What do you do?

Remember last September, I told you I changed companies? Well, that’s true. I’m the marketing manager for Alpha Technologies, a company that makes back-up battery systems.

Now that I just typed that sentence, I’ve reread it and decided it is the absolute worst way to describe what I do. There are about 12 people on the planet who would be at all interested, and most of those either work for my company or a competitor.

I’ve read in a few places that when someone asks you what you do, actually tell them what you do. Don’t just give them your title. So how about this:

Do you remember that huge blackout back east in 2003? From Manhattan to Detroit, in Canada and the United States, millions of people were without power: totally without power. No traffic lights. No air conditioning. No gas pumps. No refrigerators. It was practically the middle ages. Accept for the telephone system in Ontario. The telephone lines in and around Ontario stayed active. Grandmothers could call families. Injured people could call for help. People with laptops could still “dial-up” to the internet and get some news.

My company makes those systems. I promote my company in the press, in the market and in the community. I’m the marketing manager for a company that makes battery back-up systems.

What do you do?

Internet/Inspiration

We already know how much I think the Jetta ad campaign bites. Sadly, they have another round running. And the worst is that I think the commercials are great right up to the impact. This ad campaign literally played a role in me not buying a new Jetta. Which is quite a feat, I think, because I have a ’97 Jetta Trek that I love.

Anyway, now I’m compelled to write about one more ad campaign. Actually, I guess it’s just a commercial. Fortunately, I won’t be subject to this one much longer, because it’s for the Christmas season.

Let me give a little background. There was a lot of hype this last summer about the affect the Internet was having on entertainment and other mass media. I only mention the anti-hype from Snakes on a Plane for one. The world didn’t collapse because a movie had more attention before its release than after. Let's not assume if the SOAP producers had successfully renamed the movie Pacific Flight whatever, it would have had any more or less success. I'm thinking even though the movie didn't perform as some in the press thought it might, it did better overall than it would have without the Internet attention. And in hindsight, I’m kind of amused by the mass media hype that was generated by the Internet Hype. There’s some irony in there I think.

Anyway, the offender I'm choosing to complain about today is a huge beer company (HBC) that I will not mention, mainly because they don’t need it, but also because they don’t deserve it for this particular action (think: great taste, less filling…). For a commercial this Christmas, this HBC grabbed an idea for a commercial directly from a web video of last year: this insane shot of Christmas lights set to music, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, I believe. This web video came out sometime around Thanksgiving 2005, which makes me think it was actually filmed the year before. It got featured on RocketBoom, and various other Vlogs.

So, this year there are lots of copies on YouTube. Some are decent and they're done by self-funded web monkeys, but one copy is well-funded and professionally shot and choreographed. Come on HBC!! How much did you pay an ad company to copy this web video? And here’s the big question: was it worth it since the original is so much better than your expensive rip-off? I can only guess someone went on vacation, because the man-law commercials are great...

Frankly, this is the worst of modern advertising. If you’re looking for a reason that the Internet is going to ultimately kill TV advertising and entertainment, this is it. To survive, traditional forms of media need to be more creative. Not less. If you really want to show how cool you are by attaching your brand to a web meme, play the actual video from the web.

From Allsop to Alpha

So, I’ve changed jobs.

From Allsop, a consumer product company selling computer accessories, to Alpha Technologies, a business-to-business company selling all sorts of industrial power products.

I’ve not had many different jobs in my life. In nineteen working years I’ve only worked at five places. I’ve managed to climb up the ladder from job to job at these places, but I didn’t have to learn a new system every time I got a cooler office. So, I’m really shaking things up by starting someplace new. And adding to the fact that I’m making the switch from Consumer to B-to-B, this is quite the departure for me. Granted in my opinion, B-to-B marketing can learn a lot from consumer goods marketing, there is a pretty established mindset as to the best solutions.

So, anyway, you’re now reading the words of the new marketing manager for Alpha Technologies.

Do you want to know what products we make at Alpha? Hmm. Me, too. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed right now. But, give me a couple of days to figure it out and I’ll let you know.

Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems

I’ve never really heard this song from Notorious B.I.G. But I believe in it. Organic foods are hugely popular, but we are running out of supply. Apple is kicking some megabyte butt, but the iPod glow is losing some luster. MySpace, while growing, isn’t that cool anymore. And apparently Green Day sucks.

I see a kind of zero-sum game going on with supply and demand. For example, organic foods are selling like crazy. From food-coops, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods and other upscale grocery stores. The demand is so great suppliers are having trouble keeping up. But with a national population in the US of 300 million and a world population of more than 6.5 billion, I would guess there is a point at which it is impossible for everyone to buy organic foods. This of course unless we lower the standards of what is considered organic. There are only so many farms and dairies and they are close to only so many metropolises. At some point growth hormones and insecticides and other “impurities” are going to need to be introduced to make sure there is enough affordable, and hopefully healthy, food for all income levels.

So it goes: Apple has gone mainstream. Rather, Apple has made it to mainstream with the iPod and now the Apple-haters are coming out. The worst are the former Mac-heads who no longer like Apple because it isn’t rebellious enough… it’s not their little secret anymore… it’s not the source of their quasi-intellectual status from which they get to look down on the rest of the population as lemmings and suckers and surrenderers to the hegemonic downfall of our Orwellian society.

