Yaffe Tidbits

Ad of the Week: Bounty "Bring It"

I don't know if they were trying to capture the feeling of the SNL digital shorts that Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake put together, but the new web video for Bounty paper towels has that feel to it. The video features to "scientists" tricked up with ball caps and bling over their lab coats rapping about the new pool ball test their gonna put Bounty through. It has a lot of scene intercuts with the same kind of pacing you see in the SNL digital shorts that do song parodies. And it has the same tongue-in-cheek false seriousness to it. It has everything from sexy women waving sheets of paper towel as they ride down the road in a convertible to pool hall toughs. There are even the required T-Pain type microphone bits.

All in all, the video succeeds in being very entertaining, while still showing a strong product benefit for Bounty. The prove that even wet, the tough towels can hold a bunch of balls - pool balls, that is. The track, done by Yessian Music, is great - not missing a trick in this seriously unserious homage to Bounty's toughness. Check it out for yourself and enjoy:

Bounty "Rap"

This week's Ad of the Week was submitted by Helen Kaye at Yessian Music. Thanks, Helen. Got a suggestion for Ad of the Week? Leave your comment here, send us an email at fans@yaffe.com, send us a tweet or post on our Facebook page.

Mike McClure, Exec Creative Director & Social Media Guy

MCC Birthday Bash - what I learned can help your business

Local networking group, Motor City Connect (MCC) celebrated their three-year birthday with a big event, loaded with great speakers. As a business owner myself and someone who enjoys social media and networking, I went to see what I could learn for my own business and personal gratification. In two different rooms, each speaker had a 15 minute slot immediately followed by the next speaker - so there was always two presentations going on all afternoon. I managed to catch some great info and some inspiring messages. So, I thought I'd share some of what I learned here.

Blending your personal & professional life. The first speaker I saw was Bob Shenefelt of I Matter. He was sort of a modern day spirit guide for working souls lost in the digital age. It wasn't a bunch of guru mumbo-jumbo. It was stuff that really made sense in today's over-connected, always-on world. I may have learned more things I can use for business in other presentations, but his was the one I enjoyed the best. The official title of his talk was "Welcome to the Age of Wisdom" but it was really all about how to blend all aspects of you life into a harmonious middle ground. A place where it's okay to play a little at work and work a little at play. He talked about the old way of life kept work and home lives very separate. Now, with digital and mobile technology always keeping us plugged in, it's hard to make a distinction and to find time for just ourselves. It was a 10-minute balm for the workaholic soul.

Rebuilding our social capital. Next up was Kieth Zendler of People Movers, which is a community-based site. He talked about how over the last 40 - 50 years, our communities have been in a cycle of less and less community involvement. He sited the book "Bowling Alone" - which sounds like a good read - in how we vote less, go to community meetings less, do less business with our neighbors, etc. It's been about a 40% drop over these years, losing our social capital. This brings increases in poverty, health issues, political unrest - all as an offshoot of the breakdown of our ability to work together. Lately, through social media and networking, we're starting to come back out of it. To rebuild relationships, you need to think about what you care about.

Be a great entrepreneur. Zendler says to do this, you need to 1. Care. If you really care about peoples problems and try to solve their problems, you'll gain customers. 2. Connect - get out there and get involved in your community. It's where you're going to meet other top entrepreneurs who may become your clients - after you build trust in a non-business relationship. The 10% who are really involved are the influencers who shape the things we do. Connect with them. 3. Communication. Share with each other. You need to get out and talk to everyone. That's why the explosion in social media has occurred, because of the dearth of ways to communicate with each other. 4. Cooperate. Work together and help each other out. As you help other business, they'll help you. 5. Commerce. Get out and do commerce. Get out and do business with your friends, with people you know. There's nothing wrong with that. 6. Celebrate. Go out and celebrate your successes with those you've built relationships with.

Learn how to learn. In my next session, Kimberly Kassner of EmpowerMind taught us a new way to learn. She said we could all learn how to memorize a list of 10 random things. Then she took us through a visualization exercise that really worked. She took the things and put a visual story in our minds about it. That was hours ago and I can still remember the list. It's MCC, coffee cup, winning lottery ticket, pizza, Blackberry, love, money, Terry Bean, birthday cake, wine. I think I'll have to drink a lot of wine before I forget the list she taught us.

