Create your own occasions and holidays

Greeting card companies have been creating nonsense holidays and occasions for years. Marketers have gotten into the action, too.

Most recently:
September 19th was “International Talk Like a Pirate Day.” — Who knew? I discovered it accidentally because Meebo enabled a secrete pirate speak function to translate instant message text into pirate gibberish.

July 15th was “World Firefox Day” - World Firefox Day gives everyone who uses and loves Firefox the chance to introduce Firefox to one other person they care about. If your friend starts using Firefox on or before September 15, 2006, both of you will be recognized on the Firefox Friends Wall, and in Firefox 2.

June was “Backup Awareness Month” (according to Seagate). Too bad, many people I’ve spoken too didn’t hear about it until July.

Point is, other marketers are taking liberties, so why shouldn’t you? Go ahead and create an occasion/event! But first:

• Make sure it has perceivable value.
• Make it shareable.
• Make it worth someone’s time to briefly engage with your brand.

Then spread it out over the Web. Make it hip! And use good old fashioned grass roots promotion all the way.

Have fun.
-Roland

Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional. His observations can be found at NewMediaSandbox.com and Chaos365.com.

©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.

Brand loyalty and influence

Media Post reported the results of a new study: Some 13-34s Show High Brand Loyalty

A new study of 10,000 respondents confirmed that a portion of the 13-34 age group are opinionated and passionate to the point of influencing friends and family.

15-20% of the respondents fell into a category dubbed “Brand Sirens.”

“Those sirens have a profound network effect on marketing through their ability to influence friends and family via word-of-mouth, viral video and applications such as instant messaging and blogs, among other media.”

Here are a few other key insights confirmed in the research:

• 2 in 3 “Brand Sirens” care about the brands they use
• 7 in 10 say they love some brands
• 43% of the Brand Sirens wish they could find brands they could stick with and more than 40 percent would switch brands if another brand came onto the market that seemed more enticing.
• 82% indicated that they talk about brands with their friends.
• 70% of those surveyed send e-mails to friends about products and services
• 77% post reviews and product feedback online

One of the most surprising findings of the research is that while Brand Sirens are skeptical about corporations and marketing, they can also serve as a marketer’s strongest advocate via blogs, word-of-mouth, social networks, and other largely consumer-generated new media platforms. “There is this juxtaposition between skepticism and advocacy.”

My banana connected the dots

I found a sticker on my banana this morning. It wasn’t for Dole brand or a price code. What made me look twice was that it was the head of H.A. Rey’s Curious George.

It made me curious…

Was it for the recent Curious George movie about to be released on DVD?

Was it for the new Curious George TV series on PBS?

Was it a plot by the Global Board of Banana Growers United Liberation Front to tap into my inner child and stimulate me to subconsciously buy bananas?

It probably doesn’t matter since I’ve obviously been exposed to these things unconsciously. And all it took was a cheap, little sticker placed on my banana by some clever marketer to trigger brand recall and make me connect the dots. Ding! My banana is part of an integrated brand campaign!

-Roland

Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional who does not wear a yellow hat. His observations can be found at NewMediaSandbox.com and Chaos365.com.

©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.

Brands in virtual worlds

It’s hard enough to reach audiences in the real world. We try to deliver what the consumer wants, when, where and how they want it. Now we have to chase them to virtual worlds. Virtual worlds have taken great strides in recent years as computing power increased and more households have switched to broadband access.

Even more virtual worlds are coming. In addition to Second Life and There, MTV just made a big splash with it’s virtual adaptation of the “hit” series Laguna Beach.

Second Life now has a special version for teens under 18:

Point is, users can shop in these environments to outfit their virtual selves. They have currency to spend in these worlds to do all sorts of things like:

• buy clothes (think retailers, jewelery, shoes, accessories),
• change their eye color (contact lenses),
• build a store to sell virtual stuff,
• buy/build a house to decorate,
• attend online concerts,
• visit baseball stadium (MLB),
• play games to learn financial responsibility (Wells Fargo)
• buy a vehicle (Ford) to get around the virtual world.

All of this provides the opportunity for brands to allow potential consumers to explore and experiment with digital versions of their products — afterwhich adoption/loyalty can be extended to the real world.

You should check them out. Free, basic accounts are available for all.

-Roland

Update 10/18/2006: Laguna Beach episodes debute in Virtual Laguna Beach first.

Update 10/19/2006: News.com reports that Second Life now has over 1 million registered users, of which 41% are active users (active in the past 60 days).

Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional. His observations can be found at NewMediaSandbox.com and Chaos365.com.

©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.

Is brown is the new black?

Seems like brown is becoming the new black. Fashionistas are trying to make brown hip (again).

In the past month, we’ve seen the launch of Coca-Cola Blak (which is really dark brown).

Microsoft announced they will release the new Zune music player in brown.

Verizon is briskly selling the LG Chocolate mobile phone.

The color scheme of Ubuntu, the popular free linux operating system, is predominately brown.

A word to fashionistas: Please don’t influence us to wear a blue shirt with brown pants. It didn’t work in the 70’s and it still wont fly today.

Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional who wears a lot of black. His observations can be found at NewMediaSandbox.com and Chaos365.com.

©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.

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