Apple is known for being more expensive than the other guys. Sometimes double or triple. And with that comes the expectation of double or triple the quality and performance. And with the iBook, the iPod, the MacBook and the growing demand from the growing base of Mac-heads, Apple moved production to Asia. Like just about any other company with the business-skills to know they can lower labor costs. With this kind of production move, there are going to be problems. And a typical Mac-head is more technologically skilled than your average citizen. So if they have a problem, they are more likely to have an outlet to share their disgruntled ravings. The Internet forum/blosphere/media echo chamber starts and you hear about it a lot more. But for the 60 Million iPods that have been sold (frankly, most of them being Nanos) there are startlingly few problems.

But change is painful. With growth and popularity, Apple needed to extend their operations in order to meet demand. The bigger issue now is how Apple deals with product problems. The secretive nature with which they develop and release products (which I LOVE by the way) may not be the best to deal wth customer service issues, but at least it limits official Apple communications to the truth. Every organization makes occasional missteps, but Apple works to resolve negative issues. Sometimes it is done quietly and sometimes it’s done with a new product release.

So don’t condemn Apple or Steve Jobs because they are mainstream. Apple still makes great products, has fun stores and provides a computer experience to satisfy the technically skilled and the technophobe alike.

They didn’t go mainstream. Mainstream came to them.

Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. Since Green Day makes really good music, has sold millions of records and consistently sells out any arena, coliseum or stadium, they officially suck.

Trade Show Sponge

What’s happening with trade shows? Well, at least the trade shows I go to. There are tons of trade shows I’ve never heard of. In fact, I never fail to be amazed at the number of trade shows that exist. My favorite is the Consumer Electronics Association trade show for exhibiting at the Consumer Electronics Show. A Trade Show trade show. Funny.

I’ve always thought there were two routes to go with exhibiting at trade shows. Go to the big ones, like CES, the Housewares show or the Hardware Show. Or go to the smaller ones like all of the Gift shows, Retail Vision, or furniture shows. If you go to the big ones, you get as big of a space you can afford, and you do it once or twice a year. Hopefully, all of the customers stop by your booth. If you go the small show route, you do 30 little shows all over the country with a smaller, but strong and consistent message. It’s exhausting, but it’s regional.

It turns out there is a third way, and I see it becoming more of a trend. And here’s where I go into a little side bar.

Attending trade shows, especially the big ones, is not cheap. First of all, there is the cost of the floor space, which runs from between $10-$50 per square foot. This is just to buy your space on the trade show floor. Then there’s the booth structure itself, shipping, travel, lodging, time out of the office, someone to plan the whole thing. And there’s drayage. This is the cost you incur for the union labor guys to bring your booth structure crates from the shipping dock to your space, to store your empty crates and to take your crates back to the shipping dock after the show. This is a big cost, typically more than the cost of shipping your booth across the country. Trade shows are big business, and there are a lot of high costs associated with participating in the official events.

Here’s where I get to the up-and-coming third way to participate in trade shows. I’ll call it the “Sponge”. You sponge off of the trade show. You take advantage of the trade shows efforts to get your customers, vendor and competitors all in one town at the same time in the same building. You, on the other hand, book a hotel suite (sweet) and set-up your own traveling showroom. Your customers are already going to be there. You have their telephone number. Give them a call. Buy them dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, or drinks. Take advantage of their off-show hours.

There are lots of advantages to this:
* No extra trade show costs associated with the show organizers, unions and over-priced concessions
* No costs to build a booth, you need only bring product, displays and sales material
* Fewer employees are needed at the event
* You get the undivided attention of your customers during meetings
* $50 a square foot can get a pretty frickin’ nice hotel suite (sweet)

But there are down sides:
* You are only going to get meetings with people you already know
* The accidental discovery that you see on the trade show floor won’t happen
* There is an energy to the trade show that might not carry over to your mini-show
* When you don’t exhibit at a big trade show, you lose your priority points, which could come back and bite you if you decide to go back to the show

But, if you’re thinking of going to a new show, the Sponge option might be a good way to do it. As long as you can get into contact with the right potential customers (that’s what regional sales reps or for) and you pick a hotel and transportation close to entertainment and the convention center. You don’t want to be shuttling customers an hour out the city, or get them stuck in traffic during rush hour.

But whichever route you choose: Make Sure the Whole Thing Represents Your Brand!

Women Are Driving Today’s Technology Trends

The digital camera got past being a high-tech toy the moment its sales surpassed film cameras in 2003. Now they are a staple and many households are already moving onto digital camera number two or three. Women are the traditional keepers of the family photo album, so it’s no surprise that women are taking over the digital camera, the home computer and making technology fit in the home, instead of the other way around.

And everybody has been talking about this in the consumer electronics association. Allsop even jumped on the trend with our Bridging Technology and Décor efforts.

In the media most recently, there’s CNET reporting on “Girl Gadgeteers” and Rent-To-Own Online is letting us know about the shrinking difference in Mother’s Day versus Father’s Day Consumer Electronics Sales. These are last week, but reports have been going for a few years now. Just as I think the story is getting old, it crops back up again.

The Consumer Electronics Association is really one group that has really been trying to follow the trend. For three years now, the Consumer Electronics Show has had a “Technology is a Girl’s Best Friend” product showcase. The problem? Practically all of the products in the showcase were geared toward the kitchen. And the lifestyle photos associated with the showcase were retro photos of June Cleaver-like women. This is really the wrong idea. Let’s not get stuck in the outdated women=kitchen stereotype. I know plenty of women who avoid the kitchen and have more hi-tech toys than I do.

