"Hot Trends In Marketing"

Recently, we attended the PMA "Hot Trends in Marketing" conference and came across a few interesting items:

1) Skype - the newest way to connect with family and friends over the internet. Skype is a phone service through the internet that is actually FREE.

2) Mobile Google - every in need of searching or finding information while on the road or without access to a computer. Now, Google has gone mobile! Just type in what you need and Google will work in the same way that it does from your computer.

3) Mobile EBay - ever worried that you may be overbid while you step away from your computer for a moment - well, worry no more, because with Mobile Ebay you can get updates on bids straight to your phone! Not only that, now you can re-bid from your phone as well so that you are always able to bid with just the click of a...well, phone.

4) Mobile Couponing - it has arrived! Coupons on your cell phone! You can now opt-in to receive bar codes actually sent to your phone. More and more stores are picking up on this latest technology in couponing, so be sure to look for this to arrive in more stores across the country.

Need more information....
http://www.pmalink.org/chapters/default.asp?p=westchester

Skype - www.skype.com

Verisign Mobile Marketing - Rob Kramer - rkramer@verisign.com; (617) 673 - 2471

"Click to Call" from websites and emails

Add Click to Call To The Mix

Email this post | Links Here | Tag:Customer Service

Be easy to do business with. That's a mantra every small business marketer should adopt.

One of the way you accomplish this is to provide your prospects with many different ways to contact you and buy. Some people are more comfortable with the phone, others with email. Make sure that offer all.Google and Windows Live recently implemented a technology in their Local Listings that allows a surfer to visit a listing and click on a "call now" link to initiate a phone call to the business. It's not earthshattering, but it does offer another way to engage.

Any small business owner who has a website can add this function as well. A fairly new click to connect option from Jaduka allows small business owners easily set-up and implement a click to call function.

Adding this to a website will likely prompt more users to pick up the phone and call, even if you list your phone number on the page anyway. You can also send your click to call button in an email and promote phone conversations. Users click on your click to call icon and a small window pops up prompting them to input their phone number. Once they hit send the call is initiated.

For many businesses and prospects the phone is still the most comfortable and most effective form of contact. Anything you can do to promote more phone conversations is probably a good thing.

Posted by: John Jantsch on Nov 17, 06 | 8:29 am | Profile

Pets and Marketing

Pets and marketing

Posted to: The Church of the Customer Blog
9/27/06

People are passionate about their pets: 63 percent of U.S. households have them and will spend $38.4 billion on them this year. More than 80 percent of U.S. pet owners call themselves "pet parents" and 31 percent of women say they spend more time with their pet than their spouse or significant other.

Pet owners have money to spend, and they're not hesitant to spend lavishly. New dog country clubs and luxury kennels are offering pedicures and parties for pets, charging as much as $185 a night. Could Petwire, a spinoff of Hotwire, be far behind?

All of that is great news for companies focused on the pet industry, but is meaningless for everyone else, right?

Not necessarily. Pets are increasingly the bridge to connect with future customers, affiliates or members. A church in Chicago is offering a "Pet Blessing." Hotels have pet packages so you can vacation with your pooch.

Lisa Johnson, co-author of "Don't Think Pink" and the new book "Mind Your X's and Y's" has four ideas on how to set your brand apart by tapping into people's deep love for their pets:

1. Feature pets in your ads and messages
Use messages that will resonate with pet owners, such as companionship in times of need, unconditional love and acceptance, fun and playtime, pets with children or seniors, and other storylines that clearly fit with your brand, products and services.

2. Imagine where your products intersect with pets
Custom-designed pet showers are big in high-end home construction. In the past year alone, Florida-based McGarvey Custom Homes has built 21 showers, including a model with travertine tiled walls, a tumbled-stone floor and a tiled lip that keeps water in the stall. London Bay Homes, another builder in Naples,Florida, offers pet showers with 9-foot ceilings. The cost? A cool $4,000. Out of 20 custom homes built in the past year, 12 London Bay clients have opted to include a pet shower.

3. Create brand extensions for pets
Think about how you can extend your brand to help pet owners pamper, dress and spoil their animals, such as a Harley-Davidson dog jacket or Burberry pooch sweater.

4. Facilitate social encounters around pets
Have you ever watched the social dynamics at a dog park or off-leash beach? The owners inevitably gather in a circle, compare notes, sip coffee and beam like proud parents. Pet networks can be word-of-mouth networks.

Read the rest of Lisa's ideas here and here.

Blogging. Why do it?

http://www.ck-blog.com/VoiceIn_Collage_11.06.pdf

Cool Sugar Packets

Below is a blog I read about a program Equal is running...

I can't believe I'm actually blogging about this...

I recently sat down to dinner with my girlfirend at the famous Forest Park Boathouse. As usual, we checked out the design of the sugar packets on the table.

<------And this is what we saw

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm about to say something I never thought would end up in my blog: these are the coolest sugar packets I've ever seen!

Our sweet friends at Equal have created a perfect example of EVERYTHING I've been writing about in the past year:

Mundane into Memorable: it's a damn sugar packet! Doesn't get more mundane than that. But Equal decided to transform an ordinary confection into brand-breathing brilliance!

When was the last time you took home your sugar packet and showed it to your friends? Or blogged about it?

Do Something Cool: After I read the first few packets on my table, I started walking around to every other table in the restaraunt and stealing their sugar packets. (The other customers probably thought I was diabetic.) But these packets were so cool, I wanted to collect them all! Kind of like baseball cards or McDonald's Happy Meal toys.

