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CAN YOUR PLAN BE HIJACKED?

With all of our marketing textbooks, classes and degrees, and our guru books, blogs and seminars, how is it that our marketing efforts so often miss the mark?  Certainly it’s not because we don’t know what to do. It really has more to do with the lessons omitted. Specifically: How to identify and overcome the ever-present forces that can hijack your plan.

Have you ever compromised a plan in the name of team work? Adjusted critical elements or language to satisfy a vocal, yet misinformed co-worker? Or even made changes in advance to please the CEO? Personal agendas, office politics and fear of innovation can reduce any of us to willing accomplices. Leaving us owning and being accountable to watered down plans.

Be prepared for the doubters. Overcome their objections with conviction, confidence and determination to keep your plans on track.

by Dwayne Fry Brand Futurist/Commander Strategic Ops

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

Up to now, everything here has been about change. Well, in the spirit of this blog, it’s now time for a big change. I’d like to write about the opposite of change – that is, not doing anything. Or, should I say, sticking to what you believe in, in spite of what everyone (pointed-headed experts included) tells you.

For years, everyone said Apple computer would die if they didn’t start selling to enterprise. For every consumer who buys a computer, the enterprise buys 50, they said.

Yet change didn’t come. Apple kept producing devices that consumers loved, enterprise be damned.

Last week out comes an article that says that the Federal Government is relying on Blackberry devices less and less because, among other reasons, employees love their computers/smart phones at home, and hate their ones at work, and are asking for Apple products at work instead. Companies are smart to realize that when they give their employees a choice, they’re happier.

So I guess the moral is that if you stick to what you believe in, eventually others will change.

by Patrick Miranda Brand Futurist The Republik Sergeant Creative Ops

Photo Credit: © Apple Inc.

MURDOCH: “EMBRACE TECHNOLOGIES”

New Technology Allow Little Guys To Compete With Giants

In his second of five Boyer Lectures, The Challenge of Technology, Mr. Murdoch says people should stop whining about the challenge of new technology and “get out in front of it”. He says new technology, such as the internet, is destroying business models that have been used for decades, particularly those with a “one size fits all” approach to their customers. People can do more of what they want at a cheaper cost and the disadvantaged now have greater access to information than at any time in history, Mr. Murdoch says.

The result is technology is “allowing the little guy to do what once required a huge corporation”. How are you using new technologies to beat bigger competitors?

Read More Here

by Mike Randall Brand Futurist The Republik Captain Strategic Ops

Photo Credit: Unknown – Licensed CC-BY-NC-SA

WORK OUT

Studies show that keeping fit keeps business healthy. More and more companies are implementing health-savvy regimens for the benefit of their employees and their bottom lines. According to a national survey, companies with effective health and productivity programs demonstrate superior financial performance – up to 20% more revenue per employee, notwithstanding lower health care costs.

Read more here (membership required)

“I feel tons better now that I can kick sand in yo’ face.”

by David Avis Brand Futurist The Republik Corporal Creative Ops

Photo Credit: via Stayfitnutritionblog.com

“PULL” vs. “PUSH” ADVERTISING, PART 1

From time-to-time this blog will include change ideas on marketing. After all, The Republik is an advertising agency and marketing is the thing we know best. Today’s topic — “Pull Advertising” is an introduction to a novel marketing approach you’ll hear us referring to quite a bit. So without further ado, here it is.

We believe an agency’s job is to deliver big business-building ideas to its clients — not just advertising. In fact, some of the most powerful and effective ideas we’ve developed and implemented don’t resemble anything within the traditional definition of advertising at all. For one of our fashion clients, we created a shoebox that could be used as a closet organizer, gift box or photo storage.

As silly as it may sound, customers started buying nicole shoes, just so they could get a cool shoebox. Today, nicole is selling the boxes on their website — separate from their shoes.

Triumph, makers of the “World’s Toughest Boats” had an awareness problem. Instead of buying expensive traditional media, we produced a relatively inexpensive video. In the video, we challenged the world’s biggest redneck to break the boat. We seeded links to it on fishing and boating sites and blogs. The result? Millions of people from around the world downloaded the spot, it appeared on CMT’s “Country Fried Videos”, was the subject of a New York Times article and boosted Triumph’s sales in a down market. Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone interested in a fishing boat that doesn’t know about Triumph.

The executions mentioned above are just two examples of “pull” ideas. The objective is to create ideas so compelling, informative or entertaining, selected consumer groups find them so “attractive” they go out of their ways to find or participate in them. This is diametrically opposed to the old school way of marketing where “target” consumers are identified and media is purchased to “push” interruptive messaging on them.

So far, it’s been our experience that pull ideas, when executed well and delivered through the right communication channels, are much less expensive and much more powerful and effective than “push” ones. Pull ideas not only attract people to buy more of a brand’s products or services, they also create a long-term bonds with them. Not surprising when you consider the fact that traditional advertising is geared around disruption — breaking up a TV or radio show with commercial pods, interrupting articles in magazines with print ads, disturbing the enjoyment of a web page with pop-ups and banners, etc., etc.

Our philosophy is and always has been, advertising at its worst is just another form of pollution that’s tolerated because people understand it’s paying for their entertainment. At it’s best, it can be better than the programming or medium in which it appears.

So why aren’t more agencies producing “pull” ideas? The simplest answer is they can’t. To create “pull” ideas and make a profit, they would have to fundamentally change their compensation models to ones based on idea generation and performance — instead of mark-ups and commissions.

by David Smith The Republik