Brand Central Station

Aaron Smith, writing for MediaPosts’s Email Insider, provided an interesting sumary of the most common misconceptions about email marketing.  Aaron is a founder and principal at Smith-Harmon, a design agency focused on email marketing.  (Visit the Smith-Harmon site.)

In these tough economic times, more and more businesses are turning to low-cost marketing tactics that offer potentially high rewards – tactics like email marketing.

The problem, as Aaron points out, is that this potential for a high return on the marketing investment can lead executives to make incorrect assumptions and uninformed business decisions that can have significant (and negative) consequences over time.

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After posting my piece on Consumer 2.0, I received a Tweet from one of my friends on Twitter.

@BrandCentral – Consumers need to make companies stop taking us for granted.  We are your source of income – respect us, dangnabbit!

Not only did I find the Tweet to be interesting because I hadn’t seen “dangnabbit” spelled out in a while, but the sentiment of the post was indicative of a larger problem I see brewing for marketers in the future.  ”Engagement” is a big word circulating through the marketing universe at this time, but in reality, engagement requires two-way interactions between parties. Real interaction is built on a foundation of mutual respect.

And according to my informal survey of one and a just-released study of the nation’s political climate conducted by BIGresearch, Americans are feeling a little disrespected on all levels.

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The Apple iPhone has been a tremendous marketing success.  This week (today, in fact), Apple’s iTunes Apps Store just distributed its one billionth application for the iPhone.  This last quarter, Apple shipped over three and a half million iPhones.  Profits are up and things are looking good.

Well, except for that one misguided iPhone app debuting this week.  The “Baby Shaker” app.

“This application was deeply offensive and should not have been approved for distribution on the App Store,” said Natalie Kerris, an Apple spokesperson.  ”When we learned of this mistake, the app was removed immediately.  We sincerely apologize for this mistake and thank our customers for bringing this to our attention.”

Amid all great news, someone always seems to have to spoil the party, don’t they.

Fortunately, Apple not only did the right thing by removing the app, they promptly apologized and, more importantly, they acknowledged the role Apple customers had in making the recall possible.  Whatever the lingering lifespan this app is likely to have in the ether that is the Internet, it’s unlikely Apple will be tainted as a result. 

The Apple brand has its loyal advocates and acolytes.  They received the recognition they were do and, no doubt, see themselves as part of the Apple tribe responsible for keeping the brand pure as a result of this action and public recognition.  

All in all, it’s a great example of positive brand reinforcement with your key audiences.  Kudo’s to Apple.

And for those of you really interested in learning more about the state of Apple’s iPhone apps, I strongly suggest your read Nicholas Kolakowski’s story in eWeek.  Very interesting and informative.

by Mike Bawden
President & CEO; Brand Central Station

These are indeed interesting times in which we all live. The pace of life has picked up so dramatically in the last ten years, I question our society’s combined ability to adapt without some kind of major cultural meltdown occuring during the process. But still, I have faith.

With rapid change comes great opportunity, as well as terrible risk.

From society as a whole, there comes a desperate cry for sanity and creativity. For compassion and stewardship. For accountability and self-discipline.

As marketers, I think we all owe it to our customers, clients, communities, employees and partners to do the best we can with what we have. To make a positive difference in the world. And to encourage everyone – whether they’re our kids or our customers – to be smart and discriminating consumers of everything we’re told to believe.

In the past fifteen years, the Internet has evolved from a loose connection of crude email servers into an interactive, social network that connects us globally. For the most part, we’ve recognized that and call it Web 2.0.

Well folks, maybe it’s time we come up with Customer 2.0. They need to be better informed and capable of handling the ever-increasing flow of information, images and noise that comes their way.

As marketers, it’s our responsibility.

We’re always looking for opinionated people.

If you’re interested in becoming a contributing author to Brand Central Station, check out the information we’ve posted about being a contributor to our site or drop us a line.  Contributors should provide posts that range between 150 and 500 words in length.  All content submitted to BCS is subject to review and editing – and will be published at our discretion.

No, it’s not the latest iteration of Mad’s classic “Spy vs Spy” comic drama.

When it comes to advertising creative, it doesn’t always have to come down to an “all or nothing” proposition, does it?  For small and mid-sized businesses especially, the hard reality is that many times the design, content and sometimes finished production of a  piece needs to be done in-house or it won’t get done at all.  Some agencies look the other way, some get all “high and mighty” about it.

Here’s the reality: it’s gonna happen, get over it. 

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(Company Press Release)

BOSTON – Innoveer Solutions, an award-winning customer strategy and solutions consultancy, today announced the availability of its most recent white paper, “The Pursuit of Partner Relationship Management,” which details how companies can expand their reach, reduce costs, and minimize risks by sharing more sales-related responsibilities with their business partners during uncertain economic times. The paper is now available in the white paper library on Innoveer’s website.

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BIGresearch just published a digest of their latest China Quarterly Panel (Q1 2009).  BIGresearch conducts regular consumer research in both China and the US and provides some interesting comparisons to consider.

The findings of this latest survey find that young Chinese (18-34 y.o.) hold many of the same opinions as their counterparts in the US.  The economy has been tough on them, too, with nearly half (47.3%) expressing their view that more layoffs are likely over the next six months and 22% of them contending that they are personally worse off than they were a year ago.

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Bill Bernbach may have passed away from leukemia in 1982, but the work produced by DDB under his supervision in the 60′s and 70′s is the epitome of great advertising.  While every student of the business remembers the “Think Small” campaign for VW, we often forget how counter-intuitive VW’s entire positioning was to the automotive market of the day.

This classic ad explains why VW didn’t discount the Beatle the way other car manufacturers slashed prices to move stock each model year.

Politically incorrect – maybe so – but still another in the line of classic VW ads from Bill Bernbach’s book.

Every first-year marketing student learns about the “bandwagon” … it represents a concept of consumer preferece.  A product achieves momentum via perceived popularity.  People see others using a certain product (or uttering a certain catch phrase or espousing a certain idea) and then they start adopting that same product (or slogan or philosophy) for the simple reason that they don’t want to be left behind.

It doesn’t say much for peoples’ ability to make their own, well-reasoned decisions.  But in the world of marketing, the physical concepts of momentum and intertia are very real.

Unfortunately, the bandwagon also rolls through the marketing profession – and every once in a while, it gets really obnoxious.  This year, the marketing concpt we would probably be better off without relates to the economic stimulus package passed by Congress earlier this year.

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(Company press release)
 Drink Me magazine launches its first issue this month in San Francisco. Published by Open Content, Drink Me is the only lifestyle and entertainment publication about drinking and bar culture created for enthusiasts.

“Thirty months in the making, we’re finally here,” says Daniel Yaffe, president of Open Content. “It’s been a long and exciting road. We hope our readers take time to explore and enjoy as we offer up all the alcohol culture one could ever ask for, bottled up and ready to drink with a little tag that reads, ‘Drink Me.’ Welcome to our world…”

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The noise from social media can be deafening.  But businesses have to find a way to make sense out of the confusion or risk the consequences.

This week, Brand Central Station has been publishing a list of dozens of web sites and social media outlets your business should connect to – and if you do, you’ll soon have Inboxes full of interesting (but not always useful) information that demands your attention.

You need to aggregate all that media and the information that streams through it so you can make sense of it all and get back to the business at hand.

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