Shaw & Todd - Advertising and Marketing Communications

As a marketing professional, I couldn’t be more thrilled at the abundance of metrics and analytics that the Internet makes available. Here’s a confession: I’ve always been addicted to statistics. Guess that’s what happens when one is exposed to the Baseball Encyclopedia at the age of six. So now I have a new outlet: website traffic tracking sites. There are bunch of them out there– perhaps the best known (and the one I most often use) is Alexa. A subsidiary of Amazon.com, Alexa basically lets you view any site’s traffic statistics, ranking, and perhaps best of all, provides you with the ability to compare the traffic results of multiple sites. It also gives you comprehensive lists of the top sites in multiple categories. Check out the top 500 visited sites or drill down to an area as specific as the most popular online scientific publications. Some doubt the absolute reliability of these results, which is definitely a caveat, but for the pure volume of analytical data that it delivers, Alexa is truly a fountain of information. Actually, more like an ocean.

I went to the bank today to address a CD that was maturing. In reviewing all of the current options, the bank advisor politely told me that if I were to let it roll over into a new term, the interest rate would drop by 75%.

Whhaaaattttt?!?!?!?!

I had to bite my tongue and mentally scream the mantra, “don’t shoot the messenger!!” to maintain my composure. Watching the tears of anger and poverty well in my eyes, he explained, “Interest rates are dropping in today’s climate, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Is this true? In today’s culture of instant … everything, is it possible to capture someone’s interest, or is this interest rate also spiraling downward; a victim of perpetual information overload?

IMHO, all is not lost. Interest rates are evolving, for sure; and successful adaptation is necessary to stay competitive. With streaming videos, social networking, podcasts, Ruby On Rails, Bluetooth®, and an array of other funny-sounding platforms and technologies, it’s easier than ever to get instant access to your audience, and vice versa. The same goes for your competition, too, so it’s more important than ever to stand out in the crowd. This is where messaging is critical (and S&T’s specialty), but we’ll save that topic for another day.

Suffice it to say, tactics can certainly grab attention, but the true rate of interest should be measured by the response to the message. The perceived value in the message is what sparks your targeted customers to take action.

And begrudgingly spurred by value, my humble monies remain in the bank’s cybervault instead of my mattress. For now.

I’ll admit, I have a Pavlovian-esque reaction to a misused apostrophe – head shaking, eye rolling and even the occasional exasperated sigh. Think I’m overreacting to this tiny punctuation mark? A quick peek into the blogosphere reveals a multitude of lengthy and even heated discussions on the topic. I even stumbled upon The Apostrophe Protection Society, which isn’t nearly as funny as I had hoped.

Now I’m hardly qualified (or apparently passionate enough) to swing a bat with these major leaguers, but I do make an effort to avoid the most common misuses of the apostrophe: it’s/its and you’re/your.

‘Its’ is a possessive pronoun, while ‘It’s’ is a contraction of ‘it is’.

‘Your’ is a possessive pronoun, while ‘You’re’ is a contraction of ‘you are’.

Clearly, its use is necessary; it’s just not to be abused. Or ignored for that matter. The poor, modest apostrophe; it’s just trying to help!

 Oh, apostrophe

Well-intended yet abused

It’s our fault, not yours

In the last few days, a couple people have sent me the link to this video and I’ve noticed it posted on more than one blog. So I figured I’d do my part to spread the virus. It’s a UK TV commercial that’s clever and entertaining enough live on its own as a YouTube post. Goes to show that an old school advertising tactic, if properly executed, can actually be interesting enough for people to want to see and pass along instead of fast forward.

I’ve found myself on more than one occasion extolling the value of Google and Yahoo alerts as brand monitoring tools and have been somewhat astonished at how many people still don’t know about or use them.

It’s a reminder of the enormous amount of information resources that are out there, and that in many cases each of us is using an entirely different set of tools to obtain our news and info.  President Bush was asked not long ago if he used Google and he replied, “One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps.” (watch interview). Translation: It’s pretty obvious W. does not regularly use Google because nobody says “the Google”. That’s as obvious a “tell” as when someone declares themselves a fan of “Star Trak” or the “Jerry Steinfeld Show”.

