Too much advertising these days seems to be about the product or service and about the people who bring you these products or services. We used to believe that marketing to consumers was about creating their experience,and what the brand offers them. And this approach worked very well. What happened is ad agencies and marketing firms got lazy. They no longer spent time getting to know the consumer. And they no longer spent time coming up with insightful experiences. In fact, it works better than ever still today. Whizbang creates consumer experiences and benefits. We always have. We always will. Just check out our work at Whizbang Ideas.

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.

It is often said that small businesses are the lifeblood of America, and working with many small businesses I could not agree more. Each entrepreneur brings something new to the market that was not there before. Those skilled and innovative enough will grow and push their industry. The influx of new ideas is what I love about working with small businesses.

You could say I was born with a love for small business. My mom has taught marketing and entrepreneurship for over 30 years now. I, like a child of a famous Hollywood actress, am following in the footsteps of my parent, except much less glamorous and fewer paparazzi. I am lucky to have a mom so gifted at her craft that she has even written a textbook on starting your own small business. (http://www.amazon.com/Small-Business-Entrepreneurs-Plan/dp/0324591020/ref=dp_ob_title_bk) Not only is it a great book for a class, but for anyone thinking about starting their own business.

My mom’s textbook is a great reminder to anyone thinking of starting a small business, or currently running one, of the fundamental steps you must take to allow your business to succeed. This is why Whizbang is such a great fit for me, no matter how creative a project is, it is still grounded in the fundamentals of business strategy. As we have seen quite often with new technology, a new business idea can change the world, but it takes careful planning to bring that innovation to life.

It is becoming rare these days that a company will send you to their website. More and more we are being asked to visit them on Facebook. This is a good tactic if properly thought out. The reason you should send someone to Facebook rather than your website is so you can engage, share and interact with them, and they can engage, share and interact with you as well as with other customers.

The issue I have is that most companies ask me to go to their Facebook page and once I get there, the door is closed, the lights are out, and all I can do is maybe peek in the windows.

And no wonder. There is a lot of information about how to set up a Facebook business page, but not a lot of information on what makes one useful. What follows is the bare minimum of what a business should do if they are setting up a Facebook page:

1.  Create your Facebook page strategy. If you don’t have a strategy, get one. “To have a social media presence” is not a strategy. Understand what Facebook can potentially do for you before jumping in.
   
2.  Add content that the world will actually benefit from and can engage in, be it useful information, inspirational, humorous, thoughtful, or whatever tactic helps fulfill your strategy.
   
3.  Monitor your page. Don’t have time to monitor? Get off of Facebook.
   
4.  Be there when customers come to visit.
   
5. Engage visitors and customers regularly. Don’t worry about converting to sales yet, or funneling into your sales pipeline. Don’t try to sell. Just be there to say hello and start building a relationship with the customers that are coming “to your store” because you asked them to come visit you.

Anything less will practically guarantee you’ll take a big face-plant on Facebook. Nobody needs that.

For more useful detailed info, visit www.fbforbusinessmarketing.com

Branding isn’t just for companies anymore.

As we become hyperconnected to the other two billion people online, it is becoming harder and harder to grab and keep an audience. And isn’t that what we all want? Someone to listen to us and interact with?

Here’s a suggestion to gain more attention- brand yourself. To help find out what your personal brand is, you’ll need to fill out your own strategic plan. Ask questions of yourself and have answers to these questions: what do I wish to achieve, who am I talking to, what do I want them to do, how do I want to interact with them, what do I want them to say about me to others?

Once you have your answers, then you can form a plan on how to share your brand with others. You may even want to create your own tagline. Our previous PR/social media director, Cary Conrady, had a brand and tagline, “Look Good, Smell Good.” Pretty much everything she does embraces this edict.

Think of others around your office or around town who stand out in your mind. They probably stand out due to a certain affectation-their personal brand. In San Luis Obispo, I think of Pierre Rademaker and his Hawaiian shirts, Missy Reitner-Cameron and her colorful hair, Lynn Diehl and her wine glass.  If I had to give these three taglines, they would be as follows:

Pierre Rademaker – Yellow. The new brown.

Missy Reitner-Cameron – I used to be sane. I got better.

Lynn Diehl- Wine a bit. You’ll feel better.

What’s your tagline?

For the past few years, coupon sites like Groupon and Living Social have been changing how small businesses do their advertising, marketing and promotions. Depending on who you ask, these deal sites are either the best or worst things for small businesses. There is the promise of potentially thousands of new customers, but the thought of losing money in each sale transaction scares many away. Before any small business jumps into the world of online deal sites, they first need to ask themselves four questions:

1. Does the deal fit my business?

These deals don’t fit every business. In fact, if you are a pet sitter or interior designer, Groupon will not work with you [1]. Even if Groupon or another coupon site will post your deals, it still may not work for you. If your industry has a quick turnaround between the first purchase and the second purchase then it is easier to get repeat customers, which is the goal of using Groupon.

