Just recently, US Airlines were left embarrassed when an employee responded to a customer with a cryptic tweet – an image of a woman and a very strategically placed toy airplane. Understandably, this social media marketing error horrified the world and the image went viral. In addition, the airline’s bizarre apology was retweeted over 12,000 times.
The PR failure from this ill-advised US Airlines post served as a reminder of the power of social media and how it can cause devastating damage to a company’s brand.
Here are the six lessons to learn from this PR plane crash, and other social media disasters:
Expert Marketing Blog - Marketing - Page 37
I’ve got a not-so-secret weapon to reel clients in. It’s called marketing automation.
You walk in to your favourite shop and immediately, something beautiful captures your attention. You need it, you want it, it would be just right for you.
Summoning all of your courage, you walk over to that breathtaking prospect and begin your introduction. And no, I’m not talking about a man, or a pair of Jimmy Choos - I’m describing something else that makes my heart beat; engaging with a potential new client; that instantaneous allure of a new connection. And I’m not going to lie; you must approach business like you would a date.
Yes, I’m encouraging you to flirt with your customers.
Read more about: My secret to flirting and business → You walk in to your favourite shop and immediately, something beautiful captures your attention. You need it, you want it, it would be just right for you.
Summoning all of your courage, you walk over to that breathtaking prospect and begin your introduction. And no, I’m not talking about a man, or a pair of Jimmy Choos - I’m describing something else that makes my heart beat; engaging with a potential new client; that instantaneous allure of a new connection. And I’m not going to lie; you must approach business like you would a date.
Yes, I’m encouraging you to flirt with your customers.
Yesterday, I spoke at Cebit 2014 on sales process automation.
It was an interesting topic because so many Australian companies have yet to realise just how much more efficient their sales process can be through sales automation and the ROI in terms of revenue acquired because of having an effective sales process automation system in place.
Collaborating CRM, marketing automation, workflow automation and email marketing, sales process automation is one of the most important areas for businesses to focus on in 2014.
Read more about: How can marketing automation help your business? → It was an interesting topic because so many Australian companies have yet to realise just how much more efficient their sales process can be through sales automation and the ROI in terms of revenue acquired because of having an effective sales process automation system in place.
Collaborating CRM, marketing automation, workflow automation and email marketing, sales process automation is one of the most important areas for businesses to focus on in 2014.
Chase Performance has created successful business solutions through an award-winning combination of consulting and services. They work across a wide range of industries, developing the expertise required to deliver the most premium consulting services available.
Read more about: New brand design for Chase Performance → 
The room suddenly became silent.
Everyone unconsciously took one step back as if to clear the way.
She had arrived.
Read more about: The lessons we can learn from Italian Vogue Editor Franca Sozzani → Everyone unconsciously took one step back as if to clear the way.
She had arrived.
I cannot believe my day yesterday.
Firstly, I woke up after having a decent nights sleep - something that has eluded me for the past week. Then, as I drove to work, I stopped off to grab a coffee and croissant from my favourite cafe on Commercial Road in Melbourne. I dropped my car off at the office, and as I rushed outside the building to grab a taxi, I literally stopped in my tracks. There was so much traffic - bumper to bumper, and I had to be at the Lawyers office in 30 minutes. I panicked.
It wasn't a great start to the day.
Read more about: #Boost Adidas Experiential Marketing Campaign A Winner → Firstly, I woke up after having a decent nights sleep - something that has eluded me for the past week. Then, as I drove to work, I stopped off to grab a coffee and croissant from my favourite cafe on Commercial Road in Melbourne. I dropped my car off at the office, and as I rushed outside the building to grab a taxi, I literally stopped in my tracks. There was so much traffic - bumper to bumper, and I had to be at the Lawyers office in 30 minutes. I panicked.
It wasn't a great start to the day.
A few years ago, I began travelling internationally once a month. While the jet lag had me struggling to keep awake in meetings, it was only secondary to my concern of swollen ankles which eventually extended right up my leg. It would take days to go down and I started experiencing pain that wouldn't go away.
