Yaffe Tidbits

Tidbits You Can Use From Brand Camp 2011

For the third year in a row, I attended Brand Camp University Detroit last week and gleaned a little inspiration, a bit of knowledge and connected with some new people along the way. Here are some of the best tidbits from the conference.

The Best Storyteller Wins. Hajj Flemings kicked off the day talking about storytelling. He asked if we ever knew someone who wasn't as qualified as others, but always seemed to get the job or make the sale? It's probably because they're a better storyteller. The fact of the matter is, when you're looking for a job or trying to sell your product/service, there are a lot of others out there that seem to have the same qualifications or product specs. What makes you stand out? It's your story and how you tell it. Does that person have a more compelling LinkedIn profile? Does that brand have a more compelling story?

People make emotional connections with stories. It's all about making yourself stand apart by finding what's different about you and telling that story well. And your story has to have all the elements of a good story. There has to be something that the protagonist overcomes, obstacles to be hurtled. Victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. Or failure turned into triumph. Look at your brand proposition (whether you're the brand or your product or client is). How can you make a compelling story out of it.

Brainstorming Producing a Drizzle? Try Rolestorming. Josh Linkner introduced a concept I like a lot - the idea of rolestorming. The idea is to try brainstorming as a different character or person. In traditional brainstorming, people often hold back on their best ideas, either because they're afraid to share them or because they figure if it was a good idea someone else would have said it. The way to bring down this inhibitions, is to have everyone brainstorm as someone else.

Linkner said they were brainstorming something at ePrize and nothing much was coming out of it. Then they decided to brainstorm as if they were each a character from Mad Men. Suddenly the energy in the room went up and the ideas started flowing. Instead of thinking like yourself, you start thinking about how someone else would approach it. For instance, if you were rolestorming as Steve Jobs, you'd come up with big, grandiose and outlandish ideas. If you were rolestorming as Charlie Sheen, they might be crazy, even illegal ideas. Rolestorming as villains like Darth Vader or Dr. Evil are particularly fun, said Linkner. Sure some of the ideas are way too out there, but out of those ideas the kernel of something great can grow

If You're Starting a Business, You Need a Kitchen Cabinet of Advisers. Melinda Emerson, also known as the Small Biz Lady, talked about needing your own kitchen cabinet of advisers to help you make sure your business is set up to succeed. First, you need a supporter. This can be a spouse, a relative, a friend - someone who is going to give you emotional support and be your cheerleader. Secondly, you need a mentor. This is someone who can give you advice and show you the ropes. Then you need a CPA or a lawyer, who can make sure your business plan is tight and meeting sound business standards. The final two are an entrepreneur and a potential customer. These are all people who are already invested in your success and will be able to support you in different ways, giving you different perspectives.

GMC Trucks Have the Best Use of QR Codes I've Seen.  John Gasloli from GMC trucks showed us how they've completely integrated QR codes into the new GMC catalogs. They use them for engaging their customers with inspirational 4-minute documentary style videos. They also connect to some really great mobile tools via QR codes. For a more in-depth post on their program, read my post on the Social Media Club blog.

It's a Passion Story, Not a Product Story. If you want to build communities and conversations around your brand, it has to be tied to people's passions, not the product. Nobody wants to talk about brands, they want to talk about things they are passionate about. Your brand can be part of their passion stories though. Spike Jones spoke about this. For instance, he pointed out that you wouldn't think their would be a community built around WD40. Then Jones read from a post where a guy was talking about how he has been spraying it on his bait since he was a kid and how it's good to spray on wasp nests on his car, because it doesn't wreak the paint. It's stories about the guys passions that involve the brand. Jones also talked about orange-handled scissors. Nobody would be passionate about them. But people are passionate about scrap booking. That's where you could build passion stories.

Those are just a few of the things I took away from this year's Brand Camp University. How about you? Did you go? What made an impact on you?

Mike McClure, 3-Time Camper

Fun Facts: Social Media Revolution 2011

Every so often someone puts together a fun, compelling video that shows off interesting facts about the new media age we're living in. You've probably seen some of them before. Today, one of the newest ones floated through my web world (meaning someone in the Houston office emailed the YouTube link to our meida director here in Detroit and she passed it on to the rest of us - yes, I still find things through email sometimes). I enjoyed it and thought I'd share it here - in case someone hadn't sent it to someone who posted it somewhere you could see it yet

It has some facts we've seen before, like "YouTube is the world's second largest search engine" and "if Facebook were a country it would be the 3rd largest." It also has new fun facts like "socail gamers will spend $6 billion on virtual goods by 2013 compared to only $2.million spent on real goods by movie goers." Fun stuff. Check it out.

