Constant Beta

PSFK Evening with Rob Walker

Last Friday I attended a PSFK hosted book-reading and Q/A with journalist Rob Walker -and now author of a new book titled, "Buying In." He also writes the popular Consumed column for The New York Times, Murketing for Fast Company magazine and his own blog at murketing.com

It was a fun event - and I got the opportunity to meet several planners/ strategist with whom I had previously only communicated via email, AIM or facebook. The Q/A was hosted by Danielle Sacks,a Fast Company journalist who covers the advertising and marketing industries for the magazine. It was a chill evening spent in the company of inspiring peers and idols! Kudos to PSFK for continuing to act as our curator! 

Here are some photos picked from Dave Pinter's flickr group. Enjoy! (The girl in blue/black is your's truly btw. And no I don't like the taste of fizzy drinks (soda, beer, fizzy water..) so I finished several bottles of water instead.)

Q/A with Rohit Bhargava

Since May-June of last year, I have been assisting Rohit Bhargava with research and marketing for his very first book, Personality Not Included. The process was intense, fun and an amazing learning experience. Rohit is not just a fantastic writer and a brilliant visionary, but also an compassionate and generous mentor. Sometimes though, I cannot help but think that he lives multiple lives! I don't know how he wrote the book in less than 10 months, managed his blog and grew it to be one of the top read marketing blogs and continues to succeed at his full time job as SVP of Digital Marketing at Ogilvy PR!


As part of the marketing promotion for the book, Rohit issued an open call on his blog where he offered to answer 5 questions from any blogger about the book. Here are the few questions I asked but click on the graphic alongside to read all the other interviews. Enjoy!


1) How long has the 'Personality Matters' idea been brewing in your head?

Since I realized I couldn't use the title of the book for the marketing! Actually, the reason I called the marketing campaign for the book "personality matters" and will be using it as the title for the book blog is because if I use "personality not included" then I need to also have the subtitle, otherwise it doesn't make sense.  Why is personality not included?  Where is it?  Etc.  So "personality matters" became the tagline ...


2) And what/ which incident first inspired that idea?

It was essentially driven by my desire to have a strong "elevator pitch" for the book.  Personality matters pretty much summed it up, and if I can convince readers and others that it does matter, then getting the book is the natural next step to find out why and how to have one.

3) How are you using this big idea in your professional life?

 

The most interesting thing about writing a book on personality is the pressure that it puts on you to always have a personality!  Seriously, it has actually encouraged me to think more about how I portray myself and how I write online.  I used to think that using "I" was a big no-no because it was egotistical, and then I realized that writing in the first person was the most personal way that I could portray my ideas online

4) How can I apply this idea to make my own personality stronger/ better?

 

Great question - there is a definite relationship between creating a personality for an organization and using it as part of your own personal brand.  Sorry that I have to be cryptic to answer this one, but check my blog next week and you'll find a pretty comprehensive answer to this question ... :-

5) Lastly, what is going to be the extension (the idea of your next book!!) of this book?
I was thinking about writing a dating book about how to use marketing principles if you are single to attract the perfect mate.   Everything from writing a great profile on an online dating site to making sure you "give good google" so when they look you up you will have positive stuff out there.  Basically I want my next book to be something that could actually get me on Oprah!

 

CaseStudy of a misguided brand - American Apparel

Last week, a bunch of us here at POKE, had a very interesting experience. We routinely hold chat sessions to just talk to regular folks and understand their tech habits. On Friday, we had a bunch of guys come in for one such routine session. One of them was the Crazy James.

His story paraphrased,  -- He is trying to spread peace and love in the world that is consumed by materialistic desires and he will bike around the world for just $100. We checked out the above video on his myspace site. And we totally admit that this kid's got balls. But once you get over that - it's a load of bullshit that irresponsible brands contribute to and perpetuate. Let's examine this a little more closely.

Crazy James, harped on about living how brands and advertisers were messing around with people, offering them too many messages, compelling them to buy stuff they didn't need and in the end, contributing to this materialistic economy we live in.

Further in the conversation, when we asked him how did he decide on his idea, we learned that one night he was out drinking with American Apparel folks on the West Coast and the next morning, they bought him a bike and  offered to sponsor all his clothes. He also mentioned that everytime he is ready to leave a city and bike to a new one, American Apparel issues a press release for him. He supposedly got his airflights sponsored by Virgin Air and when he met with us, he was living with an editor at Elle Magazine.

