Never a Lack of Ideas

On each of the previous three Halloweens, I've posted my list of the best brands in the United States ( part 1 , part 2 , part 3 ). This Halloween, I'm switching it up a bit: I'm publishing a four-part series of my favorite advertising campaigns of all time. Over the next three days, I'll post my favorite: Print campaign TV campaign Digital campaign Integrated campaign Part 1: My Favorite Print Ads In the 1990s, I fell in love with the Absolut Vodka ads I would see in our family's subscription to Sports Illustrated. They were simultaneously beautiful and witty. They inspired me to study marketing and graphic design, and ultimately choose to make this my profession. It turns out I'm not the only one who loves these ads. There are several fan sites devoted to Absolut print ads. My favorite is AbsolutAd.com . I've spent a lot of time browsing on the site and I never get bored. The site takes me back to when I was a kid, dreaming of the advertising i...

Since writing my book and delivering my TEDx talk , several people have reached out to me and asked a variation of the same question: "What's the most important thing to do in marketing?" They're looking for marketing's Golden Rule. Well, the answer is actually very simple: Create a product or service that is so awesome everyone will want to tell his or her friends about it. "But that doesn't have anything to do with marketing" is a typical response. Actually, it does. Product features are a critical part of marketing (in fact, "product" is one of the traditional marketing 4 Ps). A slick marketing campaign and great packaging can't fix everything in the long term. Sure, you can quickly sell a lot of a bad product or service if you pour a bunch of money into marketing communication, but in the long term, people will figure it out and tell their friends how bad your product is.  Buyer Beware I love infomercials. Seriously. I watc...

It's been six great months since I published my book , Hey Marketers, Get Your Priorities Straight. Since then, I've given a TEDx talk about several key points from the book. I've also heard from many of you that my book and talk have provided guidance on a subject in which many startups, small businesses, and non-profits struggle: how to set marketing communication priorities. I've created an infographic (click to enlarge) summarizing key points from chapter six in my book (and the first half of my TEDx talk). I hope you'll share this infographic with everyone you know as we continue to spread the #marketingpriorities message. Share it on your favorite social network ( pin it here ), email it out, and print it out and post it on the refrigerator at work. I would really appreciate it. Enjoy! There's never a lack of ideas.

I did it! I reached 500 contacts on LinkedIn. It's the highest number of contacts reported by the site — it only shows "500+" contacts from here forward. I've been watching my total ever since I hit 450 and I've been getting increasingly excited about hitting 500. When I hit 500 today, I expected a congratulatory email, a new view of the site, or maybe some other cool surprise when I logged in. But instead I got... nothing. Any Excuse for a Party LinkedIn is missing a perfect opportunity to reward its power users with something special when they hit 500 contacts. It would have been so easy for them to send me an email to say thank you for using the site. Or they could have Tweeted a congratulatory message to me today. But instead, my big moment was anticlimactic. I'm an important user for LinkedIn: I've given them tons of information about myself, and I'm on the site a lot, so I see a lot of ads. It's in their best interest to keep me co...

Some people believe the world's first advertisement was created on a sidewalk in the ancient city of Ephesus. The photo below is of the ad, carved into the street. The etched left foot is a call to action for people to turn left. Depictions of a heart and a woman represent a brothel. So the ad says, "turn left here to find a brothel." Last week, I was in London and I saw the ad below. The arrow clearly lets us know there's a Subway just 20 seconds ahead. Isn't it incredible how the more things change, the more they stay the same? Add This To Your To-Do List The reason this type of advertising is still around today is because it's the most basic, fundamental, and important type of marketing communication a business can do. That's why it's the first marketing communication must-have I wrote about in my book : Utilize your physical location if you have a brick-and-mortar presence. That means putting a sign outside your business to let peo...

For more than 25 years, Metra, the commuter railroad in the Chicagoland area, has had a wonderful newsletter called On the Bi-Level. It used to be a fantastic tool for interacting with riders. The newsletter is printed every month and distributed on each train in the system. The best two parts of the newsletter used to be: "Sounding Board" was a forum for riders to ask Metra questions. Metra would write back with hilarious, sometimes snarky, responses. "Sound Off" was by far the best newsletter feature. Riders would write in to complain about fellow riders. The stories they told were incredibly entertaining. Here's one of my favorite submissions, from an August 2006 letter (featured in the absolutely awesome 25th anniversary issue ): "Today I saw an all-time first. ...A young brunette began fumbling with her purse, pulled out a can of aerosol hair spray and began spraying her hair. The man behind her gagged a bit but no one said a word. Unbelievab...

Let's spice up some things that are traditionally boring: LinkedIn requests and out-of-office emails. Why? Because doing so surprises and delights people, and it raises your cool factor (trust me, I'm an expert in cool factor...). LinkedIn Requests   Every time you request to connect with someone on LinkedIn, the same default email will be sent on your behalf if you don't change it: "I'd like to add you to my professional network." Boring! Why not spend five seconds and change it up? Here are three that I've sent recently to friends of mine: "Oh please, oh please, oh please!" "Let's be frienemies" — I sent this to a friend who is going to work at Yahoo. "Pretty pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease!!!!" Each one of these emails elicited a response email to me, with a little joke in return. When was the last time someone replied to your default LinkedIn email? Out-of-Office Emails "I'm currently out of the office an...