Are you being a twit?

Are you making the most of your Twitter account?

You may be working hard to come up with clever or relevant tweets for your target market or unique offers to send to your followers, but if you haven't put the time into acquiring and cultivating the right followers then you are just wasting your time.

If you are a B2B company and think that following medium-to-large sized businesses twitter accounts is getting you any value, then you should rethink that idea. These accounts are maintained by the communications/marketing/pr department of a company, so unless you are selling advertising or other products related to these specialties then you aren't hitting the decision maker for your product. The people you need to try and get following you are the decision makers in those companies. But how do you find those people?

• Collect business cards from networking and business meetings then check to see if these contacts are on Twitter
• Go through the Followers of the company's corporate Twitter account, the people managing the account will often like to follow members of the company
• Use other social media profile information (ie. Facebook, LinkedIn) to see if contacts have listed a Twitter account

Just following these people won't guarantee they follow you back, but it is a good way to let them know you are on Twitter and introduce yourself to them. When one of these people gets an email notifying them "John Smith is now following you!" the reaction will often be to find out who this new follower is.

Now all you have to do is keep them interested in what you have to say.

Advertainment

Pretty sure i'm not the first to term the phrase "Advertainment" but if I am then let's hope I earn some serious royalties from it just like when Donald Trump tried to copyright the phrase "You're fired".

Anyways, the point of this post is to talk about how brands and companies can use Advertainment to engage users and get their message in front of copious amounts of eyes. As I was going through my blog reader today and reading Andy Sernovitz's latest post I couldn't help but laugh out loud. What a brilliant way to sell your impressively, terrible, beater of a car. The creator could have just put together a plain old Craigslist ad or posted it on Cartrader.com or any other car selling website but instead they created what can only be seen as one of the most brilliant marketing pieces i've seen in a long time. Although they clearly have an advertising background a similar ad could have been created using Microsoft office, not InDesign, Quark or other professional layout programs. He used humour and creative messaging to make his product go viral and that is a great lesson for small businesses everywhere.

You don't NEED to spend huge dollars to have an advertising agency create you an ad with Jerry Seinfeld or aliens. If you don't have marketing/advertising dollars to spend you have to use creativity and have a sense of humour to get the word out about your product/brand. In this digital age it is becoming easier for brands to make a big splash with a smaller amount of money. The masses are using advertisements as a source of entertainment and if you make one interesting enough they will do all the work for you.

Making a boring product viral

I was forwarded a video ad this week by a friend of mine. As soon as I watched it and laughed multiple times throughout I have decided to give it Ad of the Year already. Why? Because this company took a boring product and managed to make a hilarious ad that has gone viral. The quality of the ad itself is very good, so clearly they didn't film it on their iPhone. So they may have spent some money on the ad itself, but they don't need to spend a single dollar on media because the masses are doing it for them. The company is called Dollar Shave Club and they have a great offer to go along with their brilliant video. Here is the video:



Check out the rest of their website at www.dollarshaveclub.com. This is the type of brilliant company that will be a goldmine for Mike the founder. As a male I can confirm that I am always shocked by how much razors cost in a store, and I always forget to buy new razors so if I can get a razor delivered to me each month for $1, then you've got my attention already.

Love the video, love the brand, and i'm sure they are getting a tonne of traction from this. When was the last time you wanted to forward a video or a website dedicated to razors?

This whole brand and campaign give hope to the boring brands out there. It just shows that with a little creativity and not taking a stuffy corporate approach to advertising can have a big impact.

Why are Bentleys so expensive?

They have style, tradition, and exclusiveness going for them, along with top of the line parts and performance. But here is one reason that they don't advertise...




I wouldn't be surprised if this video starts getting some pretty good viral action going for itself. Who doesn't enjoy watching an incredibly committed crackhead attempting to break into a luxury car at 3 in the morning.

But that being said, this is the kind of video that brands dream about people posting to youtube. They didn't have to do anything and their customer is happy and bragging to all of his no-doubt equally rich friends about how his Bentley can't be stolen. It's interesting to think about how a brand can utilize such great social marketing material such as this video. In Bentley's case, a page on their website where their customers can upload videos/pictures/stories of their favourite Bentley moments, like Tim Horton's did with everycup.ca, would not fit their upscale, posh brand image. But wouldn't a marketing video made up of amateur videos such as this one showing off the cars' impressive unknown characteristics be a great in-house sales tool? Or a great way to go even more viral?

Oh and here is what the car looked like after that fellows repeated attempts to gain entry.

Twitter Teetering??

I've written a few posts about Twitter and can personally say that I'm not a huge fan of Twitter. I have used it for my company in the past and to be honest, it did a good job at what we were using it for. But we were using it to help spread political insight leading up to a provincial election as opposed to our day-to-day marketing of health plans. Twitter certainly has its share of success stories including this one that Marketing Magazine shares with us.

That being said, I think Twitter has peaked and is heading for a steady decline. Much like Second Life and a couple of other social networking sites that were big for a while. I read a FastCompany article a few weeks ago saying that 60% of new Twitter users were not logging on again after a month on the site. That's not a good sign. Then just yesterday I read Mitch Joel's post about Twitter and one of the telling quotes from it was this:

At the bare minimum 70% of the people on Twitter won't tell you who they are, where they are located or how to connect to them. That doesn't sound very "social" at all.