 Social Media Revolution 2011

So, what did you think? Anything really surprise you? Hear anything interesting that's not in this video?

Mike McClure, Social Media Guy

 

The Runway Meets Social Media

Monday marked the first-ever Tweetwalk. For those of you scratching your head in confusion, Tweetwalk was birthed by the ever-classic British brand, Burberry, in order to combine fashion and social media. It was debuted at this season’s London Fashion Week.

Burberry tweeted to its 539,243 followers, “Excited to announce the first ever #Tweetwalk Show. SS12 looks will be on Twitter before the runway. Follow @Burberry today at 4pm #LFW”. The clothing brand known for its upscale style and easily recognizable plaid fabric teamed up with Twitter so that those not as lucky as people like Kanye West and that new girl from Transformers 3 who were sitting front row for the fashion show could experience it even faster than “real time”.

Tweeters and fashion lovers who followed the @Burberry account were able to view photos of the models before they hit the runway. As the models lined up backstage to display the looks before the audience, the official tweeter for the day took a photo of each model in their perfectly pressed and highly styled outfits and tweeted them out before they were displayed on the runway.

“We are thrilled to create the first ever “Tweetwalk show” in partnership with Twitter. Twitter is instantaneous and I love the idea that streaming a show can be in many different forms. This collection is all about the most detailed hand crafted pieces and fabric innovation, creating a beautiful physical experience that is communicated digitally in dynamic and diverse ways and I love balancing those two worlds,” said Chris Bailey, Chief Creative Officer of Burberry.

Above is a screen shot of what tweeters were experiencing during TweetWalk.

The presentation was also streamed live via the website but still, those who followed the Burberry Twitter stream were able to see the looks before anyone else. Because fashion week is so exclusive and home to celebrities, wardrobe stylist, top magazine editors, buyers and bloggers for an entire week, allowing the general public to see a collection before those sitting in the very arena its being debuted in is total new age. But how will this affect the future of Fashion Week?

Fashion Weeks occur all over the world including New York, London and Milan and the best of the best are invited. These people view the collections designers spend months, even years creating so that they can report back to the general public about their finds. So if other designers follow in the footsteps of Burberry, will there be a need for Fashion Week anymore? Designers could save lots of money by having their social media teams tweet and Facebook their collections rather than creating a huge production to show off their new garments. I highly doubt that will ever happen but there is certainly something to be said for Burberry’s attempt at breaking fashion and social media barriers.

How do you feel about Burberry’s innovative way to share its collection with the world and what do you think the future holds for social media and fashion?

  Jessica Mosley - Admittedly addicted to anything related to fashion.

How To Turn Your Worst Projects Into Your Best Products

Ever get handed one of those projects that nobody cares about? Something under the radar that just needs to get done? What do you do? Grumble and just crank something out or rise to the challenge and create something spectacular? In my experience, these kinds of projects are ripe for doing great work. In fact, my most award-winning campaign ever (for both creativity and effectiveness) was one of these projects.

Sometimes the problem with high-profile projects is the layers of approval and all the chefs in the kitchen. I'm not saying you can't do spectacular work on high profile projects. You absolutely can. It's just harder. The beauty of a project that nobody cares about is that you have the opportunity to do something out of the box. People won't try and second guess creativity on a project like that - they are surprised to see it and much more likely to accept it.

That was the case with my most award-winning project. It was a postcard size insert in Advo mailers for a drug store client of ours. The strategy was sound. Boost traffic at under-performing stores by creating a loss-leader coupon (half-gallon of milk for 66-cents, two 2-liter Cokes for a dollar, etc) and inserting in in the Advo mailer in the zip codes around the store. Sounds boring right?

Even thought the strategy was sound and the coupons were incredible values, it wasn't performing. So the assignment was basically, do something to stop people from throwing this away without even looking at it. Do whatever you want; if you can work the logo and the product in, that's great. So, instead of looking at it as a crappy mail coupon insert job, my art director partner and I looked at it as a "go crazy and do something creative" opportunity.

What we ended up doing was a series of single panel cartoons with a "Far Side" type sense of humor. For the milk coupon, if it was a 24-hour store, we showed a cow sneaking out in trench coat disguise to pick up milk so she didn't have to be milked. For the Coke coupon we showed aliens raiding a man's picnic for Cokes and him hoping he had enough to appease them. We found a good illustrator and this just do something assignment became one of the most successful we'd ever done. Not only was the creative good, but the response rates were incredible. In fact we repeating the campaign later for another drug store chain we represented. (to see each postcard bigger, just click on the image)

So, next time you get an assignment nobody seems to care about, look at it as an opportunity to really wow someone. Look at is as an exciting challenge instead of dreaded drudgery. Who knows, you might do something truly out of this world!

