Content Marketing Today

Your honest interactions with customers are critical to your content marketing success. So, please don’t make the mistake that this get rich quick marketing vendor program made with their fake ‘live attendant.’ 

This lame attempt at artificial online intelligence was amusing, but appalling.

I was awake late one night not too long ago and wound up on a marketing product site that didn’t want to let me go. Up popped the following dialogue between the fictional Lacey and my canine alter ego.  Her enthusiasm for her product never flagged in spite of my devious doggy replies.

See if you’re smarter at spotting a prevaricating PC pooch than ‘Lacey’ was in this actual dialogue (or dogalogue).

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Why a talkative canine was able to put a family-owned business in our collective consciousness

One can only imagine the original ad agency pitch to the company when they suggested having the company president and a talking golden retriever be the centerpiece of a national marketing campaign.  It must've seemed just as crazy as the idea of the AFLAC duck.

But, in fact, it has proved to be just as successful. Just as AFLAC went from complete obscurity to pervasive brand recognition, so too have Bush’s Baked Beans become a successful national brand. This family-owned company from Tennessee now has the best-selling baked bean brand in the United States.  Even for a talking dog, that's an extraordinary accomplishment.

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When Their Own Commercial Shows How Hard It Is to Get Urgent Answers, You Know They Have a Problem

Imagine a scenario where catastrophe looms unless an immediate solution can be found.  That’s the situation here where an aquarium worker accidentally creates a crack in the wall which quickly expands to disastrous proportions. 

Can the Yellow Pages save the day?

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Check Out These Gigantic Goofs So You Can Avoid Them in 2009

We all love top 10 lists, whether they are of the wonderful or of the woeful variety. We can learn from both. 

In that educational spirit and with thanks to the folks at Fineman PR, who put together this hall of shame, here is the list of really awful public relations gaffs from a year that is happily almost over.

1. AIG All-Expense-Paid Retreats ... Paid By YOU

Mere days after receiving an $85 billion federal bailout package, American International Group Inc. dropped nearly half a million dollars on an executive retreat to the posh St. Regis resort, complete with "spa treatments, banquets and golf outings," according to the Associated Press. Public reaction, as many watched 401(k) and other investments deflate, was heated. Ousted AIG CEO Robert Willumstad condemned the fete as "very inappropriate" when questioned by Congress, and presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama said participating executives "should be fired" during a debate with Sen. John McCain. AIG compounded the damage when it proceeded with an $86,000 New England hunting retreat. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo promptly launched a fraud probe, saying "our message to AIG today is simple: The party is over."

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Our dog has always been full of surprises but her latest achievement topped everything that went before.

When our dog, Mia, learned that I was co-writing a book on content marketing, she apparently decided to learn how to read.  You may be skeptical, but I think this picture tells the story.  And, we all know that pictures never lie.

Even though she's a very smart dog (so smart, in fact, that she has learned to hide rawhide bones so that my wife and I could fetch them for her), we were astonished to come home yesterday to find that she was working her way through, Get Content. Get Customers.  Of course, it does have a lot of illustrations so maybe she was looking at those, but not really reading all the words.

But, if this was a video, you might see her mouthing the words ever so slowly and carefully: T-h-i-n-k  l-i-k-e  a  p-u-b-l-i-s-h-e-r

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Steve Spengler didn't think he had anything to say But now credits his success to his wacky blog How the heck do you go from being a Denver science teacher in 2001 to the head of a $5 million dollar a year toy company? According to the Entrepreneur section of the Wall Street Journal, providing great content on your website and in a blog, were critical to building a very successful small company. Read More

It amazes me how often ad agencies can talk their clients into advertising campaigns that won't sell any product, but aren't likely to help the brand either. All around business guru Tom Peters mentioned just such a campaign in a recent post that involves a drumming gorilla. OK, it's funny (and it follows below--I couldn't resist)! But it is so far removed from the product that it sure seems like a lot of money for nothing. You might say they made a monkey out of their clients in the name of 'creativity.' Read More

Here's what happens when you take advertising just a little too seriously. For those of us who have had bosses who take things just a little seriously. And who couldn't handle the truth. Here's what happens when you take advertising just a little too seriously. For those of us who have had bosses who take things just a little seriously. And who couldn't handle the truth. Read More