I think my wife might have been slightly more excited about the 37-inch LCD purchase we made last Thanksgiving (only slightly, though). And she’s the one who always remembers the camera, and the iPod. And she’ll log more hours on our Powerbook.

A general marketing mantra applies here: lifestyle will outperform strategy every time. When a product or a category hits on a lifestyle trend or creates a lifestyle trend it will take off regardless of the strategy behind it. Technology is letting you save money on photo processing, save even more memories, de-clutter your living area, reclaim your home office, carry your entire music collection with you and call home from anywhere in the world. Technology has hit the point that it can be inculcated into the everyday lifestyle without being strapped to a desk and without lugging around 45 pounds of electronics. And it’s with digital cameras, MP3 players, flat-panel TVs, mobile phones and laptop computers.

Consumers Win By Network Forfeit

Consumer demand will overwhelm corporate protests.

In a Media Daily News story:

Today, to be sure, networks still haven't exactly thrown the DVR threat out
the window. But they appear to at least be coming to terms with the increased
penetration of the devices and the jarring predictions about how many homes
could eventually have them. And they appear to be developing ways to work
around, or even with, them.

And here's a smart, smart solution to getting ads seen without product placement. I call it TiVo-proof advertising. A new take on an old classic.

Future of TV at Home

Just as movies are facing changes to their consumption model, so too is television. What was once three stations offering advertiser sponsored variety shows, game shows and soap operas is now burdened with Digital Video Recorders, satellites, cable, DVDs, cyberspace and, to confuse things more, the end of the analog spectrum in Feb 2009.

As much as TV has changed, it has stayed quite the same. Sitcoms are still sitcoms, except that we don’t have a Seinfeld, Roseanne, Cheers or Friends going on right now. Dramas, like Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy and 24 are taking on more and more cinematic qualities, and in many cases, employ much better writing than most movies.

The 500 channels promised by broadband are consolidating due to less-than-expected ad revenue and lack of audiences. Yet there are still a lot more channels available than there were 10 or 20 years ago. With so many channels, and so many of those channels producing original content, syndication seems to be in trouble. No longer does a show that has survived five seasons have a chance to live on forever in reruns.

So here’s the big question: who is going to pay for television programming?

The advertisers?
I have a DVR from Dish Network. I record my shows and skip the commercials altogether. In fact, in the last six months I’ve watched more TV commercials on YouTube than I have on my TV. And I’m not alone. The only thing I voluntarily watch live is sports, so I see ad rates for football, basketball and other to jump. The rates of others, I’m not so sure. Why pay big bucks to hock your wares during the first run of a Lost episode, when that same episode is available for people to download the next day?

Of course, there is always product placement, which if done well is the solution to this whole deal. But don’t get me started about product placement.

And TiVo has been warning about adding some sort of unskippable commercial breaks added to TV programming. But would this revenue go to TiVo or the production companies?

The watchers?
Essentially, this is the HBO or Showtime model. But even these shows start to run into trouble when stars become huge and demand huge salaries (ie. James “Tony Soprano” Gandolfini).

Sure, people already pay for “regular” TV in the form on Cox, Comcast, DirecTV, Dish Network and others, but this is paying for the vehicle that delivers the signal to your house when you tire of the rabbit-ear quality. The content is mostly still supported by advertising.

But now for network shows you can now buy episodes or subscribe to some shows on iTunes and others. You can also buy most popular TV series on DVD. And not only the latest shows, like 24 and Gilmore Girls, but extensive backlogs like Battlestar Galactica and MASH. So far this has been a little extra butter on the production company’s’ muffin because a vintage show’s costs were paid years ago. But with future TV shows, I’m thinking it’s going to turn into a way to pay the bills.

To those cynics out there, it’s even being said that the movie and TV production industries are up for hyping the new blue laser technology is because they are running out of products to repackage. They are running out of stuff to convince you to buy. So they want to repackage old shows and movies again, and convince you to purchase them… again… to support their salaries and produce new shows.

Just like for movies, keep your eye on cyberspace as the end winner of this game. It’s too easy, convenient and pervasive to ignore.

Style is Not Important. It’s Essential.

In the early stages of any products life, function is what gets our attention. In consumer electronics: better picture, clearer sound, more organization, greater convenience. These are the things that sell the early adopters.

But the life of innovative function is short lived. We all know you can get a DVD player for $30. While manufacturers and retailers can continue to offer products that cost less and less, one alternative we see again and again is choosing to make them look better.

I recently ran into a friend, one of the most techie people I know, and he proudly pulled a brand-new one mega-pixel camera out of his pocket. It was tiny and could hang around his neck. Obviously, he did not buy this camera for the high-quality single mega-pixel pictures. He bought it because it was small, and it looked neat.

When function is the only thing that matters, a product can look like a giant orange turtle and still sell. But when there are lots of giant orange turtles, it won’t be long before someone decides to make theirs smaller or more attractive. Consumers will not forfeit function, but if a manufacturer is not willing to add an aesthetic value, their competitor will.

A Consumer Electronics Association survey showed us women account for 58 percent of electronics purchases.

That same study showed 46 percent of women say they have the most influence on home purchases and 42 percent reported having equal say.

In other words: "Ninety percent of the time women will make the buying decision because it becomes a function of home décor,” said Michael Steinberg, the former CEO of Macy's West, in a recent interview.

Let me repeat that: “…it becomes a function of home décor.” Translated: it has to look good; it has to fit in the home.

