Dave

Oct 13 2010

Bank Offers Two-for-One Money

You know the daily deal phenomenon is out of control when you can get 50 dollars in cash for 25.

Area 224 loves a deal as much as the next guy. But is this headline, from an email we received from daily deal site “The Got Spot,” TGTBT? (Too Good To Be True?)

“Free Money from MB Financial”

If you’re new to “social commerce,” you are buying, in effect, options to receive a product or service at a discount. Most of the time, sites like Groupon and Gilt Groupe are selling you something at a discount. You’ll pay $25 for $50 worth of food and drink at a local restaurant, or get a $500 retail Lauren suit for $99. (They sold out of that one, I’m on the waiting list.)

Bringing us back to the bank’s offer. Read the fine print and it’s a Master Card Gift Card, with $50 in value, on sale for $25.

Limit one per household; somehow, I just purchased ten.

What’s in it for the bank? Well, I’m sure they’ll try to sell me something – so they’re calculating that spending $25 to acquire “eyeballs” (or foot traffic, since I have to visit in person to claim my gift card) is worth it.

But this is trackable marketing – they can tell what it costs to get me in the bank, and whether or not I convert. So…probably not a bad idea on the part of the bank.

Now we’ll see if they let me cash in all ten.

UPDATE: As of 10/14 at 3:00 p.m., The Got Spot has refunded me $225 from my original $250 purchase, saying that I can’t buy more than one coupon. They did this without me asking or complaining.

Oct 12 2010

How to Throw Creatives Under the Bus

Is your new logo universally reviled? Go back to the old one! And make sure everyone knows the designer screwed up!

Ignored in the recent Gap logo kerfuffle is how poorly the designer, Laird + Partners, has been treated by the iconic brand. Which reminded us of another logo that was universally reviled…

You kinda like it now, right?

When the London 2012 Olympic logo was first launched, response was less than favorable. (Or “favourable.) Sites still exist asking the public to upload “something better.” (Here’s an example.)

HOWEVER, rather than kowtowing to the masses, London 2012 stuck with their logo choice. And they stuck by their designer – Wolff Olins – instead of acquiescing to “crowdsourcing.” (We’ll save that topic for another day.)

Thanks to craplogo.me

As for Gap, take a look at the stuff that Laird + Partners did for the brand. Notice a theme? A look? A common thread?

“Ultimately, we learned just how much energy there is around our brand,” said the company in a statement.

NO, Gap, there’s energy around your new logo – not your brand.

Oh, and your management greenlighted the projects, right? Not just the new logo, but the look and feel of the creative leading up to the decision to actually come out with a new logo.

Meanwhile…Laird + Partners hasn’t been thanked for its tremendous work in helping the company get to where it is now – as far as we can tell.

Last time we checked, clothing stores aren’t democracies (save for Threadless), and isn’t the focus here actually supposed to be on the clothes?

And shouldn’t they say nice stuff about their designers?

In other news, we tried our logo out on the craplogo.me site – what do you think?

I kinda like it

Oct 12 2010

Whither Rick Sanchez (on Twitter)?

He’s Back?

We’re trying to get to the bottom of a developing story here at Area 224 HQ. Much has been made of Rick Sanchez and his hasty departure from CNN; rather than discuss what was said, what was meant, or whether or not Jon Stewart is cool, we’d rather look at Rick’s Twitter Page.

First reported by @MediaAlert on 10/8, Rick, who used to be on Twitter as @RickSanchezCNN, is now just @RicksBook.

But here’s the question: if it is really him, how can he go from using CNN’s reach to amass scores of followers to being just another guy on Twitter with tiny numbers?

Odds are, he’ll figure it out.

NOTE: Rick does actually talk rather candidly about how he messed up in this Washington Post discussion from Monday, October 11.

Oct 11 2010

A Clever Use of Twitter by a Chicago Radio Station

Trying to figure out how to use Twitter? Here’s an example from Chicago’s Q101.

One buzzword that seems to have taken over Corporate America is “engagement.” “Let’s engage our customers in new and exciting ways.”

Sounds trite, and can also sound a little lame if you have no clue what engagement means to you – your company, your brand.

