Yaffe Tidbits

Want to create video content for your company? It's easy.

According to an article in dBusinessNews today, "a company's online video - when widely distributed and search optimized - will help business owners grow their business more successfully than their websites." In that article they talked about how Google has revamped their search criteria to give more weight to video content. Over and over, every report you read today talks about how online video is the fastest growing trend on or offline. In fact, I went to a digital media conference last year and the experts were saying video was the hottest, fasting growing thing in the online enviornment then.

High production quality videos that really enhance your brand are nice and we like producing them. But if you are a company or individual who can't afford to go that route, there is an easy way to accomplish it. Get one of the Flip Video cameras. They only cost around $150 for a decent one and they are designed to make shooting and uploading video easy. It even has a built in editing program. It's a fairly rough editing system, but it is easy. They're so easy, we suggested giving them to various employees as part of a recent social media plan for one of our clients.

So, try one out and get yourself on film... er, tape... um...electrons? It could improve your google rating, engage your customer base and just be a lot of fun.

Mike McClure, ECD & talking head

Do you know what your brand's personality is?

Your brand has a public persona, whether you know it or not. Its personality can be one you carefully crafted or it can be something that just grew organically without any nurturing. It may be something different to each of your constituencies or a solid persona for all to see. But your company or brand definitely has one.

We just created social media strategies for a couple of our clients. One of the first things we tell them is that you need to know what your brand personality is. It's important to speak in one voice, whether it's in marketing, pr, brochures, your website or internal memos. It's doubly important once you get into social media, because you need to make sure the voice you're speaking in is one your fans and followers will recognize as being yours.

How do you discover your brand personality? It can be a simple as looking at your communications and asking people, both within and without your company what they think it is and then building consensus. Or it can be as intricate as the brand analysis and corporate culture discovery practices Yaffe/Deutser performs for clients.

What do you do if you have multiple brands within a company? Usually each brand will have it's own distinct personality and then the unifying company has a personality that encompasses all its parts. Look at it as a family. If you are the Jones family, each member has their own personality, but yet they have parts of their personality that make them all Jones.

Let me illustrate by going through our family of brands. The Yaffe Group has five different family members, each with their own personality:

Yaffe/Deutser is very serious, professional and respectful. It has a quiet richness to it. This is a personality befitting what they do. They are a consulting firm that does some pretty heavy and intricate brand, research and corporate culture work. They have deep relationships with their clients and delve deep into some pretty serious analytics that can have a large impact on the businesses they work with. The current corporate culture project they're working on is profoundly changing the way that client does business on so many levels, most of them not even dealing with marketing or talking to the public.

Barrelhouse Creative is just the opposite. They are brash, flamboyant, quick with a quip. It has a tongue-in-cheek attitude. It's a hired gun who comes into town, makes some noise, tells its story, fixes the problem in a blaze of glory and rides on to the next town. This personality also fits the kind of work they do and the relationships they have. They are expected to come up with something flashy, something bright, something that will cause people to take notice. They are usually hired for project work and are only brought in when a problem needs to be taken care of. Once it's done they move on the the next one.

Yaffe Direct is the geek of the family. They are all about immersing themselves in data and finding patterns no one else sees. They're smart and quirky. Sometimes no one really understands what they do. But, everyone expects brilliance and results. They figure out equations and develop new technologies and gadgets that do wonderful things. Sort of Einstein meets Mr. Peabody. This fits in with what they do, too. They take client's data, find patterns, use new technology whether digital or new ways of using old tech and discover ways to get better results than the client was getting before.

Yaffe & Company is the cagey street fighter. They've been around the longest and know how to get things done when you're in a bind. They're the kind of company you want with you when you're fighting for your company's life. They've worked with all kinds of clients, but have a strong background in helping retailers wage the every day battle of gaining share and moving products. They have a bit of McGyver in them too. Always finding new ways to get a leg up on competition. It's out of this company that the newest disciplines, like digital marketing and social media, are coming.

The Yaffe Group is the parent for all these siblings. its personality is that of a kindly father figure with a twinkle in his eye. He is always handing out good sage advice. Often dotes on his kid's accomplishments. And isn't above pulling the old "pull my finger" trick on the newbies. If you look at the social media communications from The Yaffe Group, you'll see that combination of factors building the personality through what is said and how it's said on the Facebook and Twitter accounts.

