Monthly Archives: December 2015

Are You Looking in the Wrong Place For Digital Knowledge?

See the Internet for what it really is. As Malcolm Auld tells us, it's a pure Direct Marketing platform.
For knowledge about Direct Marketing and how to create more effective messaging, see the books below.

Some marketers seem to be better analysts than problem solvers.

They can sense difficulties in the marketplace but they’re not as cluey in dealing with them.

A case in point is optimizing brands in the Digital Age.

More than a few marketing people and traditional agencies have said they’re ‘steering into the unknown’.

Or they’re ‘feeling their way’ through it.

If that frames the situation, one wonders … how do you correct it? How do you advance?

For that, it’s always an idea turn to the experts.

One in particular is Malcolm Auld. His blog is www.themalcolmauldblog.com and it’s well worth bookmarking.

Malcolm Auld defines the Internet as ‘a pure Direct Marketing platform’.

How right he is.

But this surprises many marketers and traditional agencies we know.

Their take is that Digital is futuristic, not something from the past.

Well, it’s true technology has changed, but people haven’t.

They continue to be human and they’re motivated by their emotions.

Equally, ‘response’ is what we value today as it leads to attitude changes and the moment someone acts or buys.

If that need for ‘response’ doesn’t define Direct Marketing, then what does?

So it stands to reason that a bit of knowledge about DM techniques can help.

Especially if it can take the guesswork out of creating content on the Web.

If you and your team value learning for gaining and renewing skills, there are plenty of books to give you a grounding in Direct Marketing.

It’s a grounding that benefits you with knowledge you can adapt for Digital communications.

Start with these five titles:

Common Sense Direct and Digital Marketing – Drayton Bird

 Tested Advertising Methods – John Caples 


 Scientific Advertising – Claude Hopkins


 How to Write a Good Advertisement – Victor Schwab

 The Robert Collier Letter Book – Robert Collier


Time spent with these books should give you a clearer idea of how to get results you can test and measure.

By helping you create more effective messaging it can lower your risk of investing dollars in marketing.

It can make it easier for you to compete.

And at a time when you want to be a more effective it can help you become one thing better than a marketer.

A Direct Marketer who can get people to respond.

Share with us. Leave your comment below. Thanks for reading Whybetonto.com. Regards, Steve Ulin LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/1Bey3Jl

Slow Dynamite. Don’t Look Now But You’re Sitting on a Stick of It.

Tennessee Williams wrote 34 plays, Sweet Bird of Youth being one of them.
Tennessee Williams wrote 34 plays, Sweet Bird of Youth being one of them.

Slow dynamite is the way Tennessee Williams characterized the ravages of time.

It’s a gradual explosion that changes everything.

The expression comes from his play, Sweet Bird of Youth.

As slow dynamite applies to marketing, how are you coping? How are you dealing with changes over time?

It’s a fair question as many agree, change is the biggest challenge we face today.

That’s change in consumer attitudes and the way brands are seen.

It’s the way people view social media and the intrusions that have come with online messaging.

As to the last, we’re thinking of pre-rolls, page take-overs, pop-ups and ads that pursue you around the Web.

Pesky stuff.

Little wonder ad blocking is seen as a new form of self-defense.

There’s also change in technology, the marketplace and development of new products.

There’s change in the way your competitors operate.

More to that, change can extend to old companies that suddenly get re-energized or merge to become a threat to your sales efforts.

American Airlines, General Motors and now maybe Kodak fall into that category.

It includes overseas companies that come to America to take brand share as well as start-ups like Uber and Airbnb that emerge to change the economic landscape.

It’s all part of dynamite that doesn’t seem so slow these days. Moore’s Law is one reason why.

But for too many people — those in management, marketing and sales  — change is little more than an academic issue.

They talk about it; they put the idea of it on a pedestal.

But they live in the comfort of routine.

Could that be an inescapable human trait? That was a question a TED Talk speaker asked his audience recently.

One thing’s pretty clear, as security feels better than risk many people do things by habit.

It’s easy to slot in to convention and uniformity as you operate under the illusion you’re forging ahead.

Adding to that, the American writer Paul Auster has suggested:

Failure is measured by the

number of routines you have.

He could have a point there. Maybe he should expand on it in a TED Talk.

After all, when you give yourself over to habit you may miss the way consumer thinking and competitor efforts are changing.

The world can pass you by.

