Lone Star College does good marketing. As this ad in the Houston airport shows, they get to the bottom line right away: Adding over a billion dollars to the local economy. Then they tell how: Students' increased earning power and a better educated workforce. Their call to action? Go to our website to discover our full impact. Clear, succinct, and powerful. Which should be how they educate too.
Their website follows through: Why choose Lone Star? They tell you not in three pages, or even several paragraphs, but in 11 plain language words:
We're close to home. We're affordable. We want you to succeed.
(I might have said "We help you succeed." Small point though.)
So many colleges and universities don't put a stake in the ground and declare their value proposition. Which make it hard for prospective students and parents to know why they should choose or support that particular school.
Learn from Lone Star.
State clearly and concisely why people should choose you.
What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of green M&Ms?
When I was growing up in the '70s, everyone "knew" that green M&Ms were an aphrodisiac. Even if we didn't know what the word meant, we sure knew what it led to! Or what we believed it led to. Where the urban legend started, no one knows for sure. But what a great marketing idea! For years, Mars, the company that makes M&MS, denied the green M&M story. Then they decided to capitalize on it.
Here's the Valentine's Day story from a few years ago, excerpted from blogger David Emery's fine post. Mars dubbed green "the new color of love" for Valentine's Day. Special all-green packages of M&Ms were available through the holiday marked with a "disclaimer" that read, "Consumption of The Green Ones® may result in elevated romance levels. If you experience this effect, contact your significant other immediately." The idea was to stand out "amidst a sea of traditional red and pink products." And they did.
Mars was putting into action my favorite marketing axiom: If you can't fix it, feature it! They recognized how widespread the myth was, probably thought it was harmless, and figured out how to uniquely market what they then called "the Green One" while simultaneously positioning the brand to appeal more to teens and even adults.
Can we create and capitalize upon harmless myths to promote health and social good... a pro-social placebo? Hey, maybe CDC will make asparagus the new green aphrodisiac!
Public Health has struggled for years to tell its story- ironically a very worthy story- in a powerful and compelling way. We worked with CDC 10 years ago to help them tackle being misunderstood and to create and communicate their brand identity - with what we called Putting Science into Action for a Safer and Healthier America. Then Washington State's Department of Health (WDOH) engaged us to hep them overcome being "underknown and undervalued" - and therefore underfunded. The WDOH central idea? Always Working for A Safer & Healthier Washington, coupled with three identity themes. In both cases, our research showed it was not just about health, but the more emotional issue of keeping people safer, that resonated across the board. Plus action - public health is about taking action that makes a difference. Here's a one pager I wrote in Government Executive on Building a Brand Identity.
And here are three examples of relatively low budget, high production value videos that do a good job at making public health come to life and personally relevant. They all capture the "safer" aspect of public health and show the value of public health action across its many "touch points." Most importantly, they all convey a message that hits home.
The first one, from American Public Health Association's (APHA) Healthiest Nation in One Generation campaign, shows through sophisticatedly simple word graphics, one person's interactions from birth through adulthood with Public Health (including 4 mentions of Motor Vehicle Injury Prevention, but who's counting!).
This second one, is from theThis is Public Health campaign of the Association of Schools of Public Health (ASPH). Along with student voices and simple red stickers, it powerfully SHOWS in fast MTV-like style, the numerous touch points of public health.
And to tie it all together, this video by the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), which is the national organization representing local health departments, goes from showing (again with sophisticated graphics and word art) what a world without Public Health would be, to the good we have here in America, thanks to our everyday heroes (truly!) in our local Public Health Departments. It ends by showcasing a Public Health logo, given that when public health is working best, it's mostly invisible.
Together, these videos shine a light on what may be the most important and valuable (and often invisible!) service our country provides to us: Public Health. And a professional community I am so proud to be a part of.
