A Text For That? App Hype Shouldn’t Discount Text Marketing.

What I have noticed recently in the marketing press is we hardly ever mention texting anymore. A lot of people are jumping on the marketing App bandwagon the way QR Tags were all the rage a couple of years ago, but many have seemed to skip over texting. The latest 2012 Pew Internet Research indicates that 79% of cell phone owners say they use text messaging while smartphone usage is still only around 45%, and of those smartphone users only 27% report having scanned a QR Code.  In fact, B.L. Ochman of Ad Age recently said “QR codes are dead.” It seems texting has been really underused or at least “under-talked” about by marketers.

Nielson reports Text Messaging as second most used mobile activity behind Apps.

The latest Neilson U.S. Digital Consumer Report shows that behind Apps, the second most used function of mobile phones is text messaging. Another good point about text messaging is that you can use them in mediums where QR codes are not possible, such as radio. With a QR tag you need something visual. I actually saw a 30 second TV commercial flash a QR tag for two seconds on the end. What are the chances of that being used?

Instead they could have used an easy to remember text code that someone could punch in without pausing the TV or getting up from the couch! Ads can request users text a code to a number, such as “text JOIN to 99999” to opt-in to a campaign or get an offer. Text codes can be included in just about any marketing medium, from direct mail to email to landing pages. Once someone responds you have their number and can sending messages back. At a concert I texted to win a seat on the stage. I didn’t win the seat, but the band still texts me updates on album releases and concert dates based on my opt-in.

After reporting that 98% of SMS messages sent are opened, and 83% of them are opened within 3 minutes, Corey Eridon from Hubspot gives us some advice on how to conduct a SMS text message campaign:

Raise awareness with text messaging

1. Fundraising and Raising Awareness:

‘The Cove’ case study from Msgme talks about how the documentary film had a “digital social action” campaign to reach other socially conscious people, get them to join a mobile subscriber list by texting a short code, sign a petition, and continue to receive updates about the cause. It engaged viewers at their highest moment of inspiration – the closing credits of the movie.

2. Communicating With Your Most Active Customers:

Zpizza used SMS to identify and reward loyal customers for repeat business by using SMS to make registration quick and easy. Customers texted a keyword that entered them into a contest, and received a follow-up email prompting to join the customer loyalty program.

3. Sending Service Alerts and Reminders:

Macy’s leveraged its mobile database to drive both in-store and mobile sales.

Mobil1 Lube Express’ SMS campaign to remind customers about regular service and communicate promotions was more effective than email and direct mail. “The read-rate for direct mail is poor. Open rates for email are hindered by spam-combat software and other bounce problems. SMS is virtually a spam-free channel that goes wherever the customer goes.” – Bob Jump, president, Digital Rocket.

4. Driving New Sales:

Through an SMS initiative, regional Ace Hardware users were encouraged to opt-in to receive weather-related mobile notifications based on their ZIP code. Ace integrated the campaign with the National Weather Service to provide timely, location-based weather notifications that included promotions that drove in-store traffic and sales.

But I will close on this caution: EVERY consumer must provide an EXPLICIT opt-in using a cell phone or another approved way of giving permission! Jiffy Lube was Sued for $47 Million, for reckless texting. I suggest you read this article in Chief Marketer about how you should handle SMS Opt-Ins - a lot of this is based on selecting the right experienced vendor. But I don’t want to end on a sour note. SMS Text Messaging can be a very effective marketing tool that doesn’t cost a lot. Big ideas and big results don’t need big budgets or big marketing hype. Have you considered text marketing?

Gen-Y Honda Student Campaign Gets Results With This Gen-Xer.

I teach in the Center for Leadership Education at Johns Hopkins University and every spring my colleague runs a course called Advertising & IMC. The unique characteristic of this course is that they participate in a national competition through partner EdVenture Partners. It brings top brands to students who get to work on real efforts for real marketing clients. The experience is invaluable.

This semester the client product is for the Honda Civic targeted to the younger Generation Y audience. Here is a commercial they created for their big idea “Recreate A Classic:”

But just to show you that sometimes a strategy targeted to a younger audience can also pull in an older one – I bought a new Honda Civic Hybrid last week. The students flattered me saying that I was an “older” Gen-Y, but no. I had to correct them and say that I am officially a member of Generation X. Will seeing this Gen-Xer driving around campus, discourage Gen-Y from a Civic? Is it less cool? I think you will always have some older people buying cars made for younger buyers to feel or look younger. I simply like the Civic Hybrid gas millage for my long commute.

