With the start of a new year is a chance to adopt new practices. One that caught my attention recently is the process called Mise en Place (MEEZ-ahn-plahs). It’s a French culinary term that means “everything in its place.” Wikipedia describes it as purchasing, preparing, and pre-measuring all the ingredients necessary for a dish before you start cooking. It makes cooking more efficient and prevents the cook from making mistakes. Wikipedia finished with this statement: “Mise en Place is probably the single biggest difference between gourmet chefs and regular, once-in-a-while cooks.” That got me thinking. The same can be said about marketing. True professionals have all their marketing pieces in place before they implement their programs. This includes:

1. SWOT analysis

2. Competitive analysis

3. Customer analysis

4. Marketing objectives

5. Marketing strategies

6. Marketing tactics

7. Positioning and key messages

8. Budget

9. Implementation schedule

10. Controls

These are the main ingredients to a marketing plan. Any marketing professional worth his or her salt (sorry the puns just keep coming) has them at their ready just as any gourmet chef has their ingredients ready. Mis en Place, whether practiced for cooking or marketing, makes the difference between success or failure. If you would like to talk about marketing or cooking, or cooking up marketing plans, please email me at ellen@whizbangideas.com.

Have you noticed your email box, Facebook and Twitter feeds are full of predictions for 2012? Mine is.  If someone would have predicted 2011 would be the year of predictions they would have been spot on. Here’s my eclectic list of lists:

1. OK, this one will take some time to read.  Written over 12 years ago, The Clue Train Manifesto is amazing in how accurate it is. The gist, as stated on the book’s cover, “Markets are conversations, talk is cheap, silence is fatal.” The link is to the entire text of the book. Free.

2. Mashable always serves up great information. Here’s their  5 Key Digital Media and Advertising Trends for 2012. Notice four out of the five trends include the influence of mobile.

3. Here’s our clients, Shopatron’s, look into the crystal ball. Working with over 1,000 brands, no one knows more about Ecommerce than them. So this list is a keeper.

4. Faith Popcorn is a past ad agency exec turned futurist. She is most famous for her book, “Popcorn Report” and coining the phrase “cacooning.” Here are her predictions for 2012.

5. Click documents has made my job easy by compiling over 80 contributors to their Social Media & Content Marketing Predictions 2012.

6. What’s the upshot for 2012? Here are 10 cultural trends identified by trend watcher, Upshot.

7. Here today gone by 2012. The blog, 24/7 Wall St., predicts “Ten Brands That Will Disappear In 2012.” Sears and Sony are just two they mentioned. We’ll just have to wait and see.

8. At the opposite end of the spectrum, there’s Forbes Comeback Brands of 2012. At the top of the list is the Muppets and Madonna separately not performing together. However, that would be fun to watch.

9. I am a marketer and a small business owner. Here are two lists for the latter job description:  Entrepreneur magazine’s Top 10 Small Business Predictions for 2012 and Inc. magazine’s  5 Predictions for the Future of Your Business.

10. Lastly, to put all this prognostication into perspective is a list of predictions from the past, something I found on StumbleUpon, a social media platform no one predicted would change the way we find and share information.

I have been watching a lot of the Food Network lately and being the wordsmith that I am, I had been adding to my epicurean vocabulary.  Here’s a term I found particularly interesting, amuse-bouches.  They’re single bite appetizers (always complimentary) specially created to give guests an idea of a chef’s cooking style and prepare them for the meal ahead. They are in essence tastebud tinglers. The term is French, literally translated to “mouth amuser.”

While I was pondering amuse-bouches (and cracking myself up saying the word out loud: ä-ˌmüz-ˈbüsh) I thought about social media and how it offers a great way introduce your brand.  Social channels give your fans and followers a taste of what it is like to work with or buy from your company. So what follows are great social media amuse-bouches to tingle your customers and get them excited for more to come:

1.     Acknowledge them.

2.     Thank them.

3.     Say you’re sorry if you need to.

4.     Give them inside information.

5.     Hang out with them.

6.     Give them free stuff.

7.     Write a blog that solves their biggest problem.

8.     Retweet them.

9.     #ff them.

10. Introduce them to someone influential.

These social media morsels are just a start. There are many more ways to make your fans and followers feel special. What amuse-bouches do you serve your prospective customers?

During October, I attended the Facebook Success Summit, a series of webinars about the latest and greatest strategies and tactics for Facebook marketing. One of the presenters was Jan Rezab from Socialbakers, a website that offers an abundance of social media statistics. Based on measuring millions of Facebook posts, this is a list of Jan’s Facebook best and worst practices and my own two cents worth added in.

Facebook Do’s

1. “Diversity of content,” Jan says that statistically you will get more engagement if you mix up your content. Think about it. If you are always saying or asking the same thing, your wall gets boring fast.