When he pointed out the glaring contradictions in what his is preaching and what he practices, he didn't have a suitable response for us. We pointed out that for his rants against materialism, he was the ultimate poster child hawking a clothing brand, a bike brand, an airline and probably other brands we didn't know about.
Again, no convincing argument on his end.

Finally, he did mention that he worked for his food. Why, we asked. Why not get that for free as well? No, he persisted because that's a story for me and then I share it with my readers on my blog.
His website has no blog. And his myspace blog has a few entries and was last updated on Nov 5. Maybe he hasn't eaten since and has no stories?

Our craigslist ad that he responded to had asked for 18 - 21 year olds. It was only after he left and we checked out his myspace page that we realized he was 23. Not that it matters. He did say that he picked up odd jobs to make some cash on the side and our little chat was gonna earn him $20.

Also as he was leaving he invited us to go visit him and his biker buddies in Central Park the next Sunday where they will all be parading around half-naked and clothed only in American Apparel underwear. Is American Apparel paying you to do that for them, we asked. And again, he fumbled really not knowing how to be his own PR agent.

Crazy crazy...James, the poor poster child for misguided brands. If you see as his video ends, he has several other sponsors and from the looks of it, it is a part of some virtual reality show. But if you ask me, it is a virtual show that's already gone very wrong. And I pity the brands associated with it.

Especially American Apparel. I did think AA was one of the leading brands who had a vision and stuck to it. But after this experience, I get it -- I get that AA is just another brand trying just too hard to be cool.

Homeless Man Brand

WSJ has a great article yesterday about the fashionable re-branding of the 'Homeless' brand. A bunch of Beverly Hills kids created a fashion label inspired by a West L.A homeless dude who has been nicknamed "The Crazy Robertson."

The clothing brand is sold in high-end boutiques like Kitson with the Crazy Robertson hoodies selling for as much as $98. John Jermyn aka Crazy Robertson gets 5% of net profits although he  refused to accept cash and instead asked to be paid in food, liquer and paper for his art projects.

I'm not sure where I stand on this particular brand building endeavor. The entrepreneurial kids also set up a MySpace page complete with videos of Jermyn saying, "My name is John Jermyn. Welcome to my myspace.com website."

The whole venture strikes me as funny. But it is fantastic microscopic vignette of the various forms boredom takes and the various solutions we come up with to continue to keep ourselves fascinated.

Bollywood marketing uses twitter

I had a weird notification on twitter today.

"Saawariya" is following you.

Saawariya is a movie. :-|

As a marketer, twitter marketing is one of the recommendations we often use for clients but I didn't expect bollywood movie markters to be so savvy.

Only, I quit twitter because of such marketing campaigns destroying the network's social stock.

Sigh.

Using traditional media to advertise an online brand

At the recent Temple Ad-Club speech, one of the students asked us about using traditional media to advertise online/ digital brands. I think it's a brilliant and ironic question by itself. Because you see, you have a whole host of digital media practionners who still write and publish books and then you have a host of online brands that advertise on TV. Even though audiences that consume traditional media are fragmented and perhaps traditional advertising doesn't have as many eye-balls anymore -- it is certainly not dead. And here are two brands that I think are doing it right. chemistry.com and ask.com

I'm not a fan of comemercials that take potshots at their competitors on-air. I think its highly unoriginal and barely creative to do so. But the recent chemistry.com commercials perhaps may change my opinion. Have you seen them?

I've never used dating websites so I don't know if eharmony really rejects people on those grounds. I thought there was a match for everyone... But then, take a look here. Apparently eharmony.com does reject people on unclear grounds. Their reasoning might be very valid - maybe they just don't have the match for them. But chemistry.com -- a new player in the online dating industry, used this criticism of eharmony.com to their advantage. By the way, chemistry.com is owned by match.com -- the industry leader in online dating.

I don't know if it is brilliant or sad - but these ads worked for me. I remembered the new brand, I remembered the commercials (because they are so damn good) and I correctly relayed this to the students 2 weeks after I had seen this ad. This, I think, is a great example of how to use traditional advertising to market to market an online entity.

The goal of sych advertising should be tri-fold:

• Good enough that people remember the brand name/ the dot.com URL
• They remember what the ad was about/ what the brand is about.
• Correctly able to recall the brand and talk to friends about it.

