Holiday Marketing Perfection via Coca-Cola

You didn’t think I was going to let the Holidays pass without a marketing spin, did you?  : )

Coca-Cola has once again mastered the art of Holiday marketing with its latest commercial featuring the band Train’s new single “Shake Up Christmas”.  The commercial is titled “Snow Globes” and has been played in traditional and digital channels since Thanksgiving.  Holiday marketing can be a tricky strategy for many companies that try to be everything to everyone.  Rather than focusing on a single message (that would ultimately offend someone somewhere), Coca-Cola adapts current branding and messaging to local markets at a cultural level – whether you’re in Africa or North America.

Fun Fact:  Did you know that Coca-Cola’s marketing engine is responsible for the North American depiction of Santa Clause?  Read all about it on the Coca-Cola site:  http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/heritage/cokelore_santa.html  or simply enjoy the North American version of their Holiday campaign below …

Happy Holidays!

Now Hiring! Brand Ambassadors …

From time to time I’ve seen job postings or requisitions for Brand Ambassadors to represent a Brand in a positive way and carry the brand message out to the public via a variety of media channels.  This is an extremely important role in marketing that often represents a strategic initiative to initiate or further customer engagement especially in new marketing channels like social media.  The role affords the organization control over public messaging and can provide valuable feedback and metrics for analysis of market engagement, penetration, segmentation, etc.

I believe a lot of organizations have failed to recognize their employees as Brand Ambassadors. Yes, I’ve heard almost everyone say that they feel their employees are Brand Ambassadors but this isn’t something typically supported from a corporate perspective.  Thanks to social media (whether YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Blogs … take your pick!) everyone can truly be an ambassador – and to the chagrin of a lot of marketing organizations … they already are.

Why not EMPOWER your employees to be brand amabassadors?  Every company has an opportunity to do this during new hire training, onboarding, or even via their employee handbooks.  HR and Marketing could team up and devise a very quick yet powerful brand overview or guideline that employees could feel empowered (and supported) to leverage across their social media presence.  Employees are (usually) very proud of their workplace and want to share stories, interactions, etc. with their personal networks … and trust me, they already do … but have not been armed with referencable items like logos, tag lines, style sheets, or even a Top 10 List of do’s and don’ts.  In the recent past, Google’s handbook summed all of this up in one line … “Don’t be stupid.” … although, I’m sure that’s changed by now.   Wouldn’t it be great if your entire organization felt empowered to be brand ambassadors?

Sales vs. Marketing – An MBA Opinion (Part 1)

The old adage still rings true at most organizations – sales and marketing do not get along.  In fact, most organizations fail to acknowledge (outside of quotas) that the sales team is ultimately responsible for revenue and unknowingly pit Marketing against Sales and vice versa.  In my opinion, ALL functions of the organization should be aligned to enable revenue growth. Too often, leadership fails the sales organization in properly aligning corporate resources and departments to enable the best performance of the sales organization.  Simply purchasing email lists, attending trade shows, etc. is NOT properly aligning marketing with sales.  Both departments should work in tandem towards revenue attainment.  If marketing, customer support, development, etc. do not have “skin in the game” then leadership has failed to enable a sales team that can deliver revenue.

The root cause of this, in my opinion, is the failure of business schools to provide sales theory and practice to MBA students (heck, even Business Undergrads).  All the marketing theory, product management, business analysis, financial modeling, etc. you learn in B-School means absolutely nothing if revenue isn’t ultimately generated.  There is definitely an innate skill set component to sales that cannot be taught – but, without a proper introduction or understanding of basic sales methodologies in an MBA program there is never an opportunity to understand the importance (and mechanics) of properly aligning an organization for revenue growth or attainment.  And the net result is almost daily conversations like this:

Related Articles

• Does Sales Care About Alignment with Martketing? (customerthink.com)
• Sales and Marketing Alignment (demandmetric.com)
• Aberdeen proves that Sales and Marketing Alignment pays off… (customerthink.com)
• Six Best-Practices to Improve Sales and Marketing Alignment (marketingprofs.com)

Recruiting Is Marketing

Image via Wikipedia

On November 17th I’ll be facilitating a roundtable discussion for work at HealthPartners in Minneapolis.  “Recruiting IS Marketing” is the theme for the event and I’m excited to bring the best of marketing and recruiting practices together as well as learn what other major employers in the Twin Cities are up to with their Talent Marketing efforts.