If you watch MTV, maybe you’ve seen the show Cribs. In this show, we get to tour famous people’s homes and without fail, right above the fireplace is a giant Plasma TV. This is not because it performs better. It is because it takes less space, it looks cool and it no longer forces the television to be the central focus of the room. One could walk into the room and not notice that you have a giant TV on the wall. Sure the picture is good; it is a huge screen and all that. But it could just as easily be all of those things and still take up half of the living room.

The point is it does not take up half of the living because people do not want it to. There are other things worth showing off in the home. Décor is important. Style is important.

Of course, “back stage” products like cables, batteries and cleaners do not need to look good, they need to be invisible. If it is not going to add to the décor, just make sure it will not detract. Given the opportunity, and comparable function, ugly accessories will get replaced by stylish accessories.

But back stage products aside, there are other appliances fighting for space in the family room. For example, computer workstations may not be in their own room any more. They could be in the corner of the living room, the kitchen, or in the “media room.” And no one can deny that computer manufacturers are making their products more attractive. I am not sure of the last time I saw a boring beige CPU in my local office store, but it has been a while. Now it seems the standard is ABB (anything but beige): black, silver, white.

Going beyond the elegant white shell of the iMac, Apple is heavily promoting the computer’s wireless capability. Using Bluetooth, the keyboard and mouse can connect wirelessly. No wires on the desktop. This makes it incredibly clean and attractive.

This seems counterintuitive to the Consumer Electronics study, which showed that a majority of women said using "female" colors on technology equipment is a bad idea and would not impact purchasing decisions. But in the market, out on the retail shelf, why does that very marketing strategy work?

In early 2004, Apple introduced the iPod Mini: the smaller, more colorful version of the industry-leading iPod. Sales of the iPod Mini exploded. But here’s the catch: a colorful four-gigabyte iPod Mini cost $250, while a plain white 20-gigabyte iPod costs $300. That’s 20% more price for 400% more memory. And the Mini sold! In fact, it was often out of stock. Could it be because the iPod Mini is pink, blue or silver?

When people say they are concerned with home décor, they mean they want good looking products. Form may follow function, but sometimes, function is not enough.

It is becoming widely recognized that women are playing a larger role in the electronics that are coming into the home. That fact, coupled with the traditional woman’s role as keeper of the home means we all have a new boss. Forget about working for the man. We’re working for the woman.

Future of Movies at Home

I’ve been thinking about this for a little while. I like movies. I signed up for Netflix really early. Like, 2000 early. It was a great way to get movies, and I’m sort of a geek, so it was a cool way to demonstrate that to my wife. I quit after a couple of years because of lots of scratched discs and, the last straw, a disc completely broken in half (The Corruptor with Mark Wahlberg and Chow Yun Fat. I’ve still not seen it…).

So, I quit. But I couldn’t stay away. After a few years of rental stores, I came back last year and I love it again.

I admire Netflix. It’s a mix of antiquated technology (USPS), current technology (DVD) and the future of technology (Internet). Brilliant. But I’ve always thought their days were numbered. There’s been a way to download movies illegally just about as long as you could download music from the awesome and original Napster. But bandwidth, memory capacity and lack of video quality did not lead to as quick adoption of movie downloads as music.

Well, the bandwidth problem is going away. Something like 42% of the country is on broadband. Computer hard drives regularly have upwards of 60 to 80 gigabytes and more. External hard drives are being used by less-than-geeky people. And blank DVD-Rs and CD-Rs are selling in insane numbers. The only issue still outstanding is quality. Simply, because the better quality you want, the more bandwidth and memory you need. And with people accustomed to DVD quality and 42 Plasma HDTVs the general assumption is that people will only aspire to get better quality and bigger TVs.

Well how about this?

Consumers have been known to sacrifice quality for the sake of ease and convenience. Think back to the most referred to event in the history of consumer electronics - betamax vs VHS. It is generally acknowledged that BetaMax was the better technology, yet VHS won by having more partners and better distribution.

The concept of movie downloads, too, has more partners and better distribution.

And besides that: It’s Already Happening. Look at DirectTV, Dish Network, Vongo … These are video on demand sources that let you view a movie as many times as you want in a 24-hour period. The only thing that will hold up the concept of movie downloads is giving consumers the option to keep the downloaded movie file. I believe most people only buy DVDs for the repetition. So their kid can watch The Incredibles two times a day, everyday, for three months. But notice I said “hold up the concept” back there. That’s because it’s going to happen. Even if the movie companies get dragged along by the arm… by iTunes… or some college drop-out programmer in Albuquerque…

Band aids like TiVo, is going to be up to you. It’s going to do the same thing: pull files on demand from a source on the other end of your coax cable, phone line or satellite dish. And if that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s what happens now, every time you log onto the internet.

NOTE: So I’ve finally realized the real industry drawback to movie downloads. There is a reticence on the movie studio and distributors part because they are running out of things to sell. TV shows to package, movie sets to compile. Movie downloads give consumers too much freedom. But, man, consumers are going to drag movie companies along, just as they did to the RIAA.

NOTE 2: It may be slow, but it's coming...
Netflix says mulling options for downloading
Apple's iTunes Movie Store Hurdles - 2007?

New Award: Worst Product Names Ever

And the winner is... A&W

And it pains me just a little to say that. I like A&W. For some reason, I view A&W along with Arby's as a little less fast food than McDonalds and Burger King. (I know I'm just fooling myself).

