By Linda Forrest
Like many people, I rang in the new year with friends and loved ones at home, watching the famous ball drop in Times Square on television. With a little one at home, it wasn’t feasible to go out for the evening, and so when relegated to sticking around the house, it’s inevitable that we were drawn to watching one of the many new year’s eve specials on television.
We settled on Dick Clark’s Rockin’ Eve, not because of the entertainers appearing, not because of any particular allegiance to the network it was shown on, nor because the television happened to be on that channel. Rather, we consciously sought it out, so ingrained into all our brains is the brand that is Dick Clark’s new year’s eve special. When I think new year’s eve and television, I think Dick Clark. The fact that Clark has been felled by ill health that has impacted his ability to host the program itself and so foisted Ryan Seacrest upon the viewing public is sad, to be sure, yet we still tuned in. In our case, not to see what J Lo would wear, not to gawk at the ailing state of the iconic Clark, but just because the program itself is such an institution, has such a strong brand.
Before we settled on Dick Clark, however, we wandered the proverbial dial, seeing what else was on. A lackluster performance by Britney Spears in a fountain in Las Vegas was the only game in town, television-wise, from 11pm when Fox started its terrible programming. Some would argue that terrible programming is keeping in line with Fox’s established brand, but I digress. It was sad to see Spears performing amidst a line-up of nobodies. Though it was a boost to the ego to think that they were letting just anyone perform on live television like that; maybe I’ll whip up a song and dance number for next year’s special. Stay tuned!
The other channel we had the misfortune of stopping on was CNN, the most trusted name in news. While Gawker has a thoroughly cheeky recount of the night’s events, to me this programming was the most egregious mistake by a big-name media company on a night full of trainwrecks. CNN has branded itself “the most trusted name in news” yet the buffoonery of a raunchy comic and a respected anchor was far beyond good taste. I wouldn’t trust Kathy Griffin to cross the road, let alone entertain people to ring in the new year. While Gawker points out that CNN, which is struggling in the ratings, needs Kathy more than Kathy needs CNN, it’s unfortunate that the network felt it had to corrupt its branding so flagrantly in order to attempt to lure viewers. As we’ve written about previously, poorly conceptualized stunts like this don’t work, rather, they tend to turn people off.
We’ve been marketers long enough that we’ve helped guide companies through rebranding and new identities and what we’ve learned is that your true brand is not what you thrust upon the marketplace but rather how your customers and the public at large identify your company and its offerings. That’s where Dick Clark got it so right for so many years and CNN got it so wrong. When you deliver something expected, customers are pleased. Likewise, when you provide something totally antithetical to what they’ve come to know from your company, they’re confused and put off. Valuable lessons to learn for all of us.
Happy new year to all! Best of luck for 2010; may the year be healthy, happy and prosperous for everyone.
By Linda Forrest
My husband and I went to see Avatar over the weekend. Wow. The visually stunning spectacle has been director James Cameron’s pet project for more than 10 years, his last major theatrical release being a little movie called Titanic. The movie is in 3D but it’s so unobtrusive and simply enhances the story without going for corny effects, a novel approach to an older technology, enhancing rather than interrupting the storytelling process.
It was an inspired move by Cameron to hire virtual unknowns in the lead roles, but a mistake, despite her considerable talent, that he cast Sigourney Weaver in the film because, more than once, it felt like I was watching Aliens or even Gorillas in the Mist. For the same reason he put faces to those with whom we have had little or no previous associations in the lead roles, he should have cast an unknown in Weaver’s role; this was the only distraction that took me out of the marvelous world of Pandora and back into North America, circa late 2009.
I don’t want to spoil the storyline of the movie for anyone who hasn’t yet seen it but plans to, but suffice to say that while the movie is well worth seeing and elements of the film’s story are absolutely creative and novel, the vast majority of the plot is well trodden territory. Thematic elements are very reminiscent of [SPOILER ALERT!] this, and this.
There’s nothing new under the sun, they say, and the same is true when it comes to marketing. While it’s true that in the realm of technology, there are truly revolutionary products being released, there are also a slate of products that are only slight modifications on existing offerings or have very little if anything unique about them, rather they are “me too!” propositions. That’s okay – consumers need options at different price points with different feature sets, and other distinguishing attributes, however small.
The challenge becomes how to market your offering when the basic story (of your product, your company, your industry …) has been told many, many times before. Take a page from James Cameron’s book and find novel ways to tell a familiar tale, use new technology to do so and make it compelling to your audience. In our terms, this means to use novel marketing approaches like social media to communicate your key messages to your prospects and customers, providing them with the information they need in a format that’s interesting to them and that will get them talking to other prospects about why your offering is the one to see and why your marketing campaign is better than that of your competitors.
By Linda Forrest
There’s a good reason our blog was so quiet last week. We’ve been incredibly busy launching the world’s first bionic finger, Touch Bionics’ ProDigits, to the worldwide media. We’ve had tremendous uptake on the story from all sorts of media all over the world.
