The live streaming video of the oil spill turns my stomach, so I’ve been struggling with this question for weeks: “Can Responsible Marketing help restore BP?”
My gut says “never!” but my brain says “maybe.”
The fact is, trust requires both competence and character—two things BP lacks.
I know it’s early to ask, but if BP did the following things:
Successfully stopped the oil spill
Adequately cleaned up their mess
Proved they made their other rigs safe; and
Reinvested a large percentage of their profits into other renewable energy options
…would you be willing to give them a second chance?
I boycotted Exxon after the Valdez spill, so I’m on the fence on this one, folks. I’d have to see something pretty special from BP to get me to reconsider them.
Research has shown that for knowledge workers, using money as an incentive actually hurts performance. You read that right. If you want your team to really shine, give them a purpose:
We’ve been talking about the marketing benefits of adding purpose to an organization since the beginning here. The research findings illustrated in Daniel Pink’s new book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us add another dimension to the argument:
If you want to fire up your employees, give them some personal freedom–and give them a purpose.
Know a company that’s managing and/or marketing with meaning? Share it here.
A surprising perspective regarding B2B email marketing was published recently in the Harvard Business Review blog that got one of our client’s hackles up, and I think it will yours too.
My comment was one of 48—most in violent opposition to the idea:
As we all know, the phrase “permission marketing” was popularized in Seth Godin’s book of the same name in the late ’90’s. By his definition, email needs to be “anticipated, personalized and relevant” or it’s spam, and I agree with him.
Would it be good for business to be able to communicate with their customers via email? Of course.
But if a customer doesn’t want their inbox to be filled with messages from their IT company, their marketing firm or their any other B2B partner, it’s their right.
Almost 10 years ago, research was done at the University of London regarding the effects of information overload on knowledge workers. At that time, the average knowledge worker was interrupted 168 times/day on average. This influx of information resulted in an average short-term reduction of the worker’s IQ by 10%.
We’re busy at work. We have things to do, customers to serve and many of us, hours to bill.
I’d argue that B2B spam is even MORE harmful than B2C spam. At least when we’re reading our personal email, we can deal with the clutter at our leisure without thinking twice. Hitting the delete button on B2B spam is more difficult—we’re processing our inboxes as fast as we can, but have to stop and review the latest spammy message from one of our vendors to make sure there isn’t relevant information we need for our jobs.
[B2B spam] shows a lack of respect for a customer’s time and is clearly irresponsible marketing.
While it’s true that there is some level of permission granted to communicate with your customers, it’s not an open door to send them all your marketing communications until they ask you to stop.
Just in time for Tiger Woods’ return to golf at The Masters, Nike has released the following ad featuring the voice of Tiger’s deceased father, Earl:
Here’s what Earl is saying:
Tiger, I am more prone to be inquisitive, to promote discussion. I want to find out what your thinking was. I want to find out what your feelings are. And did you learn anything?
On the surface it may seem like a bit of a head-scratcher for Nike: Woods’ father wasn’t faithful, either.
But consider this: Most of Tiger’s sponsors have bailed except Nike and it’s in their best interest to see him restored. This video shows a remorseful Woods looking his fans straight in the eye. By approving and participating in this ad, he’s showing he hasn’t forgotten his roots. That he knows his father wouldn’t approve. And that he’s learned something.
Opinions are polarized from the general public. Here are two from YouTube:
This is brilliant, Nike’s invested too much time and money into Tiger Woods to not do something like this. I give this a thumbs up with the reasoning that it isn’t often a sponsor will put money into saving a sports figure. And I think Tiger approving of it means he’s really showing the amount of change he’s willing to make to appear as an honourable sports figure again. I LIKE THIS. ~nboysis
Corporate damage control and a well-orchestrated PR campaign. And who really knows what Earl would say? He’s DEAD. Now? Tiger and Nike are bringing him back from the dead to pimp him out for greed. Poor taste Tiger….you would come across better by keeping a low profile in my opinion and working on your marriage to save your image, not your corporate whores. ~zenstate
So, is Nike’s new Tiger ad responsible or not? What say you?
I know. This execution has been done before, but it’s still pretty clever and the message is the right one.
There’s been plenty of talk about the eminent death of the publishing industry as we know it. This video addresses these preconceptions head-on, then flips ‘em on their ear.
This video was created by the UK brand of Dorling Kindersley for internal use. Its positive message and creative execution made it a big hit at DK and they decided it was worth sharing outside the organization.
Really, the power of this video lies in its ability to change perceptions, and in about two weeks it’s been viewed nearly 300,000 times.
So, where can you use creativity to change perceptions?
2009 was rough year, and a lot of companies have dramatically cut their marketing budgets. A lot of brand advertising budget has been moved to sales promotion.
You gotta do what you gotta do. But whatever you do, don’t cut corners on creativity. Bland and boring never sells.
Seems we’ve been up to our eyeballs in positioning and message strategy work at Outsource Marketing lately. Of course, positioning should be the cornerstone of all your marketing communications—without meaningful differentiation, you’ve got nothin’, after all.
But your positioning has to be more than simply unique and matter to your prospects. It has to be true, too.
If you are selling “the world’s toughest phone” that’s “virtually unbreakable,” perhaps it should be.
While Sonim XP1 CEO Bob Plaschke handled this with an amazing amount of grace, the fact is it would appear to some that this is nothing more than another hollow marketing claim.
Persuasion, good.
Puffery, bad.
Not just because you might get caught. It’s because it doesn’t respect the people that ultimately pay the bills—your customers.
Is Sonim guilty of the age-old marketer’s practice of marketing puffery? Considering their “unbreakable” phone broke, does it really matter?
“The Ringtone from Hell” is video six in our series of seven Responsible Marketing web shorts, but you could argue it has nothing to do with Responsible Marketing at all.
Truth is, a few of our shorts are about character development and having fun with the angel and devil characters as they go through their days working at Outsource Marketing.
We hope you enjoy it, and we’ll be back on message with video seven in a week or so.
Want to know what Responsible Marketing is about but don’t have the time to read our white paper on the topic?
Well, here’s “The 7 Keys to Responsible Marketing in 2 Minutes,” featuring the characters you’ve grown to love (or hate) in our Responsible Marketing web shorts.
