Please answer to a short question: what’s the first word that comes to your mind when you hear “Africa” besides “vuvuzela”? I thought so. Vuvuzela is that damn horn that made your team lose the match because the players were too damn annoyed to focus on the ball. But think about it: how do you use the vuvuzela to boost your sells?

Since the first minute I heard about vuvuzela, I understood that this is the word of the moment. I had no idea what that was. I’m not a big fan of soccer, so I don’t watch any games. But the naming was brilliant and I was suddenly interested in what that thing is and what that thing can do. Only late I found out that it’s a pseudo-instrument, a horn that sounds like bees and annoys everyone.

Where to use

Vuvuzela is not actually a marketing tool, but more of a strategy. I bet 70 percent of those who have heard about this year’s World Cup have no idea who won two matches in a row, but they’ve definetly heard about the vuvuzela. That’s what marketing is actually all about and vuvuzela strategy is the best strategy you can use especially when you’re facing a communication crisis: take people’s focus of your crisis and move it onto another object of interest.

Vuvuzela describes best what “buzz” means in terms of online communication. Hell, South Africa never registered in it’s whole history such an advertising success as vuvuzelas did. So why not give a shot and start doing something similar?

How to use

What you can learn from 2010 World Cup experience is that marketing isn’t all about the products you sell, but about the way you promote your products. The World Cup product is soccer. Well, not really, World Cup is soccer’s product and matches are World Cup’s products, but who cares? What selled best this year? Vuvuzelas and a huge image boost for South Africa. Everyone knows now that South Africa is the home of vuvuzelas and vuvuzelas is what makes the mind connection between South Africa and tourism in such an exotic country (though this time of year is damn freezing).

What you have to remember is:

1. You can market everything else than your product and people will remeber your name
2. If you’re a guitar shop, you can market a bycicle horn and get new clients if you find a great idea to make a connection between the two of them

It’s kind of what Steve Jobs does: the iPhone 4 won’t work, hell!, it’s the people in the hall that use too many mobile internet connections. That’s the point. Now it’s up to you to actually sell your products using a great strategy example.

Post from: Tonify.net

One really efficient hoax - Karen from Denmark, the single mother looking for her baby's father - should get a prize for creative PR

Some might say it’s stupid. I’d say it’s brilliant. VisitDenmark, a tourism agency, ran a viral campaign with huge potential and great results, actually. Though it wasn’t quite the best idea, mostly because the tourism agency basically said “Any kind of publicity is publicity”, almost one million people watched the video with the single mom searching online for her baby’s father. Karen was supposedly drunk one and a half years ago, she had sex with a tourist and got pregnant. From this to promoting “sexual tourism” is only one step. Still, it can be efficient

Mashable is the blog that made the hoax popular, though there were quite a few comments on YouTube saying the video just can’t be real. Considering the implications and the controversy, the idea is actually great. As long as they assume the full responsibility for all reactions, it’s fine. Of course, the idea of “sexual tourism” will generate a pretty nasty image for the tourism agency, but in the end, just think about it: cheap PR, right?

It’s interesting to follow this advertising trend regarding tourism. You can recall “The Best Job In The World” campaign for that island in Australia, which won the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Lions. This is quite similar, except the part where there’s no job, but there’s “business”, even if we’re talking about “sexual business”.

How cheap is this Danish Tourism PR?

First of all, you might consider the strategy is cheap as in low. May be, as long as it’s confounded with promoting “sexual tourism”. On the other hand, that doesn’t mean it can’t be efficient. Almost one million people watched the video and lots more will watch it, despite the fact it was removed. Copies are published on YouTube, so it’s still accessible to the public. As long as it will attract tourists as much as 2% of the viewers, that means it’s efficient. And let’s look at the big bright side: the huge brand exposure for Denmark.

Regarding the price payed to the creative agency, it can’t be that expensive.  Which is good for the business, as long as the video went viral in just a few days and has already become a PR case study. Why so? Again, for the huge attention drawn to Denmark and Copenhagen. So, are you ready to visit the country?

Is bad publicity actually becoming good publicity? As long as VisitDenmark announced shortly that it was just a campaign, and the countries image wasn’t affected (and I strongly believe it didn’t had the time to affect Denmark’s image), yes, it is.