I’m planning on introducing basic concepts like consumer behavior, marketing management, etc. courtesy of my MBA coursework at St. Thomas and how each of them is vital for organizations to leverage moving into 2011 and 2012.  We are fast approaching (believe it or not) a very significant shortage of skilled talent as our economy continues a shift from an industrial base to a knowledge base. The battle lines are being drawn …

Any major marketing organization, like a big box retailer, is in the midst of final preparations for Q4 business (their version of the battle line).  They’ve spent the past 12 months (since the end of the prior Holiday season) leveraging marketing practices to understand, engage, influence, and drive consumer purchasing behaviors.  They’ve built loyal followings and preliminary engagements via social media, have a presence on search engines, have optimized their advertising channels, invigorated their websites, and prepped their operations and processes as part of their execution strategy.  So, why am I talking about retailers and marketing?

Because, recruiting IS marketing!

Talent Acquisition / Retention should be in the business of executing an organizations overall business level strategy.  It is the Human Capital of an organization in an ever increasing global knowledge based economy that enables success or leads to failure.  Recruiting organizations are far too often leveraging antiquated methodologies when it comes to acquiring talent for their companies.  Bridging the gap between their B2C or B2B marketing efforts with their recruiting efforts should be a primary goal for Talent Acquisition in preparation for the impending shortage of skilled talent. A synergy between corporate marketing and human resources creates organizational efficiencies and drives additional value (and results) for both departments.  After all, job candidates are customers and customers are job candidates.

The battle lines are being drawn and plans are being made … the decisions that are made in the coming months will determine who gets the sale (or candidate) and who doesn’t in 2011 and 2012.

Related Articles

• Why Don’t More MBAs Go Into Sales? (willprice.blogspot.com)

QR Code Branding and Marketing – Say What?

Enabling consumers or candidates to actively engage with marketing collateral or messaging is the execution piece that many organizations completely miss.  A lot of time and money is spent developing social media strategy, marketing messages, and establishing or maintaining brand presence and awareness without thought to the opportunities to enable the sought after engagements!  Did you know that by 2012 or 2013, more mobile devices (phones, gaming devices, netbooks, ipads, etc.) will be sold than traditional PC’s?

While candidates and consumers will still be leveraging the Internet and will have access to marketing collateral on Search Engines, Facebook, Twitter, SEM, and PPC campaigns … the PLATFORM for engagement has fundamentally CHANGED.  Thus, the question … how are you executing your marketing strategy and enabling access to your content easily?  The secret is QR Codes.  QR codes galore!

Consumers and candidates can simply scan your QR code with their mobile devices and be taken to landing pages, social media sites, etc. – wherever your marketing campaigns or collateral resides.  And get this – you can track and measure everything.  What more could a marketer ask for?

Think of the possibilties from a personal branding perspective as well!  Rather than shooting resumes around via email or pointing people at specific URL’s like a LinkedIn profile, Facebook page, Blog site, etc. – you can centrally store all of your contact points, information, and background (or CV) collateral in a central location like Gravatar  and allow people to choose which channel they’d prefer to leverage to interact with you.  And all they have to do is scan your personal QR code.  Nifty, huh?

Related Articles

• QR Codes LIKE Your Facebook Page (jeffkorhan.com)
• Are QR Codes Ready for Their Close-Up? (gigaom.com)
• Slap A QR Code On That Product So That People Can Like It (techcrunch.com)
• Does Anyone Actually Use QR Codes? (theantisocialmedia.com)