Never a Lack of Ideas

Chips, Dip, and Redbox Yesterday, I attended a marketing presentation by Mark Achler, Senior Vice President of New Business at Redbox. Mark discussed how Redbox has formed great partnerships with consumer packaged goods companies. He showed an example in which Tostitos had set up large displays in grocery store aisles. If consumers purchased three Tostitos products, they'd get a free night's movie rental from Redbox. This partnership increased sales for both Tostitos and Redbox, so it was a win-win situation. Diapers, Wipes, and Redbox   When Mark showed a graphic of all the brands Redbox has partnered with on similar deals, I thought there was one big missed opportunity — diapers. As I've come to learn, new parents are very much tied down to their homes at night. Once a baby goes to bed, parents are left awake in the house with a few hours of "free time." As new parents, my wife and I have spent several nights watching movies rented from Redbox. We have nev...

Mayan Predictions According to the ancient Mayan calendar, the world will end on December 21st, 2012. That's just days away! Where are all the doomsday ads? Think of the opportunities: The world is ending in a month, so buy that Mercedes you've always wanted now. You only have a few days left; take that Apple Vacation you've always dreamed of. Eat like there's no tomorrow — because there might not be! Join us at Red Lobster for all you can eat lobster and steak. Buy a Tiffany's ring and propose to your girlfriend. Don't experience the end of the world alone! The biggest opportunity for doomsday marketing is for non-profit organizations trying to attract donations. They can ask for all your money before the end of the world — do a good deed before we're all gone! Headline Marketing I call this type of marketing communication that uses a current event in the message, "headline marketing." There are two major benefits to using headli...

Happy Halloween For the past two Halloweens, I have presented my lists of the top ten and next ten brands in the United States. I would remove Angry Birds from the list (what a difference a year makes!), but I'd keep everything else the same. My previous posts describe my criteria for these lists. So, in my final installment of this series, I give you my list of top brands #21-25: 21. Corona — There are thousands of brands of beer, but the one that stands out most makes us think of sitting on a beach every time a lime is placed inside one. 22. Tostitos — Go ahead, try to name another brand of tortilla chip. There's a party in every bag. 23. Christian Louboutin — There's only one brand of shoe recognizable simply by its red sole. Louboutin even has a trademark on the red sole in the US. 24. Tiffany & Co. — Every woman wants a gift in the little blue box, and every marketer marvels at the margins Tiffany brings in compared to its competitors. 25. Linked...

French Not Required Right next to the French Metro stop at the Palace of Versailles is a McDonald's that gets tons of traffic from visitors around the world. We stopped in and I loved what I saw: six self-serve kiosks at which customers can place their orders in any one of five different languages. That's brilliant. Managers at the restaurant have clearly identified that customers in the restaurant come from all over the world , they may not speak French, and they may not be familiar with all of the items McDonald's offers in France. So they give customers the ability to take their time and read about menu items in their language of choice, place their order with a credit card, and then pick up their food when it's ready . I love innovations in fast food, so I had to take a little video of us using the digital ordering system. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed filming it. Add This to Your To-Do List If McDonald's can innovate its order...

I'm Going Wild! In my last post , I wrote about five lessons I learned from starting my own business, hoping someone might learn something from my experiences. In this post, I will describe what I learned about myself throughout this process — not to toot my own horn, but to hopefully inspire someone to start her own business as a result. I became a good salesman. I have never given myself credit for being good at sales. But what I've learned is that sales is an extension of marketing — or the other way around, depending on who you ask. Good salespeople know the needs of their customers and deliver a solution that satisfies those needs. Identifying the customer was my first challenge: distributors, retail stores, and end consumers all have different goals and the sales pitch to each party is vastly different. As a one-man operation, I was forced to become a great salesman, and if you start your own company, you will be, too. I perfected my elevator pitch. Related to #1 an...

A Walk on the Wild Side In 2007, I designed a rummy-based card game called What’s Wild?! . I produced several thousand copies of the games and created a company to sell it. I did everything on my own— from testing different versions of the game, filing trademarks, outsourcing its production, generating PR, building a web presence, shooting a commercial, and selling to distributors, stores, and direct to customers. It was the biggest learning experience of my professional career — more so than any other job and any level of education I’ve had. The past five years have had plenty of ups and downs and I thought I’d share some of the lessons I’ve learned along the way. My next post will be on things I now do really well because of this experience. Focus on what you do best. I’m a marketer, through and through. I’m not a lawyer or an accountant. When I decided to produce and sell What’s Wild?! all by myself, I significantly underestimated the time I would spend on things other than ...

Unfiltered You might think that all coffee filters are the same. And, in fact, a quick look on a shelf in a supermarket or a search on Google will not reveal much differentiation between coffee filter brands. You might think there's no way to create a brand for a coffee filter for which people would pay a slightly higher price than an unbranded filter. If you think that, you would be wrong. I recently saw this list of 24 things you can do with a coffee filter besides make coffee. I learned a lot — coffee filters are great for cleaning windows because they are lint-free. Who knew? And I'll bet there are hundreds more uses for a coffee filter that I don't even know about. A New Way of Thinking About Coffee Filters   What if one brand of coffee filter crafted its brand around the idea that there are limitless ways to use a coffee filter and encouraged its customers to share new ways to use their filters? Put great content like that into the hands of a gifted markete...