So, what's your brand's personality? Leave a comment and let us know. Or if you need help figuring it out, give us a shout. One of us should be able to help!

Mike McClure, Top Gunslinger and Storyteller

What if you spent $12 million in direct marketing and nobody came?

Imagine you are a $2 billion retailer who’s realized you were wasting 20% of your $60 million direct marketing budget because the mail wasn’t getting to the right customer. They essentially were spending $12 million with no return on that investment. That’s a case study that was presented at the annual CRM Conference I attended in Chicago recently. Another case study focused on a large retailer’s problems with email marketing. In fact, many retailers were complaining about revenues being down. That shouldn't surprise anyone in today's economy. But one presenter talked about revenue from loyal customers actually being up. That's also a trend we’ve been seeing consistently over this last year with our furniture clients.

No matter how big or small the company, we are all victims of flawed business strategies at some time. Success is all about recognizing and correcting them, like the $2 billion retailer I mentioned above did. What’s not surprising, is that it took an outsider to do it. It's sometimes hard to see the faults in your own plan or program when you're too close to it. That’s why consultants like us exist.

The other big topic at CRMC was social media. Guru Jay Dunn from Lane Bryant talked about it as "the end of the freakin' world." Like with most technology-driven media, consumers are ahead of the marketers. And what’s scary is that by the time we think we’re catching up, the consumer’s moved on. One of the basic tenets of social media is people follow people they find interesting. So you’ve got to make it interesting. Look at what Sea World's doing and you’ll know what I mean.

While social media is still a relatively unproven marketing tool, there is an ability to experiment with it rather cheaply. Social media is a tool that augments your marketing, it’s not a strategy. You need a purpose behind it. Some others that are using the medium well are Dell, Comcast and Starbucks. We like it from the direct marketing standpoint, because it’s trackable and measureable. For more on this go to the supergroup ning page

Michael Morin, EVP,Yaffe Direct

 

Keep Your Mind Wide Open: Everything Out There is Fair Game

With everything that’s going on these days, some say the system is broken. Others say it’s going through growing pains to evolve into something else. Whatever your perspective, it may be time to take another look at whatever your current system is. Looking at it from “outside” the system one can observe some very interesting characteristics “in” the system, especially with issues that can really stunt your company’s growth and adaptation to the media revolution that is taking place.   When you operate “outside” the system the perspective is always on solving the problem without being hampered by the old adage, “we’ve always done it this way before.”   Routine can be dangerous and even deadly if strictly followed.  Whatever systems were in place before may not necessarily be the most masterful guides for the present, and valuable opportunities can be overlooked.

Today’s communication is all about “thinking globally and communicating locally”.   National advertisers may need to use different, more localized channels for creating more personalized relationships with their customers.   This means building a local network of national coverage.  You have got to burrow through the blanket of national distribution in order to create the sense of intimacy. 

In this day there should be no general sweeping dictates about how media is used.  Each situation really warrants its own analysis.  With the myriad of tools we have, coupled with endless options of distribution channels available, you won’t keep up if you don’t stay open to everything viable.

What’s viable? Anything works in new media that is informative, engaging, entertaining, respectfully speaks up to your customer or makes your brand look smart,  charitable, honest, cool or just plain fun.  In this brave new world of engagement, the brand becomes organic and that attracts a consumer’s attention. The more nimble you are, the better you hear and respond to what people REALLY want. 

Look for those golden opportunities that set you apart from the crowd.  Keep your ear to the ground and remember, everything is Fair Game

Joan Abraham, Digital Account Executive

What Makes Seth Godin So Smart?

I’ve read 3 or 4 books written by Seth Godin and liked them a lot. I have seen him speak several times and found his speeches witty and captivating. I read his blog almost every day. I’m on the email list. Heck, before he was really famous I even met him and shook his hand. We had a cup of coffee together. Well at least we were both holding coffee cups as we met in passing in a crowded hallway. Way back then (almost 9 years ago) he was preaching from the gospel of permission based marketing. Talk about being ahead of the curve!