Post from: Tonify.net

From switching a font to involuntary free marketing

They said it’s for the better. Switching from Futura to Verdana, the marketing guys from IKEA had in mind one simple idea: making their catalog readable everywhere, especially in countries like China or Japan. But then again, it wasn’t that brilliant. Hundreds of designers almost killed the IKEA’s marketing team. Still, though the company had negative feedback from designers, it had a lot of media exposure, including The New York Times, Time, etc. Is that good or bad? I think it’s free PR

Though IKEA never really needed a burst of popularity, at least not in Europe, they just got it. Involuntary, because I don’t really think someone actually thought about such a simple idea to bring so much media coverage. Basically, because they didn’t need it. IKEA’s marketing is all about catalogs delivered to your door. You take it, you check it, you like it, you go buy. And you keep the catalog for the rest of the year. We still have catalogs from three years ago, for example, and that’s because some of the furniture goes away in the new “book”.

Recently, I noticed that IKEA goes as well for unconventional OOH. In Bucharest, they arranged the furniture in the street or in bus stations. Pretty cool. But from direct marketing and OOH to online viral marketing, that’s a lot to go. So I believe what IKEA’s marketing people say it’s true. Some guy thought it would be nice to have a web font. It’s all about usability, right? Taking the new and inserting it into the old. Some sort of adapting to the new age, but in the old mediums. And, of course, Verdana is cheaper.

Well, the reactions were unexpected:

We’re surprised, but I think it’s mainly experts who have expressed their views, people who are interested in fonts. I don’t think the broad public is that interested.
IKEA spokeswoman, Camilla Meiby, to AP reporter.

What’s with all that fuss about Verdana?

There’s actually a petition asking IKEA to return to Futura. But it’s not about the fonts as much it’s about the reactions. A few days ago, I found the new catalog at my door. I took a short look and it’s actually good, despite the fact Futura was left behind. And I work as a designer on various projects. I don’t know if the new catalog looks worse than the previous one, but it sure doesn’t look better. It’s quite the same. And it’s not about the fonts as much as it’s about the products.

The guys that worked on the new version of IKEA’s catalog are actually good. In normal circumstances, Verdana looks really bad on print. The letter spacing is absolutely ugly when it comes to headings. So the designers took a really pretty approach and used Verdana italic. Which gives a whole new look to the layout. Verdana isn’t such a bad choice after all. I know, it would’ve been way cooler to just keep the old Futura, but it’s actually not that bad.

And the free PR

Being their marketing tool of choice, the IKEA catalog is one of the best examples of simple marketing when it comes to lovemarks. The catalog is that something that you actually wait for. It’s the spam you actually enjoy. You’d probably throw out all Carrefour catalogs, but you won’t get rid of IKEA’s. That’s why I can understand the designers, this product is an icon, right?

But changing the font created such a big buzz, that IKEA would be stupid not to use it next year just as well. No, they shouldn’t change the font again, this time to Arial. They should switch back to Futura and get new media coverage.

I quite enjoy this examples of free marketing, voluntary or not. These are great ideas that can improve your marketing strategies. Though designers took it to a revolution, the common people won’t bother looking at fonts as long as they’re readable. Still, that doesn’t mean everyone should switch to Verdana just because IKEA got into the news.

Post from: Tonify.net

Who's gonna buy a $141 burger? Who cares?

We’re going through a recession, right? What does that mean? Well, it means money should stay in your bank account and multiply. Because it’s not easy to make them. So what do you do to promote your business? Well, find a cool idea and get free PR. That’s what Burger King did. And the idea is great, though what they’re promoting is something no one will actually buy. But who cares as long as it’s free PR? Here we go.

Burger King “launched” this new burger, right? Well, they’re a burger company, so they should launch new burgers. But what if you were to own a burger company which sells burgers for five bucks and suddenly you were to launch an 85 pounds new cheeseburger? Who would actually buy that? Most probably, no one. So here’s how you make a simple campaign for a product with “utopian” sales.