Leading. Solution. Best. Innovative. These are the top 4 most overused buzzwords in public relations, according to Adam Sherk and PRFilter, a website that searches and aggregates press releases. Here's the Top 10 list and the number of times each word was used in press releases in a 24 hour period:
1. leading (776) 2. solution (622) 3. best (473) 4. innovate / innovative / innovator (452) 5. leader (410) 6. top (370) 7. unique (282) 8. great (245) 9. extensive (215) 10. leading provider (153)
What does this mean? Clearly, these words lose their impact through overuse. While intended to convey uniqueness and value, instead these words communicate "ho hum," "me too," "jargon," and "I don't really know my customer." Digging deeper, I believe the biggest offender is "solution." What customers talk that way in everyday life?? Aside from being generic and ubiquitous, the term "solution" has a very sterile feel to it that weakens your intimate connections with customers.
So what's the alternative? Stay real. Get to know your customers. Find out what the "solution" is, and what problems you can help them solve. That's what you talk about in press releases, in sales training, and especially with customers.
No, I don't mean MTV's award-winning series on musicians performing with acoustic (i.e. unplugged) instruments. I mean unplugging and taking a break from our cell phones, our texting, our computers, our iPads, our tweets, and of course our Facebook. And yes, blogging. (Which - good news - will make you feel, well, groovy, according to my friends Paul and Art!).
As a society, we have without awareness slipped into a new social norm; one with expectations of always being “on," instantly accessible, having your whereabouts and activities known to all, and finding out anything and everything immediately. Underneath it all is our dubious societal addiction to instant gratification.
Most marketers feed the notion that instant gratification is a good thing. We promise faster and faster, which we imply is better and better. There is however longstanding research that proves otherwise. Here's Wikipedia's summary of the classic Stanford Marshmallow study:
To test the theory of a person’s ability to delay gratification, the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment (1972), conducted by Prof. Walter Mischel, at Stanford University, California, studied a group of four-year-old children, each of whom was given one marshmallow, but promised two on condition that he or she wait twenty minutes, before eating the first marshmallow. Some children were able to wait the twenty minutes, and some were unable to wait. Furthermore, the university researchers then studied the developmental progress of each participant child into adolescence, and reported that children able to delay gratification (wait) were psychologically better adjusted, more dependable persons, and, as high school students, scored significantly greater grades in the collegiate Scholastic Aptitude Test.
Delaying gratification as a four year old is linked with happiness and better grades ten years later... amazing!
Can you pitch delayed gratification or slowing down as a good thing that results from your product or service? If so, think "benefits segmentation." Determine what segment of your market would value or perceive benefit from unplugging. It may be way more folks than you think!
P.S. Check out the new nonprofit Sabbath Manifesto and their 10 Principles. They have an app (no irony here) too to support people unplugging. And it is purely a happy coincidence that the first National Day of Unplugging started on my birthday!
Lots of companies are beginning to see the promise of riches in the "transition" space - that is, the space between hospital or nursing home care and traditional home healthcare. The idea is that the more that patient care and monitoring can happen at home, the better. Fast Company tells the story of GE and Intel's Quiet Care partnership to "keep Grandma safe." Check out this video (albeit in an assisted living facility) of the infrared motion sensors that promote safety and independence.
Now imagine this same technology to help people living where they most want to- at home. Huge marketing opportunity, but... it means thinking strategically beyond the concept of "patients."
The missing pieces of the puzzle are: 1) The panel of healthcare providers that can virtually track and respond to any emergencies. 2) The IT infrastrucure to get the right healthcare in place immediately. 3) Access to patient electronic medical records, and 4) Vision to expand these monitoring tools beyond "patients" to ever-independent boomers, babies, and everyone in-between.
According to the U.S. government website Treasury Direct, our national debt now exceeds 14 trillion dollars. $14,201,111,097,252 to be exact. Does that number, or even the word "trillion" mean anything to you? I cannot conceive of what a trillion is, besides being a whole lot. Which is a problem because it makes the amount of our debt seem unreal, and therefore hard to take seriously.
We can use numbers in ways that make quantities easy to understand or hard to understand. (I was going to say "obfusicate" but that would be counter to the point now, wouldn't it!). I believe that most of us have trouble once we get beyond millions. We may know that a trillion has 12 zeros after it, or is a million millions, but does that really help?