 

He still stands at that pulpit on a regular basis. However, more often than not he seems to be branching out into other topics and areas. I enjoy all of these for several reasons. I think first and foremost he writes about self reliance. A recent post of his titled Graduate school for unemployed college students gave all of those recent college grads who haven’t been able to find a job some really great advice about what to do about their situation now. Rather than bemoaning the current state of the job market and settling for something to just tide them over (which is great as long as you’re doing more than just that).

 

In another post, Slack, he writes;

“A lot of corporations have seen dramatic decreases in revenue and have cut back projects as well. In many cases, this is accompanied by layoffs, and so everyone is working far harder.

But in other organizations, and for a lot of freelancers, there's more time than work. In other words,slack time.

Assume for a moment you don't have money to develop and launch something new. So, what are you going to do with the slack?”

 

Not to steal the thunder in case you want to read his post the 2 suggestions are; Learn something new and earn a following and reputation.

 

Whether you are a employed, unemployed or freelance, these are simply invaluable and smart nuggets of wisdom.

 

Mike Morawski

Chief Development Office

Are you feeding your website enough?

Is your company website saying what you want it to say? Is it different from your competitors? How does your industry as a whole fare in the corporate website realm? The answers probably depend on who you ask and when. Unlike a print ad, a TV spot or even your company's vision statement a website isn't something you make and then you're done. It's a living, breathing organism that needs to adapt to the rapidly changing environment around it. If it's not, it's probably dead in a year tops. Like that sturdy goldfish your kid has had forever, you do need to actually feed it once in awhile or it won't keep on going. And the fact that you've let it die is probably saying something about you that you don't want to be telling potential clients.

What brought this on? Yesterday I saw two completely different takes on agency and marketing websites. First, I saw probably the most innovative and fresh take I've ever seen in an agency web page. It was an agency that put it's whole website on YouTube. It consisted of a series of fun, interactive videos that were pretty edgy compared to the standard "business" fodder you see, even by ad agency standards. My favorite part was their agency vision, which was just a :30 video of a cat playing the keyboard. You can check it out  here.

The second was a blog poston how all agencies are terrible at creating their own websites. It talked about the sea of sameness and lack of understanding of the digital realm. Some of her comments were dead on. Some were a bit off base. I caused a lively discussion in her comments section.

The truth is, in every industry, including ours, there's great websites, awful websites and a whole bunch in between. It's an area that you can't just do it once and forget about it. In our own case, we have multiple websites that accomplish this objective to varying degrees. The corporate websitewas created in the very early 2000's and although the look holds up well, it has many of the sins of websites who haven't been feed often enough. It's built in flash, so you can't find it well through search. It isn't easily updated and needs an overhaul. And we're in the process of taking away the dead body and building one we can sustain better. The microsites we created for Yaffe Directand a Yaffe Groupportal to it fare better. Our news and information site, Yaffe Tidbitswas created to be one we can feed often and fares much better. Our Yaffe/Deutsersite has a new version debuting soon.

How is your website faring? Have you created it so the care and feeding is easy? Do you feed it at all? To get the most out of it, you need to put something into it on a regular basis. I'd like to know how many of you have living, breathing sites and how many are on life support.

Mike McClure, Exec Creative Director

How To Fashion A Great Brand Online

Fashion has become so tied in with entertainment that everyone everywhere is exposed to it’s nuances. Fashion is no longer considered a urban awareness...it’s universal; it has pervaded all levels of society with its visual appeal.

Fashion in a sense reflects how you feel about yourself.

Branding is the extension of this. The essence of the brand has to be communicated so loud that everyone can hear, and so resonant that everyone can feel. The more distinct and pronounced the statement, the more people remember who you are. The degree of distinction is the fashion quotient. This is style.

We can relate this to any product, but it is especially significant with cars. An automobile is brought to life wrapped in a coat of style. Surely the "swoon" of style can add value to the feel of the car. Fashion is the sense of fun, the personal connection with the car.

The American auto industry is going through great pains to accommodate the changes our environment requires, regardless of what we desire. That means, for American automobiles, creating awareness is going to be about creating a sense of desire to stay competitive in the marketplace and move us unwillingly into becoming a smaller car nation. So, sometimes fashion desires and perceptions need to bent and blended into a shape that fits the realities of the situation.

The Internet is a good place to do that reshaping. As marketers, we shouldn’t underestimate the Internet presence of any brand, both as created by the brand and as created by the users of the brand. The online environment is a key location to change perception about the feel, the quality and the services associated with a brand, product or company..

