Return on Intention

There is nothing quite like holiday promotions to make me realize that new ideas are hard to find. It’s not just the use of the same color scheme and overall theme that bothers me, it is Valentines day after all…but the names of the promotion (sales) are very similar, both using the same heart for “love” in the title and to top it all off, the same “Early Bird” and “Night Owl” copy.

Advertising is primarily a form of communicating to an audience to get them to take an action, or change their behavior. PR is pretty much the same, but the two use different tactics. What should stand out is the PR function of internal communication. When given the choice on whom to hire for employee communication, PR firms win hands down. This is because as a general rule, there are no “Internal Advertising” agencies.

So if both advertising professionals and PR professionals are communications specialists, then whey is there no advertising function for internal communication? Mostly, because when given the choice, the tactics used by PR professionals work better for internal communication than those of the ad professionals.

Can you imagine running ads for your employees to inform them of your companies’ strategic plans, direction, values and goals? It wouldn’t work. Imagine what the company newsletter would look like without news, and just full of ads?

So what does this all mean? Marketing communications aimed to the external audience (customers) is not so different from those for the internal audience (employees). Your employees have an interest in the success of the company. They need information. There is a group of your target market that shares a pretty close interest in your company, or product / service category. These are the influencers.

Influencers are the group of people that help shape the trends and opinions of the buying market. They influence because they are considered experts in a subject. To have that expertise they need information…just like your employees. The difference is really in the amount of interest a person has in your product / service category to determine whether they are an influencer or not.

This post is not intended to prove that PR is better for marketing communications that advertising is. The point here is that there are many tools in the toolbox available to accomplish each marketing need. If you need to reach the influencers of the market, traditional media and advertising becomes a supportive tactic, not a purchase pusher. Your advertising is a good way to help the general market talk to your influencers by offering a common frame of reference. Your influencers need more information but they like to get it a different way. They want to talk to you sometimes, and have their questions answered. Advertising and even traditional PR is a one-way affair, from you (the company) to them (the customer).

Treat your influencers like you treat your best employees. Don’t sell them. Inform them. Give your influencers a way to talk to you and get information, this way they will have a lot to say to the rest of your market.

It isn’t hard to see why employees, PR professionals, enlightened marketers and customers love social media. It may not be “the” tactic to ensure all your marketing communication efforts are golden, but no one tactic is. It can be a very powerful tool, though.

Most people have heard of the Dyson Vacuum cleaner. It’s the vacuum that doesn’t lose suction, and it looks pretty cool too, as vacuums go. Most people also know that a Dyson can sell for around $400 and up. So who would sell a Dyson for $50? Kirby.

Kirby is a very high priced “Home Cleaning System”. It’s a vacuum with a million attachments including a paint sprayer. Kirby is sold only by door-to-door sales people. We had a demonstration in our home this week. At the end of the pitch, which was quite amazing, we were told that if we trade in our current vacuum, they would give us a credit toward the purchase price of the Kirby machine. I asked about how the Kirby compared to the Dyson, and the sales rep told me “The Dyson is just another plastic, poor quality vacuum. I have one in the van someone else traded in, I’ll sell it to you for $50.” My friend was sitting on the couch in my home office waiting to meet with me and jumped up and said “I’ve got $40 bucks on me, will you take that?” Being true to his brand, the sales man said “I don’t have any faith in the Dyson, but I’ll just throw it out if I don’t get rid of it, so sure.” How is that for a statement of loyalty to the product?

During America’s Funniest Home Videos on ABC, Energizer ran a 30 second spot. You may have seen it, its the one where aliens jump start their flying saucer with jumper cables attached to the Energizer Bunnie’s ears. The spot was OK, but what played before it was even better.

Right before the commercial break Energizer sponsered a video clip on the show. They did it by first running a 5 or 10 second video overlay of Energizer, then showing a home video of a dog running around a living room and barking at the camera, and then doing it again, and again, and again, and …. you get the idea. The video had a voice over from the host of America’s Funniest Home Videos, so it was part of the show. Then after the funny voice over and the dog video ran for a minute, another overlay appeared from Energizer using the video as its example of how Energizer keeps going and going.

I just loved this, because I watched it. I don’t mean it was the greatest video I have ever seen, or that the voice over was really that great. When I say i watched it, i mean litterally. I didn’t fast forward my DVR like I did for the commercial that followed it. By integrating their message into the show in a contextually relavant way, Energizer received a welcome impression from me.

This week, Al Gore’s movie about global warming (An Inconvenient Truth) hit DVD. Along with the movie was one of the best promotions I have seen in a long time. There are two options for buying the dvd, one with just the dvd and one packaged with a flouresent low energy light bulb for $5.00 more. This was a home run! While light bulbs don’t have much to do with movies, a low energy light bulb has everything to do with the content of this movie.This bundle is a win for everyone. The light bulb manufacturer (Phillips) wins buy being able to put their brand in front of the customer in a way that doesn’t seem like advertising or marketing. Its a win for the movie because the point was to get people involved enough to take action, and this light bulb is a way to do it, not to mention the “you’ll never guess what I saw” factor.The retailer and the bulb manufacturing company also win because after watching the movie you will probably be convinced to go buy more of the light bulbs.This is the kind of promotion that works, the products may not seem to be relevant to each other, but the content of each is. The customer isn’t going to look at this and say “Why would a light bulb be packaged with a movie” because to the customer, this isn’t a movie, its a peice of content. That content has a value above and beyond what the product physically is. This point is important for companies when they make decisions, especially marketing ones. Never forget what your customers get out of your product.

Have you seen the Nintendo Wii commertials?  They are targeting the middle aged man directly and promoting family “play time.”  This console is apperantly different than the Xbox 360 and the PS3, these are more for already established gamers. 

With the proposition that Wii is bringing to the market, family entertainment, they might have a chance to win some market share to its competitors.  For now they are doing Ok in promoting this values, but we got to ask ourselves, are these the kind of people who are gamers? Maybe not, and maybe Wii does not want those hard core gamers who focus on game play, graphics, and intensity of games.  I hope that this strategy is not intended to be a competition for the other consoles because it just seems so different, and lets face it, how many 15-32 year olds want to play a video game of tenis with their parents?

I couldn’t help but appreciate finding this bag of candy in my sons trick-or-treat stash on halloween. It goes to show, there is always a way to get your message out.