Magnifique Re-Gift!

After I just created my post on re-gifting your brand yesterday, this pops up

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/mar/02/pompidou-centre-vides-exhibition

An exhibit of nothing!

Now from what i've heard it is normal for there to be some empty rooms at the Pompidou Exhibition Centre because they don't always have pieces to put in them. So why not combine them all together and turn it into a PR landslide, by claiming it is actually a new exhibit!

No its not, it's an empty set of rooms. You can have as many artists saying it is a radical concept and explaining in their ramblings that it allows people to be "free for a moment to think about what we are going to do".

It's a series of empty rooms, because you didn't have anything to put there. Congratulations to your marketing team, a brilliant Re-gift. Not many people can pull off the re-gift of nothingness and turn it into a huge win for their company.

Re-Gifting your product

As I was watching commercials the other night and a Bounty select-a-size ad came on, I was struck by what must be one of marketings most impressive feats. The Re-Gift, or re-package, or re-whatever you want to call it. Basically taking your regular product and re-packaging it or re-marketing it as a brand new entity. The Bounty select-a-size isn't the greatest example because there is some innovation in the product, but it does offer a bit of a re-gift. Select a size basically takes paper towels and cuts the regular sheet in half and allows it to be tearable every half sheet instead of a full sheet. This is not a remarkable new technology or even a genius piece of engineering, it's a simple well thought out way to market their product that makes people feel like they are saving money by using less paper towels while at the same time their conscience gets a pat on the back because that means they are throwing out less garbage too. Thats win-win for the customers and definately a win for the marketing team.

But think about it, being able to re-market your product to an entirely new market or for an entirely new purpose is extraordinarily genius and creative, even if some may think of it as pulling the wool over someones eyes. But the majority of the time these new applications for your product/brand provide something to the target market your aimed at, otherwise they would fail miserably.

Probably the best ever representation of this was when Arm & Hammer realized that people were using their baking soda to neutralize the smells in their fridges. They now have a variety of products that are directly designed just for putting in your fridge/freezer to help keep them odor free. Genius.

Now unfortunately not all products/brands provide marketers with the ability to re-gift them to consumers, but maybe yours does. Does it?

Twitter Update

Earlier this week I wrote about Twitter and whether it would become too much for a lot of people in the near future.

While scanning my google reader today I came across this FastCompany, The Week that Twitter Tipped, talking about how there has been a huge boom in the notoriety of Twitter in recent months and especially this current week.

The one thing in the article I really found interesting was one company's attempt to create an ad format that will allow Twitterers to put advertising in their tweets

Web advertising company Adjix has announced that it's creating a new ad format that will allow individual Twitter users to embed ads in their tweets and monetize their popularity on the service.

Overall, it seems like advertising through these social networks has not been hugely beneficial for most companies or the network itself. Things such as display ads on Facebook have not been announced to pull huge numbers or huge revenues, and MySpace does well in terms of ad revenue but the effectiveness of it has never blown anyones socks off.

The real question is, will advertising in people's messages end up hurting Twitter in the long run? Twitter obviously needs some revenue because as the article points out they have had $55 million in venture capital invested and don't have much revenue to speak of. But at what cost? Will tweets with advertising included end up angering a large portion of the users and therefore pushing them to a newer and greater Twitter clone that has just risen?

I personally think that companies will get more value from using Twitter like they would a Facebook application, give the consumers something to do with it. In the article it mentioned Skittles and what they are doing with Twitter, but instead of them paying someone to include a skittles logo in their tweet, create a Twitter feed that allows people to "Tell us what your doing as you eat your skittles" or something along those lines. I'm sure consumers will get a kick out of some of the crazy shenanigans going on as people taste the rainbow.

Hope floats

Reading through the various FastCompany postings and came across Barack Obama doing some more marketing work. Check out the new logo that will be floating around the U.S. and stamped on anything that is part of their stimulus package.

As strong as marketing is, apparently the new logo leant no help to the financial markets which dipped lower again today. Damn those financial people and their numbers! Come on! They've got a new logo, what more do you want?

Tweet Tweet Too Much

When does Twitter become too much?

I am a fairly new user of the much vaunted Twitter and it has made me think about a few things.

Firstly, what happens when every single company you know starts Tweeting? Remember that thing about why advertising is working as well, because everybody gets harassed by 8,000 messages a day or whatever the number was? Well with Twitter you could seemingly receive 8,000 messages in a matter of an hour depending on who you are following. Granted, Twitter offers consumers the power to select who they follow and don't follow but the majority of them probably won't pare down their list once they have added someone.

So what happens when everyone is on Twitter???? I think it will probably lose the a major chunk of its appeal because how do you cut through the clutter of the hundreds of messages you receive to find the good stuff? How do you follow hundreds if not thousands of people?

Twitter is definately still in the beginning stages of its adoption, but it is starting to go like fire. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next year or so and how long of a life it has as a result of its success.

Using your blog for good or evil

Let me preface this post by saying I understand writing your own personal blog is about building your brand and promoting yourself. But if you have developed a loyal following of people reading your entries when does too much selling yourself lead to a drop off.

I have followed the Pow! Andy Nulman blog for 7 or 8 months now and there was often some very interesting entries. He would talk about recent marketing campaigns that had used the Power of surprise to catch peoples attention and thus land themselves a good return. It was thoroughly interesting and I always looked forward to his newest post until.......

He got a book deal.

Now pretty much every single post is selling his book. Now he does mask it with promotions he is offering with the book, and contests he is running, and how he is trying to Pow! sell his book. But it all feeds back to being about his book, and in reality trying to sell more copies of his book.

Fair enough. You built your blog up, you built the brand of it, you got a book deal out of it so why not use your blog readers to sell copies. But what's going to happen when those loyal readers start to tire of seemingly the same thing every day. I know I am.

It's just like an overused advertisement. Wassssssupppp!!!!

Too early for greediness

These days on television it is rare to find a commercial not touting some way to bust the recession through pricing or financing that they have. One of these such offers was observed and taken up by yours truly.....it was for Quizno's. Quizno's typically offers a higher priced sandwich than Subway because they have the ever sneaky oven to toast your sandwich along with probably using higher grade ingredients. Well, Quizno's saw what was going on with the economy (and i'm sure their sales department also took note of it as people started eating less there) and decided to offer our fair population of Canada a stellar deal. Their Real Deal sandwiches would be $5 for a large one. Wow! Great deal, and especially for an above average sandwich. Now granted the Real Deal sandwiches only offer 5 different selections but it is still a great deal for someone looking for a tasty lunch at a great price. I partook in this deal multiple times, they had won at least one customer.

Then the other day I went back for another $5 sub.......

The price had been raised to $6.49 for a large!

Wait a minute does that mean we are out of the recession????? Hooray.....wait no we aren't. So they weren't really willing to help us then? First off this seems a little like a bait and switch tactic and i'm sure I wasn't the only customer a little chagrined by the 30% increase in price all of a sudden. But the worst part is that you say you are there to help out people when they need it, and then all of a sudden your greedy again. Now maybe the $5 price point didn't leave enough margin, okay I can understand raising it slightly, but 30%!!!!! Come on. We aren't out of this economic trouble yet and if you have found a promotion that works and helps bring customers into your store during these tough times, then it is a good way to build loyalty as we work our way out of these tough days.