Never a Lack of Ideas

Fake news can strike any brand at any time. It hit ours recently. Consider this a playbook for what to do when fake news hits your brand.  For clarity, I’m not talking about how to respond to a story in which facts were misinterpreted or taken out of context. I’m not talking about editorials, either. I’m talking about a completely fabricated story that has no basis in fact and is damaging to your brand. When fake news hits, it will almost certainly spread via Facebook first. Follow the steps below and you’ll make it through as unscathed as possible. Make sure the fake news story is actually fake. Don’t proceed with the next steps unless it’s truly fake news and has no basis in fact. Draft a brief statement (3-4 sentences) to communicate four things: You are aware of the fake news story  It’s truly fake news You are working to take down the story You are contacting each person who has shared the story online and asking them to remove their post Communicate to ...

Newness and nostalgia.   Could there be more powerful forces in marketing?* And yet they’re polar opposites.   One says, “I’m undefined, different, and exciting. Check me out.”   The other says, “Remember how great I used to make you feel?”   Both are incredibly powerful. It’s quite the accomplishment to go from new to nostalgic. That doesn’t happen by accident. It takes years and years of excellence to get there.   The best brands consistently use both newness and nostalgia to excel. It may seem like an oxymoron, but I think of these forces every time I hear, “the all new Chevrolet” or “new at Disney World.”   It’s a slippery slope, though. Nobody asks, “what’s new at Marshall Fields?” any more.   For established brands, successfully tapping into newness and nostalgia is perhaps our biggest challenge and opportunity as marketers. How will you take advantage of both?   There’s never a lack of ideas.   *”...

Well, it's over. Powerball madness has ended. Three winning tickets will split the $1.6 billion and we can all go back to our daily lives. This was a good reminder, though, that people aren't rational. If we were, we wouldn't buy Powerball tickets. With the odds of winning at 1 in 292 million, even with 100 tickets, your chances are still basically zero. As I was irrationally standing in line to buy my Powerball ticket, the cashier told me that earlier someone had bought 500 tickets (for $1,000) after selling his car and using all the money to buy lottery tickets. We now know that he didn't win the jackpot or $1 million. If that's not irrational, I don't know what is. Life can get back to normal now. Until we get swept up with the next irrational thing. I can't wait. There's never a lack of ideas. PS. My Powerball ticket is pictured here. We won $4! By spending $10....

As companies mature and look for new ways to increase revenue, they inevitably look toward vertical integration . Companies with great customer relationships move up and/or down the purchase path to increase revenue. Let's look at three examples of vertical integration in the travel sector: one historic, one current, and one I predict will happen soon. Historic: Why Airlines Sell Vacation Packages The majority of people planning to take a trip that includes a flight will start planning their trip by researching flights first. Before most people look into booking accommodations, a rental car, and/or activities, they look into flights. Many years ago, airlines figured this out and started selling vacation packages. Since customers started planning their trip on an airline's website, the airlines realized they could sell other services while they had customers' attention. (They also make a lot of money by selling hotel rooms.) That's vertical integration. Curr...

Two years ago, when I wrote the book on setting marketing priorities , inherent in the book, but not specifically discussed in detail, was the need to ignore a lot of marketing opportunities. In theory, it's easy to do this. But in practice, it's more complicated — at least, for me. When I was in college, applying for marketing internships in extremely creative ways but never hearing anything back, I vowed that when I was a marketing professional, I would always reply to everyone who contacted me, even if only to say no. "Saying no is better than saying nothing at all," I thought. But then I became a professional marketer and realized that's just not possible. There just isn't enough time in the day to respond to every opportunity. From marketing vendor inquiries, donation requests, and people looking to network or land a job, I could easily spend my entire day just saying no. This is Hard for Me I struggle with this. I'm a nice guy and I want ...

Another year is in the books and I've still been able to blog once in a while. My blog has never been viewed more than in the past year, so thank you for your increasing interest in what I have to say. And now, according to tradition, I'd like to highlight my favorite posts from the last year: The Perfect Souvenir for a Harry Potter Fan — I blogged several times about Harry Potter over the last year. This is my favorite because of the video. Hops for Flops: An Ad Campaign Idea for a Beer Brewer  — Beer makers, there's still time to implement this idea for the next World Cup. Poop in the Pool: The Psychology of Illusions (Part 1) Stop Calling Them Millennials When Selling Lawn Ornaments, Fill Your Lawn with Ornaments Add This To Your To-Do List Enjoy my favorite posts! There's Never a Lack of Ideas

The Pew Research Center defines Millennials as Americans born between 1981 and 1997. Two years ago, Time magazine said people born between 1980 or 1981 and 2000 are Millennials. Most other definitions cite similar date ranges. But I don't think Millennials are defined solely by their age. Sure, date of birth provides some guideposts, but Millennials are better defined by psychographic traits — like confidence, entitlement, tolerance, and narcissism. And one platform has done more to foster these traits than any other: Facebook. Facebook has shaped the way this generation behaves as consumers and employees. It has influenced this generation's attitudes about privacy and has redefined "friendship." In my opinion, a "Millennial" is someone who started using Facebook while they were in college, high school, or junior high school. But let's stop calling them Millennials. We should rename "Millennials" the Facebook Generation. College st...