What do you do when you can see that your products are selling less than expected and you feel like customers forget about you? Of course, you go for advertising. But advertising is not cheap. That’s why companies go for PR. PR should be cheap, there’s no production costs compared to advertising, where you have to pay for video and for outdoor, where money goes to buying paper and ad space.

But if you’re Burger King, you can afford a good PR agency. So what’s to be done? Well, why not launch a new product? A product that no one will ever buy unless he’s stupid? So here’s what Burger King did: they launched an exclusive burger, just for London, for the price of 85 pounds. That’s like 98 euros. To be more exact, that’s 141 dollars! Who would pay that money for a burger?

Well, it doesn’t matter. Guess what were the results? Media coverage. Cool, huh? Well, I guess that can be called “exploiting the cheap people”. Or just “exploiting the people”, because no one has such a small IQ to pay 141 dollars for a burger. But that means brand exposure and a lot more attention to the Burger King brand.

Post from: Tonify.net

Using a Windows Mobile powered device - like HTC Touch Pro - is that simple. Full QWERTY keyboards make your life easier and emprove your efficiency

When I first got my hands on a Windows Mobile phone, I said “Damn it, this is Windows!”. In other words, I remembered about Windows 95 and how it crashed. The HTC Touch Pro was sent to me by the local McCann PR branch for a two-week test run. In the first seven days, it makes you go nuts. If you’re a regular Windows user, you know what I mean. But after the first week, you start to love it and you don’t want to give it back. And here’s why

Using a mobile device with a real operating system makes you see the endless possibilities. You can install software for almost anything you like. Instead of keeping the phone for two weeks, I kept it for a month and a half. Hopefully, the guys from McCann will still send me devices. And this happened for one single reason: you just start to love it and you just don’t want to give it back.

Actually, I had to give it back and I turned back to my old Sony Ericsson v630i. An old bad looking phone with no capabilities. Oh, joy!, I said. And then I got to test a Sony Ericsson, sent to me by a different PR agency. Yes, I said Sony Ericsson. But this time… well, it was the Xperia X1. Which is another device running on Windows Mobile. And the joy returned!

Where does all the joy comes from? From the software, of course!

True, not as much as in the first instance, basically because I had to reinstall all the software. And because of the keyboard, which is not actually full QWERTY (meaning it doesn’t have all the keys a regular laptop keyboard would have), like the HTC (believe it or not, beside the F-keys, it has almost every other key).

But the real fun comes from all the possibilities a Windows operating system is giving you. And it’s all about the software. Others tried, but it’s hard to actually create software for a mobile phone, I think. Especially when it comes to programs like video players or instant messaging clients. Here’s a few of what I use:

1. Core Player
   This one’s a must for anyone having a phone running on Windows Mobile. It’s the perfect player for any kind of video file, it allows you to browse a video and if you close the program, when relaunched, it will run the same video from the point you closed it. You can watch on your mobile phone episodes of your favourite TV series or any kind of movie in .avi format as long as you have enough space on your memory card.
2. Slick
   If you’re a instant messaging heavy user, Slick is the perfect application for your mobile phone. You can connect through any of the following services: Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, ICQ, GTalk and Jabber. It even stores some of your chat history.
3. iGO My Way
   If you have a car and you forgot to remove the GPS device from your car’s windscreen and someone broke into your car and stole it, you know that might happen again. Some guys crashed my car’s right door glass just to verify if the GPS device is in the glove compartment. And that happened because the rack was still attached to the windscreen. If that happens, I’m not sure you’d like to buy a new GPS device. But you can buy the GPS software and install it on your Windows Mobile powered phone.

These are only three examples. But you can do much more. And that’s the main reason I strongly believe Microsoft should start a marketing campaign for Windows Mobile.

What should Microsoft do?

I don’t know how much a Windows Mobile license costs. But in the first instance, I’d lower the price for phone producers. That means less production costs and, of course, lower prices for phones. That would be the first step in encouraging phone producers to install Windows Mobile on their products.

The second step would be a huge campaign to make the world know that the most used operating system in the world is working on mobile devices just as well and look, there are huge benefits! Microsoft runs a campaign for Office 2010, for Christ’s sake! Why not run a campaign for the future of your business: mobile entertainment!