What are your thoughts on generational marketing? This blog post “The Death of Generational Marketing” says that you can not create a unique appeal based on it. It seems car makers have always tried to reach the younger demographic as this NBC story discusses “Automakers Battle to Attract Younger Buyers.” But apparently this battle is harder than ever before. In 1983, 69% of 17-year-olds had a license, but this seemingly ubiquitous rite of passage has now become passé. In 2008, just 50% of 17-year-olds had a license. The New York Times quotes research that says in 2008, 46.3% of potential drivers 19 years old and younger had drivers’ licenses, compared with 64.4% in 1998.

I don’t think you can dismiss the value of consumer behavior research into generations. Do you think is it s viable marketing strategy?

What Do We Do With Out-of-Date Advertising Professors?

“What Do We Do With Out-of-Date Advertising Professors?” was a recent article in the trade journal Advertising Age by small advertising agency owner Marc Browstein. He made a lot of good points making the case that colleges need to find ways to offer a more state-of-the-art experience for undergraduates. Graduates tell him, “they learned more in a single summer internship in an agency than in four years in college.” Students also tell him, “classes promise integrated marketing while delivering insights about only traditional tactics.” Still more students complain, “subjects like mobile marketing aren’t even offered at their schools.” Professors have grown out of touch so agencies are left to spend valuable resources teaching new hires what they should’ve learned in college.

As a professor who only just recently left the professional field I can see both sides of this issue. I am not too far from professional practice to forget, yet I’ve been teaching long enough to know the issues and environment of universities and academia. Mark really plays up the importance of Internships and his connection to the C0-op program at Drexel University (looks like an excellent program – one of the first founded in 1919).

I am personally grateful for internship opportunities and Mark because he gave me my first copywriting internship at Brownstein Group almost 20 years ago (ouch that hurt to say). I was an enthusiastic, yet naive undergrad at Temple University in the advertising program. They took the time to give me that valuable hands on experience. After 17 years in the business as a copywriter and creative director and teaching part-time in the Temple Advertising Department and the graduate IMC program at West Virginia University I now teach full-time in the Center for Leadership Education at Johns Hopkins University.

My plan is to remain current and since joining the university I have launched courses such as Social Media Marketing and Blogging, Online Copywriting that cover among other things mobile marketing. This spring I am publishing an Ad Age White Paper on Social Media Integration. I follow trade journals and ad leaders on Twitter and write a blog (this blog) about new developments in marketing and advertising.

Our center has a vibrant internship program and an upper level class that creates integrated campaigns for real clients as our students compete with other universities in a new business pitch situation. Our intersession class gives students an intense week of professional guest speakers followed by tours of top New York Advertising, PR and Media firms. We focus on hiring professors with significant professional experience, but also supplement with part-time professors who are current working professionals.

My hope is to stay current through research, lifelong learning and continuing to freelance and consult. I will also always teach from a case study method, giving “real life” project based assignments. I also teach graduate classes where 90% of my students are working professionals – this keeps me learning as I teach them. But like anything in life different programs and professors will have different strengths and weaknesses.

A big issue to consider is that most professors on the tenure track must conduct research and publish in peer review academic journals. This can take a lot of time and effort. Most professionals don’t read these journals (for one reason we speak different languages) and professors looking to get promoted don’t get credit for trade publications or continuing to gain practical experience.

Another issue is that many PhDs don’t have the practical experience because they choose academic careers at a young age instead of professional. This is not a bad thing, we need these types of people as well – many of the principles and strategies we take for granted were developed by academics, who have the time and perspective to think about issues the way professionals don’t. On the other hand, for a professional to give up a high paying career, take an average of over 8 years to get a PhD and then get a teaching job that pays a lot less doesn’t make sense or isn’t even possible.

These may sound like a lot of excuses, but that is the reality of the system. Fortunately it is starting to change, but (here comes another excuse) academia moves much slower than the corporate world. But this isn’t just a problem in the marketing field. In a recent survey by The Chronicle of Higher Education half of employers said they had trouble finding graduates qualified to fill positions and criticized bachelor’s-degree holders for lacking basic workplace proficiencies, like adaptability, communication skills, and the ability to solve complex problems.

I hope to work hard to stay current, teach the latest things, keep working freelance and strive to make the education system better. But who knows, maybe I should get on the AEF Visiting Professor Program waiting list now. Oh, and thanks to every agency that takes the time to give undergrads internships and mentor juniors. Industry veteran Sally Hogshead said in another Advertising Age article, “Sadly, there are not enough mentors in the business. Our business squeezes people out at the age of 50 or so. Then we look around and scratch our heads and say, ‘Huh, gosh, why don’t we have any mentors?’” So I am grateful for Mark Brownstein for giving me an internship and taking the time to mentor.

