12 Facebook Resolutions for 2012

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Does Marketing B2B Need 2 B Blasé?

A: No.

Note: I originally posted this article on DMNews and again on The Customer Collective, it’s a message that bears repeating. With 2012 upon us, we’re all back at the drawing table; planning out next year’s marketing strategies. Don’t bore your audience just because you’re marketing B2B.

If you're anything like me and marketing business to business, you have probably instinctively traded graphic-intensive, colorful sales collateral for stoic, straightforward and very often exceedingly dry content. That content is typically rich with articulate product information. We need to ask ourselves — is this knee-jerk approach to communicating value coming across as mundane and uninteresting? Are you boring your audience to an extent that it is affecting sales?

As a marketer of professional products and services, you believe that your brand value is complex and cryptic. You assume the more verbose and in depth you communicate your significance, the more likely your product is to be comprehended, trusted and ultimately purchased by your valuable customers and prospects.

Put yourself on the other side of the table for a minute. As a vendor, partner or customer, have you ever struggled to digest a long-winded case study or what seemed to be endless paragraphs of dull product specifications?  While no one can discount the confidence added detail provides for many of your prospects, what you can't quantify are the prospective buyers who are driven away by the information overload in your marketing materials.

Marketing 101 teaches us that if you want to gain attention and ultimately generate loyalty among your customers, brand “stickiness” is often just as important as product quality. 

This lesson seems to have been lost on business-to-business marketers.

We are all consumers, right? 

Put your intrinsic preference for the balance between statistical detail and visual stimuli aside. The inclusion of both is fundamental in growing your business with both types of customers you are targeting. 

So how can you begin to change your focus?

Break the mold. Get creative. You can start by augmenting the tools you already possess. Break behemoth case studies down into smaller, concise pieces that are terse by design and make them easier to digest for your customer or prospect in one sitting.  Develop intuitive graphics and work-flows that clarify and “tangibilize” even the most complex solutions. 

Infuse color. Grab attention with color and graphics that represent your brand. These will generate excitement and create a brand personality, and that will be more memorable for your audience. Test clever tag-lines or rhythmic jingles. Build consistency with the repetition of graphics and pictures.  This is the glue that binds us and pulls us towards one brand compared with another.  

Personality breeds relateability. In a crowded, mature business-to-business market, it may be the fix you need to break through the clutter and add excitement to your brand and incremental dollars to the bottom line.

Facelift | Faceoff: State Farm Insurance

Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm is (still) there…

…she just looks a little brighter! After nearly 60 years, the team at State Farm decided it was time for some creative Botox.

We continue our Facelift | Faceoff series with a discussion of the changes made to the State Farm Insurance mark, slated to roll out the first of the year.

Before the facelift:

You know it well. Here, we see “STATE FARM” and “INSURANCE” stacked vertically, yet separated by a pyramid of 3 interlocked ovals. The ovals spell out State Farm’s three founding service offerings; Auto, Life and Fire insurance.  

After surgery:

Distinct, yet familiar. The new look pulls the ovals out in front; gone are the words ‘auto, life and fire.’ The new logo drops “Insurance” and brings “StateFarm” together horizontally with a refreshed upper/lower, italicized casing.

30k Ft Weighs In:

A lot can change in 60 years! At more than 65,000 employees and nearly 18,000 agents, State Farm has grown 5-fold.

Now purveyors of securities, annuities, mutual funds and banking, dropping the word “Insurance” better aligns with State Farm’s broadened range of financial services.

If service line extension wasn’t enough reason to scrap the “auto, life and fire” verbiage, the proliferation of digital and social media channels coupled with the rise in mobile browsing was. We’re sure the old logo rendered beautifully on billboards, tv, and the weekly paper. But it’s not 1953 anymore. Can you imagine trying to read “auto, life and fire” in a Facebook profile? What about a mobile app? Clearing out the ovals provides a sleek viewing experience where brand real estate is shrinking; enabling State Farm to maintain one consistent look regardless of channel.

For us, the change is a welcomed one. “After” prevails.

So, weigh in.

Did State Farm get it right with their “less is more” approach and modest refresh?

Which look do you prefer?

Take your free pudding and quit griping about ‘Big Brother.’

Kraft Foods begins testing a new breed of vending machines today. Created in conjunction with Intel, the devise dispenses free Jell-O brand Temptations - but only to the product’s target market: grown-ups.

That’s right, programmable discrimination! The machines are equipped with special cameras that scan faces and discern approximate age. Adults are dispensed pudding. Children go wanting.

Wait, but what about ‘Big Brother?’

Please. Do you really think a pudding machine is going to steal your identity? There’s no human behind the lens – it’s just a detection device! The machines look for universal indicators of age, like distance between your eyes and ears.