Want it or not, the future is heading to mobile. Of course, no one will stop using laptops, it’s a huge difference between a 3 inch screen and a 17 inch screen. But only few people will dare taking their laptops out in the subway. Plus, the subway won’t give free wireless access. But mobile networks already have internet connections on reasonable prices. More, using a device like HTC Touch Pro, with a full QWERTY keyboard, allows you to send and reply e-mails while going to work. Instead of getting bored, you can finish at least 15% of what you have to do that day. That’s what I do.

Yes, there are a few issues

In Europe, Nokia is a lovemark. People love Nokia and most of them won’t give up for some other phone. But Nokia acquired Symbian, so they already have an operating system. Yes, but Sony Ericsson – which is another lovemark, by the way – doesn’t have one and their Xperia X1 runs on Windows Mobile. And there are plenty of other producers you can talk to.

Of course, not everybody affords a device running on Windows. My HTC Touch Pro costs as much as I’d pay for a laptop. But the technology inside costs as much as a desktop computer used to cost seven years ago. And I mean a lame configuration like: AMD K6-2 processor running at 450Mhz, 128 MB RAM and a 10 Gb harddisk. And that has a huge case. This device, on the other hand, is small and allows Windows to run helped by a Qualcomm processor at 528 Mhz and 288 MB RAM. And a 4 GB memory card costs no more than $20.

In a few years, devices running on Microsoft’s mobile operating system will be really cheap. Technology goes cheaper year after year. My Dell laptop was 1.000 euros last year. Now, it costs 550 euros. Beat that! So why not spend the money for the future instead of throwing millions on campaigns for products that people would buy anyway? And I mean Office, for example.

Well, we’ll live and see.

Post from: Tonify.net

A blog could make your company's voice heard. Really heard.

You know people from your company read blogs. You might read blogs. You know blogs are really trendy and though you don’t understand why exactly people read them, you know they’re important. You know there’s not necessary news, nor expert opinion, but some articles are really good and they are really coherent and all those ideas are enjoyed by people. And you see companies tend to have blogs and write about stuff, though there’s no logical explanation why someone should waste time writing on a blog, especially when some of the articles are not related to what those companies do. Should your company start a blog? I believe so. Let’s see why.

I’ll try to make a list of reasons why companies should blog. And when I say companies I don’t mean startups or small companies, I mean big corporations just as well. I believe in online communication and, most of all, I believe in cheap and efficient online communication. And that is what a blog means to a company: easy and cheap communication. An online voice for your company, a voice to spread the information you want to be heard by your potential clients.

1. It’s free (or at least really cheap)

   Building a blog for your business won’t cost you a penny. Just download WordPress, install it and start writing. It’s that simple. WordPress has built-in SEO capabilities, so the search engines will index your articles as soon as you start writing. What is going to cost you though, is the blog theme. If you have a serious business, you’ll need a personalized image, with visual elements from your company’s website. That’s a must.
   But that’s not a big problem. You can find a premium theme and pay someone to customize it or you can just pay someone to design the theme from scratch. Costs? Somewhere between $100 to maximum $2,000. Why is the second limit so high? It depends on what kind of features you want to include. But if it’s a simple custom theme built from scratch, that can cost you as low as $300.

2. Anyone can write

   And when I say anyone, I don’t mean any guy that has access to a computer. I mean anyone from your company, people from your PR or marketing department or even you. Of course, if you want to show off and let people see how cool is your company, you can even let your employees speak their mind to the public.

3. It requires few resources

   What exactly do you need to start a blog? A cheap hosting account. Of course, you don’t actually need a hosting account as long as you have a website. You just need a subdomain and a MySQL database account. 100 MB of space are more than enough and a bandwidth limited to 5 GB a month is perfectly fine for a blog in the first two to four years. Well, maybe you’ll close your blog or maybe you’ll enjoy it. But remember that as long as you don’t upload movies or huge photos, everything is going to be alright and you won’t have to pay more than necessary.