Q101 in Chicago, the alternative rock outlet that is part of the Emmis Communications empire, decided to use Twitter to ramp up engagement. And, dare I say, it’s pretty darn cool how they’re doing it.

It’s called “October on Demand,” and how it works is rather simple. Instead of relying on the old method of “give us a call and let us know what you want to hear and we’ll nod and say we’ll see what we can do…” they invite listeners to “tweet” a request. And they play the requests, at their discretion, but pretty darn often (at most hours of the day).

Advantage for you as the listener/tweeter is you can hear your song if you’re lucky.

Advantages for them, the radio station:

They can better take the pulse of listeners. The phone has been replaced with a real live comment stream called Twitter. If there’s a mini-trend — if there are lots of requests for a song called Chelsea Dagger (because the Blackhawks are raising their Stanley Cup banner), well, they can capitalize on the trend.
They interact with listeners through another channel. You tweet, they respond by Twitter, they play your song, they say who you are.
Help with programming: it’s no secret that radio stations are being whacked upside the head by things like Pandora. The beauty of Pandora is the lack of a set playlist. Playing a song that might be buried in the archives somewhere allows a radio station to be more “iPodesque.”

What can you learn from this “engagement experiment?”

Well, it’s a multi-channel whipsaw effect, and one that might run counter to what you’d expect to hear from a radio station. Are there ways that your brand, your company, you can use new channels to engage? For instance:

Search. Even if you’re not selling anything online, should you be taking the pulse of your target market by finding out what they’re saying? Do a quick Twitter Search and type in a term that’s important to your company. Even if you’re not on Twitter already.

Stick with what makes sense for you. You don’t have to chase trends just because they are popular – if they don’t make sense for your industry. A Q101 Foursquare check-in won’t make much sense. Tied to an advertiser, MAYBE.

Have a conversation. If you follow Q101 on Twitter you’ll see that they are actually having conversations with people. You have conversations with people every day – if your target market is using new media like Twitter, you can always extend those conversations online.

Have at it!

Oct 08 2010

Ready, Fire, Aim Returns in the ’10s

Should you launch first, then adjust your plan?

It’s so bloody easy to launch a product these days. Find a need, exploit the need, get a website, send a few emails, and you’re launched.

Is it really that easy? Should it be?

: Gantt Chart, (c) SmartDraw.com

Or should you wait – plan, plan some more, sit on the sidelines watching others make mistakes?

We think the “Ready, Fire, Aim” approach is back with a vengeance.

We’re not saying the plan is dead. We’re not advocating “Fire, Ready, Aim” either.

Two cases in point, from our experiences here at Area 224 HQ.

One is the book idea “Nichification” – which is taking longer to get off the ground than we would have hoped. (The “we” is myself and Jim Alexander.)

We conceived the idea in the Winter and proceeded to conduct dozens of interviews with people, from a variety of places and walks of life, all of whom had one thing in common — a niche business. We got help from a professional writer (Jody Calkins from Emery Road, who I would recommend highly). We had discussions with publishers – not just the “fill out the form and we’ll get back to you” stuff, but actual discussions with publishers about real book deals.

So we’ve got content. We’ve got a concept. We’ve got a few chapters. But we don’t yet have the book. Why?

We have to adjust our aim.

Part of the aim adjustment process involves that dreaded word “Objective.” The objective of the book is NOT to sell it and make a zillion dollars in royalties from selling the book. The objective of the book IS…well, that’s the thing that we’re fine-tuning.

But there’s another example, too…

We see a need (and actually a niche within a niche, one of the themes we’ve heard over and over in the book interviews) for professional communicators and marketers in the energy industry to connect, to share ideas, to learn about best practices.

Having spent some time working in the energy industry and working with Realtors on things like “green” and “LEED” marketing — well, there’s a hook here.

So we fired — you can see the Facebook Group here — and we’ll adjust the aim as time goes by.

What’s the point?

You could probably point to a thousand examples of companies that launched product X thinking it would fill need Y and make Z money; only to find out that product X does A+B-C and the money is somewhere in the middle of the alphabet.

But you could point to 100,000 examples of the guy sitting at the bar saying “I had the idea back in the 90s to create…”