Using your Chamber of Commerce for business. I kind of stumbled into this one. I thought I was going to another session, but by this point the presentations had gotten behind the timeline. So, I sat and listened to Jennifer Roosenberg of the Ferndale Chamber of Commerce. I had thought, even though Yaffe's not a huge company, we were too big to try and make connections through the Chamber of Commerce. But once Roosenberg outlined all the ways that your business can benefit from being a part of it, I may just have to check out our local Chamber. Some of the things she outlined, I hadn't thought of and they really made sense.

Getting more out of your Blackberry. This is what I thought I was seeing in the last one, Dave Peckens, one of the area's true Blackberry experts was going to tell us how to be smarter with our smart phones. Trying to make up time, he kept it short. But packed good info and good humor into his short presentation. The women in the room seemed to really like the way he told us you could sync up two Blackberries with a list app that the wife could add things to a shopping list when the husband was out shopping and it would cue the husband in that more had been added. Our office has Blackberries, so I may just have to get Dave to come in and help us be a smarter office with our smart phones

Want the sale? Don't use these words. One of the better presentations for my business was this one by Fred SaintArmour. He talked about words you need to eliminate from your vocabulary when you're talking to a prospect. First he said get the "whyne" out of your mouth. When you ask anybody why they do something, it puts them on the defensive. Instead of why do you use XYZ company, ask "what conditions would you need to have happen to make me your supplier?" Instead of why, "what was the reason" or "what circumstances made this happen" type of questions. Or start with "I'm curious" or "I was wondering" He also said to eliminate "but" (get the but out of your mouth) because if you say "I like that, but I think you should do this" you're really saying you don't like it. You can simply say, "I like that. Did you ever try it this way?" Same meaning but without the implied insult. Finally, he said to eliminate "just" as in "I just wanted to send you a quick email." The word just trivializes what we're trying to do. It means the same if you write "I wanted to send you a quick email." SaintArmour had some other great advice, like actually asking for the sale. 

I saw some other good presentations, meet and networked with good people and talked to some of the businesses who had displays as well. Did I mention they had birthday cake? All in all it was a good day.

Mike McClure, Partner at Yaffe and networking guy.

Ad of the Week: Capital One: "The Ivan Brothers"

If you like college basketball and, like me, you still have a day job, you probably saw this week's Ad of the Week. CBS offered free streaming video of all the games on their sportsline site. Like many, I had the games running on my desktop while I was working. And the Ivan Brothers were everywhere. Seemed like almost every break, you'd see an ad for them, while a banner ad ran down the side of the video even as you went back to the game.

The ads were well done and a nice extension of Capital One's long-standing marauding horde of barbarians campaign. The spots featured fictitious college named West Eastern State who, after long losing seasons had now secured a 15 seed in the tournament, riding on the massive shoulders of the Ivan Brothers. The Ivan Brothers are two giant barbarians who wear animal skins and horned helmets under their basketball uniforms. And their unstoppable on the court. The spots consist of a variety of famous college coaches like Tom Izzo, Roy Williams and Tubby Smith lamenting how tough it would be to face the Ivan Brothers, intercut with shots of the brothers amazing dunks and feats on the court. The best line is when Danny Manning says, "It's hard to defend guys who are used to storming castles."

Capital One: "NCAA coaches on the Ivan Brothers impact"

When the spots are over, you are directed to go to www.theIvanBrothers.com to see their story. It turns out to be Capital One's YouTube channel, bedecked in Ivan Brothers graphics. All the TV and web ads are there along with a six-minute "documentary" about how the brothers were found and how they learned to harness their powers in a team format on the court. It's worth the watch.

All in all, it's a brilliant example of how to create an engaging campaign that ties into your overall one, but still is targeted specifically at the target you're trying to reach and the environment in which you see them.

Mike McClure, Izzo and Ivan fan

You Can Create Social Change Through Marketing. Here's How.

