Money or Integrity? Making the Tough Choices

Ever since my first job, I have found myself in situations causing an internal conflict of security and financial independence versus my conscience and moral compass.  In that first job (I was a server at a restaurant rhyming with Frowned Sound), our soda gun system did not pass health inspection and we were required to serve bottled soda instead.  At first, the owner complied but then with financial pressures over his head, a few days later he made an ill-fated decision.  My boss asked us to refill the soda bottles with soda from the tainted guns because that was much cheaper for him.  He was serving a tainted product in bottles that should not be reused to save money-putting his financial security above the health of the customers. While only a teenager, I needed the money I earned at that job.  I used it to help support myself while at college with a very heavy course load and so I was tormented by what we were being asked to do and what I needed to do to protect my future.  I would like to say that it was an easy quick decision for me but I really contemplated my choices-self versus community. In the end, I placed an anonymous tip to the health department and quit my job.  And, as you can guess, I easily found another waitressing job and the restaurant didn't last very long and was soon out of business.  Fast forward twenty years and these situations of moral compass come ever more frequently.  When I first started the firm, it was on a foundation that we wouldn't take on any client that we weren't willing to donate our own money to, be a customer of, or vote for.  If our staff disagrees with the viewpoint of any of our clients, they do not have to work on that project. This philosophy has allowed us to 100% stand behind any of our marketing and PR campaigns. That being said, things don't always work out as planned. Recently we needed to partner with an outside vendor to work on a project that was exciting and innovative and with meaningful community impact.  It wasn't for the money that we were interested in it, but for the difference it could make.   After working with our vendor partner for some time, we realized that more was promised than could be delivered by the vendor.  It was then we knew we had a big decision to make.  Could we promise an outcome we didn't know was feasible? Could we move forward not having confidence in the outcome?  After all, the agreement was already signed and deposit check was cashed.  Wouldn't it be easier just to move forward and hope for the best? Here's THE thing.  I believe my whole life is filled with an abundance of blessings that are given to me with a responsibility to do what is right for my fellow man. I cannot make decisions based on what will make the most money or bring in the most clients.  In the end, all we will have is our reputation and integrity and we need to be willing to stand behind it. I had the displeasure of having to have the tough conversation with the client and ask if I may return the deposit check and find another firm to fulfill the project. I would work with them at no charge to make sure the transition was smooth and the product was delivered as promised.  I can't say the client was pleased and I can't say I blame them.  However, I did what I had to do in order to stand behind our promise of integrity. Every day you will be faced with questions of moral obligation. Every day you have choices to make of self versus others and every day there are consequences to those choices.  Before you decide, eliminate money as a factor and see what you choose.  To live, grow and prosper, that is the only way to decide. >>Interested in finding out how to have your personal philosophy mesh with your corporate goals? Join us for our Marketing ROI Makeover Summit. We will examine our personal and professional goals and create result-producing campaigns around them.

Are you making the WORST marketing mistake? (Hint, don't copy Super Bowl Ads)

This past weekend, many sat on the edge of their recliners to cheer on their favorite team (or against their favorite team's biggest competitor) to see who would make it into the Super Bowl.  Regardless if the outcome was what was hoped, most will tune into the Super Bowl on Sunday, February 5, 2012.  In spite of the competition, this continues to be the most-watched television program of the year.  In fact, Super Bowl XLV was the most-watched telecast in TV history, delivering 111 million viewers with fifty-one percent of people surveyed by The Nielsen Company in January 2010 sharing that they watch the Super Bowl for the commercials.

This is why one thirty-second spot can go for 3 million dollars (that's $100,000 a second) and sell out.

So here is the MOST effective night of the year in television advertising, with the most expensive ad space, and how do most advertisers use it? To ENTERTAIN us.  They don't try and sell us one darn thing.  They are literally paying A LOT of money to make us laugh. (Or try to anyway.)

