All media is local

In Las Vegas on a budget. (Who isn’t on a budget these days?) So I tweeted for suggestions for the best, bargain buffet in town.

I also asked a woman in a University of Nevada sweatshirt playing the nickle slots.

Sorry, peeps. She just so nailed it.

Ideas to steal: Be interesting

A simple message from one of my favorite social media bloggers. Nick O’Neill’s The Social Times combines the passion of an enthusiast with sharp analysis. “If you want to become an influential node in the global social graph work at becoming interesting,” he writes.

I’m exhausted just keeping up with him on this and his other blog, All Facebook, which is as its title implies. It’s not easy to live your demo(graphic).

Time Moves On. Time Stands Still.

Every now and again, something happens that can really shake things up. Really grab your attention. Make you examine everything. This week, it was the loss of an old and dear friend. Someone I’d been close to, and not so close to, since grade school. Three days before he died, we’d had a great conversation at the supermarket and made plans to get together. Real plans. Of course, the plans didn’t happen. He’s someone I expected to live forever and now he won’t. And it really got my attention. And not for the reasons you might think.

Ideas to steal: Great brands deliver

Scott Hanley gets it.

General manager of public radio station WDUQ in Pittsburgh, PA, Scott understands that building a strong, sustainable brand is not the end game. Rather, it’s a powerful means to increase sales or, in the case of WDUQ, grow listenership and underwriting.

Macaroni cantaloupe knows the future

Social media marketing is all the rage. And it deserves to be.

When used right, social media can benefit your brand through increased customer loyalty resulting from memberships in ad hoc fan clubs and conversations among social media participants. Your audience practically screams for you to market to them. If you think the next big thing after Tim Horton’s is a nationwide chain of grilled cheese fast-food joints, you can jump on the Facebook pages of Cheese Toasties (sponsored by Heinz) and Grilled Cheese Sandwiches (there are several) to speak to half a million people ready to burn the tops of their mouths at your restaurants.

In the era between a black and white TV announcer politely asking viewers to share the secret of laundry day successes and our current fascination with creating buzz with viral marketing, word-of-mouth propelled brands (and profits) of everything from the Vegematic to Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In to Chia Pets to Geico Insurance. Secretly, mad men prayed for Johnny Carson to poke fun at their ads. (Was the Tonight Show the original social network? After all, how many work hours were spent “retweeting” favorites from his opening monologue?)

Getting your customers (and your wanna-be customers) to amplify your messages can probably generate more impressions per marketing dollar via social media than the more established vehicles, such as print and broadcast. But don’t forget that bad messages fall just as flat on Twitter as they do on channel 14. Maybe flatter, because on Twitter, you don’t have Ed McMahon guffawing to be sure the recipient gets the joke.

The title of this post is what the 614th person said in the world’s longest game of telephone. The message started as, “Mac King is a comedy magic genius”. Viral indeed.

Ideas to steal: How to work a trade show

Reader John Whyte sent us this link from VerticalResponses’ marketing blog. It does a great job of covering trade show basics—basics that are all too often forgotten when investing (tens of?) thousands of dollars at a trade show.

One of my favorite trade show guidelines is the three second rule.

Ideas to steal: Making the old new

Shreddies is a breakfast cereal that originated in the UK in the mid-1950’s and became popular in several countries, including Canada. A little over a year ago, Post Foods Canada Corp. responded to dormant sales by introducing Diamond Shreddies. Take a minute to appreciate what they’ve done. Select “English” and check out the videos that were placed on YouTube as part of the campaign.

Get it?

Is now the time for postal mail marketing?

A small item in today’s New York Times, Recession Takes Toll on Direct Mail Ads, indirectly suggests it’s time to look again at this tried-and-true marketing technique.

With others cutting back, your well crafted piece is more likely to be noticed in a smaller mail pile. Keep costs down by developing a highly targeted mailing list to limit the mailing to the most appropriate prospects and customers. Artwork, printing and mailing can total under a dollar for each mail piece, using vendors such as Amazing Mail. Look for a vendor that makes it easy to customize mailings by salesperson or sales territory.

Hint: It’s not to late to get something prepared and mailed to promote your activity at NAB or InfoComm. But be sure to include a “takeaway” for those who may not be going to the conventions this year.

Editors reveal more ways to get your news published. And not published.

Last month, I posted results of a survey I conducted of trade press editors. What I heard from the editors, and passed along to you, reinforced my notion that successful placement of your stories requires knowing what stories are worth publishing, as well as where and how to deliver your press releases.

Since that posting, I received additional responses and comments from editors that reinforce and supplement the original post.

One comment totally blew my socks off.

Ideas to steal – Why some ideas survive and others die

One of our readers forwarded an article to me that was first published in The McKinsey Quarterly (free registration required) a little over a year ago. It’s chock full of great ideas on ideas and is a must read.