Tuesday

Life After Integrated Communication


I guess I'm at that point in my life where I have to start figuring out who I want to be. I'm on the edge of a diving board preparing to dive into my life as a responsible adult who contributes to society.  When I was little, I never pictured myself in the world of marketing. I actually pictured myself as a teacher, but that was all before social media.

I remember using Facebook and liking it, but when I got into Twitter that's when I fell in love with connecting with people for more than just casual conversation. I started networking with people who followed the same sports teams as me. We had great conversations during games and before I knew it I was blogging for an NBA affiliate website. That's when I realized that social media was something I could see myself doing professionally.

Fast forward 3 years, I currently work as the Social Media Manager for a health supplement company. I'm learning that social media is so much more than interacting. From a business perspective, social media combines online marketing, advertising, story telling, customer service and so much more. It's becoming a powerful and affordable way for many companies to reach out and advertise to their clients.

I've learned a lot about online marketing but I feel that I'm lacking some knowledge in the world of traditional marketing. That's where I felt that integrated communication would be beneficial. The marketing industry is very competitive and in order to do well, one must be well rounded in online marketing as well as traditional marketing. The new age of selling a brand will require knowledge of who people think in front of their computers, how they think when listening to the radio, reading a magazine, watching TV, and interacting with businesses face to face.

I see a lot of potential for myself in this industry. After graduation I want to open up a social media consultation firm working with multiple companies on multiple projects. Marketing is a really competitive industry and I am a very competitive person, so I know that if I'm willing to put the effort in, I will be able to make a name for myself within the industry.

5 Common Pet Peeves in Writing



I had the opportunity to read through Elements of Style on a red-eye flight to Alaska. It was interesting reading through it and seeing some of the things that I am guilty of in my writing. That being said, there were several things I saw, that as a content writer, really get under my skin.

1.  Misuse of Affect & Effect (pg 45)
When I was taking AP English in high school, I remember a simple mnemonic device I learned. This mnemonic device was burned into my brain to the point that misusing affect and effect is completely out of the question--even five years after graduating. The acronym R.A.V.E.N. means: remember, affect is a verb, effect is a noun.

Broken down into an example: We see that the side effects of medicine can affect your body.

2. Overusing Literally (pg 52)
I work with a girl who is 25 years old. She is a talented, creative individual, but when it comes to speaking, she is very influenced by pop culture. One of her most common and irritating habits is using the term, literally, to describe over-exaggerated states of emotion. Such as, "Oh my gosh! Did you see "Breaking Bad" last night? I literally died when I saw the end of the last episode!"

Oh really? You literally died? So this story is being told by your ghost? Because you look pretty freaking alive to me.

Here is a better way to explain how mind-blowing the episode of "Breaking Bad" was: "Oh my gosh! Did you see the episode of "Breaking Bad"? I was so surprised, I didn't see that twist coming at all!"

3. Using Qualifiers (pg 73)
This pet peeve is one that bothers me, but it's also one that I'm guilty of --Using qualifiers takes potential away from your sentence. Instead of finding descriptive words, we get lazy and use qualifiers.

For example:

Judy could feel the excitement coursing through her like a river on the first day of spring.

Judy was way excited.

Which one is more powerful?

4. Misuse of apostrophes to identify possession (pg 1)
When I was an editor for the newspaper at Taylorsville High School, our adviser spent a lot of time making sure we knew how to use apostrophes. Now, I'm pretty quick at detecting the misuse of apostrophes to identify possession. The most common ways the apostrophe is misused is when it is added to a year it in its possessive form as well as when it is added to words that end in s.

Examples:

Incorrect: The 1980's were awesome.
Correct: The 1980s were awesome.
This same rule also applies to decades. A decade is not possessive.
Incorrect: The dog wagged it's tail.
Correct: The dog wagged its tail.
"Its" is the unique instance when the only time an apostrophe is used is when it is a contraction of it and is, it's = it is; its = possessive.

Incorrect: James's car is red.
Correct: James' car is red.

5. Adding unnecessary commas in lists (pg 2)

I remember learning about commas in first grade. Mrs. Nancarrow was teaching us about putting commas in lists. She taught us to put a comma after the second to last list item that comes before the word, "and" when there are three or more items in a list.

Mrs. Nancarrow & Elements of Style teach: Judy's dress had yellow, green, orange, and pink flowers.