Without Failure You’ll Never Suceed

“To me success can be achieved only through repeat failure and introspection”     - Soichiro Honda, Founder of Honda Motor Company

Coming from the creative side of the advertising business, you would think the people I worked for would understand the creative process. Some of them got it, sending us back to the drawing board without shame before our good ideas turned into great. Unfortunately too many other places I worked drove us to perform by fear of failure. Their attitude was that it better be perfect the first time. But I have learned over the years that failure is part of the learning process.

In the Harvard Business Review Peter Sims agrees. In The No. 1 Enemy of Creativity: Fear of Failure, Sims observes that many MBA-trained executives are never given permission to fail and industrial management is mostly built on mitigating risks and preventing errors, not innovating or inventing. Yet Darden Professor Saras Sarasvathy has shown through her research that successful entrepreneurs make decisions by making lots of mistakes to discover new approaches, opportunities, or business models.

Whitney Johnson process for turning failure into success.

The way you handle failure is the corner stone of success. Having no room for failure means you have no room for progress. In another HBR article, Whitney Johnson advises how to Put Failure in It’s Place. Johnson says, “Implicit in daring to disrupt the status quo is daring to fail. As we learn by doing and do by learning something will eventually (and inevitably) not work.” How do we not let failure take us down?

1. Acknowledge sadness: Grieving is an important part of the process. If you suppress sadness, you risk losing your passion, which is the essential engine of innovation.
2. Jettison shame: Failure doesn’t limit innovation – shame does. Pull shame out of the process to gain the lift you need to get back to daring and dreaming.
3. Learn the right lesson: What valuable truth did you discover by failing? The lesson isn’t to never pursue a dream again, but to gain valuable insights that will help the next idea succeed.

The difference between winners and losers is winners have accepted failure, learned from it and move on. Losers never enter the game for fear of failure or the first failure stops them dead in their tracks. Need more proof? Here is a list of famous failures turned success provide by Business Insider:

• Walt Disney was told a mouse would never work.
• J.K. Rowling was on welfare.
• Oprah Winfrey was told she was “unfit for T.V.”
• Jerry Seinfeld was booed off-stage.
• Sidney Poitier was told to become a dishwasher.
• Steven Spielberg got rejected from film school three times.
• The Beatles were dropped by their record label.
• Steven King received 30 rejections for “Carrie.”
• Michael Jordan was cut form his high school basketball team.
• Steve Jobs was removed from the company he started.

Failure isn’t time to stop, it’s time to learn. Anything worth having is not easy to get. Join the winners that own their failures and learn from it. The reality of our world today is we all must be lifelong learners. Are you not allowing yourself to fail and limiting your your success?

Fear Means Go: Stretch Yourself for Social Media Success

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” - T. S. Eliot

No matter the industry, to grow business and earn a profit, you are constantly seeking a competitive advantage. Competitive advantage comes from innovation. Innovation comes from taking risk. But if you’re waiting to find a risk that has a high probability of success and low probability of failure, you will not find it.

Change starts with movement and feeling fear doesn’t mean stop. Fear means you’re stretching. Successful people stretch. They think carefully, but then choose to do. To act. Don’t fool yourself. To do nothing is choosing something.

The Social Media landscape can be intimidating.

By now you probably have read too many articles and blog posts on the latest social media channel. It was Facebook, then Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. Tomorrow it will be something else. Articles on the latest social media channel or success story can leave you in a constant state of feeling behind with no hope for catching up, let alone getting ahead.

When it comes to social media it is easy to get stuck in a “paralysis of analysis” while searching for the perfect solution. The key is realizing that you will never have all the answers and to not get caught up in the latest social media star.

Start with what you know: your business objectives and target audience. Find social media channels your target is active in and devise ways to engage them on a personal level that will move them towards business objectives. I say business’s objectives because social media goes beyond marketing into customer service, PR, HR, etc. For example, if you discover (through listening) that most brand conversation on Twitter is product or service complaints those issues need to be fixed before making more marketing promises.

How did Shaun White become the first snowboarder ever to land back to back double corks? He tried it. People become innovators by trying and eventually they succeed and become the experts that everyone looks to enviously and wonders how they did it. Did Orville and Wilbur Wright have all the answers before they attempted flight? No. They had a series of small successes and important failures that taught them lessons that lead to ultimate success.

Shaun White, the Wright Brothers, and Frank Eliason didn’t fear, fear.

How did Frank Eliason go from customer service manager at Comcast Cable to S.V.P. of Social Media at Citi Bank? Two completely different industries? He had a simple idea (provide personal customer service on Twitter where people were complaining about his company) and he did it. Fearful? Yes. A stretch? Absolutely. He had no marketing or PR training, but now he tours the country telling us Marketing and PR professionals how to use social media. The Wright Brother’s owned a bicycle shop, but that didn’t stop them.