Have Fun: Try to visualize the marketing department of Equal, sitting around a board room table, brainstorming slogans like: Banish the Bland, In Favor of Flavor, Do Your Drink Justice, Embrace the Taste, In Taste We Trust, Power to the Packet! Come on. That's freaking hilarious. It's almost so ridiculous, it's cool.

Remember when UPS started embracing their brand (echh! the color brown?) by asking customers, "What can brown do for you today?"

Same thing. Equal is becoming unforgettable and unique and cool and fun in an otherwise boring market where there is no discernable difference between competing products.

(Oh, and did I mention: it's a damn sugar packet!?)

Sweet & Low? Regular sugar? Fughettaboudit!

I'm an Equal guy now.

Power to the Packet!

* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
Author/Speaker/That Guy with the Nametag

Websites Specifically for Mobile Devices

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- One-handed reading got a little easier this morning, thanks to Maxim, which switched on its new website tailored for cellphones and other mobile devices.

'Today's Girl' is one of several features visitors can find on the new mobile Maxim site sponsored by Burger King.

'Found Porn' Previously, phones with browsers could always visit the normal Maxim.com and try to fight through all the graphics, text, links, ads and the rest, but the mobile site now live at http://mobile.maxim.com offers a streamlined experience that gets right to the good stuff. Beneath a banner ad for launch sponsor Burger King, visitors today will find a photo of a woman -- well, primarily a photo of her legs -- and options including "Today's Girl," "Joke of the Day," "Steamy Video," "Sexy Advice," "Sports Stuff," "More Girls," "Found Porn" and "Sweepstakes." Revenue source Maxim has sold content such as wallpaper, ringtones and games to mobile phones for a few years, but the march of consumer technology made the new mobile site worth it, said Todd Anderman, president of the Dennis Digital division of Maxim parent Dennis Publishing. "It was a natural that we should start extending this as people upgraded their handsets above and beyond just a phone," he said. It isn't clear how much revenue Maxim's mobile site will bring in, but executives said they expect it to become significant. The digital opportunities, moreover, could help sell broader programs to advertisers seeking a 360-degree solution. "Being way out in front with this technology and these initiatives is helping us put a lot of pages in the print product," said Robert F. Gregory, group publisher, Maxim. The mobile site is arriving just before the December issue of Maxim in print, which is the title's second "mobile issue," meaning many pages are marked with a "Maxim Mobile" bug urging people to text this or that to the magazine for contests, voting and of course the chance to buy photos of women. The mobile theme helped bring in Nextel as a first-time Maxim advertiser, Mr. Gregory said.

Websites Specifically for Mobile Devices

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- One-handed reading got a little easier this morning, thanks to Maxim, which switched on its new website tailored for cellphones and other mobile devices.

'Today's Girl' is one of several features visitors can find on the new mobile Maxim site sponsored by Burger King.

'Found Porn' Previously, phones with browsers could always visit the normal Maxim.com and try to fight through all the graphics, text, links, ads and the rest, but the mobile site now live at http://mobile.maxim.com offers a streamlined experience that gets right to the good stuff. Beneath a banner ad for launch sponsor Burger King, visitors today will find a photo of a woman -- well, primarily a photo of her legs -- and options including "Today's Girl," "Joke of the Day," "Steamy Video," "Sexy Advice," "Sports Stuff," "More Girls," "Found Porn" and "Sweepstakes." Revenue source Maxim has sold content such as wallpaper, ringtones and games to mobile phones for a few years, but the march of consumer technology made the new mobile site worth it, said Todd Anderman, president of the Dennis Digital division of Maxim parent Dennis Publishing. "It was a natural that we should start extending this as people upgraded their handsets above and beyond just a phone," he said. It isn't clear how much revenue Maxim's mobile site will bring in, but executives said they expect it to become significant. The digital opportunities, moreover, could help sell broader programs to advertisers seeking a 360-degree solution. "Being way out in front with this technology and these initiatives is helping us put a lot of pages in the print product," said Robert F. Gregory, group publisher, Maxim. The mobile site is arriving just before the December issue of Maxim in print, which is the title's second "mobile issue," meaning many pages are marked with a "Maxim Mobile" bug urging people to text this or that to the magazine for contests, voting and of course the chance to buy photos of women. The mobile theme helped bring in Nextel as a first-time Maxim advertiser, Mr. Gregory said.

Borat Movie and Viral Marketing

Published: November 06, 2006 NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The viral marketing campaign for "Borat" has been so effective, so omnipresent, that you almost (almost!) didn't need to go see the movie this past weekend. Now we can all look forward to the DVD release, which is going to be awesome, because there's so much stray viral Borat material already floating around out there that can be larded on as DVD extras. (I predict it'll be the best-selling comedy DVD since the "Chapelle's Show" first-season box set.) Need a quick fix of potential DVD extras now? Surf away:

Cheese, a scene deleted from "Borat" in which "Borat tours a grocery store with the supermarket manager" (search for the user "boratmovie" on YouTube).

Doctor, a deleted scene in which "Borat discusses the sexually transmitted diseases he has had in his life, some contrived [sic] from his sister, as a stoic doctor takes notes" (also via "boratmovie").

Police, a deleted scene in which Borat is pulled over by Dallas cops and "warns them about a cavity search because of all the Cinnabon he had eaten previously."