I offer three things to back up my decision:
1. Chubby Chicken: I don't want to know the name of the chicken I'm about to eat. And worse, they make Chubby look like a mother in an apron, so I can only think they are serving up her own animated chicks. Like most people who've never had to kill their own chickens, I live in denial.

2. Cheese Curds: This just sounds gross. Curds? All I can think of is curdled, rotten milk. Granted, cottage cheese packages include the words Large Curd or Small Curd; but I'd venture a guess that the consumer of small curd cottage cheese at the Haggen is not the same consumer buying the large order of Cheese Curds at A&W. For my money, Fried Cheese would have been a great name option.

3. Getting rid of the Mama, Papa, Grandpa nomenclature: They came back to it, which only makes me think they have someone on their marketing department who has a clue. My advice? Assign this person the duty of reviewing new product names and brands.

PR at Work 4 of 4: Consumer Press

In general, I find consumer advertising expensive. Like, buy-a-new-BMW expensive. That’s why I generally opt for consumer PR. Because the right product at the right time can triple traffic to a web site and impress the heck out of vendors and retail partners.

The downside to consumer PR is you lose control of your message. A product review might be good and it might be bad. Your web site address may or may not get included. The information may end up wrong. You are not in charge, and just about anything can happen. Plan for the best, be optimistic and talk your product up. But keep in mind most products are not going to change the world. Most products are not, in fact, the best things since the iPod. So try not to say your idea is the BEST EVER. Of course, unless it is.

In general, go from the angle your product or service is going to make some people’s lives better or easier. But prepare yourself for a less than stellar write up.

Consumer PR is a bit tougher because everyone wants it. When someone thinks of PR, it is nationwide magazines, newspapers and television they are thinking.

For newspapers, go for the big guys. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Seattle Times, etc. Allsop had a small mention in a Washington Post article that resulted in two or three dozen mentions in smaller town papers. That being said, soliciting PR coverage in several smaller newspapers is a little more work, but is usually pretty effective. Just make sure you are sending your information to the correct editor (usually the business editor).

For magazines, target the ones whose readers shop at the stores your products are sold. Go to Barnes & Noble or Borders and look at the magazine section. Think about your subject and think about what kind of magazines your consumers would read. Buy a few magazines (come on, spend the $20). Read the articles and find a writer who might fit. Send them a release and a sample. Better yet, email them the news release in the body of a message. Then follow up with a sample and release in a third-day FedEx envelope.

It helps if you can get an editorial calendar. It’ll give you an idea of planned feature articles throughout the year. If you time it right, you can get your product mentioned in a longer feature story, which has way more impact than a product review.

For television, send it to the right person. Don’t just send info to the newsroom. Send it to the on-air personality who talks about your technology, market or hobby. There are lots of hosts, so spend some time on Google and find the right person.

If you’re lucky, someone from the consumer press will call you. These are reporters. They are just people doing a job: looking for new and interesting things to write about. In general, they have lots of writing assignments going on at the same time, and they can use the help. They may have seen you at a trade show. They may have seen an article in a trade magazine. They may have had someone they were interviewing mention you in passing. If they call: respond. Answer their questions, call them back, be honest, tell your story, offer anecdotes, be prepared to offer other resources. After you’ve spoken with them, ask them to let you know when the article is published.

One final note on this: nothing will drive your web traffic up and drive your conversion rate down more than consumer PR. Put more simply, tons of people will come to your site and see your offering, but the vast majority will not buy. Don’t worry, because the traffic alone will generate sales in the long run.

PR at Work 3 of 4: Trade Press

If the term is foreign to you, a trade magazine is a periodical of some sort that publishes news and features particular to an industry. Say sporting goods. No one outside the sporting goods industry (except for maybe investment people) cares about this publication. It covers promotions, new hires, product launches, product trends, athlete licensing and such.

I recently stumbled on a summary of the top 100 trade magazines. Initially, I was a little surprised there were 100 total trade magazines in existence, let alone a top 100. But think, for every industry from promotional products to holistic vitamims to Hollywood to truckers, there is a community of professionals who need to be connected. And that connection can be made through a trade magazine.

So, who reads Trade magazines?
* Customers (hopefully)
* Competitors (guaranteed)
* Vendors (prospecting)
* Your Sales Team (they better)
* Ad Sales People (prospecting)
* Consumer Press (more on this later)

Really, trade magazines are almost like catalogs: page after page of reprinted product and personnel news releases, with a section of news snippets and one or two longer features. The best ones, in my humble opinion, read like hot sheets or gossip pages. Some look like Vogue, some look like the Wall Street Journal and others look like a college extracurricular newsletter.

If you’re not sending regular news releases to the applicable trade magazine, shame on you. Start today. Take the latest product or service you have, write three paragraphs on it and email it to the editor in chief. Chances are your release will appear in the next issue… for free… in almost the exact format you submitted it. And then that long lost sales rep from Albuquerque will call because he saw the article and you can ask him what he’s been up to for the last three months.

Seriously, the article will get noticed. Also, it’ll be on their website; you can link to it from your website and get some search engine play out of it. And here’s something cool, the consumer press reads these things, too. So if the stars are aligned, that trade magazine coverage could garner some consumer press. All from a three paragraph email you sent to the editor of your favorite trade magazine.

Just like every other journalist, trade magazine writers want new and interesting things to write about and publish. If you help them out, they will help you out with more coverage, and maybe one of those coveted feature/trend stories. They might even start calling you just to check in and see what you have going on. Take advantage of this and make a friend in the publishing industry. It’s not hard. It’s just work.

Those who do the work, get the coverage.