I'm excited for all of the other elements of style that were in the book. I know that implementing these rules will help me improve my writing.

Which of my five pet peeves are you guilty of?

Introduction to Psychology: Consciousness, Memories & Suggestibility

Yesterday I was talking to some family members about Hostess. It occurred to me that I haven't seen any commercials from the baked goods company for several years. Then it occurred to me that the last ad I remember was the campaign centered around the catch phrase, "Hey, where's the cream filling?"

There are two interesting things about this realization: 1) That Hostess doesn't have to spend a lot of money on traditional marketing because their snacks have become such a large part of American culture, and 2) The slogan, "Hey, where's the cream filling?" was first used in 1996.

At the age of 5, I perceived the message from Hostess, I encoded the message, and then I stored the message, and I remember the message nearly 17 years later during a conversation with family members. That's good marketing, Hostess. Good marketing, indeed.

When it comes to marketing, we want to ensure that the content, the ads, and the campaigns we generate are memorable. Creating memorable campaigns can result in creating new accounts. It's one thing to want to create something memorable, but it's another thing to understand how things are remembered. Get ready for a little Psych 101, fellow marketers.

Intro to Psychology: Consciousness
The readings tell us that consciousness is a personal experience of the world and one's own mind. We often confuse consciousness with simply existing. For instance, we see someone talking and walking and assume the are conscious, but we have no way of knowing if they are actually experiencing the things we see them doing. Instead of thinking of  consciousness as existing, think of it in terms of experiencing. Consciousness is a private experience of your own thoughts and the world around you. No one else can know exactly how you are experiencing something.

The overall concept of consciousness brings up two very significant problems. First is what the book refers to as Problems of Other Minds. This means that we have a hard tome perceiving the consciousness of others. As an example: Jan and Bob both taste a sour candy for the first time. Jan tastes the candy, feels it tingle her tongue, her jaw tightens, she thinks, "Wow! That's really sour," and she makes a face. She sees Bob make the same face, but she cannot know if he had the same experience as she did. Even if he says so, there is no way to ensure that they both tasted the sour in the same way. One thing the book stated that I found very insightful was this, "You are the only thing in the universe you will ever truly know what it's like to be."

The second problem is that of Mind & Body. It is hard for us to study how the mind is related to the brain and body. We do know that studies have show the brain seems to precede activities of the conscious mind, but we don't know if our consciousness is the way it is because of our brains or if there is some degree of separation between the physical make up of our brain matter and the psychological make up of our minds.

As a marketer, I can make assumptions all day about my target demographic, but on the most fundamental levels of human experience, I will never know exactly how they will experience my message.

Intro to Psychology: Memory

There are three steps to memory: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Encoding is where we transform what we perceive into a piece of information. Storage is the process of maintaining that information over time. Retrieval is bringing to mind that information that has been previously encoded and stored.  The reading also teaches that memories aren't just sets of current information, they are actually a combination of new information with previously stored information.

Earlier I mentioned recalling a Twinkies commercial that I first saw at the age of five. Somehow when I saw that commercial, I encoding the information that Twinkies have cream filling. I stored that memory and retrieved it enough times (this process of retrieving the information multiple times is also called rehearsal) that I was able to store the Hostess catch phrase as a long-term memory. This memory, while unattended for several years, still existed in my long-term memory, and once called upon it was again rehearsed and remembered.

Relating this to marketing, even further, brings to mind a couple of questions. How do we make a commercial or slogan so memorable that people rehearse it long after they have seen the commercial? Also, what are the most important elements of our campaign that we want people to encode, store and be able to retrieve?

Intro to Psychology: Suggestibility
Have you ever thought about what your earliest memory is? Have you been able to narrow it down to a specific moment in time? How old were you? I've always had a hard time with this exercise because I have a hard time separating actual memories from suggested memories. Suggestibility is our tendency to incorporate misleading information from external sources into personal recollections. As an example, I have seen a picture of our family during a party and seem to remember my aunt trying to get everyone together to take the picture, but I also remember my aunt showing me the picture and telling me about it. So do I remember the actual event of the picture being taken, or have I been told about the event and seen the picture enough to put that event together as a memory? It's hard to say, but suggestibility can play a big role in everything from family memories, to childhood traumas, to hypnosis, even to how we view certain products.

