the commercial again and again. But 15 minutes later, during the next commercial break, another car ad pops up, this time it’s the new campaign for the Sienna:

Once that wrapped up, I was sold.

I have no need for a new car right now, but I looked over at my wife and I’m pretty sure she was on board. When the show ended, I wandered over to my computer, hopped on their YouTube channel and proceeded to watch all of their ads (if you have some time, you should too…after you finish reading my blog post of course). Then it struck me, I’m the target market for the Toyota ad. Young (hey I’m only 30) dad, growing family, different responsibilities, THAT’S ME! No longer am I checking out sports cars, thinking about weekend getaways with the wife. Now I’m wondering if the current family car is going to be able to hold a stroller and pack ‘n play along with all our groceries. I didn’t actually end up buying the car (or any other car for that matter), but the fact that Toyota was able to entice me to do research on a car that a year ago I would have mocked really stuck with me.

The Target Market

So what does this have to do with my industry? It’s pretty simple, Toyota did their research, identified their target market, and did an awesome job of reaching out to them with their ads. Oftentimes in marketing I come across ads, whether they be on tv, in print or online, that seem to be unaware of their target market. One of the first steps we go through during our branding process is figuring out who our client is speaking to. Frequently the client will think they have a good idea of who their audience is but we find that research occasionally yields some surprises.

It’s easy to forget that a successful marketing campaign needs more than slick graphics and smart copy, it needs to be sold to the right people. Had Toyota replaced those actors with a couple in their mid-40s raising teenagers, I would not have been even slightly interested. Instead they cast the right people, aired a humorous, relatable commercial during a show they knew I was watching and then instead of just promoting their website they actually encouraged me to visit their YouTube page.

The Medium

This leads me to second part of identifying your market, knowing their medium. It’s amazing to me how many companies are still afraid of pushing their messages via non-traditional mediums. The 30-somethings of today are nothing like those of the 90’s. The World Wide Web as we know it came to fruition while most of us were in high school or college. It is a medium we are very comfortable using and one which I use more frequently than magazines or newspapers. The fact that Toyota’s call to action was to get me on their YouTube channel says something about their target market. I gladly went and checked it out because it fit in with my usual routine. Had they requested I visit their dealership or call an 800 number then they would have lost me as soon as their ad ended. That doesn’t mean that every advertiser should drive you to YouTube or Facebook as a call to action. It just means that marketers have more options than ever. Finding the right fit is more important than using the newest technologies.

Conclusion

Before you kick off your next campaign make sure you really know who your target market is and make sure you’re familiar with the communication mediums they prefer. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some diaper research I need to take care of.