Does marketing increase revenue? Or is it a cost center?
A recent study from ITC and Velocify says it definitely works.
The two companies surveyed more than 1,000 insurance agencies. Continue reading
Does marketing increase revenue? Or is it a cost center?
A recent study from ITC and Velocify says it definitely works.
The two companies surveyed more than 1,000 insurance agencies. Continue reading
Eight years ago United Airlines found itself in the middle of a social media kerfuffle when Canadian folk singer Dave Carroll’s guitar was broken by baggage handlers. Now they’re in the thick of it again.
A few months after his guitar was broken, and the airline refused to compensate him (he says because he didn’t make a claim with 24 hours), Carroll posted a Continue reading
I recently ran across a feature I’d never seen before on the Yahoo news site: real-time sentiment analysis.
Sentiment analysis can be a really valuable tool, such as when a company is evaluating social media conversation about it. Some high end programs also provide purchase and churn intent and predictive analytics about individual behavior. Those programs can start at few thousand dollars a month on up. Continue reading
A few weeks ago I wrote about how viewership of NFL games, including the Super Bowl, has been declining for two or three years. Well, the NFL isn’t going to sit back and do nothing. The league office probably knows more about marketing than it does about football. Continue reading
One of the reasons I enjoy sports is because they sometimes serve as a kind of management simulator. For example, Michael Lewis’ great book, Moneyball, is not just about how the Oakland Athletics baseball team selected players, it’s also about how any company can compute the value that an employee adds to the company – and beyond that, how rationally or emotionally we make decisions. Continue reading
Today is St. Patrick’s Day and it’s time for the wearin’ of the green! Or not.
In China “wearing a green hat” is an expression for a man being cheated on by his wife or girlfriend, because the Chinese word sounds similar to the word for cuckold. Continue reading
NSFW = Not Safe for Work
If you’re offended by swearing or near nudity, you may want to skip this one.
Some years ago a marketing writer showed me a draft of copy for a client (not my client) which had numerous swear words in it. I said I was kind of surprised, and he said that the client had said it was perfectly fine. But a few weeks later he told me that the client had taken out all of the swearing before the final copy.
These days that might not happen.
Look at the title of this podcast from leading venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz
Or this ad copy that mimics the “Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn” ending of “Gone with the Wind” – – a line that was considered scandalous in its day.
Or the name of this company:
This B2B British marketing agency, which counts Salesforce among its clients, seems totally comfortable with swearing.
A hundred years ago a nearly fully clad woman showing a little ankle in an ad might have been thought shocking but, as Cole Porter said, these days anything goes. Today near nudity is common (just as long as a woman’s nipple is ever so slightly covered, which has prompted some women – including women models – to back the Free The Nipple campaign for equality with men’s nipples).
Topless beaches have long been more common in Europe, as has nudity in advertising. But a study in three European countries found that women reacted more negatively to female nudity in ads than men did. It didn’t test for how men and women felt about male nudity in ads, although one study found that men and women are less comfortable with male nudity in general. And sexual preference comes into the nudity equation, too. It’s complicated.
As with everything else in marketing, context should be your guide. You might use swearing or near nudity to market to a younger or hipper demographic. Or a more male audience: the suggestiveness of GoDaddy ads never seemed to hurt them, but I assume that they were targeting a predominantly male IT clientele. But neither swearing nor anything suggestive would be a good idea if your audience, for example, has many religiously conservative members.
What is obscene? A college theater professor of mine said that it comes from the Greek for “off stage” – something that should not be shown on the stage. For the Greeks that included violence, too. I do not find that explanation in the dictionary which says it comes from the classical Latin meaning “inauspicious, ill-omened, filthy, disgusting, indecent, lewd”.
Is this ad more obscene than anything above?
My wife and I have hosted an annual Super Bowl party for almost 20 years now. I remember the first one when our daughter was five. A little before the party started I told her, “So the rule for this party is that you can talk during the game but be quiet during the commercials.” And she replied, “Oh dad!”, as if I was kidding her. But when the game started she saw that that was in fact how we watched. Millions of other people do the same thing. Continue reading
Things change fast. Less than two weeks ago “no drama Obama” left the White House and now it’s 24/7 Trump. President Trump, and his administration, are producing new challenges for corporate communications and marketing.
Already a number of companies have seen their stock prices tank or jump because of a critical or embracing tweet from Trump. (Go back in your time machine 10 years and see if anyone understands that sentence.) Continue reading