America's been on the social marketing and cause related marketing bandwagon for a couple years now. But can you use marketing to get a community to pass a bond millage when they've never passed one before? Yes, you can. In fact, we did - in the conservative state of Texas, no less.

The Yaffe Group was working to establish a position for our client, Houston Community College (HCC), for a number of strategic initiatives. One of the most important of those was an upcoming bond election. Passing the bond was critical to the on-going success of the college. We conducted research designed to  understand the performance, attitudes and value drivers of the voting public in the area. After reviewing the research and a strategic planning session with the client, we decided to position HCC as key to the success of the city of Houston and the surrounding districts.

One thing about social marketing, you usually have a big job to do and a limited budget.This was no exception. The good news is that you can usually get the media to give you more added-value bonus spots if it's for a good cause. I't a matter of positioning the client with the media reps, just as you have to with the general public. We managed to get tens of thousands of dollars worth of bonus spots and online adverting for the initiative.

Then we put together a campaign designed to influence the public awareness and attitudes towards HCC. Our main objective was to get people to vote yes on the bond issue. But, we had a number of secondary objectives. We wanted to foster public esteem as it related to HCC and their reputation. We wanted to talk about HCC's value to the community and as a valuable asset to Houston. And we wanted to attract more students and have communication efforts still be aimed at driving student registration.

While we did want to target the 18+ general public, which includes possible students, those looking to go back to school in this economy to find a second career and the 50+ adult population that has the heaviest voter turnout. However, we also targeted all the niches that were key to getting the bond passed. We targeted each niche with different media selection and different messaging. We targeted those in the 50+ segment since they represented a critical voting segment. We also targeted both students and prospective students, as both the end users and as important influencers. We had targeted marketing for the Hispanic, African American and Asian American population as well.  

We used TV, outdoor boards, posters, print, social media and online advertising to reach these targets. The results were terrific. there was a dramatic increase n regard for HCC which resulted in the first-ever passage of a $151-million bond initiative. It received overwhelming voter response and an 11% increase in recruitment of new student registrations, a new all time high.

So, it can be done. You can create significant changes in behavior using social marketing. How about you? What successes have you had? We'd love to hear them.

Mike McClure, Yaffe Exec Creative Director & Social Media Guy

10 Things Marketers Can Learn From The NCAA Tournament

The 2010 NCAA basketball tournament has barely started, but already there are some lessons marketers can learn from the tournament and the teams in it. Here's 10 tournament-related winning strategies to keep the marketing for your business on track:

1. Reputation will only get you so far. Yes, reputation is very important for your business. But, you need to deliver on your brand promise consistently. The Big East came into the tournament with the reputation as the country's toughest league, but (at least on the first day) didn't live up to the promise of bringing the toughest teams in. Top teams like Georgetown lost to mid-conference teams like Ohio. Make sure in every interaction with your customers, the public and your peers that your products and services meet or exceed the good reputation you've built.

2. Never underestimate your competition. Everyone comes into the tournament hungry. And as some teams have learned, you can't take these lower seeds lightly or they can hurt you. Same is true in business. Everyone wants their business to succeed. A small competitor who is determined and marketing savvy can cut into your business. They may not have the budget you do, but outstanding creative could get them noticed. Or an innovative media strategy, like dominating a local radio station or tapping into the local community through social media. So, make sure you monitor even the little guys. Or better yet, think like one and don't just plan on winning by sheer media weight, but develop your own out of the box thinking for your marketing.

3. Engage your consumers. The huge popularity of the tournament is due to more than school loyalty and great basketball games. Over the years, a whole industry has sprung up around office pools and filling out your brackets. It's a way to engage the casual viewer. Now every game has meaning and people will watch even if they don't know a thing about the teams. Same thing happened with fantasy football helping make the NFL so popular. So, how can you put that kind of thinking to work for your brand? What can you do to deeply engage even casual users of your product or service? Find the answer and profits will increase as engagement increases.