PR at Work 2 of 4: Local Press

Working for an international company, there are different publics with whom we relate. Our trade industry. Consumers around the world. National and Regional media. But the one that raises the most questions in the building is the local press. There are things we tell the local community that we tell no one else. Personnel promotions, new employees, formation of a Ski to Sea team, and we still share bigger company news, like new customers, products or advertising campaigns.

What is the value of local public relations? Obviously it's not product awareness, because the relative sales that result are small. But when communicating with the local community, there are more important things than sales.

Think about this: Company Morale.

About a year ago, the president of my company was on the cover of the Northwest Business Monthly. A couple of days after it dropped, he stopped in for lunch at his favorite Thai restaurant. The owner was excited to see him, because he had seen the magazine cover and he got special attention the whole lunch. I heard about this experience for two days straight.

I later learned that our President’s mother Betty, the Allsop Matriarch, was passing the Northwest Business Monthly around at a dinner party. She had a great time talking about her sons with her friends. And funnily enough, I learned that Betty was showing the article off from the editor of the magazine. Someone he was interviewing had been at the party and mentioned Betty’s gloating. So it fluffed the editor’s ego a bit, knowing we were so happy with the piece.

People love to see their name or their organization in the paper. Friends, family, casual acquaintances and others will see little clips about the organization and comment. "Oh, I saw that you hired some new people, or you launched a new product or you're moving to another building. You must be growing. How exciting!"

But even beyond company morale there are other benefits. Being visible in publications that members of the local government read improves your status as a community member. You are thought of as a local employer, taxpayer and benefit to the community. This eases the way in any face-to-face interactions or disputes.

And even family businesses have investors. They're called bank executives. People like to claim a little bit of responsibility for successes and seeing customers in print gives them a chance to point and tell their friends and associates: "Hey, we work with them."

We recently had some budget meetings with our accountant and bankers and very early in the conversation, we heard: "I saw you guys in the Bellingham Business Journal. I didn't know you had a company store."

It's true. Sometimes there's more to business than sales. Local public relations for an international company can help the organization through company morale, creating a positive community image and building ties with other local businesses.

So I have a plan. I’ve made a mental list of the people at my company who doubt the value of local public relations. And I am going to get each of their names published for something. An anniversary, a promotion, being on our Ski to Sea team. My guess, the first time they see their name in print, I’ll have a new ally.

PR at Work 1 of 4: Advertising or PR

Have you read The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR? If not, click over to Amazon.com and get it. It’s a great book.

As a mid-sized marketer, I see the value in PR much more than I do in advertising. I think an ad for one of my company’s products or brand, opposite a page from Maxell or Verbatim looks a little odd. If anything they paid way less for their space, yet the cost was a much smaller percentage of their budget.

And besides, there is an inherent mistrust in advertising. Advertisers can say anything they want because they are paying for the ink. But PR on the other hand is above reproach. If a reporter or editor put it in the magazine, it must be true. It must be news.

Hopefully.

But, not always. Magazine and newspaper reporters have a set amount of space to fill. And they are always on the lookout for interesting, new things. And strangely, there is not always an influx of new and interesting things to write about. Frankly, those that take the time to send out news releases get attention.

At their best, editors and reporters will receive a release and use it as a reason to call for follow up, or request a sample for review, or put together a trend story. At their worst, editors will copy and paste the text of a news release directly into their publication. Either method gets your name in print, but savvy media consumers know the difference.

But even the worst case scenario helps you out in the Internet era of public relations. Each time your news release shows up on the web, Internet search engines see more value in it. And that makes your company and your web site show up higher in search engine results.

But to be most effective, you’re going to need to make a few changes to your news release style. Lose some of the news speak. Make it more like a blog. Go conversational and load it up with hyperlinks. Not too many; keep it to one every paragraph. Keep in mind you’re ultimately trying to appeal to a writer/editor, so keep everything pertinent. Link to your homepage, the web page of the featured product or service, try and tie the release to another more prominent company or trend, so you can link to their web sites. One neat effect of adding these hyperlinks is if your text gets copy/pasted, your links might follow and build more search engine juju.

But never forget you’re trying to appeal to a writer - reporter, editor, blogger, product evangelist, lonely teenager who spends too much time alone on the Internet - who in turn will share your news with their audience. So keep it human. Appeal to aspirations and fears.

Of course you can buy your way to the top of the Google results page, but those show up under the “Sponsored Links” header, and have less genuine appeal than organic search engine results. And people really do look at paid placements with a touch of cynicism

So, for my time and money, I’d rather send out samples and releases, and call and email; I want to get to those writers who might be interested in the news I have to offer. As long as you’re honest and have something interesting to talk about, they listen.

Over the next few days I’m going to throw out some thoughts in dealing with Consumer, Trade and Local PR. Because they are all different, and yet oh so alike. It can’t hurt to think of them as cousins who like the same stuff, but live in different neighborhoods.

Oh, Advertising. I Hate You... yet I'm strangely attracted...

I’ve had an unexplainable attachment to M&Ms for most of my life. I don’t remember the attachment initially, but as a child you could push me down on my diaper-covered toddler butt and I'd be fine, but taking away my little bag of M&Ms meant trouble. So I was surprised when Elliot threw down the Reese’s Pieces to coax E.T. out of the bushes. But in hindsight, it’s better to sacrifice your Reese’s Pieces. Save the M&Ms for yourself. Anyway, I gave a lot of thought to this subject. And Reese’s is probably happy about it. Because they paid Spielberg $20,000 to have their product featured in the movie, and their sales jumped 66% overnight. It’s one of the seminole moments in the marketing in movies. Along with Jaws being the first summer blockbuster. Another source of advertising revenue was found. Paid Placement.