Anyway, I’m digressing. Back to topic. If you haven’t done so already, sign-up for Google and Yahoo! alerts immediately. By no means should they replace traditional, comprehensive clipping services like Cision (formerly Bacon’s) or Custom Scoop but what they do provide are additional monitoring devices that every marketing professional should take advantage of. And did I mention that they’re free? Simply sign up and enter your choice of query or topic and you are sent an email each time your search term is referenced on the web (you control the frequency of the emails you receive). You can even set the alerts to troll the blogosphere to clue you in whenever your company (or name) is mentioned by a blogger.

Here are the links:

Google Alerts: www.google.com/alerts

Yahoo! Alerts: alerts.yahoo.com

I recently read a local newspaper’s article about a small drug discovery company. In the details was a description of a microplate—small plastic trays with many tiny wells, about the depth of a thin paperback book. For a split second, I wondered why they spent so much time describing such a commonly used consumable. Then I remembered that this wasn’t a scientific portal, this newspaper was available to the general public—with many education levels, market experiences and even language backgrounds. Not everyone has contemplated the use of skirted vs. unskirted vs. semi-skirted or discussed how many wells to blank without inferring mortal danger to the poor wells.

This newspaper was right—it’s important to write to your audience.

When writing technical articles and communications to peers, a more complex writing style is useful to clarify your message. On the other hand, general releases like corporate events and news can be accessed by readers unfamiliar with the industry. Too many intricate details can scare a potential investor away.

There are several methods to gauge the readability of your written communications, most using calculations compared to a chart or graph. Popular methods include:

1. Gunning Fog Index. From a 100-word sample, determine the average sentence length. Add this to the percent of multi-syllable words. Multiply by 0.4. The result is the grade level required to understand the sample.
2. Fry’s Readability Graph. From three 100-word samples, plot the average number of syllables and the average number of sentences from each passage on a pre-set Fry graph. The point where the two values meet determines the grade level required to understand the sample.
3. Flesch-Kincaid Formula. From any written piece, plot the average number of syllables per word against the average number of words per sentence. Or, multiply the average sentence length by 1.015 and the average word length by 84.6. Add the two numbers. Subtract this sum from 206.835. Or (my personal favorite), in Microsoft® Word, go to Tools > Options. Click on the Spelling & Grammar tab. Under the Grammar section, click the “show readability statistics” box, then click the “Okay” button. You only have to do this step once. Then, go to Tools > Spelling & Grammar… After the document is analyzed, a summary report, including readability score, is automatically calculated. Any of these Flesch-Kincaid methods will provide the grade level required to understand the article.

These formulas are subjective and should be used as a general guide only. Appropriate readability can help to engage readers and clarify your message. And for the curious, this blog scored near grades 11, 10, and 10 respectively.

Marketing Your Product to the Wrong Target.

A company is very excited about a new product introduction. Marketing communications initiatives need to be developed immediately. The budget is determined, the campaign is created and media is purchased.

At the end of the day the campaign is a flop and not getting the response that everyone hoped for. Why? Because the message was crafted with the wrong target in mind– the advertiser.

All too often, the wants, needs and desires of the customer are overlooked. This is all part of an unfortunate marketing malady we call “talking to yourself.” There are a variety of symptoms too, they include:

• No cohesive strategy (”What!! That’s too expensive!”)
• Messaging that is the same as the competition (”It worked for them!”)
• All benefits and features included in every execution (”Let the buyer sift through it, they’re bound to like something!”)

Penny wise pound foolish? We think so. Just because a marketer’s budget doesn’t rival Proctor & Gamble doesn’t mean they shouldn’t apply a simple truth; the customer is buying the product, not the manufacturer, not the advertising agency, not even the sales and marketing department. Let’s listen to the market. Find out their wants and needs and how to intellectually and emotionally connect to them. Once this becomes part of the marketing discipline, we can then develop unique messages targeted directly to the most important person in the process—the customer.

So we’re adding another blog to the heap. We need to express ourselves too, ok? Shaw & Todders (Toddians?) have much to contribute– just you wait and see. This thing’s going to serve up some uber-keen marketing insights, especially in the area of B2B advertising. And knowing the people here (especially myself), we’ll also have some completely off-topic, esoteric stuff for you to chew on.

Enough with the introductions. Now we gotta give you some content. Let’s get the ball rolling with some advertising 101 material. A video that all of us need see, heed, and learn from…