I had a problem.
Read more about: Midwest Medical Enterprises Brings New Branded Medical Device To Market → I had a problem.
February is a great month to take stock of where your company is heading. Closing in on the "pointy' end of the financial year in Australia, companies there are taking stock of whether or not they will make their sales targets.
Marketing Eye is safely on-track, but instead of sitting back and watching the new clients come in, we are firmly placing our feet on the accelerator and going full steam ahead. Our Melbourne and Sydney offices are looking for 50 new clients before the end of the financial year.
So, like any good manager, I have put aside a marketing budget of $150,000 to be spent on sales and marketing activities. Our internship program ensured that we had a heap of new ideas, and alongside our new exposure to the US-market and the way they use technology to power marketing campaigns, I have to say, I am fairly confident that this goal is achievable.
It caught my attention by accident. I was in an airport and Scarlett Johansson popped up on facebook. Apparently, after eight years of being a global ambassador for the anti-poverty group Oxfam International, their relationship had come to an end due to her doing a Super Bowl commercial for SodaStream.
Now, that's a word I haven't heard since I was a child. SodaStream was in every home when I was a child and at some stage, went down the same route of so many other popular brands that are "fads" and became a thing of the past.
The uproar was because SodaStream operates in Ma'ale Adumim, a large Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank.
The pedigree marketing background in consumer products that CEO Daniel Birnbaum credits to his name, was the reason that SodaStream fell in his lap. A friend asked him some years to have a look at the operations with him as he thought it was undervalued. After much consideration, it was decided that for $6 million, they would buy SodaStream and Birnbaum would take over as CEO.
I have watched Birnbaum and I would say that he has a "Steve Jobs" style about him and without doubt the same marketing nous.
Instead of selling SodaStreams to sit on your kitchen bench, he revamped the design so that it looked great on the bench and then started a multimillion dollar marketing campaign to showcase how much more environmentally friendly SodaStream is compared to Pepsi and Coke.
It was this head on approach that caused an uproar over this years Super Bowl Advertisements, causing SodaStream's original advertisement to be banned by Fox. Instead the advertisement was placed up on YouTube and received almost 13 millions worth of hits and was shared on every social media platform imaginable. On top of that, they received tens of millions of dollars in free editorial worldwide, literally putting SodaStream back on the map. It didn't harm them any having one of the most beautiful women in the world, sipping SodaStream from a straw.
In an interview with USA Today, Daniel Birnbaum said of the whole debacle of using the phrase "Sorry, Coke and Pepsi." : "Which advertiser in America doesn't mention a competitor? This is the kind of stuff that happens in China. I'm disappointed as an American."
As a marketer, I think Daniel Birnbaum is a genius. He may be using big agencies, but I suspect that he has alot to do with just how successful SodaStream has become. From a $6 million investment, the business now has a billion dollar market cap and while they don't have the marketing budget of Coke and Pepsi, they are giving them a good run for their money by clearly differentiating their value proposition. Who doesn't want an environmentally friendly solution and to save money at the same time? As for taste, I am neither here nor there. They both taste different but I am fine to carbonate my water with a SodaStream if it means that I don't have cages of landfill that is directly contributed to my laziness of buying on the run.
Read more about: How Daniel Birnbaum turned a 6 million dollar company into a billion dollar global enterprise. → Now, that's a word I haven't heard since I was a child. SodaStream was in every home when I was a child and at some stage, went down the same route of so many other popular brands that are "fads" and became a thing of the past.
The uproar was because SodaStream operates in Ma'ale Adumim, a large Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank.
The pedigree marketing background in consumer products that CEO Daniel Birnbaum credits to his name, was the reason that SodaStream fell in his lap. A friend asked him some years to have a look at the operations with him as he thought it was undervalued. After much consideration, it was decided that for $6 million, they would buy SodaStream and Birnbaum would take over as CEO.