2. “Engaging content.” Ok this is a gimme. You have to engage to be engaging. What makes up engaging content? Stuff your community wants to know about. Don’t know what that is? Just ask. That’s the beauty of social media.

3. “Actually telling people to engage.” Again this is obvious, but often overlooked.  Social media managers are so concerned with being authentic and not too salesman-like that they forget to ask for people to like, share and comment.

4. “Simple and clear messages.” I saw a statistic (Dan Zarella, social scientist) that said the best Facebook posts are under 80 characters, about the length of a short sentence. Even though Facebook now allows longer posts (1000 characters), it isn’t the place to share your dissertation. Remember, Facebook is the People Magazine of social media, not the New Yorker.

Facebook Don’ts

1. “Posting too many updates a day. Recommendation: 1 – 2 / day for brands.” Ok, how many of you have hidden the posts of friends who share way too much? The same is true from brands. Forty-six percent of people unsubscribe from brand pages for over-posting, a Socialbaker’s study shows.

2. “Not engaging with people in comments.”  Facebook edgerank (the algorithm that determines if your post makes it to your fans newsfeed) weights comments more heavily than likes. What that means is if someone has taken the time to comment, the least you can do is to acknowledge their contribution. If not for the edgerank, comment back because it’s good manners.

3. “Arguing with fans.” Really, does that need any further elaboration?

4. “Running competitions against Facebook rules.” Facebook has 800 million users and thousands of business pages. What’s the chance of getting caught? With lots of low cost and even free ways to run a competition, why take the chance?

5. “Not using apps + tabs.” Using these helps with #1 of Facebook do’s and avoiding #4 of Facebook don’ts. Plus, apps and tabs can help with SEO.  How it helps is a blog for another day.

1. Break out the adjectives.  “These California grapes deliver rich, complex, naturally sweet flavor.”
2. Realize facts are your friend. “Holland makes many fine cheeses, but one of the best known is Gouda, named for the town in which it was first crafted.”
3. Try a limmerick. “ There once was a bar called granola, it didn’t contain one pignola. With almonds and nilla, it has great appeal-a. We think we have here a winola.”
4. Use foreign words. “Bulgogi, Bool Kogi. It’s all good.”
5. Intrigue your reader. “Reduced Guilt Skinny Fries.”
6. Go historical.  “Granola Bars were first formulated by a prolific 20^th century inventor by the name of Stanley Mason…..”
7. Create new terms. “We’ll just admit it…we’re hummus happy here at Trader Joe’s.”
8. Toot your horn. “Trader Joe’s fresh pastas are not expensive, and they taste really good.”
9. Compare and contrast. “Beautiful flowers. Stunning Price.”

10. Sell. “You might expect to pay a significant premium for premium wines. At Trader Joe’s, though, you’ll pay just $6.99 a bottle, a terrific value.”

Content. Content. Content. This is the subject on every marketers mind these days and for a good reason. In social media, there is an 80/20 rule. That is, 80% of your content should add value for your customers. The other 20% is for brand promotion. For most brands, the 20% is a no brainer. It’s the other 80% that leaves most marketer’s scratching their heads. What to write about?  Of all possible content, original content is the most highly prized. In lieu of having a staff of professional writers, most marketers depend on aggregating or curating content. Simply put, you find content that you deem interesting for your subscribers, fans, followers or customers and pass it along.  For most, that’s as far as it goes. But to make an impact you need to do more than shovel the content out. You need to add value.  That’s where the true art of curating comes in. The following are some ideas on content curation.

1. Start with a strategy: Answer the question, “What problem can I solve for my customers?” For example, this blog post addresses the problem of content curation.

2. Make the familiar fresh: Art curators can arrange a show around historical periods like Cubism or Impressionism.  They can also organize a show around a subject matter like the history of flowers in art. Within this collection, the viewer will see some familiar favorites but through a new lens.

3. Dig beyond Digg: Content curators have their reliable sources, Google Reader, Digg, Huffington Post, Mashable, etc. Unfortunately, these sources are the same for people in the same circles. Contemporay art curators spend a large amount of their time unearthing new talent. Do the same with your content. Personally, I rely on my friends outside my field of marketing. They are always sources of content gold.

4. Have a retrospective: Or, as Buddy Media suggests in their white paper about fan engagement, “leverage your assets.”  Social media channels offer a great venue for content that never made it to your website or newsletters. The trick is to make it relevant and interesting to your followers.

5.  Ask for help:  This is the easiest strategy. Don’t know what to write about? Ask your fans, followers and subscribers. Do a poll and ask them what is the biggest problem/challenge they are facing today? Ask them what they want to hear from you.

