Content Marketing Today

She is listening to her customers and she is passionate about her products. So we believe Progressive is, too. And, through Flo, the company makes it a no-brainer to understand why we should buy from them and how we can do it.

I think we would all like to run into a sales clerk who cares as much about her customers as Flo does in the long running series of Progressive Insurance commercials that encourage viewers to visit their website, Progressive.com.  She is probably now just as much of an insurance advertising icon as the Geico gecko. 

Actually, the two advertising campaigns have something in common: they are amusing and memorable, but they make very clear points about why you will benefit from buying their products.  Creativity never gets in the way of their goal to persuade you to buy stuff.

We all know that sex sells in plenty of obvious circumstances. But, sometimes, it may really put off the folks you really want to influence. A recent post in the CopyBlogger reminded me of the dangers that lurk when you fail to understand your target audience. And, it also made me think of PajamaGrams.

As Valentines Day approaches, we are bombarded with TV ads for PajamaGrams.  It may be that most of the recipients of those classy PJ's are comfortable grandmotherly types for whom full-length flannel jammies are more appealing than tiny bits of lace. But their frisky commercials sure seem to target a younger demographic for whom sleep is not the high priority it becomes as we get a bit older. So, in that case sex does sell. We know it's working because they keep rerunning the same commercial year after year.

But, as Simon Payn reminds in When Sex Refuses to Sell, just driving huge amounts of traffic to a site may be completely counterproductive. He recounts past incidents in which his companies' ability to drive traffic based on their sites' temporary sex appeal ultimately drove advertisers away.

Charmin goes right to the bottom with its big and bold Times Square campaign.

Thanks to Neil Davidson in a guest post at Avangate's blog for reminding us that interruption marketing is not dead. 

Sure, we are bombarded by way too many messages in way too many places.  We are practically numb from the information and advertising onslaught.

But, that doesn't mean we can't be influenced by genuinely creative interruption marketing.  See if you can apply this kind of creativity in your own marketing efforts, so that you are generating a different kind of relevant and compelling content. So awesome and outside the box that it just can't be ignored! 

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."

Avoid the 5 Perilous Print Advertising Mistakes It Commits

"Print Advertising is dead," says a very smart small business owner friend.  Although print advertising may be more endangered than all those ice-loving polar bears some folks worry about, you can still create effective print ads   that prompt customers to take action. 

Unfortunately, this advertisement isn't one of them.

The actual print version of this ad is a half page in an 8 1/2"  by 11" trade publication that is aimed at the book industry.  That's big enough to make a difference if the ad were not so flawed.

This polar bear ad certainly answered one classic and vital advertising objective--the dominant image of the polar bear does grab your attention. That's great. But, in five important respects, the ad fails both in communicating a brand message and in inspiring action.

As surely as traditional news content contracts, reduced readership will follow. Simultaneously, Internet news usage has skyrocketed 600% in 10 years.

Nobody would have thought that a decades old Mad Magazine parody of the old New York Times slogan, "All the news that's fit to print"  would become reality across the print news provider universe.  In fact, too often, not much fits in print anymore.

Sadly, we are now witnessing a downward spiral in which less print content drives lower readership which shrinks ad pages which results in less print content... and on and on and on until the end.

How You Can Gain from Yellow Pages Likely Disappearance.

In January 2008, I wrote two stories about the Yellow Pages which some readers probably thought to be alarmist.  Now, the Wall Street Journal appears to agree with my drastic prediction.

In the first of those January articles, I suggested that advertisers should be rethinking their Yellow Pages strategy based on the results of an informal research study I had conducted: Is It Time to Abandon Your Yellow Pages Advertising? In the second, I reported the results of a test Idid comparing the Yellow Pages search in print and online with a Google search.  The Yellow Pages lost in both cases: Real World Experiment Explains Impending Demise of Yellow Pages.

The November 17, 2008 Wall Street Journal article kicks off with a headline just as brutal as anything I might have written: Extinction Threatens Yellow-Pages Publishers.

Even if you don't love Wal-Mart, you can learn a lot from them, just as conservative Republicans should learn a lot from Barack Obama's election victory. 

Small business marketers especially should pay attention to what this Arkansas giant can teach us about marketing. 

Part of the brilliance of Wal-Mart is their ability to manage a highly complex global supply chain that enables them to deliver an incredible range of inexpensive products to their customers in-store and online.

Equally important, however, is Wal-Mart's understanding of and responsiveness to their customer base.  You may not be able to replicate their supply chain expertise, but you can come very close to replicating the essence of their marketing. 

1990s icons talk about nothing in a meaningless way.

If you're old enough, you may remember the deeply flawed introduction of the Infinity luxury car from Nissan which was all about flowers and trees and nothing about a high performance high-end car.  Since the new brand entered the market at the same time as Toyota's Lexus, goofing up at the beginning was pretty unfortunate.

The Bill Gates--Jerry Seinfeld adver-tale is equally oblique.  The first in the series also misfires in its effort to lay the groundwork for positioning Microsoft as a leader once more. The campaign launch pairs a retired Microsoft CEO and a rarely seen Seinfeld both of whom flourished in the 90s and have floundered in more recent years (apologies to fans of Windows Vista and the lamentable Bee Movie).

More proof that companies need to be thinking and acting like publishers online.

In the world of print advertising, it has always been true the ads placed within very well read publications will outperform ads placed in also-rans.  There is a reason for this.  Great magazines and newspapers engage their readers and engender a level of trust that carries over to the ads running within their pages. 

Now, according to an article in the Online Media Daily, the same applies to online advertising.  This reinforces the importance of content marketing in building trust that can transform Web visitors into buyers.