2. Can you fill orders and provide great service even with the extra traffic?

One thing you can be almost sure of is that when you use one of these sites you will see a big jump in traffic to your store [2]. Be prepared to fill orders on time and be staffed well enough to provide excellent customer service. Even though customers are paying discount prices, they are still expecting excellent service.

3. Is your product or service good enough to get bargain shoppers to come back?

Not only must your product be easy to purchase with great customer service provided, but you must also provide a quality product. While a new business may want to get its name out there right away, it could be beneficial to wait until you know your product or service is perfected. This way you don’t risk negative reviews. Bottom line, if your product isn’t good enough to get customers to come back and pay full price, you will just be losing money.

4. Does the math add up?

Like every business decision, you should do the math before jumping into a coupon site to see if it will be profitable for you. There are many factors to consider, but if your margins are low enough and retention rate high enough, you can make a profit. This article can help you calculate if it will be effective for you http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/doing-the-math-on-a-groupon-deal/

As you can see, there are many factors to consider before deciding to sign up with one of these deal sites. You should put in time to research how other businesses in your industry have faired using deal sites. Groupon and sites like it could be good or bad for your business, but that is for you to decide.

1. http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/will-groupon-really-boost-your-local-business/

2. http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/is-groupon-good-for-small-businesses/

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.

While it may be a month into my adventure in the wonderful world of Whizbang, as a design intern I’m still in progress. Not only in the myriad of my projects, from logo development to illustration to Facebook tab design, but in the progress of becoming a full-fledged designer.

Interning as I see it, is an insight into what the real world expects from you, and also into what you’re expecting from the world. Whizbang is untraditional, open, dog-friendly, and most of all, creative. I meanwhile, am straight-forward, analytical, aestheticly driven, and artistic.

The creative is our commonality and what drew me to Whizbang. Is it everything I’m looking for in a company? I don’t know, I’m still figuring that out. What I do know is that this experience has been valuable to me in my exploration of design, and I will always remember being a part of the Whizbang crew. Everyone is at a different stage of life, and I myself have taken steps forward… I like where I’m heading.

Then, in 1994, I went to work at the ad agency that created all of the ads for IBM. There was talk of switching the creative department, all 1,500 of us, to IBM PCs. There was also more than talk of a total creative department revolt. By this time, the Apple had made its indelible mark on creatives worldwide, and we would not, could not give them up for anything.

Throughout the years, Apple continued to deliver tools that enabled us to create more, faster. Our artwork looked better. Research got easier. Ideas seemed to come to us faster. Gadgets became hipper, and so did we. We all bought and sold Apple shares for $8, $16 and $24 a share, and made money with every buy and sell order. Life was good with more of the same until October 5, 2011. Our visionary leader, Steve Jobs, leaves us for a better place. He was one of us. But bigger. Much bigger.

One way we are coping with our loss is to memorialize Steve Jobs with tribute ads, created on our Macs of course. Below are a few of the ads we created paying tribute to the man behind the products that have added so many cool experiences to our lives. We hope they help you feel better, too.

Frank Scotti

Creative Director

Whizbang Ideas with Impact

by Frank Scotti, Chief Idea Officer

It may be a futile statement, but I’d like to be the first one to officially declare the “i” movement retired. I’m talking about products and services that use a lower case “i” in front of their name to loosely associate with Apple’s innovative “i” products. Search for a domain name beginning with “i” and ending with any other word. You’d be lucky to find one still available. My favorite is iCopy, a landing page for copy machines. Copy they did. You know we have gone too far when there is even an app called the iFart.

Like green washing, where environmentally friendly marketing messaging is deceptively used to promote a product, I have coined the word iWashing. iWashing is the abuse of products and services using “i,” thus suggesting they are anywhere close to the innovation and technical aptitude of Apple’s “i” products.

Does anyone even remember what the original “i” was all about? Here’s a bit of “i” history. Steve Jobs and Apple Computer introduced the very first “i” product, the iMac in 1998. It was the first computer that seamlessly integrated internet access with a computer. The “i” stood for internet, individual, instruct, inform and inspire.

So what’s my hang up with “i?” First off, to brand a product an “i” product if you’re not Apple, is a marketing rip off lacking any creativity, which is sort of the opposite of “i” in the first place. It’s just plain lazy. Most of these products don’t even have anything to do with the internet. Most are not individualized. Most do not inform or instruct. Very few inspire. From a sales perspective, adding an “i” has helped many companies move product. But that is a short term effect. Who are any of the companies behind any of these “i” products? Name one besides Apple Computer?

So what will replace the “i?”

I’m going to rally for “o,” and say it stands for open, like open source, openness, open to ideas, open for change, open to expression, keep the door open, etc.

What do you think?