6. Collect and interpret: Erik Deckers in his blog post, “Rethinking Creation versus Curation: Curators Can Add Value.” says, “As we have access to more and more information, including all the mediocre and/or crappy stuff, we need the curators to help us make sense of it all.” I couldn’t agree more.

7.  Find context: Niru Ratnam, in her article “Hang It All,” reports art curators are now required to engage with new art as it emerges and find a critical context for the reception of that work.  In the same way, content curaters need to explain why something is important and worth paying attention to.

8. Break through the filter bubble: This idea expands on the importance of #3. Even if you search beyond your dependable sources, the Internet may not allow you to. In Chris Cum’s  “Break through the filter bubble: Should Google and Facebook Be Filtering Our Content For Us?” he says, “[Google] results are tailored to who you are, based on your search history and your click history. Since you often click on things you agree with, you keep getting more and more of what you already agree with, which means other stuff gets demoted (effectively filtered).”  Fortunately, there are alternative search engines such as DuckDuckGo that solves that problem.

9.  Extend your audience’s horizon: In another blog post about the filter bubble dilema, “The Filter Bubble: Algorithm vs. Curator & the Value of Serendipity“  Eli Pariser author of the book, The Filter Bubble, is quoted as saying, “The primary purpose of an editor [is] to extend the horizon of what people are interested in and what people know. Giving people what they think they want is easy, but it’s also not very satisfying: the same stuff, over and over again. Great editors are like great matchmakers: they introduce people to whole new ways of thinking, and they fall in love.”  Not always easy but great advice.

10. Connect the Dots: In her blog post “5 ways to curate and add value,” Liz Guthridge advocates, “…making the connections to your business strategy, key themes, and values.”

I hope this blog post achieves that goal. Let me know.

Today, more than ever, businesses must innovate or be left behind.  But coming up with breakthrough ideas don’t naturally come or are fostered in many company cultures.  Even at big advertising companies, creativity can get stifled.  While I was a Creative Director at a DDB in Chicago, I was fortunate enough to participate in an improvisational workshop to foster creativity.  It taught me the importance of going with the flow and staying open to ideas to get the most out of my team.  I was reminded of this workshop the other day when I saw this interview with Tina Fey at Google.  Google’s Eric Schmidt Interviews Tina Fey [VIDEO]

I love Tina Fey for so many reasons.  She’s funny. She’s a writer.  She’s a mom.  She’s a trifecta of womanhood. In the interview, Ms. Fey touched on how improv made her a better writer, a better co-worker.  She said the main thought behind improv is that your idea can only get better when shared with others. The trick is to stay open and positive. At Whizbang, we use the improv exercise of  “yes and” when we are coming up with marketing ideas. That is, no one is allowed to say  “no’ or “but” and stop the idea from gaining its full potential.

In the next few months, we will be putting together a “Creativity with Impact” Whizinar using improv exercises to tap your creativity and help you innovate in your business. Our creative technician, Jose Molina, will help lead the Whizinar. In addition to writing for Whizbang, Jose is a Second City conservatory member in Chicago. As Jose points out, “If there are two things I know it’s that I hate it when people speak in the third person and that it took Tina Fey 3 auditions to get into the Second City conservatory and Jose Molina only 1. “  So you know it’s going to be good.

In the meantime, we like you to join us on Facebook for an improv exercise called “Swedish Storytelling”. It’s a great way to get the creative juices going and see how far you can stretch your imagination muscles. As a group, we’ll come up with a big thing, a small thing, and something alive. Then we’ll tell a story incorporating these three things. Each participant will build on the last participants post.  Who knows where the story will lead except to lots of fun? See you on Facebook.

A few weeks ago, I attended the Natural Products Expo West show for our food and beverage division, Recipe. Along with getting a taste of the latest and greatest from the natural food industry, I also had a chance to sample some really interesting seminars. Bridgett Brennan, author of Why She Buys, was my favorite, hands down. It wasn’t just because she was a fellow Chicagoan.   She confirmed all I had experienced first hand as a marketer, a consumer and a woman. She also dished up some facts and trends that could prove useful for any company that markets to women, which according to Brennan is all companies. The fact is, women are responsible for purchasing 80% of all goods and services and hold veto power on the other 20%. That’s a pretty amazing statistic, but completely believable when you consider women buy on the behalf of everyone – their kids, their husbands, their boyfriends and themselves. Women are great shoppers. This isn’t breaking news. However, few companies embrace this fact. Here are some trends Brennan pointed out in her keynote address that companies can take advantage of:

1. More women than ever are in the workforce. The implication is women have more money to spend. But really, women have less time to spend it.

2. Ecommerce is big for women. With less time and more to do, women are doing their shopping online.

3. Women are having fewer children.  With less mouths to feed, women are indulging the kids they have with upscale, gourmet and adult experiences. Brennan gave a great example of sitting next to an 11 year old while getting a mani pedi and remarking she didn’t get a mani pedi until she was in her twenties.