4. Everybody love a good story. If you want to capture imagination and hearts of the people, make sure you have a good story to tell. In the tournament, that can mean a small team making an extended run, like George Mason did a few years ago. Or it can be a story about one player being a great person trying to win the big one in his last chance as a senior. Or a team or player overcoming adversity. A good story gets people talking and paying attention. What story is your brand telling? Make sure it's a compelling one and you too will get people talking and paying attention to your brand.

5. For some just being there is enough, for others it's all or nothing. When one of these small schools get into the tourney for the first time, they're just happy to be there - even though the chances of moving beyond the first game are close to nil. For a team like number one seed Kansas, anything short of a final four berth would be disappointment. How you look at your business depends on where you're at. We have a client who tells the story of when his business first got on TV. He was on camera and they had a cheesy jingle. It wasn't good, but they were just happy to be on TV and business improved for being there. Now, 20 years later, they're the leaders in their market. Anything short of beating the competition is no longer acceptable. So, wherever you're company is at, be glad to be there and have a strategy that works for where you are at the time.

6. Stay focused. We see it all the time, a team gets up big and loses focus, letting their opponent get back in the game. Just because the marketing plan you put together a few years ago has been doing well, don't let it coast without updating it. Stay focused on what you're trying to accomplish and update your plan as needed. Don't let a competitor sneak up on you. Make sure you're doing everything you can to keep your company moving towards it's goals.

7. Everyone needs to pull towards the same goal. Some teams play over their talent level to win games simply because everyone on the team has bought into the same plan and are all working perfectly together to achieve their goal. The best marketing plans can fall apart if you don't get everyone in your organization on board, marching in the same direction. First, you have to make sure everyone understands what it is you're trying to do. Then, you need to inspire them that it will be for everyone's good if the goals are achieved. No matter how good your marketing is, if the people on the front lines of interaction with your customers don't understand and buy into your plan, it's more likely to fail.

8. It makes a difference what region you're in. In the tournament, it can greatly affect how you play whether you're playing near the home crowd or are shipped to the other side of the country. Also, some regions provide easier paths than others. In business, it makes a different what region you're in, too. The competition is going to be different from area to area. Also, how you go to market will vary regionally. We've worked with furniture retailers all across the country. You need to be aware of the subtle market differences in how you advertise in Detroit or Chicago and how you go to market in Virginia or Houston. Knowing those differences and playing to them has created success for each regional client.

9. What you've done in the past does matter. How you're preformed over the course of the year and past tournament experience makes a difference in what seeding you get as a basketball team. Your past marketing efforts make a difference in how your current efforts will be received, too. If you've always been a company that does quirky marketing with a personality and you suddenly start an aggressive campaign to move products, it's probably going to lose you some customers if you don't take into account what you've done before. The reverse is true too. If you've been an aggressive marketer and want to put a kinder, gentler face on your brand, it will take more work to convince people that the new face reflects who you are.

10. Give it all you've got, because you could be out of the picture tomorrow. The NCAA tournament is a one and done proposition. If you don't put everything you can into your effort, you could lose and be gone. In today's economic climate, the same could be true for your company. Put your heart and soul into your marketing efforts. Make sure you have the smartest advisers you can and that you spend what is needed on your marketing without overspending. If not, you may lose relevancy or share of mind or simply go off in the wrong direction. Today that could lead to something worse than loss of share. Make sure you keep your eye on the ball. Good advice for both basketball and business.

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FedEx "Lucky" - the perfect St. Patrick's Day Ad of the Week

This week we honor a very funny, but understated (until the end, anyway) TV ad for FedEx shipping. In it, a group of business people are sitting around a conference table. They are worried about a presentation getting to someone in time today. Then the person who sent the package says he didn't use FedEx to ship it. They tell him that he better cross his fingers then.But, he can't because his hands are in casts.

The spot then goes through a series of "good luck" cliches, none of which work in today's politically correct, "make the world a better place" environment. He can't knock on wood because the office went green and has no wood furniture. He can't throw salt over his shoulder, because it's a healthy salt substitute. He goes through a series of these things, ending up looking for the office "leprechaun" - which is today's St. Patrick's Day tie-in. The spot is fun to watch, well paced, well acted and put together well. So, without further adieu, here it is. Enjoy!

