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Bonding with my beverage

October 30, 2012 Leave a Comment

Love, love, love co-op promos like this. File this under “Experience Marketing” – an intrusive genre of communications which firmly places the consumer right into a high-octane, high concept brand moment.

Take a look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDiZOnzajNU

How could we use this for more industrial applications?

Stay tuned.

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Direct Choice Inc. is a full-service direct marketing agency that has worked with national and regional brands in a wide variety of vertical markets. In addition to this blog, you can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn

Filed under General Marketing Tagged with Brand marketing, direct mail advertising agencies, direct mail campaign, direct marketing, full service advertising agency, Philadelphia direct marketing

Green com

October 16, 2012 Leave a Comment

Continuing along on our discovery of sustainability…let’s take a look at the five pillars of creating sustainable communications.

Credibility: As a high school teacher (a fan of double-knit poly pants suits…hmmm) used to say, Cut the crap.

Sustainable communications get down to it and are based on technology-enabled data. Think substance over style. There’s no place to hide…no excuses. Reaching out to customers and prospects needs to be based on credible, verifiable facts and opportunities. And that means no hedging on claims about your product’s green CV. The truth will set you free.

Clarity: Authentic, clear messaging wins. Don’t assume customers and prospects have gone all Al Gore on the details of eco-friendliness and the environment. What does the whole carbon footprint thing really mean? Make sure you’re being concise and genuine. The other big word is “transparency.” This connotes trust. Sourcing needs to be impeccable when making claims and educating consumers.

Consistency: Your entire organization needs to get on message, and more importantly, in line business-wise vis à vis sustainability. What you say in communications out front should be applied at the back of the office, too. It’s a systematic, business-discipline movement versus a single campaign. Before you put it out there, make certain you’ve created a dedication within your company.

Conversation: Old school: one-way narrative from brands. Now: two-way conversation. Tap the interactive potential of the internet to engage your critics as well as allow your fans to get penetration into the blogosphere and create a clear call to action for your consumers.

Cost: This is not necessarily $$$$. But certainly that’s a factor. Responsible costing is critical. But what’s also essential is an analysis of cost to the planet of your communications plan. If you’ve tak

en down a third of a forest this year in print, nothing you say about being green will make an iota of sense to consumers. Not to say move all com online, but consider reducing that pr int commitment where it makes marketing sense. And if you do print, use recyclable stock.

Bottom line: What you do is more important than what you say.

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Filed under General Marketing Tagged with direct mail advertising agencies, direct mail campaign, direct marketing, full service advertising agency, Philadelphia direct marketing

Sustainable com

October 9, 2012 Leave a Comment

Okay, so your org is jumping onto the sustainability wagon. (Hopefully, it’s because you’ve thought this through and not just because it’s the cool thing right now.) An example of guilty sustainers is the brand turning green overnight or using natural or typically “green” iconography in their communications. In fact, this approach smacks of “greenwashing,” especially if you’re in the automobile or petrochemical sector.

There is no “green and go.” You’ll be successful at this sustainability thing only if your brand can demonstrate a real commitment to responsible business and sustainability overall. Environmental and social messages are simply not enough.

In the current market hit hard by an economic downturn, it’s no surprise that the focus for most marketing is value. Every brand is pushing a value message, it seems, right? Having combined brand attributes into the mushy “value” bucket, competitive advantages will come from differentiation. How do you differentiate when your message is just like all the rest?

Sustainable communication offers real opportunities for enhancing brand equity. The brands that master it will be better placed to ride out the recession and poised to capture sizable market share when it ends.

So what is sustainable communication? Without getting all esoteric, it’s about dematerialization, increasing the emotional value of a brand while decreasing the physical resources used in creating its communications. Enhancing the emotional value of your brand engenders loyalty and trust — both highly valuable assets. It’s about creating compelling communications, underpinned by fact, with a clear call to action for consumers.

There is a tangible opportunity for brands that create effective sustainable communications to stand out in a crowded market. Consumers are skeptical and confused. Recent research from Forrester Research [link: www.forrester.com] shows that as many as 77% of them don’t believe the environmental claims made by brands. Confusion and lack of trust are among the main reasons consumers do not buy sustainable products.

Digital is changing much of the old ways. The power of search is incredible, giving consumers the muscle to discover more about brands of all kinds. There is simply no longer anywhere to hide.

The smart money is on the next 12 to 18 months, during which time 60% of companies will move to digital-marketing activities in order to communicate more sustainably. Not to mention, smarter, more cost-effective communication (better ROI), which can be tracked and measured.

So how do you create sustainable com? What goes into it?

Next time.

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