Here comes the best argument:

“But why should I start a blog?” Because it’s better to let the world know your side of the story

It’s cool when people talk about your products. But it’s not that cool when they’re speaking loud the bad and the ugly. So why not let them speak about you exactly what you want them to talk about? Writing on a blog means you’re open to communicate and that’s what people want. Show your customers that you’re open to talk about everything they want to talk about and you’ll be above them. They will admire your courage.

Though internet has grown and lots and lots of companies start blogging, there are few that actually talk to their customers. If you show them respect, they’ll show you fidelity. They will buy from you because they know you listen to their problems and you are trying to make your products better, according to their expectations. They trust you more than your competition.

Talking isn’t cheap. It’s free

Blogging is how you make people stick with you and not run to the competition

Let your marketing and PR people do the talking. That’s why you pay them, right? Let them make the buzz. It’s in their job description, remember? Let them speak for you. If you do that and they convince the people you’re really interested in emproving your products according to their hopes, your clients will stick with you and they’re going to become the ones to deliver your message forward.

You just have to be friendly and make sure that your company’s relationship with the customers is based on friendship. Because it’s friends the ones that carry on your message to their friends. And by all means, keep the friendship. Because word-of-mouth will always be the number one way to add new clients. People trust people. Give your business a human face.

Post from: Tonify.net

Buzz Aldrin in front of the Apollo 11 lunar module

As any other human being interested in the fate of his kind, I watched the news regarding the celebration of 40 years since the Moon landing. But I couldn’t fail noticing that it really seems to be a PR campaign rather than a celebration. And I’ll try to explain why, because I find it very interesting. First, it’s a really interesting campaign, and then there’s this recession that somehow killed the hope and people need to recover.

Maybe it wasn’t perceived as a crisis, but the Cold War was indeed one. So people needed their expectations to be fullfilled. But how do you do that? Well, for showing off the supremacy of the United States of America, NASA sent people to the Moon. They say there were six Moon landings.

Meanwhile, technology evolved in such a way, they couldn’t imagine in those years. What was science fiction in the 1990′s, now it’s reality. Just think about the cheap touchscreen phones you use. Those were like 50 years away in the 1990′s, right? It was Star Trek, if you allow me the comparison. But despite the technological improvements, no other man walked on the Moon surface. Or at least we don’t know about that. Why?

I strongly believe that the 40 years celebration is just a great PR campaign for NASA. In the sixties, Americans needed something to believe in. Today, all the world needs something to believe in. Moon landing was and still is one of the greatest accomplishments of the human kind. Why not reuse it?

Talking about new videos and new audio recordings, publishing lots of new images, that’s all just PR campaign. Announcing that NASA is going to send another human to the Moon by 2020, that’s the actual news. It sends this message to the people: “Whatever recession we live in, it’s going to be better and it’s going to be soon. Look, have something new to believe in!”

Though it’s strange that in about 30 years no other human being walked the Moon, I wonder what the future stands for. Despite this huge NASA PR campaign, there really has to be something cool outhere. And the campaign is actually working. Though I was born too late to experience the enthuziasm of the people that witnessed the Moon landing, I’m really enthuziastic right now. And makes me feel like maybe the recession is not that far from ending.

I wonder if the US Government had something to do with this PR campaign.

Post from: Tonify.net

Moonfruit became the most tweeted company in the world by using a contest

Moonfruit is a London based company that developed a free website builder, which is used by a couple million users. These days, Moonfruit marks 10 years on the market, so the guys thought they should advertise this and run a 10 days campaign. How? Using Twitter. What was the budget for the campaign? Most probably, around $20,000. What are the results? After the first day, HUGE! Let’s see the details.

Moonfruit will spend around $20,000 with a campaign that’s going to be one of the most successful you’ve ever seen on Twitter.

Basically, the company gives away 10 laptops (MacBook Pro), one for each day of the campaign. The mechanism is pretty simple: to enter the competition, you have to tweet about the contest using the hashtag #moonfruit, and eventually, give a link to the contest details page. At the end of the day, the computer will chose the winner.

Huge results!

What happened? In about 24 hours, #moonfruit became the most discussed topic on Twitter, leaving behind any discussion about Michael Jackson or the Iran revolution. After just one day, everyone seems to be tweeting about Moonfruit’s contest. The millions of tweets made the news to Brand Republic, and had a huge effect over the company’s website, similar to the “digg-effect”. While I’m writing this article, moonfruit.com is down.