In that situation slow dynamite isn’t the worry.

It’s fast dynamite that’s the challenge.

Share with us. Leave your comment below. Thanks for reading Whybetonto.com. Steve Ulin, LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/1Bey3Jl

 

 

 

Just the Thing for Marketers. Poetry.

When he first came to America the name Dylan was mostly unknown. So Dylan Thomas coached the press on the pronunciation with the line, It's Dylan as in Penicillin.
When he first came to America the name Dylan was mostly unknown. So Dylan Thomas coached the press on the pronunciation with the line, It’s Dylan as in Penicillin.

When the celebrated Welsh poet Dylan Thomas came to the United States in 1953 he was met at the airport by the press.

They mobbed him and wanted to know if he’d written new poems.

He said yes he had some recent ones.

As he was swept out of the airport on a tide of photographers, blinding flash bulbs and badgering reporters he said he also had written some decent ones.

Then he turned to all assembled, stopped them in their tracks and gave them an effortless account of his writing:

‘I’ve written some recent ones,

some decent ones

and some recent decent ones’.

The press broke up laughing.

They were delighted with the answer. The impromptu performance surprised them.

Surprise value also serves marketers well when communicating with a target audience.

You could say it’s the most important thing about commercial messaging.

That and the fact that brands should always be presented anew.

Saying or showing something surprising, new and unexpected is what stops people and extends attention spans.

It makes it easier for a brand to compete.

Put another way, it helps you become a real problem for your competition.

Southwest Airlines has a handle on that.

Remember the line, ‘Ding. You are now free to move about the country’.

There’s bags of character in that. It’s both surprising and unexpected.

It’s the opposite of the ‘try-hard thing’ which gives it surprise value.

Of course, Southwest is still at it with funny flight attendant announcements and safety briefings that are near enough sidesplitting.

You’ve seen them. And no doubt you laughed.

Why bother to create work like this, why go the surprising route at all?

As Dylan Thomas would have told you, you have to give people something if you want them to remember you.

Share with us. Leave your comment below. Thanks for reading Whybetonto.com. Regards, Steve Ulin LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/1Bey3Jl

 

 

Order Online, Get Your Delivery By Drone in 30 Minutes.

A problem for UFO hunters, an advantage for the rest of us. When Amazon starts delivering orders with drones.
Confusion for UFO hunters, but an advantage for the rest of us. When Amazon starts delivering orders with drones.

Here’s a story the author Joseph Heller told about writers and an unusual way to buy a book.

Years ago in Manhattan bookstores like Doubleday on Fifth Avenue novelists stole the show.

They set up their manual typewriters in the shop window and worked on their latest book.

Anyone happening by on the sidewalk could see an author typing away or gazing into space to figure out a twist in the plot.

As pages were written they were taped to the inside of the window for all to see.

Often crowds gathered in front of this goldfish bowl as it came with no small measure of curiosity.

If you went inside you could pre-order the book and it would be signed for you when published.

With Amazon there might be a way to revive the ‘unpublished pages promotion’, albeit in a slightly different way.

It could be a way for Amazon to introduce the drone delivery service they’re developing.

As you probably know it’s called Amazon Prime.

Order something online and you’ll be able to have it delivered within 30 minutes. Depending on where you live, of course.

If you happen to be a Maine lighthouse keeper you’ll have seagulls for company, not the Amazon Drone.

So how do you get a delivery?

They’re working on it. But we’ve heard you might be supplied with a large Amazon logo stamped on a plastic sheet.

Your role in the delivery process is to lay the logo out in your backyard or on your apartment rooftop.

Presumably that’s how the drone zeros in on you.

As you read this, a drones-only airspace is being proposed and Federal flight regulations are being hammered out.

Meanwhile, to promote the service, sample pages from an unpublished book could be drone-dropped to you 30 minutes after the author writes them.

Too bad we didn’t have this when JK Rowling was going full blast with Harry Potter.

A drone service might prompt you to order all that goes with a good book.

Reading glasses, a standard lamp, a bookshelf and a set of wine glasses.

Maybe even an easy chair, as a drone’s hauling capacity can be surprising.

In years to come you might be able to order a piano online and have it flown in.

After all, some military drones can manage a takeoff weight of three tons.

As Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon might tell you, that amounts to more than a few books.

Share with us. Leave your comment below. Thanks for reading Whybetonto.com. Regards, Steve Ulin LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/1Bey3Jl