In the not too distant past, there were basically only a few milk choices: skim, 1%, 2%, and whole. All of it came from cows. Of course, the numbers refer to the fat content of the milk. But whole milk only contains about 3.5% fat. That's not terrible. So why not call it 3.5% milk? Calling it "whole" milk conjures up jugs of fat. But for as long as anyone can remember, whole milk has either been just "milk" or "whole milk." Since 1975, whole milk sales in the US have decreased by 61%. See this chart ( source ): Somewhere along the way, milk producers decided that calling milk "whole" wasn't a good idea. They switched to calling it "Vitamin D" milk. That has a much healthier connotation. But it hasn't turned around sales. The product essentially hasn't changed in years, and re-branding it didn't do anything. Because sometimes changing the name just isn't enough. Of course, that's due to many factors...

I'm noticing a new trend in commercials for electronics: many of them feature very quick cuts of people using the products while music blares in the background. A few of them also feature one word on the screen that doesn't change, while a word before or after changes with the different scenes. Here are a few very recent examples: 1. Android: " And You " Quick cuts of people using the product. Music blaring in the background. The word "and" stays on the screen while other words change around it. 2. Fitbit: " Find Your Fit "  Quick cuts of people using the product. Music blaring in the background. The word "fit" is on each screen while other words change around it. Slight variation:   3. iPad Air: " Change " Quick cuts of people using the product. Music blaring in the background. No words on the screen. Example from two years ago:   4. Chromebook: " For everyone " Perhaps this was the...

This is the second of two posts on the psychology of illusions. Read the first post here . I hate waiting. I'll bet you do, too. My vision of hell involves waiting in a long line that never ends. Smart marketers know people hate to wait, so they create illusions to trick us into thinking that we're not waiting. Theme parks have gotten really good at this. These days, every major new ride created at a theme park includes things to see and do right in the line. Example: Touring Hogwarts When Universal Studios Islands of Adventure opened its Wizarding World of Harry Potter park in 2010, my wife, sister, and I were among the first to visit. We happily waited in line for nearly two hours to ride the main attraction: Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. Why were we happy to wait in line? Because it took us on an awesome tour through Hogwarts. In each room we waited, magical things happened to us. The Sorting Hat sang us a song. Harry, Hermione, and Ron cast spells i...

Illusions are everywhere in marketing. I'm not talking about the kind of illusions David Copperfield performs nightly. I'm talking about the things organizations do to make customers think something is true when it's not. Because my wife and I are going to see Penn and Teller perform in Las Vegas soon, I thought I'd expose some of the most popular illusions in marketing and then identify what we can learn from them. Let's go... Example: Poop in the Pool A friend of mine recently told me this story from his time as a lifeguard at his neighborhood pool: Whenever someone pooped in the pool, we cleared the area and then fished it out of the water. Then, we were trained to grab an empty two liter bottle we had on hand, go into the bathroom, fill it with water, and dump it in the area in which the poop was found. We'd wait a few minutes, and then open the pool back up. Yikes! My friend went on to say that the pool was already treated heavily with chemicals...

This should be named the United Airlines Center There's no easy answer to that question. Perhaps it doesn't even matter. While there are a few published methods for calculating the brand value of buying the naming rights to a stadium ( example ), I'd argue that the decision to buy these rights is based more on emotions than any sort of rational return on investment calculation. It's much more likely that a CEO or CMO simply thinks their brand closely aligns with their local sports franchise and they want to see their name atop its stadium rather than a situation in which CEO or CMO estimates how much sales will increase as a result of their sponsorship. Some research suggests much of the value from a stadium sponsorship actually comes in the included tickets a brand receives and can use to entertain its most important clients. So maybe those CEOs and CMOs really just want to go to events at the nearby stadium and they figure if they can also bring along some c...

Check out this picture. That's me all the way on the right. I was about eight years old and I was at my first World Wrestling Federation event with my cousin, dad, and uncles (right to left). Our faces are painted as the Ultimate Warrior , my favorite wrestler growing up. I brought a sign to the event — I had a blast making it with my mom. There were a handful of other signs throughout the Rosemont Horizon, but none were as good as mine. The sign said, "The Macho Man is Not So Macho! The Warrior Rules!" I actually liked the Macho Man, but he was fighting the Ultimate Warrior so by default I was cheering against him that night. I still remember the moment the Ultimate Warrior won the match. He climbed up the ropes like he always did, raised both arms in victory, and then he pointed right at us and gave us a thumbs up. He saw my sign. He saw our faces. And he appreciated it. We could tell. I like to tell people that moment changed wrestling forever. It's what le...

