SMART Marketing and PR

S = Strategy to Meet Goals
M = Media Mix
A = Art & Creative that Sells
R = Research to Identify Buyers and Measure the Results for ROI
T = Tactics & Channels that Fit the Situation

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Old Spice has new commercial writers

You probably don’t remember the lame commercials that Old Spice produced to try and boost their brand and sell more products years ago. They were not memorable.

But now, Old Spice has a new creative team. Quite simply, they’re nuts.

They’ve been known to shoot 200 commercials in 2 days. Then they put them on YouTube.

Old Spice has new commercial writers

Friday, July 2, 2010

Drowning at the party. One blink is all it takes.

Have you noticed all the drowning deaths in the news lately?

Holiday weekends are the most dangerous. According to the American Public Health Association, “Florida has the highest drowning death rate in the US for children ages 1-4 years (8.9/100,000) and during 1999-2003 recorded 356 unintentional drowning deaths among children in this age group. In children under age 5, swimming pool drownings are most common (68%).”

Click below to see how it can happen.

Drowning at the party. One blink is all it takes.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Will oil spill grassroots marketing campaign work for Palm Beach County?

Collateral damage is part of any disaster or emergency. Misinformation or the wrong perception is common. Florida is going through that right now.

Mention vacationing or buying waterfront property or near beach homes in Florida, outside the state, and many react, “The beaches are flooded with oil,” Property values are crashing because of the oil,” and on and on.

It’s just not true.

Click Below to See The facts:

Will oil spill grassroots marketing campaign work for Palm Beach County?

Thursday, May 20, 2010

How do you find and hire a professional writer?

More and more “writers” are appearing in the market. They blog, write email, use Twitter, and are rabid Facebook users. There is no shortage of channels for them to express themselves. Are these the people you should hire?

Click to read more: Marketing Works Today

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Mobile marketing is heating up! http://ping.fm/hQeWE

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Print Can Work as Part of a Marketing & PR Strategy

A good integrated marketing and PR strategy must incorporate the media types and channels that best fit the audience for a product, service, or situation. Many times print is a great fit. Read more:

http://brownltd.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/print-can-work-as-part-of-a-marketing-and-pr-strategy/

Monday, March 1, 2010

It Takes More Than a Single Bullet to Win in the Marketplace

Over the last month I’ve heard one employee after another, one senior executive after another, and one consultant after another tell me that they are looking for a magic bullet to solve their marketing and sales problems.

They didn’t phrase it that way. They said things like:
* “We’re jumping all over this social networking thing.”
* “I’m trying TV. I think that’ll bring in leads and traffic.”
* “I’ve got this really hot sales exec coming in. She’s going to make our numbers soar.”
* “The guy I was going to hire a year ago is available now so we’re ‘bringin him in’ because he’s a market maker.”

I asked, after each one of these statements, what else are you going to do and they each said, essentially, nothing. That’s it, nada.

Doing more than one thing makes it more complicated… harder to imagine.

Click here to read more:

http://brownltd.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/it-takes-more-than-a-single-bullet-to-win-in-the-marketplace/

Saturday, February 27, 2010

3 Sources to Help You Take the Guesswork Out of Marketing & Advertising

I'll bet you want to find out how to get more qualified leads, prospects, clients, and sales? Especially for the lowest cost per customer.

http://brownltd.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/3-sources-to-help-you-take-the-guesswork-out-of-marketing-advertising/

Friday, February 26, 2010

Use Interesting Places and Situations to Attract Attention

One of my specialties is writing and producing feature stories for the web, print, and TV that shows a product in a unique place or situation. The uniqueness attracts attention and the payoff is showing how the product or brand would work in almost every place or situation. Here's a sample about Amangiri:

http://brownltd.wordpress.com/writing-samples/

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Mike is now on the new social network site Google Buzz. Check it out and connect: http://ping.fm/PyoBk

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

15 Minutes. Time-frame for a weblead to encourage them to become a prospect

15 Minutes. That's how much time you have to answer a weblead. In this article you will learn how to setup a system to take advantage of those precious webleads. Find our more: Marketing Works Today

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Social network efficiency with Ping.fm. Create once, publish on all your networks.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

From Print to Phone to Web. And a Sale?

"Item Level Intelligence" (Radio Frequency Identification) will eventually replace bar codes on products. Smartphones will integrate that function to make point-of-sale more interactive and possibly ad/PR more interactive. In the meantime, to get more product info available to shoppers and ad/PR measurement for business, publishers are using scan/web/text messaging to get consumers to interact.

Smartphones that can read bar codes are allowing magazines to add Internet-like interactivity to print graphics and advertisements.

NY Times
Published: January 10, 2010
Print may be a flat medium, but that has not stopped magazine publishers from trying to add dimension to their pages. For at least a decade, they have been experimenting with bar codes and icons that could take readers to Web sites, trying to add a bit of Internetlike interactivity to their pages.

But the average consumer did not own a bar-code reader — until now. With the sudden ubiquity of smartphones, which have apps that can read bar codes, and cameraphones, which can easily snap pictures of icons, magazines like Esquire and InStyle are adding interactive graphics to their articles, while Entertainment Weekly and Star are including them in ads.

Click to Read NY Times Article

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Use Wikipedia as a Marketing Tool

In the age of social media, you can use Wikipedia -- the world's online encyclopedia –- as a marketing tool. Small businesses are finding that getting a listing in Wikipedia can help validate their existence and more.


Copywriting that Works in Social Media

You can write anyway you want to market your products, services, and relationships. Are they listening? Are they acting on your words? Do you get more qualified leads, traffic, sales, or relationships that matter?

I’ve always written to engage people as simply and personally as possible with the idea that a personal, helpful approach leads to a relationship.

The point is to add value to someone else. Adding value in relationships leads to two-way influence. A sale can come from that relationship – or not. You might get something better… world changing advice, a great friend, a business partner, or more.

Many in the Social Media world write like they speak or sound like they do at work.

As William Zinsser says in his classic book On Writing Well, “Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon.” I would add acronyms to that list.

When I was writing speeches for IBM and Motorola executives, I would ask to interview the speaker at their home. Most thought it strange but went along with it. The reason was to find out what they sound like when they are a real person. Not their work voice - their personal voice. A spouse or kids won’t put up with corporate-speak. Those tech and “leadership” words make executives all sound the same at work and bore an audience.

They make you sound the same as everyone else on social networks too.

If you aren't getting more leads and meaningful business relationships on social networks, consider hiring a professional writer. Social Media has become a vortex of content.

Professional writers help your content break through the clutter. They know, and have practiced, how to reach your audience and start relationships. To learn more about my freelance writing services, click here: Get Words That Work For You!