Some of this year's offenders (source, Media Decoder, New York Times and SBNation)

• Mars unveiled on Thursday the cast for its Snickers spot for the coming Super Bowl. The commercial will feature Roseanne Barr and Richard Lewis.  The commercial, to be shown in the third quarter of the game, will be part of the continuing campaign for Snickers that declares, "You're not you when you're hungry."
• The Planters unit of Kraft Foods will introduce another commercial that is part of a new campaign giving the venerable Planters brand spokes-character, Mr. Peanut, a new look.  The commercial introduces a character named Alejandro, an almond who behaves like a cross between Antonio Banderas in the movie "The Mask of Zorro" and Johnny Depp in the movie "Don Juan DeMarco."
• Volkswagen will bring back the Star Wars Theme for its 2012 commercial-- this time with dogs barking it. 

All these ads ask viewers to do is to laugh.  Not to buy anything, or sign up for anything or check anything out.  Just to laugh.  And remember, with production costs figured in, on average, they are paying 10 million dollars to have us laugh.

One of the very few exceptions of the wasted Super Bowl advertising money is GoDaddy.  GoDaddy always gives a time-sensitive call to action driving traffic to its website.  Granted, they always use some type of sexual enticement and whether or not you believe in this tactic, it works very well for the football-watching audience.  When GoDaddy advertised in Super Bowl XXXIX (2005) for the first time, the domain name registrar saw its active sites increase by 136 percent. That boosted GoDaddy to become the world's largest web hosting firm and has continued to top traffic and sales each year. This is in spite of the fact that they are 10x higher in price than most other domain sellers.

Why does this work for them? They give a direct call to action with an offer that makes sense for their viewers and a limited time offer. They actually ASK their prospects to DO SOMETHING. Their audience listens and the results are a sky-rocket in sales.  (If you choose not to pay their prices or support their advertising tactics, try our favorite domain register 1and1.com.

I am assuming you won't have an ad running on the Super Bowl, but are you making the WORST mistake possible with your marketing? Are you just putting a brand or awareness message out there and not asking your audience to do anything? If you are, then while on a smaller scale, you are making the exact same mistake as the big brands on Super Bowl night-- you are wasting your money.

EVERY message you put out needs to have a call to action that is time-sensitive and gives your prospects an effective incentive to act now.  Advertising's main goal cannot be to entertain if you want to be effective. The only ones making more money in an entertaining advertisement are the stations and the advertising firms. These type of ads do not sell products.

How could calls to action be built into the existing spots? A few quick thoughts:

• Mars and Planters-- During the commercials, give a number to text to receive free samples, coupons and in-store promotions to collect contact information from your target audience and to target for future sales promotions.  Even better, offer a chance to actually purchase product in a special one-time only retail offering.  Through a partnership with major cell providers, viewers could text a certain number and for $1 added to their cell phone bills receive a family pack of peanuts or Snickers.  That would easily show the ROI of the advertisement.
• Volkswagen-- In the commercial, place a call to action with an incentive to sign up for a test drive now online, with only a limited number of spaces available.  Once prospects conduct their test drives, they will receive a Star Wars limited-edition DVD.  This would drive sales leads and again, provide contact information that could be entered into the sales funnel.

There are hundreds of ways to add in a call to action that would make the return on investment trackable and increase the sales and lead generations.  Just making us laugh will never do this. 

>>Interested to find ways to more effectively ask for the sale in your marketing? We are holding two Marketing ROI Makeover Summits in March. 