Image from Wired . A beer maker needs to create an ad campaign making fun of the worst part of soccer: the flops . Flopping has become an epidemic, rendering some games almost unwatchable. The Wall Street Journal even published an article (premium) analyzing the worst offenders so far in the 2014 World Cup. From the article: "During the first 32 games [of the World Cup], there were 302 players who could be seen at some point rolling around in pain, crumpling into a fetal position or lying lifeless on the pitch as the referee stopped the match." There are two ways to make the flopping more bearable, and both could be combined into a great ad campaign for a beer maker. Let's call it "Hops for Flops." Turn all of the soccer flops into a drinking game. Buy your favorite brew and take a drink of your hops with every flop. What if flopping extended beyond soccer and into peoples' every day lives? Wouldn't that be ridiculous? I can see the ad campaign n...

I love ABC's hit show Shark Tank. I also love making pancakes with Kodiak Cake mix because it's all-natural, made of whole grains, and tastes great. Imagine my surprise last month when Joel and Cameron from Kodiak Cakes walked onto Shark Tank and pitched the Sharks on investing in their business. I was thrilled! Naturally, I had to track down Joel and Cameron and see if they'd share some insight into preparing for Shark Tank and what has happened since appearing on the show. Luckily for me, they were willing to jump on the phone for an interview. All Shark Tank fans are sure to enjoy this rare glimpse inside the minds of two people who stood in front of the Sharks and lived to tell their story. President Joel and VP of Sales Cameron were seeking $500,000 for a 10% of their business. Ultimately, they chose not to make a deal with the Sharks.  Thank goodness. Here's their story: Tell us how you prepared for your time on Shark Tank. We prepared so much that it would be...

Edit on 11/11/14: After further consideration, I no longer agree that Portillo's should franchise. I still like my first two ideas, though. Portillo's is a terrific fast casual restaurant chain predominantly in the Chicagoland area. It's a true Chicago original, famous for its hot dogs, Italian beef, and chocolate cake. And it's reportedly for sale. Since I don't have a spare hundred million dollars lying around to make a bid, I'd like to share a few big ideas for the next owner on how to take Portillo's to the next level. I spent three summer and winter breaks from school working at my local Portillo's. I loved working there and I still love eating there. So to the next owner of Portillo Restaurant Group: here are three big ideas for you. We should chat sometime soon: Expand to Illinois' biggest college towns. Portillo's is extremely popular among young people — especially high school students. And 33 out of 38 Portillo's restaura...

My sister and I just visited the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studio Tour outside of London and we came back with the greatest souvenir these two Harry Potter fans could ever own: videos of ourselves flying on brooms, just like in the Harry Potter books and movies. YES!!!! Enjoy the video above . I've shown it to my wife and kids many, many times. It's time you saw it, too. As a marketer, I love this souvenir because it's something that visitors will take and show to people after their trip. Maybe you didn't even know that Warner Brothers kept two of its Harry Potter studios open after filming ended and that you can now tour them if you can get to Watford, England. But now you do, and that's because I've shared this video with you. I paid for a copy of this video and now I'm telling all my friends about the studio. Incredible. And this souvenir is so much better than just a t-shirt; it shows my friends exactly what they'll get to do if the...

What's the first thing you think of when you hear "RadioShack?" If you're like me, words like irrelevant and old come to mind. So is it time for RadioShack to take the nuclear route of changing its name? Well, maybe. Certainly its name is not its only problem. But perhaps consumers just can't get past the outdated name and look any further into what the company is all about. I know I can't. And what was once a thriving business is now struggling to find ways to grow. One Final Attempt I admired RadioShack's attempt at making fun of itself in its SuperBowl ad this year. But that single effort isn't enough. It may be time to start from scratch and build a new brand. Other Examples If history has taught us anything, RadioShack could take a few different paths: It could change its name and thrive. After its involvement in the Enron scandal in 2001, Arthur Andersen changed its name to Accenture and has done very well. Similarly, in 2003, cig...

Somehow, some way, I've managed to keep this blog going for five years. I've moved twice, changed jobs, completed grad school, published a book, and had two kids during that time. Thank you to all who have supported me, shared my writing, and contributed ideas throughout these years. I couldn't have done this without you. My Favorite Posts In an annual tradition, I'd like to highlight my favorite posts from the past year. Check them out: The Best Church Youth Group Fundraiser Ever (starring my sister!) Two Holes-In-One (starring my uncle!)  It Doesn't Have to Be Boring The Best WiFi Network Names My Favorite Ads Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 Add This To Your To-Do List   Enjoy my favorite posts! There's Never a Lack of Ideas

"But will my new cell phone get a good signal in my home?" That's the first question you should ask when you see those coverage maps from the major wireless providers.  Sure, it's great if your phone works in a ton of places around the US, but what matters most is if it works perfectly in your home. How can you be sure that it will? That's easy: have a "wireless signal party" and test it out. Invite a bunch of friends over for a party. Have your friends who use Verizon dress in red. AT&T friends dress in blue. T-Mobile friends dress in pink. You get the idea.  Then, have them show you how good their signal is in your house. Make phone calls from their phones to check how good their reception is. Put Your Money Where Your Coverage Map Is If wireless companies are so sure that they have the best network, then I think they would be willing to sponsor these types of parties. Imagine if Verizon said: We're so sure our coverage is the best ...