The Circles of Marketing

Another awesome reminder form Seth Godin that there is more to Marketing than advertising!

There is so much more depth, art, and skill required, which is honestly why I love it so much.

It is certainly a great though-provoking read!

 

Spotify – Fail

Really, I don’t know how many times I can talk about designing personalized ads for folks if you have enough information to do so!

Moreover, I don’t know why companies haven’t yet gotten this through their thick skulls.

Today’s offender is none other than Spotify:

I was doing my morning workout with my Spotify “Angry Workout Playlist” in the background (This playlist is a tasteful arrangement of compositions by artists such as Rise Against, Linkin Park, Slipknot, Static-X, Mudvayne, etc [Don’t judge!]), when an ad came on.

Now, I understand that I’m going to get advertisements (as I have a free account), but this was no ordinary ad: This was an ad for Pier One.

Now, I believe that, if you met a person on the street who was listening to the type of music on my workout playlist, you would not offer them a pamphlet from Pier One (you’d probably be more likely to offer them a Guitar Center magazine).

Why, then, is it ok for Spotify to do this when Spotify has this same knowledge of me (and even more, as Spotify knows my facebook account in addition to my listening preferences, so they should be certain that I am not in Pier One’s target demographic).

I suppose what irks me the most is that ads like this are nothing but destructive. They do not make any additional sales for Pier One and they do not increase my customer satisfaction with Spotify.

If you have the info – Customize!

Barnes and Noble – Fail

It grieves my heart to post this, especially since they were doing so well…

Today, I received the following in an e-mail from Barnes & Noble:

Yes, that’s right, I received an e-mail featuring “Oprah’s Book Club”.

Barnes & Noble, you know me better than that!

I have bought many, many books from you; from Blink to The Tipping Point, from  Positioning to Imagine to Made to Stick…so what on earth would make you think I’m interested in Oprah’s Book Club?

You have more than enough personal information from me to construct a personalized e-mail for me containing the things that I actually like (Amazon.com does this all of the time; it’s not that hard)!!!

Barnes & Noble, you’re abusing your e-mail privileges by spamming my inbox with these  generic weekly e-mails.

Autoforward >> trash. I’m buying all my books from Amazon.com from here on out (…unless, of course, I need it really, really quickly).

How Long Should Your Videos Be? & Understanding Your Video’s Use.

Yet another great post! I would have never thought of buying “bookend” TV commercials (then again, I’m not in the position to purchase any TV commercials either!).

Anyway, the topic of video length is a good one (especially with the rise of YouTube and the online video age).

Two things stick out in my mind:

-First of all, a great example, any videos by Vat19.com. Talk about amazing online video marketing! These folks have it down. I highly recommend checking out any and all of their videos; they are very entertaining and clever (I promise I’m not making any commission from them!).

-Secondly, the Miller High Life commercial from a few Super Bowls back. Miller bought a 1 second spot and the commercial consisted of one man yelling “HIGH LIFE” at the top of his lungs at the camera. It happened so fast that it was hard to tell what even happened, but the media buzz created by the ad before and after the Super Bowl was greater than the hype for all of the other commercials combined.

Indeed, when it comes to video advertising, it is not always about the length of the video, but how you use it… 😉