I’ve thoroughly bastardized Dylan Thomas in this post’s title, but it’s for a good cause. This morning, the fruits of my labor appeared on “Good Morning America,” one of the highest-rated morning shows in the U.S. and one that airs worldwide. Here’s the segment: .
Getting this segment to come together was no easy feat. We launched last Tuesday, and I began pitching GMA in earnest the following day. I spoke often to with the medical producer there and by Thursday morning, it was set – they were going with the story. I’d lined up a patient in NYC and a prosthetist to come into the city for an in-studio segment Monday morning. Elated, I let the whole Touch Bionics team know we were set; ProDigits were going to be featured on “Good Morning America.” I was told to expect a call from a producer to go over the finer details later Thursday afternoon.
This is where our story takes an unexpected turn. The call came, but it was to say that they didn’t feel the story was different enough from the i-LIMB Hand, which they had covered in 2007, and so they were going to cancel our segment. The patient we were originally going to feature has a partial-hand prosthesis with all four fingers and a thumb so it does not, in fairness, look that much different from the i-LIMB Hand. Nonetheless, this is how I felt.
Having come so close, I was not going to take no for an answer. So I began to pitch all of the other angles to the story – we had other patients, in other locations, with other circumstances. ProDigits is a huge technological advancement from the i-LIMB Hand, it’s the first device of its kind and, before it came along, partial-hand amputees had no other option to regain any meaningful level of functionality. We could tape in advance, we can provide experts, here’s research to back up our claims of the numbers of potential patients… Basically, I would not take no for an answer. I knew that this was a compelling story and that it would be of interest to GMA’s audience. It was just a matter of presenting the whole story of ProDigits and what was available from a resource perspective and convincing them that we could provide the producers with the components they needed in order to put together a good story.
It worked.
They went for the compelling story of Michael Bailey, a 24-year old student in Atlanta, Georgia, who lost three fingers in an industrial accident nearly two years ago. Michael’s prosthesis clearly shows his remaining finger and thumb and so, presumably, tells the story of the partial-hand prosthesis better. GMA senior health and medical correspondent Richard Besser flew all the way to Atlanta on Sunday to do a great interview with an amazing Michael Bailey and the piece aired this morning. (The hit was all the sweeter because this morning was the the debut of new “Good Morning America” host George Stephanopoulos, ensuring our story even better ratings! In a little banter with his co-host that’s not seen on the posted segment, Stephanopoulos, who got to shake hands with a model ProDigits, said the story had given him goosebumps.)
Phew!
This was a lesson in perseverance, and in knowing the whole story, one that extended well beyond the news release. When I was hit with that first setback, I was able to present that whole story and win the day. We couldn’t be happier with the result, and, more importantly, neither could our client.
By Linda Forrest
A quick browse through my Google reader shows that it’s that time again. No, not the holidays. It’s time to gaze into the marketing crystal ball and make bold predictions about where marketing dollars will be spent in the upcoming year, what communications trends will appear and how we as marketers can best lever this knowledge.
I don’t pretend to be extraordinarily prescient when it comes to these things, so I’m going to put down my own crystal ball and instead point to a few posts on other blogs that might illuminate the near future for marketers.
A LinkedIn question about New Years resolutions for CEOs has garnered 5 responses so far. What are your clients’ resolutions for 2010 and where do your services fit into those plans?
According to this post, it’s going to be all about social media and email next year.
Will portable identities take off like this post predicts? Will B2B companies further expand usage of social media and take advantage of this brand portability?
And finally, this post predicts all of the above will take place in 2010.
Do you have any predictions for the year ahead?
By Linda Forrest
Several items in my Google Reader caught my eye this morning. Being the amateur philologist and word nerd that I am, titles about “word of the day” and “word of the year” are assured to be clicked.
EMarketer’s word of the day is cyberdisinhibition. Notwithstanding that it may not, in fact, be a word, it’s an interesting concept – people are more inclined to lose their inhibitions online and this could impact your business considerably as customers are more inclined to complain about bad customer service or spread word about dissatisfaction online than they are in the “real world.” All the more reason to excel at customer service. Sites like the Consumerist are devoted to spreading the word about sub-par customer service; this is not a site where you want your company to appear.
In a year when sparkling vampires ruled the box office (and high school locker posters), an exciting new U.S. President held his first year in office, Michael Jackson and other cultural icons passed away, H1N1 threatened health worldwide and the economic bailouts in America overtook international headlines, the Global Language Monitor has just announced the Word of the Year. The winner is? Twitter. The microblogging platform saw incredible year-over-year increases, the linked ComputerWorld article references research that denotes a 1,170% from 2008 to 2009. It’s undeniable that the platform has made the leap from being strictly for tech geeks and now is the communication platform of choice for the mainstream public.