I doubt there is magic formula or the right recipie to achieve all the goals above, BUT --

I think a few elements to doing this teh right way are:

• Establish the sole distinguishing factor from competitor -(without really ridiculing the competitor please- that's just something I am not cool with and would have no respect for a brand that did that.)
• Give audiences the "OMG!" moment. (OMG - taht's funny, OMG - that's cool.. whatever your OMG is) Have you seen the ask.com commericals? My reaction was "OMG - those features are so cool" And I did log on the site to check them out.
• Can you add to this? What other elements worked for you that you think will work for online brands taht want to use traditional media for advertising?

PS - I'm referring to the new ask.com commericals - where all you see are the website features. No annyong man singing and no references to alogorithins or complicated concepts. Just the website - and what it can do for you. I'll post them here when I find them - right now, youtube.com has the old ones.

Funny ad on facebook

This marketplace listing ad on facebook cracked me up!! You gotta love the panache of college kids.

What to do if you suddenly run out of fancy paper bags

It's good news when Victoria's Secret Beauty has a 50% - 75% off sale.

But really bad news when the store runs out of their fancy-schmancy paper bags and begins using these 'Thank you for shopping' polythene bags.

How could a gignormous retail giant like Victoria's Secret run out of paper bags during a sale? And how could they not have a PLAN B in place? If using polythene bags was indeed PLAN B -- perhaps the company needs to consider hiring someone who understands brand touchpoints.

Literally every woman in that Santa Clara, CA Victoria's Secret store was a little perplexed at the idea of carrying their goodies (beauty supplies and undergarments) in flimsy grocery store bags. When I asked the cashier about the state of the bags, she replied, "We've run out our bags for like.. forever."

It probably was an honest mistake and the store thought that was their best solution, but perhaps this is a good opportunity for the store to realize that they need an actual plan in place to conitnue to maintain their terrific brand integrity and image.

Here are some ideas for retail giants that suddenly realize they are out of bags:

1) Run to the nearest dollar store and buy every single paper bag available there. Or Have store printed stickers handy to paste on every bag so atleast the customer knows where the bag came from.

2) If you must use plastic bags (god forbid) - get a little creative. Use ribbons, bows or make creative use of left-over props from past store displays.

3) Create a temp-sign on your window that says the store won't be using any bags that day as the store's contribution to saving trees and promoting a green earth. (With the curent bro-ha-ha about going green -- this is a very smart strategy when you think about it) Customers can bring their own bags.

More on this.. later. (Off to dinner now!)

Nightclub marketing

Studio 54 days may never return, but innovative nightclub owners and promotion companies are inventing their own recipes to drive traffic and create that unique buzz around their club. Here are some rather interesting tactics I learned about recently, 

1. Polaroids: A close friend in Australia runs a promotion and marketing firm. He alerted me to a cool idea he recently introduced to clubs in Melbourne  - taking Polaroids at nightclubs and selling them in club branded inlets for $5. What a brilliant way to market the club and add that extra pizzaz? Digital and phone cameras have wiped off the old-world charm of polaroids, but like the photo-booth that is climbing up the popularity charts again, the polaroid is back into fashion. An impulsive moment captured on film when surrounded by foot-tapping music, fun-loving people and a couple drinks !
2. Digital downloads: Another club in London actually has it's own crowd take random photographs of the crowd on a digital camera that are later uploaded to a site. If you were at the club the night before, you are welcome to download your photos (if any!) from the site for free!
3. Invisible stamps: The same friend who is now in Australia pioneered a new way to issue an invisible 'entry stamp' on nightclub crowds, who he noticed were always grumbling about the permanence of the stamp. Now clubs use a special ink that is visible only under a green laser light. (That also keeps unsuspecting parents from thinking about their daughter's whereabouts in Indian households!)
4. Commercialized Stamps: A club in Mumbai actually came up with this innovative stamp that said, "Don't Drink & Drive. Call a cab" and then provided the preferred cab-company's phone number. Very innovative: conscious capitalism!
5. SMS Marketing - Send special entry passwords and drink coupons via SMS to preferred guests .

Can you think of any other cool ideas?

Grocery chain goes high-tech

A friend passed me on a link to this -- I suppose that would make Whole Foods the first grocery store to air it's own podcast shows!
(PS- Whole Foods CEO John Mackey writes his own blog on the company site. Is that cool or what?!)

The monthly podcasts on WF site feature interviews with experts in diverse fields and share product information and recipies with the readers. I think it's a fantastic way to get the word across about WF products. But surprisingly there was no information/ posters about the podcasts in the store - and I live right next to one.