I use the auto industry as an example but this is true with any product in any price range or size. An unusual relationship between the product and the customer can be created on the Internet. The Internet has a number of seductive creative tools that can be implemented to elicit that emotional connection between the consumer and the product at the point of purchase. We walk through the aisles of our favorite retail emporium and our heartbeat quickens as we see all of the appealing merchandise on either side of us. The Internet can effectively elicit that same emotion with the right combination of creative features. If you have defined your online audience with the proper measurement tools and efficiently sorted out the data related to your online audience, you can begin communicating and servicing their needs in a very personalized manner. You can customize products for them. You can offer services and information and engaging promotions that go beyond anything they have known before. And you know about their interests because you can ask them. It is the access to specific areas of interest that makes you valuable to your customers.

Magazines can present luscious pictures of the essence of a brand, television can go even further with movement, music and desirable characters. Retail stores can make the seduction three dimensional; the product can be touched and felt. But the Internet brings access right into the bedrooms of your audience. The seduction and the point of purchase are available at the consumer’s personal whim and convenience, wherever they may be.

No matter how many stores you have, or what your advertising budget is, whether you are Wal-Mart or the woman down the block selling handmade knick-knacks, you can offer purchasing access to more people on your website than anywhere else. Anything new I heard about, any new resource that I should know about, can immediately be accessed through the web, where I can instantly see what all the buzz is about. So the Internet becomes Swoon Central for anyone selling a product.

Swoon Central is defined as the most accessible and appealing location you can have. The Internet qualifies hands down. The Swoon Factor is that illusive thrill and sense of style that creates the appeal. This will only become more important as technology evolves. Fashion is a potent elixir in establishing the swoon factor. So, when you look at the space your brand is occupying online, make sure it's located in the neighborhood of Swoon Central and your customers will always come back for more.

Joan Abraham, Digital AE & Fashion Fan

Is Your Company using Social Media? Here's Good News, Bad News.

If your company has not dipped its proverbial toes into the social media pool yet, I have some bad news to tell you. According to the latest figures, nearly 90% of all companies are using some form of social media. So, you're behind the vast majority of businesses. But, there's good news, too. Over half of those companies using social media only started doing so in the last 4 - 5 months. Which means, you're not that far behind if you get started soon.

What is social media? It's essentially ways for people (and brands, products and companies) to connect to one another and have their views be heard. It's everything from blogs, message boards and customer ratings online to social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

For business, social media is a research tool that allows you to know what your customers and potential customers are thinking about you, your product, the competition and general issues in your category. Knowing what they are looking for and what’s bothering them allows you to help them achieve their goals in a way that’s beneficial to both you and them. It allows consumers and brands/companies to participate in new ways that allow for positive business results.

Social Media adds a "pull" media to your traditional "push" media lineup. Marketers are used to pushing their messaging at consumers via traditional media. But, the Internet, social media and mobile devices has allowed the consumer to take much more control, to seek out whatever answers they want, to get other’s opinions on products and services. If you feed this need, you will benefit. You can’t control the push media, but you can participate in positive ways. If you connect with your customers and give them value without trying to "sell" them, you will positively impact your brand. For more information on how your brand can provide value, read "Building a Generous Brand"

The most popular social media for businesses seem to be blogs, Facebook and Twitter. But, you don't want to run out and start a blog right away. You need to learn how to listen first. If you jump into a blog right away, you risk bringing your traditional. push marketing mentality into the tone of your blog. Once you've mastered listening to what you customers are saying out there, you can start to respond and then add value to the equation.

I follow a lot of companies in our fields of expertise on Twitter and it's amazing what kinds of innovative things different companies are doing. Henry Ford Hospital had three surgeons Twitter thorugh the entire process of a surgery (whichever doctor wasn't working on the surgery at the time sent out tweets as to what was going on). This gives consumers a front row seat into a world that was never accessible to them before. If you were worried about needing surgery or wanted more info on what went on. You could follow the whole procedure live, as it happened. To get more tips and discover some other innovative ways businesses are usingTwitter, read Michael Estrin's post "Meet the Brands that 'get' Twitter."