As a marketer, I’ve bought magazine ad space. I’ve bought local newspaper ad space. I’ve even arranged for an on-location radio event for a warehouse sale at our headquarters.

But couple those things with my knowledge as a media consumer (ie. I read magazines and watch TV) and I am an expert in my mind.

And advertising is going through some growing pains. To a large degree, advertising dollars are a zero sum game. There are only so many dollars that will be spent on advertising. The dollars get shifted around from format to format. Old forms of advertising die. Types of companies that advertise change.

Take radio. It’s gone from a national advertising medium to a local and regional advertising medium. But it’s still viable for local businesses. TV is giving way to the Internet. The best commercials made for TV never get shown on network TV but become an Internet phenomenon. Ad words and banner placement based on the context of the searches made by browsers is giving way to behavioral advertising over time.

Internet business models have gone from “make money by selling stuff” to “build a killer app that people use and sell advertising to those who want to make money by selling stuff”. That’s a big part of what caused the dot com bubble to burst. There are only so many dollars in the online-ad well. Even still, I am amazed at how many successful companies are still popping up with this model. Though I hear we are on another bubble. And what are the chances that at some point we’ll see Google-Like ads appear somewhere on the screen during your favorite TV shows.

But here’s my product placement vent. When I was reading the Fog, I was amused and engaged when I read that a bottle Ragu was smashed over someone’s head. Because we had a jar of Ragu hanging out in the cupboard. But now, if this were pulled off in a movie, I’d immediately view this as product placement, done for a fee by the movie producers, and call all of my friends to bitch about it.

Sure: TV, movie, music and pc gaming producers and artists need to make money on their product. I get it and support it. If TiVO, disappearing CD sales, slacking box office receipts and online digital media theft are going to eat up their profit, go ahead and make it up on the front end. But remember that if it looks like advertising or smells like advertising, it will look untrustworthy and suspicious. Make your creative people be more creative.

Accidents are a Bad Idea

I think, in general, we can mostly agree on this. Accidents are a bad idea.

So how about this advertising campaign I’ve been seeing from Volkswagen. These commercials start out with a multi-racial assortment of people chatting in a car, being all cute or funny, and then - you see it develop - a car pulls out of nowhere and a startling car wreck happens before your eyes. The next image is of the passengers standing outside the car wreckage - shaken, but not visibly injured.

I own a ’97 Jetta Trek. I love it. I’m shopping for a new car to replace my other car, a 22-year-old Japanese import, and was thinking about another Jetta. But these commercials make me think twice about it. Obviously, VW’s goal is to demonstrate how safe their car is, what with the commercial’s slogan being “Safe Happens”. But I’ve never been a fan of auto makers showing their cars getting demolished in commercials, even in crash testing. I like the Porche one where their engineers can’t bear to watch their masterpieces get crash tested. Or even the passengers who were saved by an air bag. It was emotional and memorable, but in a way that bothered me less (maybe, because ostensibly they weren’t actors). But showing real world wrecks, simulated or not, is different.

Here's what VW has to say in a USA Today article today: "There are mixed reviews but no matter what, the ads make you think that you can be driving along and you can't control what's happening," says Karen Marderosian, director of marketing for Volkswagen of America.

Talk about the safety rating. Let Consumer Reports give its ranking. Go ahead show me the safety features, but show me them in a sanitized form where I could never possibly believe that I will ever actually need them. I want to know I’m safe, but I don’t want to think about the situations in which I might actually need that side curtain airbag to keep my head from shattering the side window.

Here’s a test: come up with some commercials that show airbags deploy in a sudden and extreme yet comical series of situations. Slogan: “Always there” or “Just in case”.

Mid-Sized Marketers Get Their Due

Imagine a spectrum. On one end you’ve got Apple, Coke or any of the Forbes 500. On the other end you’ve got your local mechanic, accountant or any of the small businesses you pass on the way home. One end employs marketers-o-plenty, and maybe even a Chief Marketing Officer. While small businesses have the marketer/owner - the barber or bartender. Al Ries and Jack Trout write for one group. Jay Levinson writes for the other. This is for the big space in the middle: the mid-sized marketer.

I’ve read Guerilla Marketing, Marketing Warfare, 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. I’ve read how GM has worked to be/stay #1, how Miller and Budweiser duked it out in the 70s and the dot coms spent billions of dollars buying Superbowl ads and vinyl wrapped cars. But it takes some effort to find the nuggets in there for the mid-sized marketer. And that’s strange, because I think the number of mid-sized marketers outnumber mammoth marketers.

I for one, after living in Bellingham and paying attention to local business media for ten years, am occasionally surprised by another $10-15 million company within five miles of my house. They are all over the place. And they are surprisingly small, say 20-30 people.

If you walk down the aisles of your favorite Best Buy, Wal-Mart or Fry’s, once you get away from the TVs and cameras, you’ll stumble on tons of products from mid-sized companies all over the country and the world. Greeting cards, vitamins, glassware, candles, ladders, the list reaches into every consumer interest category.

Let’s look at some traits I’m assigning to companies of this sort:

• National, if not International.
• Not too concerned with local media, since their market is not concentrated in the local population.
• Want to play with the big boys by building a web presence.
• Might outsource some marketing, public relations or advertising.
• Quite possibly a marketing department of one.