Has this happened to you? I'd love to hear some of your hidden opportunity success stories.

Mike McClure, Exec Creative Director & social media guy

Effective Marketing Tools & Methods That Yield the Best Returns

Thinking about your online business - of the various marketing tools and methods you use, which has yielded the best financial return?

In this article, I’m going to share my two favorite tools that I use in my business as a business and life coach for mom entrepreneurs.

My favorite marketing tool is Twitter. I get several leads a day directly from Twitter. That's why I'm so passionate about it. Let me expand a little on that, though.

In a teleseminar I hosted at MomBizCoach.com with Rhonda Hess, she explained how we should all focus on a blog as our centerpiece. Write in your authentic voice, share your thoughts, wisdom, opinions, photographs of your work or products, lessons learned from a situation or experience that is relevant to your target market, etc. and you'll start attracting readers who want to spend more time with you and ultimately purchase what you sell.

Then every time you post to your blog, you share it on twitter (and Facebook and LinkedIn, etc.) with a link back to your blog. By doing this, along with asking for and responding to comments to your blog posts, you are building relationships and increasing the "stickiness" of your blog.

I use Twitter as a vehicle to connect with people, to build relationships, and to deliver prospects back to my website and blog so they can learn more about what I do. Upon checking my blog statistics, the top referrer to my blog and website is almost always Twitter.

Twitter is, of course, a free tool, but it does cost me my time. As a mompreneur, time happens to be my most expensive and valuable asset. That said, I spend very little time on Twitter most days. I usually pop on and off for 1-5 minutes at a time several times a day. There are days I never log on to Twitter, and then there are times when the kids are in bed that I'll spend two hours on Twitter chatting with friends and potential clients. I also use several Twitter integration tools so that lots of what I tweet can occur automatically, saving me a lot of time.

As a return on my investment, I am currently getting a couple of warm leads each day from Twitter. Given my very limited work schedule of only 10 hours a week (client-facing time), this is more than enough to fill my pipeline.

My second favorite marketing tool is my BlogTalkRadio Show. I'm finding that people all over the world are hearing me on the internet and already feel related to me because of this. As a result, my prospects are ready to hire me before we ever speak in person.

People like to consume their information in different formats, so if you're not currently using audio or video as part of your marketing strategy, it would be worthwhile to consider adding these options. If you have no clue how you could integrate audio and video into an effective marketing strategy for your business, talk to a business coach or strategist to help get you started.

So what are your favorite marketing tools? Do you enjoy marketing or prefer to delegate it to someone else? Do you spend most of your marketing budget on traditional (print, radio, TV) methods or on Social Media Marketing?

Guest blog by Lara Galloway, Momprenuer & Mom Business Coach

Simple Ways to Curate Content for Your Company

Part of any content strategy for your brand should include curating helpful articles, blogs and other sources of information your community would find useful. Sure, you need to create your own content, too. But, unless you have a huge staff dedicated to content creation, you need to curate content from other sources.

Where do you find all this content that will connect with your clients and potential clients/customers? There are several fairly easy ways to keep content ideas coming to you. It may take a bit to set it up, but after that it's a matter of sifting through what's coming in and sending back out what will be most interesting to your audience.

First off, you need to look at who you're trying to reach and what kinds of information would either be interesting or helpful to them. For instance, I curate content for The Yaffe Group twitter feed. The audience here is people interested in marketing, branding, strategic solutions and in general, ways to make their business better. This group would include our clients, potential clients, business owners, business marketing department and fellow marketers. I choose from a wide variety of topics that provides information that will help these people run their businesses better.

You can also create sub-categories within this group.The Yaffe Group has expertise in a number of fields, including health care, education, retailers, non-profits and others. As I curate general marketing, branding and strategic materials. I also curate specific content aimed at these particular specialities, because there's a higher propensity for someone within those categories following us (and being a potential client).

Use eNewsletters to find content. One thing you can do is go out and find a number of eNewsletters that curate content in the specific fields you're looking for. I subscribe to over 20 daily and weekly eNewsletters for our content. Then, as they come in, I scan through to find articles I think will connect well with my specific community. A good place to start when looking for eNewsletters is SmartBriefs - they have daily emails in over 100 different topics.

