Blog Author Mellissah Smith - Page 69

Marketing Executive
Atlanta based

Marketing Eye is an innovative marketing consultancy firm that has offices in Australia and has recently launched in the US. We are looking for an energetic and career-orientated Marketing Executive who shares the vision to bring the best marketing advice and solutions to small businesses in the US.

Walking in Brisbane's West End this morning, I walked past this street sign. 

I stopped and looked at it for a few minutes.

Why not?

"Sounds unbelievable. My Melbourne dancing queen becomes a global business tycoon. I always believed in you. You are a female version of myself when I was your age. Only you have more balls. You are a real entrepreneurial woman and I was too long a successful manager with golden gloves. I admire people like you. I started my own businesses far too late. I am proud to be your friend."

I woke up at 5am this morning to this message on Whatsapp.

That age old battle - the ego vs the heart - is more relevant now than ever to us marketeers and anyone directly involved in business development. It dictates how you speak to the people you need to be speaking to; how you capture their attention and it applies to every communication you put out there – online, direct mail, posters, brochures, social media.

The thing is though, with everyone communicating to everyone else - shouting, pitching and bargaining for a share of the market - it can be hard, defeating and infuriating for those of us running ethical business operations to compete with ‘get rich quick’ and ‘lose 7kg in 7 days’.

When I think of Valentine's Day, I think of rose petals and champagne, caviar and strawberries. Soft music playing in the background and a handsome, romantic man laying beside me looking up at the stars.

It's a dream, one that I would never want to wake up from.

Happy Valentine's Day to all. I hope your Valentine makes your day memorable.

It is with great sadness that on the weekend we lost a friend. A man who had so much to offer the world, yet felt that he had so little.

This is the second time in four months, that a friends husband or partner has chosen to end their life, of their own free will, leaving behind small children who will grow up, never being able to share their happy moments or times when they just need some reassurance from their Dad.

It feels like the birth of the sweeping social media phenomenon occurred just five seconds ago, with Pinterest’s viral growth to dizzying heights, Facebook’s takeover of Instagram and Twitter launching the new network, Vine.

The new medium is continuing to grow and evolve, spawning a new phenomenon of its own: visual social media.

Like moths to a flame, humans are innately drawn to visual elements including images, photographs and sensational design. As more of us are increasingly mobile and engaging with social media on smartphones, viewing an image is far less tedious than squinting to read a few lines of tiny text on a moving train.

An extraordinary thing happened yesterday. I arrived at a client meeting and was greeted by their inhouse / incumbent agency and felt like I had walked into a one-woman war zone.

It was suppose to be a meeting whereby both parties worked together on different projects to accelerate the growth of a company, working on the strengths of each agency - but it didn't quite go to plan.

Firstly, this woman walked into the room, didn't acknowledge me at all and sat down and started typing away on her computer. After 10 minutes, she was faced with having to be introduced to me and as she shook my hand, she nearly broke it. I hear men say that this happens with people who try to make a statement, but in 14 years of business, this has never happened to me. I have never met a woman who has shook my hand so aggressively that my fingers turned blue.

My first thought was about how the meeting was going to unroll and whether it was worth me being there.

It's Friday... and most of us are in need of a motivational talk. Watch this video by Kid President for a dose of Friday morning inspiration!

As business owners and managers in an ever evolving world, our jobs become more challenging every day – every hour – to cut through clutter and make consumers notice our message.


How many times do we find ourselves repeating what we say to co-workers to get a message across?  For most of us, this isn’t a reflection of how we’re gauged as professionals or individuals but 95% attributable to the ‘151 rule’.


They say a person needs to hear new information at least three times before it registers into his/her mind for immediate recollection.  This has been taught over and over again to us and you can test it by saying aloud a new name you come across three times consciously.


When you target a market with a specific message the same rule applies, all except your target isn’t one person and those three times won’t cut it.  It’s all about repetition.  You have no control over which people are listening at what time of the day - so the logical bet is to be accessible and available 24/7/365.