I have watched Birnbaum and I would say that he has a "Steve Jobs" style about him and without doubt the same marketing nous.
Instead of selling SodaStreams to sit on your kitchen bench, he revamped the design so that it looked great on the bench and then started a multimillion dollar marketing campaign to showcase how much more environmentally friendly SodaStream is compared to Pepsi and Coke.
It was this head on approach that caused an uproar over this years Super Bowl Advertisements, causing SodaStream's original advertisement to be banned by Fox. Instead the advertisement was placed up on YouTube and received almost 13 millions worth of hits and was shared on every social media platform imaginable. On top of that, they received tens of millions of dollars in free editorial worldwide, literally putting SodaStream back on the map. It didn't harm them any having one of the most beautiful women in the world, sipping SodaStream from a straw.
In an interview with USA Today, Daniel Birnbaum said of the whole debacle of using the phrase "Sorry, Coke and Pepsi." : "Which advertiser in America doesn't mention a competitor? This is the kind of stuff that happens in China. I'm disappointed as an American."
As a marketer, I think Daniel Birnbaum is a genius. He may be using big agencies, but I suspect that he has alot to do with just how successful SodaStream has become. From a $6 million investment, the business now has a billion dollar market cap and while they don't have the marketing budget of Coke and Pepsi, they are giving them a good run for their money by clearly differentiating their value proposition. Who doesn't want an environmentally friendly solution and to save money at the same time? As for taste, I am neither here nor there. They both taste different but I am fine to carbonate my water with a SodaStream if it means that I don't have cages of landfill that is directly contributed to my laziness of buying on the run.
It's a strange phenomena to think that we have two sides of our brain that decipher information in two inherently different ways.
The left side is logical, analytical and objective, whereas the right side is intuitive, thoughtful and subjective. With the latter being the one credited to creativity; some of us are fortunate enough to play in a creative field where idea generation, designs and looking to the future are all part of the parcel.
Read more about: 10 Websites That Are Guaranteed To Make You More Creative → The left side is logical, analytical and objective, whereas the right side is intuitive, thoughtful and subjective. With the latter being the one credited to creativity; some of us are fortunate enough to play in a creative field where idea generation, designs and looking to the future are all part of the parcel.
As I sit in the hub of innovation at Atlanta Technology Village, I am amazed at just how many companies here are working on the next big thing.
They are not just revamping what exists already, but revolutionizing the way in which technology is used and powered to bring change. There isn't a developer here that hasn't caught on to something big, but perhaps, for some it won't happen because they are bringing the wrong product out at the wrong time, or they simply do not know how to market it.
December is upon us and in the marketing world, its a big month for writing marketing strategies for 2014. As we conduct one workshop after another, it amazes me at how out-of-touch people really are through no fault of their own.
At Marketing Eye, we work tirelessly on keeping our top marketers up-to-date with the latest in marketing, yet they still stay behind because there is always someone out there bringing out a new solution or new way in which to market, that may catch on and be the next big thing.
Marketing automation has been around for a few years, but it is not done and dusted. Instead, marketing automation is evolving and transforming the way in which we conduct marketing and process our prospects and clients into a more advanced customer relationship program. What is missing though is the biggest influencer in marketing today - and that's social media.
Your bounce rate may come second in your book to other metrics such as number of visits or page views on your website, but it is something that many small businesses can leverage if they put it to the forefront.
After checking the Marketing Eye google analytics account yesterday, as I do every day, I paid special attention to how the website bounce rate was going. I had just been to a number of my client's google analytics accounts and noticed that theirs ranged from 35 percent to 80 percent - depending on whether they allow Marketing Eye to do their SEO and invest in creating content to drive connections.
For those who are uncertain what a bounce rate is, it simply is a record of the "bounce" that occurs when a visitor goes to your website, reads a page or looks at a page, then leaves your website. A "bounce rate" is the percentage of total visitors that come to your website that then bounce off of it.