On top of that, over half of those people don't follow anyone, have never tweeted and how no followers. So, what's the point? Are most of these "people" not really "people" and simply bots? Or, do the majority of people who sign up for Twitter have no idea what they're getting themselves into, what the point is or how to really use it?

This makes it extremely hard for you to use Twitter as a targeted marketing effort. With 70% of the people not sharing their information your entire list of followers could, in effect, be completely wrong for your business. Take my company for example, we focus largely on British Columbia and sometimes all of Canada. Well anyone that would follow an account of ours in the States or elsewhere on the globe would not be any value to us, nor would we really be providing value to them.

I still don't really see the sustainability of Twitter and don't expect it to have the same buzz about it in the future. However, there clearly is some value for specific companies and individuals but I wouldn't bank my entire marketing efforts on it.

As you can tell, I can relate much more to the brownhaired guy in this video

How long can you make sex sell?

I've never really liked the Go Daddy.com commercials that use sexy female celebrities to encourage people to go to their website and check out a "exposed" video of the celeb making it seem like they will be exposing themselves. Go Daddy's business is selling domain names to people so I can only assume that they feel people hoping for a naked Danica Patrick will then feel inclined to purchase a random domain name.



They have been using this tactic for quite a while and I wonder how much longer it can really work? Does it really work for their business, sure they probably get a lot of views on youtube and from viral views but I question whether all the money they spend on celebrity sponsorships and production/placement of these commercials will really result in enough $10/year domain name sales. Here is another Go Daddy commercial that I feel had better messaging.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JHGCd_9U5E

The automotive industry needs an advertising bailout

If you have seen one car commecial, you have seen them all. They all blend in to one soupy monotonous mash of person announcing that this "amazing car" gets you so many miles to the gallon, handles like a gem, and is as quiet as their empty showrooms. Well news to car companies, your not fooling anyone and you are all saying the exact same thing. So why would you continue to waste so much money on basically promoting the exact same car as your competition. Here's a crazy idea:

a) Design a car that is different from your competitors, get crazy with the look of a car
b) Have something in the car that differentiates you from every other car company out there and is actually of use to someone (just spitballing but apple is a pretty hip company maybe you can make an arrangement like Nike did with the ipod shoes)
c) Market the crap out of your unique offering (this is pretty much the first lesson in any marketing class)

It baffles me that car companies haven't been able to come up with something like this. As much as I don't really like Scion, at least they are thinking slightly outside the box and not trying to be everything to everyone. GM, Ford, and Chrysler seem to be mailing it in like a lot of the union workers that are on the line.

It also seems like none of these poor advertisements are available on YouTube which is definately a great way to help not drive traffic virally. Good thing they have now gotten to the point where they are appealing for national pride "Over half of these quality Pontiac products are made right here in Canada including......"

Well that did it, i'm sold. I'll buy a car for my country. And full disclosure, I own a GM product currently that I bought brand new 4 years ago and can say that it is not really the "quality" that a lot of these commercials tell me it is. My family has always owned GM so we are pretty loyal, but I can tell you this much, the loyalty ends after this car is done.

The easiest/most effective marketing tool

Happy employees who enjoy what they do.

That leads them to tell their network of friends about your company and also creates amazing viral opportunities such as this one shown on the Velopig blog (a daily breakfast blog expressing the blogger's feelings through pictures of his coffee and muffin).

Southwest Airlines gives their employees that ability to have fun instead of adhering to a strict corporate code heaved upon them by the higher-ups. The net result is an employee that has found a way to do his job which entertains him and at the same time entertains his audience (Southwest's customers). It's almost a guarantee that a good portion of the people walking off that airplane will then be passing on this unique experience to the person that picks them up and asks "How was your flight?". Great word of mouth marketing through a companies employees.

So instead of the consumers thinking about how little room they have and how they don't get a meal on the plane, they have a positive feeling after being engaged in an out-of-the box routine announcement.

Viral Via Music

One of the most underrated aspects for videos is the musical selection. You find that perfect song and combine it with amazing production and creative and you have an instant hit, heck the production/creative don't even have to be that good. Take the Free Hug's Campaign for example. It's also win/win for the musician(s) because they get exposure to new audiences from their song being forwarded as the video goes viral (I mean come on, who doesn't type 3 lyrics from a song in google and hit search everyday).

I have recently seen the roll out of a 100% New Zealand ad campaign and they found the perfect music to accompany a wonderful commercial. I would never have gone to the website or thought twice about the commercial if they hadn't used this song, which I couldn't get out of my head (and i've even traveled to New Zealand and know how amazing it is). The use of the song to connect with the viewers helps carry them to the magical place that is exhibited throughout the ad.

If you are trying to create a viral video, finding a great song that is not necessarily well known yet, is a great way to go viral. Or, find something that matches the tone, feel, and rhythm of the rest of the video and works perfectly in harmony with it. And if you are a band trying to make it, I suggest you have a creative person in your group that can make a cool video to attach your music to. Then watch the sleazy record label guys come running.

Here are some other videos that employed this technique:

Apple does this better than anyone: Did you know who Yael Naim was or Feist before these ads?

Telus has caught the buzz recently, but use well established bands like White Snake

Heineken, i've never heard of Chris Knox but i'm sure he got a lot more hits after people tracked him down from this ad.

This is a commercial for Swedish Berries, I was actually trying to track down this song for a long time.....until I learned it was a jingle just for the commercial. Well lo and behold there was so much interest for it, they turned it into an entire song!