FedEx "Lucky"

This week's Ad of the Week was discovered by our CFO, John Cassidy. Thank's for sharing, John. Got a suggestion for Ad of the Week? Leave your comment here, send us an email at fans@yaffe.com, send us a tweet or post on our Facebook page.

Mike McClure, Exec Creative Director & Social Media Guy

5 Things Your Business Should Do Now.

It seems technology and the way it affects how we do business is changing on an almost daily basis. Every Internet search, eNewsletter or blog post seems to turn up new ways to connect with customers, to take your products to market, to market your products, to develop your business, etc... There's a lot of change taking place. Some of the revelations are truly the "next big thing" and others will turn out to be the latest passing fad that came and went (remember the rush to get product and store space in the virtual world of Second Life?).

So, how do you know what to do, what can wait and what is going to turn out to be completely irrelevant? In some ways, you can't. But we put together this list of 5 things we think you should do right now to make sure your company is relevant today and will continue to be so tomorrow.

1. Register Your Company Name Everywhere. Make sure you stake your claim to your brand before someone else does. Much like grabbing your name in a URL for your website (we're assuming your company has a website, if not, your company's name in a URL is absolutely the first thing you need to register for), you need to start staking you claim everywhere else. Even if you're not ready to start a blog or dive into social media, register your name in all the main areas. You don't want to go to open a Facebook Fan page or Twitter account a year from now and find that someone else has your company's name locked down for themselves. You can make it private so no one goes there or if they do, that they see nothing's available yet.

2. Start Collecting Customer Information. All our research and experience shows that money spent marketing to your own customers, especially your best customers, has a far greater return than marketing to the general public. Create an internal process designed to get their name, address and email address. Email is a fairly inexpensive way to send customers special offers and communications. But, you need to have their email addresses to do so. So, come up with a way to start collecting them now. So, by the time you are ready to do something with them, you have a database to work with. Added bonus if you get their cell phone numbers, too.

3. Find Your Strategic Advantage. We believe an advantage exists at the intersection of strategy, culture and communications. If you can figure out what your strategic advantage is and it is one that fits your corporate culture, you can then start communicating it to the world and start taking advantage of it. All good companies have at least one strategic advantage over their competition. The sooner you figure out what that is, the sooner you can start leveraging it to tip business in your favor. Don't know what your strategic advantage is? There are plenty of good companies, like ours, who will help you discover it.

4. Have Executives Create LinkedIn Profiles. It's become a big research tool for anyone checking out your company and the top people in it. Whether it's someone researching you for a job or a potential client evaluating the people they'll be working with, everyone searches LinkedIn for info on key personnel. Even if they don't ever do anything more with their LinkedIn account, you should make sure all your top people have a profile that is carefully crafted to make them and your company look good.

5. Empower Your Employees. Make sure everyone in your company knows what the corporate vision is and then empower them all to become brand evangelists for your brand. There are things in every good brand's corporate culture that should and will get employees jazzed about working there. Make sure those strengths are clear and encourage employees to spreed the word - in deeds, in their own circles of friends, in their online communications and social networks, any place they interact with people outside the organization. You don't have to have a wildly employee-centriccorporate culture like Zappos for this to work. Just makd sure your company culture has a good story that rings true and your employees feel good about.

There are a lot of new choices and technologies for advancing your business today. But, these five things should give you a good place to get started. Do them and see where it takes you. Chances are, the next steps will become self-evident.

Mike McClure, Yaffe Employee Brand Evangelist

Ad of the Week: Zappos Puppets

The Zappos shoe and apparel company has a rather quirky corporate culture, as I discussed in a blog post a couple weeks ago in What Story Is Your Brand Telling. Their latest ad campaign reflects that quirkiness as well as their brand promise of exemplary customer service. To show just how good their representatives are at customer service, the ad agency fake, almost prank calls to real Zappos customer service people and recorded the conversations. These were people with weird requests like the woman who called in and wanted to exchange some workout clothes for a deep fryer.