There’s a lot to be said about a marketing department of one. It’s not all good, but there is a lot to be said about it. Your work is high profile, but there’s also some confusion about what you do in the company. You get a lot of credit and a lot of blame. You get to be both creative and analytical.

I’m going to spend some time here in the next few weeks and share some things I’ve learned as a mid-sized marketer. The freedom I’ve garnered, the successes I’ve managed and the flops I can call my own. And this is because I don't think there are enough props shown to the humble mid-sized marketers of the world.

So here it is. Here’s the well-deserved shout out to the mid-sized marketer. There are more of us than you think.

Web-adword-seo-blog-podcast-videoblog-myspace

Every other month there’s a new technology trend that marketers are supposed to jump on, corrupt and make dirty. That’s not how marketers talk about it, but that’s what happens. Marketers have a long history of soiling new technologies. Mail service has its junk mail. The telephone has its telemarketers. TV has commercials and (shiver) product placement…

But the web has made it easier for everyone with an idea to try to make some money (check out Commission Junction and Constant Contact). So everybody’s a marketer. I read this marketing trade magazine called B-to-B. And there is a predictable series of articles about any new tech fad.

Check it out. This new thing exists.

The smart people are doing this. Are you?

Everyone should be doing this.

Why isn’t everyone doing this?

Slow down, Bessie. It’s not all about technology, remember the marketing part.

That last one is usually written in a condescending tone by some young marketing professional who “gets it” that this Blogging-thing is actually not the best thing since duct tape.

Podcasting is cool and new. I have a few friends who created their own. And now people are asking if Podcasting is the next great medium for advertising. And the extension of Podcasting, Video Podcasts like Ask A Ninja and Rocketboom are a lot of fun. But they are little tiny TV shows. In fact, RocketBoom was available for your iPod Video before The Daily Show. Keep in mind Jon Stewart’s audience is way bigger than Amanda Congdon’s, but holy cow is it smaller than Brian Williams’. But who is going to watch all of those Podcasts? I’m reminded of the 500 cable channels I was expecting, which are now consolidating into nine because of lack of an audience. (But here’s a thought, are Video Podcasts the bush league for Network TV and Cable).

I’m thrilled people can find a way to support themselves by making these great little clips. But once you put the plastic Coke glass in front of you and start talking about how great those Reebok shoes feel, the luster will come off. There are only going to be a few people making money, and most of those are the people already making money in other mediums.

Most new technologies are shinier versions of stuff we’ve been working in for a hundred years. Yeah, there are variations: the web is the perfect micromarketing tool, mass-customization, viral marketing and such. But after the first two weeks of marketing’s invasion, none of these technologies are any different in that decades-old marketing principles should take hold. Look at some of the best web advertisements. They look startlingly like the best magazine advertisements. Look at the web-only commercials that take the world by storm. First of all, they reach no where near the audience of even the crappiest commercials shown on network television. But secondly, of the most memorable ones, people don’t remember what product the commercial was for. That’s crappy marketing.

Yes, technology is cool and fun and all that. You can get creative and get exposure for little money, but just remember that little sock puppet from Pets.com. I saw him doing a commercial for a cut-rate car loan place on early morning Comedy Central yesterday. So, everyone calm down. Technology is fun. Play with it. Pet it. Love it. But control it. And make sure you’re paying attention to how it affects and complements your brand and your other marketing efforts.

NOTE: Yes, I do realize that as a marketer, I am at this very moment participating in the sullying of a perfectly good technology tool: blogging. Hello, everyone. My name is Jeff, and I’m a recovering hypocrite.

Apple vs. Microsoft. Yawn.

So, Microsoft opened an online music store, the MSN Music Service, last September. Yeah - I didn't know about it either. It was/is rather similar to the Apple iTunes music store, selling songs for $.99. Just like Apple, MSN's songs are encoded in a proprietary format (in this case WMA files). Ostensibly, the reason for the special format is to help protect the artists; it limits your ability to make illegal copies of the song file. The real reason for this is to lock you into their operating system and player. Of course Apple does this with the ACC file format, but not surprisingly, I'm OK with this practice. Whatever - that's another story.

So, Microsoft opened an online music store last September. Well, let's say it hasn't had a ridiculous level of success, since in the meantime Apple has grown to a high of 82% market share of the online music store market. Meanwhile other services have cropped up based on a subscription model, ala Napster. Sure, all of these are snipping at Apple, though none are making a dent yet.

Here's the new news: Microsoft has abandoned its initial price-per-song model for a subscription model. In an attempt to win back Windows users, Microsoft is even thought to be planning an offer to let new users download Microsoft versions of songs previously downloaded from the iTunes store. You might say it's a direct attack. So let me get this straight: MS goes from copying Apple to copying Napster and they think they're going to win? Even if they aren't planning on winning, they think they'll carve out enough market share to be viable? And even if they aren't planning on carving out enough market share to be viable, do they think it will be perceived as cool? Even if Apple and the iPod is becoming slightly less cool, it is firmly entrenched.

And sure somebody out the is saying: But Fej, remember the Sony Walkman? It's dead! Apple and the iPod's days are numbered!

Yeah, I remember the Walkman. I had one. But here's the thing. I used it until a new technology came around: The compact disc. So here's my prediction. When the next music format comes along, Apple might temporarily be on the sidelines. But Microsoft will still be snipping at the heels of innovation.

But until then, my iPod is cool.