What does that mean? Well, it means if you understand how to use Twitter, you can get a hell of a feedback from your audience. Basically, Moonfruit became the most tweeted company in the world. That’s a huge brand exposure and one of the best PR campaigns I’ve seen lately. And it was made with a relatively small budget.

How can you do that?

Yesterday, I published an article with 10 great tips to develop a strong relationship to your Twitter followers. I clicked the publish button just 5 minutes before the first tweet about the Moonfruit contest arrived in my Twitter dashboard. One of the tips was just this one: make contests! That’s what Moonfruit did, and look at the huge success of this campaign! Here’s the article, go check it out.

Post from: Tonify.net

Mocking Sir Martin Sorrell

You can find the mocking Twitter account really easy. @NotSirSorrell is writing about how much money Martin Sorrell has, how he can afford buying everything he desires, even magazines, not following anyone on Twitter because he’s a leader, so he can’t afford to follow. Actually cool jokes, written in a really funny way. And the “auto-irony” can make your day.

I have no idea who’s behind the Twitter account and I sure hope, for his own sake, it’s not one of WPP’s employees. But what I know is that @NotSirSorrell will go viral in a relatively short time. And if it’s actually Martin Sorrell writing the tweets, then that’s going to be great. Still, let’s not make plans for the guy. I’m not that sure the CEO of WPP Group is going to fall in with Twitter that easily.

But I’m damn sure it’s going to be fun to watch. Actually, the initiative is fun because it’s similar to Steve Jobs‘ fake blog. It’s true, the fake blog didn’t convince Jobs to write on a blog, but you never know what Sorrell is going to do.

Post from: Tonify.net

If Halmark's Fast Break will work, NBC Universal will surely use it for its other TV stations

NBC Universal‘s Hallmark, one of the niched channels you might have noticed in your cable network’s offer, will introduce a new ad break format with only one advertiser. What does that mean? 40 seconds of advertising for each program (TV series or TV show or whatever). The first 10 seconds will run in the beggining of the show as the program’s sponsor ad and other 30 seconds as a TV ad in the commercial break.

What does this mean for the advertiser?

The good part: the advertiser won’t have to worry about competitors’ ad right after his. And it won’t have to worry about people forgetting his message because of some other commercials that might be better than his, even though the others are not on his niche. That means one brand exposure, better chances for his products to sell better. If Pepsi pays for a Fast Break and the viewer will leave the program because he’s thirsty, chances are he’ll most likely buy Pepsi instead of Coke.

What does this mean for the TV station?

Well, here’s where we should ask what happens. First of all, the ad break will most definetly be shorter. That means less advertising quantity. That might mean less money. Selling time for ten ads means more money than selling for only one. But Fast Break might mean bigger costs for the advertiser.

And I believe that introducting Fast Break on Hallmark is just an experiment for NBC. If sales will grow for the advertiser, or at least the advertiser will have a better known brand based on this kind of deal, then Fast Break will definetly cost as much as seven ads “in the old days”. Or at least as much as five.

It’s a crisis measure

I believe NBC would rather have one advertiser to pay than an uncertain number of ten advertisers. It’s some sort of “Let me be sure I sell the ad space and get some money” rather than “We love to give our advertisers the best offers“. We live in times of financial crisis, advertising budgets grow negative for the TV market, so unless you are really big and everybody needs you, you have to get a minimum revenue.

Because of the crisis, not only the budgets grow negative, but the number of advertisers just as well. So it’s a sure thing that if in the good times, TV stations had – let’s say – ten ads in a commercial break, they might only have 3 for tomorrow. So why give away 90 seconds of your ad time for 30 bucks (saying, for example, that one ad costs the advertiser 10 bucks) when you can sell 40 seconds with 70 dollars?

What you should follow

You should pay attention to what is going to happen from now on. I’m not sure Fast Break will be really productive, but I’m sure it’s going to be interesting for the advertisers. And I’m really sure that if this works, there’s going to be a Fast Break on each and every NBC channel.
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Image source here.

Post from: Tonify.net