Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Dan Droz is Chairman and CEO of Droz & Associates: Marketing, Branding, Design, Public Relations, Advertising, Web Design, Interactive Marketing for Pittsburgh and surrounding regions.
Monday, May 4th, 2009
Advertising, Marketing, Pittsburgh, Sales, Uncategorized No Comments
The holidays are a great time to reach out to current and potential clients. The reason: holiday greetings and online gifts provide an excellent opportunity for viral marketing. Viral marketing is a marketing strategy that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily. Like regifting… only they can be regifted a gazillion times. Viral marketing typically involves messages, greetings or information that are free, interesting or fun and leverage existing and easy to use communications networks, like email. Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive games, images, or even….fruitcakes.
The goal of marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing programs is to identify individuals with high Social Networking Potential (SNP) and create viral messages that appeal to this segment of the population. The more creative or relevant…the better chance it will passed on, or regifted… like a fruitcake.
To demonstrate, suppose someone, like us, sent you an online gift like… a fruitcake. Well what are you supposed to do with the gift of fruitcake? What does anyone do with the gift of fruitcake? Regift!… That’s the spirit of viral marketing. This year, people went nuts for our greeting our ‘do-it-your-self’ fruitcake. We sent it to our core email list, along with an option to ‘regift’ it others. We also sent out a link on our Twitter, and other social networks.
The result: an increase in traffic to our Web site and our blog, and multitudes of positive comments from regiftees. The positive word of mouth that we built with our simple holiday gesture is priceless from a marketing standpoint, and the perfect example of a successful viral marketing campaign.
Click here to get, send and/or ‘regift’ your own fruitcake.
If you’d like more marketing tips on viral and other types of campaigns, or would like to receive more things like do-it-yourself fruitcakes, click here.
Dan Droz is Chairman and CEO of Droz & Associates: Marketing, Branding, Design, Public Relations, Advertising, Web Design, Interactive Marketing for Pittsburgh and surrounding regions.
Monday, December 22nd, 2008
Advertising, Branding, Design, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Pittsburgh, Public Relations, Sales, Uncategorized, Web Design No Comments
Determining the best promise or ‘claim’ for your product or service isn’t just a matter of defining the message. You have to make it engaging, relevant and differentiated. So many claims (and copy) use words like ‘biggest,’ ‘cheapest’ and ‘best,’ that are platitudes at best and probably not true. More importantly, they waste the most valuable opportunity to engage and differentiate you. Here are two simple tests you can do in the privacy of your office to evaluate your claims and headlines.
The “Duh” Test. Ask someone why you should buy from them. They respond, “because we give great customer service,” or “We Deliver Results.” A plumber says, ‘we’re there when you need us,’ or a builder says, ‘the house you’ve always wanted…’ Duh. If it’s something you (and your competitors) need to do to just be in the game, that’s not a claim. It’s simply a description. Not engaging, relevant or different.
A charter school, called Propel Schools , used to say they provided a ‘Student Centered’ education. Duh. By using their name, and making the claim that they ‘Propelled’ students, they and created a compelling promise that had energy and engagement. You’ve got to answer the question, “Why would anyone choose you over one of competitors.” For Real. No Duh’s.
The “Different” Test. The issue of differentiation isn’t a matter of what you do. Your competitors probably do it too. Usually, difference lies in some specific detail of how you do it. Your “3 Steps,” “113 Simple Ingredients” or “10 Inspectors.” All those ‘differences’ like experience, quality or creativity aren’t differences. They could well be characteristics of your competitor as easily as you. Gleem toothpaste has GL-70 . Domino’s Pizza has 30 minute delivery and Saab’s are designed by aerospace engineers (as well as having the coolest cup-holders in the business). If you can cross off your name in an ad and insert your competitor’s name without substantially misrepresenting them, you’ve got a problem.
Dan Droz is Chairman and CEO of Droz & Associates: Marketing, Branding, Design, Public Relations, Advertising, Web Design, Interactive Marketing for Pittsburgh and surrounding regions.
Friday, October 31st, 2008
Advertising, Branding, Design, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Pittsburgh, Public Relations, Sales, Uncategorized, Web Design No Comments
Until about 200 years ago, the design process was quite immediate in that there was a very direct connection between people who made things and the people who used them. If you wanted a canoe, you’d use the time-tested method of getting bark off a tree, and shaping it like your forefathers did. They learned what worked over time, by the process of boats sinking, or floating. There was an evolution to the forms that products, buildings and packaging took. The person who designed and built your boat probably lived down the street. There wasn’t really a mass market.
