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February 16, 2007
Deal or No Deal?
David Kistle, head of PSB's Research Practice, gave a "lunch and learn" session to staff yesterday on the importance of understanding the concept of risk/reward when developing messaging. He used the game show "Deal or No Deal" to drive home the point.
Here's the gist...
Risk seekers -- those who perceive the potential gain to outweigh the impact of the loss.
Risk averse -- those who perceive the potential gain as not worth the loss.
So how does this relate to marketing and public relations? Here are a couple of examples:
- Michelin Tires runs an advertising campaign showing babies playing in a stack of tires with the slogan "Because there's a lot riding on your tires." They're banking that you'll believe that it's worth it to spend a little more on your tires for the protection it gives you and your family.
- Visa's recent campaign showing the risk associated with not choosing a credit card that has automatic fraud and identity theft detection. They're hoping you'll see that the high risk of loss will cause you to take the time and effort to switch your credit card company.
- A promising startup recruiting high-potential employees by offering lucrative stock options and warrants in exchange for taking a base salary lower than they'd get at a steady corporate job. The premise is that you're confident enough in your abilities to skip the sure thing of a steady paycheck in exchange for potentially huge gains down the road.
Summary: Customers, investors, employees and other publics need to change behaviors if you're going to be successful. You've got to understand the risk associated with those behavior changes if you want your messaging to be on-target.
Posted by Matt Kucharski at 11:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 8, 2007
Pontiac Joins the Myspace Race
Pontiac has started a new Myspace site that asks people to register with their new Pontiac G5's and then asks people to get their friends to buy the same car and register it on the site. Once the community reaches 100 people, they all get $100 VISA gift cards (and so on as the community reaches 1000 members, etc.). But the name they have chosen might be a little questionable...
Posted by Catherine Claeys at 3:25 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 5, 2007
Thumbs down on mobile phones aloft
The Minneapolis Star Tribune today mentioned that Northwest Airlines CEO Doug Steenland got a standing ovation at a recent presentation for saying, as a flyer, he's not keen on allowing mobile phone conversation on flights. If Northwest does eventually get phone-whipped into allowing this, I say we bring back the phone booth. Only let's also allow smoking in there so that it stinks as bad as it would to sit between a couple of high-flying users. If you must do mobile communications from your plane seat, use text messaging. That's why we have opposable thumbs.
Posted by Bob Brin at 9:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 2, 2007
Search Engine Best Practices Coming Round to Traditional Marketing
Search Engine Watch and other search-marketing experts are talking about the growing inflation of pay-per-click costs as marketers have become addicted to what one pundit calls the "search crack pipe."
One article refers to a return to what was once called PR and communications:
Marketing: Formerly known as "link building," in 2007 we will begin to think of this as marketing and promotion
Refering to the waning effectiveness of link campaigns . . .
So what does this mean? It means you have to get your links by different means (in Smith Barney terms you have to "earn it"). Great content. A reputation as an open business that builds relationships with its customers and partners. In short build trust. This is what will get people to link to your site.
We often refer to the push/pull effect of traditional marketing combined with search marketing efforts for greater success. (PR learns what keywords are most effective and search is optimized continually to capitalize on changing messages, news and events.) However when search marketing is seen as the wonder drug, creating "pull" all by itself, and communications and marketing efforts aren't deployed to create valuable content, events, news links, etc. -- the things that really pull people's interests -- then search marketing has less pull and becomes a suck on time and resources.
Posted by Bob Brin at 7:41 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