Theoretically, the lower your website's bounce rate, the better your conversion rate, or at least the higher the potential conversions, because more of the people who visit your website like what they see, and click around on your content.
According to Weidert Group, 'a good bounce rate would be anything under 50-60 percent. A large factor influencing bounce rate is what kind of page you're looking at and what the content is on that page. If a page links to other pages, say, products you make or services , then a bounce rate of above 60 percent wouldn't be out of the norm.'
Humbled by an employee discussion in our Atlanta office, I was pleasantly surprised that given the hypothetical situation of winning the lotto, all employees said that after a brief holiday, they would want to come back to work at Marketing Eye.
The engagement level on a day-to-day basis in our Atlanta office is very high – not to say, other offices are not the same. Company culture is everything and there are many reasons why it has a direct impact on bottom line.
There are a number of lessons learned from having a start-up in Atlanta that is inherently different from other offices we have.
The first being that all employees have chosen each other
Usually, a senior manager or myself makes the ultimate choice on who is going to join the team and in what capacity. Instead, in Atlanta, I have been over-ruled twice, and both times, I had to put my hand up and say that my choice would have been wrong for the team.
A few years back, I heard of a character called Hannah Montana from one of my nieces who desperately wanted her album. I couldn't be bothered going out to buy it, so I simply gave her money so she could do it herself. Sitting in the car, she sang songs from Hannah Montana, mimicking her teenage idol.
All fairly harmless stuff - after all, Hannah Montana was a Disney brand, wholesome and pure that teenage girls the world-over could relate to.
Then something happened. She grew up. From teen idol to woman and that's where it all began.
Like Madonna before her, and Kylie Minogue for that matter, Miley Cyrus, the former sweet teenage girl that played Hannah Montana wanted to evolve her brand image and take it to the next level. If she would have kept up the wholesome image, it probably would have ensured that her brand diminish over time. Instead, she reinvented her brand. First it started with a number of selfies in proactive poses creating headlines. Then it was the picture of her smoking pot which I would imagine was not by accident - instead just part of a brand evolution.
Read more about: What we all can learn from Miley Cyrus → All fairly harmless stuff - after all, Hannah Montana was a Disney brand, wholesome and pure that teenage girls the world-over could relate to.
Then something happened. She grew up. From teen idol to woman and that's where it all began.
Like Madonna before her, and Kylie Minogue for that matter, Miley Cyrus, the former sweet teenage girl that played Hannah Montana wanted to evolve her brand image and take it to the next level. If she would have kept up the wholesome image, it probably would have ensured that her brand diminish over time. Instead, she reinvented her brand. First it started with a number of selfies in proactive poses creating headlines. Then it was the picture of her smoking pot which I would imagine was not by accident - instead just part of a brand evolution.
Driving back from Hilton Head in South Carolina on the weekend, #24yrold asked me what I thought of the new branding for Yahoo! I hadn't given it much thought and had mainly seen press around the rebrand that was negative - aimed directly at Marissa Mayer.
My thoughts on Marissa Mayer are varied. Firstly, she should be applauded for her career achievements, ambitions and determination to clean up a company of Yahoo!'s magnititude. It's no small feat! She is a woman who is held in high esteem amongst most women who want to climb the corporate ladder. The downside of Marissa Mayer is that she comes across as arrogant, dominant and because she makes the hard decisions - not always in good favor with her colleagues. She isn't necessarily a crowd pleaser.
Read more about: How do you know its time for a rebrand? → My thoughts on Marissa Mayer are varied. Firstly, she should be applauded for her career achievements, ambitions and determination to clean up a company of Yahoo!'s magnititude. It's no small feat! She is a woman who is held in high esteem amongst most women who want to climb the corporate ladder. The downside of Marissa Mayer is that she comes across as arrogant, dominant and because she makes the hard decisions - not always in good favor with her colleagues. She isn't necessarily a crowd pleaser.