When Coke and Pepsi start being judged by their social responsibility as much as their taste (and their ads), you’ll know Responsible Marketing has arrived, right? Well, that time has come.
The associated article does a great job laying out the differences between the campaigns, then left it up to readers to choose which campaign they preferred.
For marketers wanting to reach the younger generation, this makes sense:
This “conscious capitalism” has been a growing trend, and for good reason. A 2006 Millennial Cause Study by Cone Inc. and AMP Insights found that 69% of Millennials will consider a company’s social and environmental commitment when deciding where to shop, and a whopping 89% are likely to switch from one brand to another if the second brand is associated with a good cause. That’s powerful motivation for companies fighting for market share.
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.
Ah, ah, I almost forgot…I’m also going to need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday, too. Mmmmmkay? Thaaaaaanks!
We here at Outsource Marketing like to think that our office culture doesn’t resemble that of our good friend Bill Lumbergh’s Initech. But we do relate.
Don’t know who Bill Lumbergh is? Never heard of Initech?
Then you haven’t seen Mike Judge’s 1999 cult masterpiece “Office Space.” You don’t know what you’re missing. Here’s the trailer:
A couple months back we took time out of our busy schedules to have a little fun and watch Office Space as a team. Somehow the movie is even funnier watched in a group.
But a movie packed full of classic, memorable quotes delivered with comic brilliance inspires imitators. Lot’s of them. Over and over and over again.
Yes, “We’re going to have to have you go ahead and come in on Saturday” is a brilliant line in the hands of Gary Cole but not in the hands of amateurs.
In 2006, we decided we needed get serious about greening Outsource Marketing after years of agreement about having an environmentally responsible workplace but no real plan to make it happen.
Everyone at Outsource is required to sign our Green Pact. The Pact is our personal vow to abide by a list of rules we developed as a team regarding paper use, bottled water, use of cleaning supplies and such.
While several people were passionate about the idea, one person, dubbed our “Green Czar,” was given the responsibility and authority to lead the charge.
Some team members were perfect for the role: They motivated us to do what was necessary and made us feel good about the work we were doing.
Others? Well, let’s just say some people can drive you to drink.
So, what are some of the best practices you’ve seen in workplace recycling programs?
Why not believe it? You just heard it from the Devil himself.
Well, because it’s all a lie.
Sex sells sex.
Sex gets attention.
And sex creates controversy.
But it seldom converts attention to action.
And most people don’t recall the brand the ad was for.
Men respond better than women to sexy ads, as expected. But in Buyology, author Martin Lindstrom shared this interesting tidbit: One study found that even for men, recall for sexually explicit ads was less than 10%, but recall was nearly twice that for the non-sexually charged ads.
Steve Hall of Adrants puts it perfectly when talking about sex in advertising call it:
. . . a lame cop-out used by marketers who lack imagination to create more compelling work that will sustain itself beyond the initial titillation.
He’s a muscle-bound, rough and tough lover of all things manly. She’s a petite girly girl that loves a nice glass of Chianti and long walks on the beach under the moonlight.
Learn how they meet, and what happens if you don’t recycle.
We dare you to litter in our parking lot. We double-dog-dare you.
ABOUT THE VIDEOS
This is the first of at least seven Responsible Marketing web shorts from Outsource Marketing. I say “at least” because we had so much fun doing these, we’ve already begun concept development on the next round.
As we launched our new responsible brand, we decided to crush any notions that Responsible Marketing might be boring—even prudish. Even the casual reader of this blog knows better.
While there are seven videos in this series, don’t expect them to focus solely on the Seven Keys to Responsible Marketing. Our goal wasn’t to preach responsibility.
Rather, it was to have some fun with the conflict every organization faces—that battle between commerce and conscience. Between doing the right thing or doing the other thing.
To accomplish this, we’ve put two characters you’ll know well into our everyday working environment to see how they’ll fare. Eventually we’ll cover all “Seven Keys,” but it will be subtle and not in this round.
THE RESPONSIBLE MARKETING YOUTUBE CHANNEL
The videos will be be posted weekly here on the blog and on most video sharing platforms. We’ve given special treatment to our Responsible Marketing YouTube Channel where I’ve favorited over 300 marketing videos over the last few years. Subscribe if you dig quality and/or controversial marketing vids.
We’ve been evangelizing Responsible Marketing for some time now, so infusing the idea into our new brand wasn’t just necessary—it was the responsible thing to do.
Here’s our deck from our Re-Brand event last Wednesday night.