Without fail, every person answering the phone at Zappos treated the caller with respect and tried to be helpful in whatever situation that was thrown at them. They remained friendly and worked with the customer, no matter how crazy the requests were. It's a testament to how Zappos does business. The audio for these calls became the audio for Zappos' ads. Then they made big puppets in the likeness of the employees, using only photos. The results are pretty darn good. Which is why you, Zappos puppet campaign, are our Ad of the Week. Watch the first spot below and then check out the making of video.

Zappos ad: Puppets - Jesse

The Making of Zappos Puppets Video

Got a suggestion for Ad of the Week? Leave your comment here, send us an email at fans@yaffe.com, send us a tweet or post on our Facebook page.

Mike McClure, Exec Creative Director & Social Media Guy

Chevy's brilliant road trip to South by Southwest Conference

After a rather tumultuous time for American car makers, Chevy is doing something to engage the buzz makers of our time. And they're doing a rather good job of it. The annual South by Southwest(SXSW) conference is being held this month. It's an conference of innovation in interactive, music and film. It was at this conference that innovations like Twitter and FourSquare have been introduced in the past.

Leading up the interactive portion of the conference, Chevy is sponsoring road trips from eight different parts of the country to SXSW. They are providing the car and having a four[person team from each city's social media scene drive it to the conference. Along the way, they must complete as many of 50 challenges as they can, which were crowd-sourced out to the followings of each team. The Chevy social media team, headed by Chris Barger, then chose the 50 challenges from all those submitted. (They didn't use my "find a ugly bug from each state" suggestion - but then that would be hard here in Michigan). Each team also get points for how much their social media communities interact with them along the way. The prize for the winning team is that Chevy with throw an "epic tweetup" in the winner's city for their social media community. How much good will and online buzz is Chevy creating from this one social media promotion? It's huge. And it's spearheaded by the leaders in each community, the early adopters with lots of followers. I think it's a brilliant way to get your product and brand name out there and generate positive feelings.

I've been following Team Detroit all day today, which is the first day of the road trip. I'm friends with three of the four members of the team, through various local social media functions. They're all great people and are making following them a lot of fun. They've had a steady stream of photos, videos, tweets, Facebook comments, blogs and more as they've gone. The local community has responded with comments, retweets and more on a large scale. Now, maybe it's not like that in all the team's cities (last I looked Team Detroit had a commanding lead), but the buzz is pretty great. You can follow Team Detroit on the Twitter hashtag #DETChevySXSW or on Facebook. It's fun. I'd recommend it. But, in the end, I think it's Chevy who's the real winner.

Mike McClure, Exec Creative Director & Social Media Guy

In Dark Times, Find Your Sunshine

My dog is as dumb as a stump. But, there's one thing we all can learn from him, whether you're an individual or a company. You see, he understands what will make him warm and happy. On cold winter days, even if there's just a sliver of light coming through a crack in the blinds, he'll find it. And he'll lay there with sunshine falling on his face and have himself a little snooze. No matter how dark the house is, he'll find that little ray of sunshine and bask in it - even when it's just a little strip across his nose.

This concept is something that can work for you, too. What's your ray of sunshine? Is it your family? Your job? A hobby? A good book? Playing a Facebook game? Connecting with your online community? Whatever it is, use it to fend off the darkness whenever you feel it decending on you. The economy looks like it's poised to come back. But, it can't come back soon enough for some people. Maybe you had to take a job you don't like. Or you have bills that add up to more than you make. Don't let the darkness settle on you. Find that thing that makes you feel warm, safe and happy. Then embrace it. Even if you can only find time for a little bit of it, do what makes you happy whenever you can.

This goes for companies and brands, too. What makes your brand shine? What makes your employees feel good about working there? What does your company do that makes consumers feel good about you? Tap into those things and it will not only help your brand or company do well, it'll make all those associated with it feel good. This is why cause marketing, being green or being active in your constituents' online communities are important for companies these days. If you can make yourself and your customers feel good about what you're doing in these hard times, business will bloom when things lighten up.

Find your sunshine and bask in it. It does a body good!

Mike McClure, basking in that all-over Yaffe glow.