So when will you have your Shaun White, Wright Brother’s, Frank Eliason moment? If you’re not afraid, you’re not stretching enough.

Super Bowl Ads: A Unique Opportunity for Undivided Attention

As we watch this year’s Super Bowl of football and advertising, there is a big lesson we can learn from this high priced marketing spectacle. A poll reported by MarketingProfs says more of us would rather visit the bathroom during the game than the commercial breaks. The same poll says the commercials beat out the game, halftime show and even food as our favorite part of the Super Bowl.

This kind of undivided attention is amazing in our current cluttered advertising environment where some claim we see 5,000 ad messages a day. And even when watching TV, a Harris Interactive survey reports people also surf the Internet, read a book, magazine or newspaper, go on a social networking site.

Why are people surfing the Internet, reading books and engaging in social media? They’re searching for content they want to see and during the Super Bowl marketers who pay the $3.8 million manage to give them just that. MarketingProfs reports people say Super Bowl ads are funnier, more creative and more memorable than regular ads. And people watch them again online, share them via social media and even email links to them.

Despite these successes many marketers and bloggers write off Super Bowl ads as being not effective in selling products. But it’s hard to pass up the 180 million viewers – top prime time shows now only attract viewers in the hundreds of thousands. And Kantar Media claims last year’s game produced sales of $262.5 million for the advertiser while Abobe says Super Bowl sponsors get a 20% increase in traffic on their websites the day of the game and higher than average traffic after.

Whether you buy a Super Bowl ad or not, the lesson here is that people like quality content whether its an ad, TV show, game or video.

This is the key insight to success for marketing in social media. You don’t buy attention, you attract it with quality content. without the huge media expense. For the most part, marketers are not used to thinking this way.

The bottom line is people choose to spend time with quality content and successful Super Bowl advertisers are acting more like content producers – creating the kind of ads that keep people in their seats. Perhaps the rest of us marketers should start thinking like this all the time. Maybe the best way to beat ad clutter is to stop trying to push and instead pull the consumer to you.

Brand Engagement Through the “Martydom Effect.”

For non-profits the “consumer” of the service is not the same person “purchasing” the service. So there is no immediate gratification like we get when purchasing a new pair of Nikes or an iPod. But does that mean the donor receives no benefits? There are definitely emotional benefits from giving. The desire to help others is inside of us all and it feels good to do so.

A different way to look at this is involvement. Today I think more people want to get involved to make a difference versus simply writing a check. In this instance the donor receive the benefit as an experience. There are obvious ways that this can happen like Habitat for Humanity builds. The “run for a cause” trend has also taken off in recent years through marathons, distance biking, and shorter runs or walks. People are attracted to athletic fundraising events for the experience – even the rewards that come from pain and suffering. Princeton University conducted a study that suggests people like to participate in fundraising activities that involve discomfort. Researcher Christopher Olivola attributed the results to a phenomenon he calls the “martyrdom effect.” “When you have to work hard and suffer for a cause, then you become more involved and more motivated to help,” he said.

I can attest to this personally. I ran my fastest marathon when I ran for Cure International and raised enough money to pay for six club foot operations so these kids could run too. Olivola’s dissertation states, “Most theories of behavior consider pain and effort to be deterrents and assume that making a task more painful and effortful should decrease motivation … I show that willingness to contribute to a charitable or collective cause increases when the contribution process is expected to be painful and effortful rather than easy and enjoyable.” Not only did I train harder, but I contributed my own money and my sponsors contributed to this good cause.

Another way to get involved is by feeling like you are actually helping because you are. Another campaign that has influenced me is for Wireless Amber Alerts. On May 25, 2006, National Missing Children’s Day, The Advertising Council launched a national, multi-media PSA campaign designed to raise awareness of The Wireless Foundation’s Wireless AMBER Alerts program and to encourage all wireless subscribers to aid in the search for abducted children. I saw the ads featured in an advertising publication called Creativity and I immediately signed up. If a child is missing in your area you are sent a text message describing where he or she was last seen and provides descriptions of the abductor and his or her vehicle. Hundreds of people can provide extra eyes for law enforcement to help find missing children. In its first four years AMBER Alert helped save the lives of 502 children nationwide.

The Home Depot has been successful in donating money, time and effort through its associate led volunteer force to help Habitat for Humanity. Recently they’ve received PR coverage with their  “Repair Core” program that helps veterans with home repairs. Is there a cause (non-profit) your brand can team up with to increase engagement? Is there an event or effort that can also increase involvement by taking advantage of the martydom effect?