Let's say for instance you are doing a focus group on a new product and you are asking people's opinions on Miracle Whip versus Mayo. Showing the group a picture of a mom making a sandwich for a child using Miracle Whip, then asking them whether or not they remember which condiment their mothers used on their sandwiches as children may suggest a certain brand to them one way or the other.

Does suggestibility have it's place in marketing? Certainly. If there's a way that we can get our products or services integrated with certain long term memories of our clients, they are more likely to recall our brand when they are looking for our particular services.

We all want our marketing efforts to be memorable. The trick is making them so memorable that 17 years down the road when our clients are in the store looking for some baked snacks they will recall, "Hey, where's the cream filling?"

YES!: 7 Ways to Get People to Do What You Want

There will come times in our careers as marketers where we are trying to convince people to do things we want. Whether it's purchasing a particular product, asking for a referral letter from a boss we don't care for, or even getting the CFO to sign off on additional marketing funds.

Sometimes, making such requests can be daunting. The thought of being shot down can lead a lot of people to find an alternative solution. Fortunately for us, YES! teaches several techniques to persuade people to, well, say yes, even the request seem big.

Here are 7 tips for getting people to say yes to you:

1. Make the Message Positive
Instead of designing your marketing message around a negative point that you're hoping will scare people into doing what you say. Focus on the positive. For instance, let's say you're in charge of a stop smoking campaign. Traditionally, people focus on the negative, saying, "X amount of people died last year from smoking." Focus on the positive. "X amount of people quit smoking and lowered their risk for lung cancer." The more positive message still includes a large number, and it makes people want to be a part of the mentioned group.

2. Reverse the Traditional Incentive
The traditional incentives commonly used in marketing ask people to complete a task in order to receive a reward. However, a study on hotel towel recycling reversed this and provided an incentive then made a request. Guests were more likely to comply with requests to reuse their towels when they saw a positive action being taken by the company asking something from them. Translating this to my job. Instead of asking people to take a pictures of their orders and post it to Facebook to get a coupon code, we randomly selected winners to receive free products based off comments posted on a status update.  We sent a package to the winners with their product, in which we included an insert asking them to take a picture of the item they won along with a specified hashtag. We received much more participation in the second request than the first.

3. Get your Foot in the Door
Looking for customer feedback? Maybe your survey is a little lengthy. Here's a trick: start with a smaller survey or poll, then send the lengthy survey to those who participated in the smaller poll. Studies show that those who honor a small request, are likely to honor a larger request following the small one. This technique is called getting your foot in the door. It can also translate to sales. Those who buy a smaller item, are more likely to buy a bigger item later on.

4. Label Desirable Attributes in People
Sometimes we have to remind people that they are capable of what we are requesting them. Let's say
you are requesting for a bigger budget on a particular project, one you know that is beneficial for the company overall. You meet with your CFO who is known for making responsible business decisions. It is in your favor to tell him/her, "You are a practical, responsible Financial Officer. You always do what is right for the company. I know you'll make the right choice in this instance, too." If the budget increase is really beneficial, and your CFO reflects on your statements, that budget increase may come a bit easier than you anticipated. People often act the way people perceive them, especially when those perceived qualities are good.

5. Ask for a Favor
If you are looking to improve your relationship with an individual, Benjamin Franklin teaches that instead of playing a kiss up, to simply ask the person a favor. When you do this and they oblige, they build a connection with you after reasoning within themselves why they would do this favor for someone they don't know/don't like.

6. Point out Similarities
As odd as this sounds, and as far fetched, people are more likely to participate in your marketing when they are addressed by someone with a similar name or birthday. Often times it is  even subconscious, too.  Let's say you run a large call center where you are starting a new campaign. If possible, have Cara and Carl call out to all the C names on your list. Have Sally and Steven call out to the S names. These small similarities can make a difference in the quality and participation of those calls.

7. Give them a Reason
When I was a kid, I would always get frustrated with my mom when she would tell me no. It wasn't even so much that I didn't get to do what I wanted, rather I never knew why I couldn't do it. She never gave me a reason. Turns out this frustration is often transferred to adulthood. People are more likely to honor your request when you follow it with "because blah blah blah." Giving them a reason for your request or action makes it easier for them to oblige.

Isn't it time to start getting what you want out of the people you market to? Well, I think YES!

What are some other effective ways you've found to get people to participate in your requests?