So take your sample and be grateful the good people at Intel have yet to figure out how to stop you from coming back for seconds… (or so we’ve heard).

Goofy Gimmick or Next-Gen Marketing?

Call it what you want – it sure beats the long-standing alternative of awkwardly holding your hand out to an apron-touting blue-hair at the super market. But even for us extroverts, machines are portable. They are omnipresent and can be placed strategically within areas of heavy foot traffic.

Yes, sampling machines reach a much wider demographic than peer-to-peer sampling alone.

Not to mention, while still new and widely elusive, the machines boast a certain mystique and “wow” factor that lures curious consumers in.

Sampling isn’t going away.

Food and beverage manufacturers spend $1B/year on sampling. It’s a vital component to product launch.

For consumers who can shake their fear of cameras, the machines offer an anonymity and universal approachability sampling from a human cannot.

Beyond facial recognition, look for next-gen machines to provide additional insights. Intel is said to be working on a device that can detect facial expressions; smile v frown.

Use or Refuse?

What do you think of Kraft and Intel’s latest innovation?


Original article

On the 12th Day of Christmas, Starbucks Gave to Me…

It’s day 2 of our exploration of new and exciting ways to garner attention and increase in-store traffic during the inevitable lag that occurs between Black Friday and Christmas Eve (Read the first here).

Starbucks is no stranger to integrated marketing innovation, especially during the holidays. At the onset of the season, they launched an in-store promo in Augmented Reality. Now, as the holiday hustle and bustle hums along, Starbucks is beckoning wary shoppers in for more than just a re-charge of caffeine.

Introducing, Starbucks’ 12 Days of Gifting!

While your true love showers you with drummers drumming and turtle doves, Starbucks has something else in mind. December 1^st through 12^th, store baristas will be serving up more than the usual mocha and latte. 12 different products - a different promo every day. “Why?” you ask?

The National Retail Federation (NRF) projects 2011 holiday retail sales to reach $456.6B, up 2.8% from 2010 (way-cool infografic).

Starbucks wants a piece of that pie.

With “12 Days,” Starbucks showcases their growing collection of gift-able products; reminding regulars and rookies alike that they have evolved beyond coffee. “12 Days” transforms cafés into stores, encouraging patrons to step out of the drink queue and peruse the shelves.

When it comes to coffee shops, the competition is heavy. But with an increasing line of packaged products, music and gifts, Starbucks sets itself apart in a saturated market.

And on the Web, a Virtual (and Secular) Advent Calendar!

It wouldn’t be a Starbucks event if it didn’t have an interactive component! The merry.starbucks.com subdomain is just the place to fall in love with the “12 Days” promotion.  

Floating merrily across the top of the screen is a red bird. He carries with him an offer to opt-in to Starbucks’ mobile campaigns.

Cursor over the ornaments on the tree to reveal offers missed or those to come (and enjoy the pleasant ring of bells). Click the ribbon at the base of the tree and day transforms to night, the tree illuminates, and the offer board falls away, revealing Starbucks’ growing cast of Holiday characters.  

For Starbucks, the web component is a crucial part of packaging the promotion – the added “magic” of online interaction makes the whole event more delightful – and hopefully, more enticing to buy.

What do you think?

Will “12 Days” encourage regulars to pick up more than stocking stuffing gift cards this year?

Move Over, 2-Day Sale...

It’s day 1 of 2 in our exploration of new and exciting ways to garner attention and increase in-store traffic during the inevitable lag that occurs between Black Friday and Christmas Eve.

Target hoped to increase their share of Black Friday’s wallet this year when they rolled the start of their 2-day sale back to midnight. But with Wal-Mart, Macy’s, Best Buy, and others following suit, it proved useless.  Well, it’s Christmas time and at Target, the more (promos) the merrier! Move over, 2-day sale - a new promo is comin’ to town!

Introducing, Target’s 3-Day (almost last minute) Sale!

Ok, since when does a sale starting in the single digits of December constitute as last-minute? Did Target’s famed Christmas Champ move Christmas and not tell us? That’s not the point.

We’re now in the throes of the holiday season. We awake daily to a barrage of specialty store emails touting their own unique sales. It’s time supercenters got in on the game! With their new promotion, Target breaks Big Box tradition of simply relying on weekly circulars to drive sales between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The 3-Day (almost last minute) Sale gives holiday shoppers an extra reason to shop Target on what otherwise would have been a level playing field weekend. 3-day wow?! It's pure genius.

The promotion uses time (both in window of sale and perceived proximity to Christmas) to break through the clutter of competing promotions.

Will eclipsing their weekly circular with a second layer of (more) spectacular sales make a difference? I guess we'll find out this weekend...

What do you think?