Designer as Intermediary
But as technology and mass production became part of the business environment and markets expanded, people who bought and used things got farther and farther from the people who made them, so that eventually, they never even met. People who made things had to imagine what people might need in the future, and gradually, the field of professional design emerged as an intermediary, anticipating and planning for products, services and communications would impact and connect to people they’d never met.
Where the engineer, marketer and sales force typically represents the provider of a product or service, the designer represents the user, defining what would be desirable, useable and useful to people. Even in the developmental years of the design professions, designers understood that the products, services and spaces needed to address a range of desires and physical and emotional issues that went well beyond functional need. Products and services were opportunities to create experiences for the users, not just a solution to a problem.
Representing the User
When Henry Dreyfus, one of the founders of the Industrial Designers Society of America and it’s first president, designed the now classic phone handset in 1937, he said that “the phone is merely a way for people to have the experience of communicating directly with someone they love over great distances.”
In 1939, he designed the Big Ben Alarm clock for Westclock. After a year of development, it was ready to market. The first customer was the John Wanamaker department store in New York City. Henry Dreyfus, in what is considered to be the first live ‘user testing,’ observed potential customers pick up the clock, examine it and put it down without buying it or asking any questions. Eventually, he questioned customers. Why were they putting it down after examining it? What was wrong?
Their response: it felt too light. Something so light couldn’t be substantive. Whether they were right or wrong, Dreyfus realized that people were associating weight with value even though he knew there was no connection. In a radical departure from the notion that ‘less is more,’ he added a 3 oz. weight, serving no function whatsoever, but to create the perception of greater substance. In this case, more weight equated to more value. He said, “people want the experience of knowing that their alarm clock had something inside.” Weight was an attribute that had meaning and relevance… it created a cue that led to a perception of value and substance.
Dan Droz is Chairman and CEO of Droz & Associates: Marketing, Branding, Design, Public Relations, Advertising, Web Design, Interactive Marketing for Pittsburgh and surrounding regions.
Wednesday, August 20th, 2008
Advertising, Branding, Design, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Pittsburgh, Public Relations, Sales, Uncategorized, Web Design No Comments
Service providers face a unique problem in that the deliverable is intangible or ‘invisible.’ Unlike tangible products, invisible products are impossible to ‘test drive.’ Harry Beckwith, in his 1997 book, Selling the Invisible, defined such offerings as those whose value can’t be demonstrated or fully appreciated until after they’ve been delivered. Service providers and professionals therefore have to rely on past examples of their work, referrals or other ‘representations’ of their offering to convey value. This attribute creates a number of challenges, principally in differentiating and branding their offerings. If you can’t see a lawyer’s work product until after it’s delivered, how does a client know what they’re getting? The challenge is to translate what you ‘do’ into a ‘deliverable,’ with specific features and benefits. We call this ‘productization.’ Here are some of the characteristics of a ‘productized’ service:
1. Nomenclature. Give your service a name. Edelman Public Relations calls their product “Business Advantage Marketing” (BAM). We’ve used the acronym “APEC” to describe a variety of processes, including Assessment, Planning, Execution and Control or Advanced Personnel Evaluation and Counseling, to name two. We’ve used the acronym “MAP” for Marketing Action Plan. Names give services and process greater definition and the potential for unique branding.
2. Visualization. Although a document such as a brochure may not seem as product-like as a toaster oven or screwdriver, it can visually represent a process. Charts, graphs and diagrams, help give tangible meaning to a process or service. Even if the process may be similar to a competitor’s offering, the visualization of the process can be unique.
3. Attributes. Whether it’s a particular set of stages, formats, content components or other organizational or design elements, products have features or attributes that allow you to define them and distinguish them from other products or processes. By using diagrams, for example, you can demonstrate and differentiate an attribute like ‘turnaround time’ or ‘integration’ as a specific deliverable tangible benefit.
4. Fungibility is the characteristic that the service product can be delivered largely without regard to the person delivering it, without changing the essential nature of the product or service. Although every sales person who works for IBM is a different individual with a distinctive style, there is something about their process of selling and the experience they provide that is distinctly “IBM.” Their selling method is fungible.
5. A problem. Great service products are solutions to problems. Whatever form of service product you provide, the bottom line is that its value is related to the degree to which you can reduce or eliminating some problem or pain.
Dan Droz is Chairman and CEO of Droz & Associates: Marketing, Branding, Design, Public Relations, Advertising, Web Design, Interactive Marketing for Pittsburgh and surrounding regions.
Monday, June 30th, 2008
Branding, Marketing, Pittsburgh, Public Relations, Uncategorized No Comments