4. More men and women are separating and divorcing. This creates two Christmases, two birthdays and  two bedrooms full of furnishings for the kids, doubling the spending.

5. There are more older women in the world. While the gap is closing, women still outlive men, leaving  a huge group of underserved women. They have resources and are willing to spend them on taking care of themselves.

6. Globesity epidemic. Obesity isn’t just a U.S. problem, it’s a worldwide problem. Because women are in charge of food planning and preparation, they will be looking for any help they can get to combat this problem.

In addition to these trends,  Brennan offered insights  into the culture of women.  “Compliments are women’s currency,”  she said. On that note, I couldn’t agree more.

O.k. you’ve decided to adopt blogging as a marketing strategy. That’s great. According to a study by Hubspot, companies that blog experience 55% more website visits. The problem for most people is keeping up with consistent, creative content. Even the most prolific writers hit a wall. Here are some tips to keep the juices flowing and the blogs from blowing.

1. Make a blog calendar. If you know you will be blogging once a week or once a month, jot down thought starters for each blog. This task is made easier if you have a blog objective. For instance, if your blog objective  is to  become a thought leader in the world of cupcakes, then map out blogs that lead to that goal.

2. Divide and conquer. Invite other employees to partake in the blogging activities. Here at Whizbang, a different Whizbanger blogs every week. If you are self-employed, invite guest bloggers. Entice them by giving them their own byline. Tell them they can add “blogger” to their resume.  You’d be amazed at how many people bite at that carrot.

3. Lower the bar. Not every blog has to meet the standards of the New Yorker or Rolling Stone unless, of course, you are blogging for them. Mix up the posts with how to’s, opinions and lists.

4. Stop thinking and just write. Take a look at Seth Godin’s blog. The guy has a new post everyday. Are they all well thought out? Are they all Pulitizer worthy? Not really. Sometimes it seems like he just thumbs through a dictionary, lands blindly on a word and riffs on it to serve his blogging purpose.

5. Stumble around. While you’re simmering, get on the Internet and search your thought starter key words. I use Google, Stumbleupon, Digg,  Redit and Twitter for inspiration. Remember the objective of attaining cupcake thought leadership? Here’s a funny little news piece I found on Twitter from @dinemarketing “Cupcake Rage. Mom Trashes Bakery When They Run Out of Her Favorite Flavor. http://bit.ly/eukdEK.”

6. Have a deadline. “It’s no big deal if I post a day late.” This kind of thinking is a slippery slope. First it’s one day. Then it two days. Then it’s spring time and your Christmas blog has gone unwritten.  Deadlines are wonderful things. Pressure on coal creates diamonds. Pressure on writers produces similar results.

There are many creative tricks fourth graders employ, like stuffing their socks into the couch instead of the hamper, blaming the dog for missed homework and the perennial favorite, getting their younger sibling to do their dirty work. The tricks I am writing about today are the ones you learn in 4th grade English. I was reminded of them when I sat down with my own 4th grader to complete his homework on figures of speech. I forgot how handy these devices are when trying to come up with creative ideas. A review of this year’s superbowl commercials confirms their usefulness.

• Take the simile. It is often slung together with the metaphor.  A simile is a type of metaphor in which the comparison is made with the use of the word “like” or its equivalent. This is a “think of it as” scenario. Carmax used similes to the max this year in their superbowl commercials.

• It is apparent Carmax creatives loved their metaphors. In their Car buying spot, they used both a metaphor and a simile.

• Speaking of metaphors, specifically mixed metaphors, CareerBuilder gave us “stuck between a bad job and a hard place” with their Chimps spot.

• Of course there is personification, giving  human traits to non-living objects.  Cars.com’s Car Talk used this technique.

• Hyberbole, or an exaggeration of a statement, is a marketing mainstay. The title of Kia’s Epic ride spot gives this technique away. It’s a definite example of visual hyperbole amongst other things.

• “What if we settle for the first thing that came along?” asks the  Hyundai Old School commercial, a classic example of an elongated metaphor, otherwise known as an allegory.

• Chrysler’s Eminem spot utilized many figures of speech ending ultimately in satire with their “Imported from Detroit” tagline.

• Puns always offer tons on fun inspiration. See Mini’s Game Show spot if you doubt the power of the pun. Then, “cram it in the boot.”

• Anthropomorphism, while not a figure of speech,  is a literary device and another great creative thought starter.  Giving animals human characteristics is always an attention grabber. Witness Bridgestone’s Beaver, Bud Light’s Dog and VW’s Black Beattle.

• Depending on your view of babies (inanimate objects or animals)  Etrade commercials use personification or anthropomorphism.  What do you think?