So, if you're company's behind the surge into social media, it's okay. Just get started now. You don't have to be a big company to rule social media either. A lot of innovative smaller companies are doing a great job at it. The important thing is to get started. Don't know how and don't have someone to guide you? Email me at mikem@yaffe.com and I'll send you our 5-step guide to getting started in social media. And I'll answer any questions you may have, if I can. No charge, no sell. It's just our way of being a generous brand.

Mike McClure, Executive Creative Director and Social Media Advocate

 

Seduce Your Customers With Style

Design, style and fashion put the thrill in our everyday lives. Looking at an aesthetic object gives us pause. Keeping that in mind when you go to market with your product or brand can positively affect your bottom line.

Every day the general public is introduced to the excitement of design and they are responding to it. No one seems to have a better grasp on that than one of the most successful retailers of our time, Target. Target’s ability to integrate the value of design so broadly and effectively has spread the thrill factor throughout the mass market of consumers. Now we all have to pay attention to design and style to compete.

From the Michael Graves egg timer to an Isaac Mizrahi dog leash, Target has style. This sense of style then oozes out to everything incorporating the Target bulls eye, even the way they show mundane products such as Tide detergent. To maintain their reputation of style, Target approaches designers that are not "over exposed" in the market place. Through their marketing, these designers take on an elevated role in heightening the image of Target. Part of that strategy for Target is to take the time to educate consumers on the appeal of style and the intrinsic value of their designers, such as Michael Graves, Luella Bartley and Isaac Mizrahi. The customer feels the value of Graves’ egg timer every time she sees it on her kitchen counter, which makes her feel good.

Design has an emotional impact on the consumer. It’s a sure bet that anyone can go online and find something from Target that excites them. Good design, either in the product itself or in the presentation of the product, gives the consumer trust and confidence. Trust is essential in the online environment. If the product follows up and performs, then you have won yourself a loyal customer.

Website design and product design become increasingly more important as we cross cultures in our now world bazaar environment. The design element is the emotional tie between the brand and the consumer. If you can get into the hearts of your consumers, you can engage them in the seduction of your brand. If you get into their minds, they are successfully wooed. Companies like Target and Apple understand how to do both, each in a most distinctive way.

The E-commerce portion of your business will become most influential in determining how people feel about your brand. Design and creativity, your personal stamp on the world as a brand, is communicating the heart and soul of what your product stands for.

Art and design in our daily living make us happy. Good design can make a grown man smile even if he takes in the sense of design unconsciously. The seduction of design and creativity is a powerful force. Today’s retail demands the collaboration of merchandising, design and technical knowledge to aesthetically accommodate your audience. It is the synthesizing of these elements that will create your full growth potential in this environment.

Joan Abraham, Digital AE & Design Fan

Our Style Is In Our Cars

Detroit is in such an interesting place at this moment. I am an outsider who was an insider connected to the Detroit Advertising community and fashion community growing up in the city back in the ‘50’s when Detroit was the center of the universe. I was a bit concerned about having to return to the Motor city after 20 years in fashion and new media in New York. I moved back to Detroit in February of 2008 and I have seen some pretty devastating days as Detroit fights to remain standing. I think it’s pretty safe to say that the overhaul of the American auto industry has deeply affected every one of us who lives in this great town.

But what Detroit has not lost is a distinct sense of style born from car design and marketing. When it comes to style and new media Detroit is rich with resources. There are great influences in the city that have grown out of car country. And every major new media resource is represented in Detroit because of the money and development Detroit autos have poured into new media marketing.

As we start pulling out of the economic disaster by overhauling the infrastructure of auto production, we seem to be attracting many young, hip growth industries requiring a lot of energy and creative thinking: namely alternative energy sources, innovation in making our world green and even a little film business, thanks to our connections in Hollywood and the Governor’s film incentive package. Detroit is starting to look like it will have a strong re- tooled future after all.

For a city that could have been written off, Detroit has never lost its mojo. There is something to be said about the Motor City and the sense of style that we generate here.

Style is that illusive element that fills all of us with desire. Style is what separates the cool from the ordinary. Imparting an image of style on a car will energize the senses of a female audience faster than any other factor. And the sense of style that used to govern the Detroit auto industry needs to be reinforced more substantially than ever. Understanding the appropriate role of fashion in creating a sense of style is the key to attracting and keeping the female audience.

Joanie Abraham, Digital AE & Author of StyleBranding