The always-growing U.S. National Debt Clock helps by breaking down the huge debt into smaller parts.
And then of course we have social math analogies to the rescue, this time courtesy of ABC News (for visuals, check out this video).
Our national debt is like:
2,169 Haitian economies
Super Bowl tickets for half of the entire world's population
The 400 largest companies in the U.S.
58,000,000 (that's 58 million) new homes
U.S. defense budget for the next 20 years
That fact that our national debt is over $14 trillion dollars is what it is. And rising $8,000 every second according to Laurie Anderson's video PSA (personal service announcement), with interesting social math about paying off this staggering amount of debt.
While social math does not change this reality, it can increase our understanding, make the number personally relevant and real, and ideally activate better decisions and policies.
Sure, a candlelight vigil is good. People learn about the situation and feel like that are doing something when it seems like nothing can be done. Memorial services and honoring the victim's memory is important too. But some situations need reform, better laws, to really make an impact. Violence against youth, rape, sex offenses, and murder need policies that force reform. Educating violators and victims and the public still matters, as does creating safer environments. Ultimately, all three approaches contribute to the higher good. Sometimes though, it takes a law.
When asked for help, the late great management guru Peter Drucker asked two basic questions. The first was "what business are you in?" In Good to Great, Jim Collins distinguishes between what a company needs to preserve - its core purpose and values, and what a company needs to change to stimulate progress. In our consulting work, we invite clients to complete this simple sentence: We are in business to ___________________ . These three approaches have in common the importance of identifying your core purpose, adhering to it, and distinguishing it from the strategies and practices you employ to achieve your core purpose.
The classic example of confusing purpose and practices goes choo-choo. Fifty years ago, railroad execs thought they were in the business of trains. Had they realized they were really in the transportation business, they would likely be leaders in the industry today. As Theodore Levitt tells the story in the timeless HBR article Marketing Myopia, railroad executives were product-oriented, not customer-oriented.
It is easy to sway from one's core purpose: I saw this laboratory's office sign on their building in Atlanta on a recent business trip. Lots of lab services. And bonus, passports too!
Ready to stay true to your core purpose? Then answer these three questions:
What business are you in?
Why are you in this business?
What is your core purpose?
Next then is linking your answers to the two central marketing questions - the "dynamic duo" as it were.
The U.S. Declaration of Independence promises us Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness as our unalienable, sovereign rights. Profound, powerful words indeed. What does it mean for marketing? Well, from a popular culture perspective, there have been five movies called The Pursuit of Happiness, from a 1934 film starring Joan Bennet to a 2006 flick starring Will Smith, as well as books, a TV series, songs, and a Canadian power-pop/indie rock band.
As for business, the corporate world has forever been promising happiness as the benefit of using its products, right? Use this shampoo, buy this car, wear these shoes and immediately attract great looking people, have unlimited sex and make tons of money. Which of course leads to happiness!
Do you see the marketing opportunity? Very few companies explicitly say "if you buy our product (or use our service), it will make you happy." The way it is now, consumers need to infer happiness from the other promised benefits, like looking better, being richer, etc.
Why not be explicit about marketing happiness? Tie it into our unalienable right as human beings. Build it into your company culture, family culture, or even national culture. This speaks to a measurable, collective or public happiness, which is what Thomas Jefferson meant in the Declaration of Independence, according to historian Gary Wills. The pursuit of happiness, the attainment of happiness.
Which brings me to the most recent topic of my e-newsletter, Your Marketing Minute, about Bhutan's main objective: National Happiness. To quote this small Himalayan nation's young king:
Yet we must always remember that as our country, in these changing times finds immense new challenges and opportunities, whatever work we do, whatever goals we have – and no matter how these may change in this changing world – ultimately without peace, security and happiness we have nothing. That is the essence of the philosophy of Gross National Happiness. Our most important goal is the peace and happiness of our people and the security and sovereignty of the nation.
Promise happiness, deliver happiness. What a magical marketing opportunity to pursue this brand new year!