Load up your Google Reader or RSS feed. Another way to find content is to search out the top blogs in your area of interest and subscribe to them. You can easily add them to your Google Reader or RSS feed. Then, check these lists occasionally and find what posts would be of most interest to your community.

Create Twitter searches & lists. You can use Twitter's search function to search a category, hashtag or key words. Try several approaches and see what yields the most potential links to interesting content. Then save those searches as a list or column in your Tweetdeck or Hootsuite. Also, create a list following other accounts that post interesting content in your areas of interest. For instance, I have columns on my Tweetdeck for companies in each of our subcategories (hospitals, retail, etc)

These are just a few simple ways to keep a constant stream of content coming your way. They take time to set up, but once you do, you can spend a few moments here and there throughout your day checking for killer content you can share.

Do you have your own simple content finding methods? I'd be interested to hear what other ways you're pulling in content that connects with your community.

Mike McClure, Yaffe Group Chief Content Provider

 

Are Your New Communcation Tools Meeting Customer Expectations?

I love seeing companies push their own boundries, trying out new technology and channels to connect with their customers. However, I hate to see them not make full use of the tools they're trying. It happened to me yesterday with a surprise text message from my dentist.

Now, I've written about my dentist before. They seem to be at the forefront of amazing technology. However, when you're using new forms of communication to connect with customers, make sure you meet expectations. The text I got came very early in the day and was confirming an upcoming appointment. It was very simple. I just had to text back "C" to confirm my appointment or "R" to reschedule. I texted C and got back another text almost immediately thanking me, letting me know my appointment was confirmed and that they'd see me on the upcoming date. So, far so good. Except I had a question.

I had been waiting on them to call with some information before my appointment. They hadn't as of yet, so I figured if they were texting me I'd text back and ask them about it. As immediate as the automated responses were, something not fitting their plan took much longer, not matching expectations. I didn't hear back at all via text. They did call my house and leave a message at some point later in the day.

Texting is an immediate medium. They met that expectation when they replied immediately to my response. They didn't meet it at all once I used the medium the way many people do - to carry on a conversation. It left a bad taste in my mouth about a company I admired for being so forward thinking.

So, when you're using these new communication tools, be careful to make sure you meet expectations. You may think something like an automated texting confirmation system is a good solution. But if you're not using it the way your customers are, you're setting yourself up for failure.

Another example is aclient we just picked up had set up a Facebook page just to post job listings. Again - it wasn't meeting the expectations of the medium - it wasn't a place for conversations. If you're going to use these tools, you either have to meet customer expectations or work hard to set up new expectations.

How about you? Are you getting the best use out the tools you use? Where have you seen others not connecting in ways customers expect? And, more importantly, what have you learned from it?

Mike McClure, Indulging my texting sweet tooth

Blog #300 - What We've Learned

Yay! This is our 300th blog post! I've been editor of this blog since the beginning, so I figured this was a good chance to go back and take a look we've learned in that time about how to write a good blog for business. Here's a few gems, some learned the hard way, some dropped in our lap for immediate blog beautification.

Consistency. Consistency. Consistency. Did I mention you need to post consistently? The first few years of this blog (it started in 2006) were spotty at best. We'd get it rolling then months would go by with nothing. Then we'd get it rolling again and let slack off again. Now, for the last few years, we've been pretty consistent - posting 3 posts a week, with our "Ad of the Week" feature coming out on Wednesday. Traffic has trended upward steadily during this time.

Of course, as I say this, we're coming off an incredibly busy few weeks here at Yaffe where we were working crazy hours. During these weeks, we only posted once. In blog world, it doesn't take long for a lack of consitency to hit. Before those two weeks, we were riding on an all-time high in terms of page views per day. The last 4 days, we dropped to less than half of that traffic. You have to set expectations up and then meet them. Any slacking will hurt you.

Focus Your Content.Another wrong thing we did at first was to be all over the place. We figured we had to have a blog and didn't really strategize how to use it. We wanted everyone at the agency to be involved and had people take turns, whether they were good writers or not. And we let them write on whatever. We had posts that were recipes, posts about family holidays, a post that was really just a bad riddle... you get the idea.

Now we focus on things our clients and potential clients would be interested in. The purpose of creating content is to be helpful and in the process show your expertise and build thought leadership. Now our posts are about marketing, advertising, branding, corporate culture, social media, mobile, digital... all things we do and have expertise in.

Have Good Writers Do The Writing. As I mentioned above, we used to have everyone write, sometimes without complete willingness. Now, we have a team in-house that are all good at writing in general, and at writing blogs specifically. Rather than making the rest of the staff pitch in, we often bring in guest bloggers who have a specific expertise. This improves both your content and what your audience can get out of reading the blog.

Once you start writing a blog on a consistent basis, it gets in your blood. I know from personal experience, if it's been a little too long since I wrote a post, I actually get a little on edge about it. It's not just knowing we need to have something out there; it's a need to actually write and make the connection that a blog creates. I look forward to the next 300, which should come much faster than the first 300. I hope you'll join us on the journey and add your thoughts along the way.

Are you a blogger or just a blog reader? What have you learned in your time spent with blogs? How has it impacted your life and how you do business?

Mike McClure, Editor, Yaffe Tidbits

The Culture of FutureMidwest: A 1st-Timer's Perspective

I have experienced so much for only having been at The Yaffe Group for just two months and so far, one of my favorite experiences has been attending FutureMidwest. This was my first time at the conference and I was able to learn so much; from the predictions that Detroit will have a successful transit system in the coming years, and the idea that curation is the next big thing, right down to the overall culture of the conference.

When I walked through the doors of Eastern Market into the Quicken Loans pavilion for the first day of this two-day digital conference, I couldn’t help but notice how many people were so engaged in technology. I too pulled out my phone and began multitasking between tweets, Facebook updates and check-ins. After all, technology, fun digital things and social media were a huge topic at the FutureMidwest conference. After my first tweet, “#FMW11 with my Yaffe crew,” I followed the hashtag #FMW11 for the next two days and realized I was in the company of some pretty cool people.

Tech guys, social media folks and PR pros were among some of the professionals who attended FutureMidwest. Presenters and spectators both had great ideas and thought-provoking opinions. Everyone there seemed to be so knowledgeable at their craft, enhancing the outcome of the conference.

As FutureMidwest took flight, I began to observe my surroundings even more. Most people in the venue had an iPad, iPhone, Android or Blackberry in their hands. Of course most people now-a-days have one of these devices, but it was just awesome to see a room full of people with one of these savvy pieces of technology, and they were all on it at the same time. I also noticed a certain type of fashion throughout the room. I picked up that more than half of the male presenters wore button down shirts, jeans and a blazer. This certainly speaks for the culture of the conference in saying that people in this business are hip and trendy. One presenter even apologized for wearing a suit during his presentation, further proving that this is a pretty laid back, fun business. Women there were fashion-forward as well, wearing their hipster riding boots, well-fit jeans and trendy jackets.

Above all, since the conference was about learning, I definitely learned a great deal about the future of the Midwest, new technologies and advancements and creative ideas to use with clients. But I also learned that, as a new-comer to this particular professional world, I certainly fit the culture with my iPhone and riding boots.

How about you guys? Were there any first timers who enjoyed being in the presence of so many with the same interest?

Jessica Mosley - FutureMidwest Newbie & loving it

Future Midwest Photos by: Brandon Chesnutt

14 Fascinating Facts from Future Midwest

Besides the inspirations and new ways of looking at things, Future Midwest speakers throw out some very interesting statistics during their presentations. I thought it would be interesting to compile a few of them together. Here's some of the ones I heard at this year's conference.

 

 

1. Smartphone ownership will overtake feature phones by the third quarter this year.

2. 77% of consumers engage with brands online for incentives and ad offers.

3. 28% of consumers will provide an email address or engage with a brand online with promise of incentive.

4. Many online new businesses eliminate the middle man between consumers and the product/services they want.

5. The majority of colleges (85%) look at applicants info posted online (including social sites) before deciding to admit that student to their university.

6. 86% of iPad owners would prefer to put up with ads in order to get free content rather than paying a nominal monthly fee.

7. In Michigan, only 1.01% of the people are on twitter, compared to 47% on Facebook.

8. However, the ones who are on twitter have much larger followings/communities online than those just on Facebook.

9. Teens today send about 300 texts per month, but tend to make only three phone calls during that same time.

10. Over 700 billion minutes per month are spent on Facebook.

11. 70% of connected consumers have participated in a branded sweepstakes or contest.

12. The average consumer is exposed to over 3,000 messages per day

13. Email offers that have specific relevance to those receiving it get five times greater conversion rates than full list email blasts.

14. 47% of consumers consider their mobile devices to be essential to their lives and keep them within arms reach at most times.

There you have it, 14 fun facts I heard from the Future Midwest speakers this year. What other pieces of info did you hear that stuck with you?

Mike McClure, Playing digital trivia and #winning