You Know Why Most People Fail? Laziness

You Know Why Most People Fail? Laziness (And more ranting by Kim Walsh-Phillips)

If you ask almost any entrepreneur, they want the basic tenets of the American Dream-to be successful and financially independent. But how many of them will actually do the work required to get there? Almost none.   I had a breakfast meeting this morning with a new partner of Inside Out Creative and we got to talking about the return on investment for marketing campaigns.  This CEO is a marketing guru if ever there was one, with a firm netting over $10 million each year.  He shared that when he sent out a survey to his clients asking, "What is your CPA?" (Cost per acquisition), very few of the respondents knew what the term even meant and even fewer knew what theirs was.  They had NO IDEA how much money it cost them to get one new customer. Look at any Olympic athlete and behind them is a story of hard choices, dedication and incredibly hard work.  Any doctor and you have years of school and time with a substantial school debt to boot.  Any high-level political figure and you have years of campaigning and relationship building.  We can all accept that these levels of success require a lot of sacrifice, time, effort, skill and hard work.  Yet why when it comes to our marketing do we think it should be just as easy as throwing together a post or an email and great success should come from it? I insist that any organization that becomes a private client of ours is willing to get serious, put in the effort and spend a budget behind achieving success. If they aren't, then we aren't a good match. It is just that simple.  As I am sure you will not be surprised, most don't make the cut. Research by Dr. Herb True of Notre Dame reveals that 60% of people buy after the 5th ask but only 4% of salespeople ask 5 times. How many times does your marketing message ask for the sale? Are you using the right medium? The right person to deliver the message? The right call to action? The right research to find out? Successful marketing takes time, effort, energy and money, which the majority of organizations don't bother to do.  The exciting thing about this is that it is very easy to beat your competition. While they are napping, you can get in there and do some real marketing. If you are serious about bringing your marketing to the next level and increasing your ROI, contact us at info@iocreative.net to request a new client prospect interview.

Sometime Strategy, Diet Dr. Pepper and Prayer Isn't Enough

Sometimes Strategy, Diet Dr. Pepper and Prayer Doesn't Cut It

If you are anything like the team at IOC, you still have quite a lot to get done before the cookies can be laid out for Santa. From wrapping presents to attending holiday parties to shopping for gifts for the in-laws, it is amazing all of us even make it to work, let alone keep raising our profits month after month.  How does one get it all done?  Usually my answer is "strategy, Diet Dr. Pepper and prayer," but sometimes even that isn't enough. Recently, we experienced a staff restructuring coupled with a heavy client load, an influx of new Marketing Insider members, a sold-out seminar and the launching of our new Six-Week Social  Media Training-AT THE SAME TIME.  All of this could have put our office in a harmful state of chaos and stress.  It could have caused us to miss deadlines and damage staffing morale. Frankly, it could have gotten us on Santa's naughty list. Here's what happened instead:  Our team put our planned strategies into action, broke each project down into bite-size pieces, called in our stealth team of vendors and support staff and executed each project with success.  (And, we made it home for dinner with our families every night!)   I am not saying everything went perfectly; in fact quite the opposite is true.  After a string of road blocks we joked that we might want to hide in our basements because a tornado might hit next.   Thankfully though, we didn't hide, a tornado didn't hit and we made it through the challenges with better practices and procedures than we had before this time.  After any challenging time, the best thing you can do is take time to reflect on what you can learn from the situation and how you can improve tactics for the future. 2011 marked the tenth anniversary of Inside Out Creative.  We had many moments of public festivities to highlight this milestone and I am thankful to all of those who helped us celebrate. I have had private moments to reflect as well on the journey that brought one conversation with Barbara Schmidt saying, "Kim, I think you should own your own business and I want to be your first client," to a full strategic marketing and PR firm with clients around the world.  During this time, I have learned to toughen my skin to the moments of crisis and critics and to take time to celebrate each win.  What I have focused on more though is what fills my prayers each night-the bounty of blessings that have been bestowed to me, my family and my firm.  From the clients who have been with us since the beginning, to the ones recently entrusting us with their marketing ROI, to the vendors who have been flexible when we needed them to be and those who have grown alongside us, to the past and present staff and interns working to produce outstanding results for our clients, to our families who have been supportive with their encouragement and love (and sometimes lending a hand!), thankfulness sounds weak as to the gratitude I feel for all of it. None of us can know what the future holds. All I know now is that the past has been incredible and I am looking forward to 2012. May your blessings abound now and into the future. Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas and peace and blessings to all. Kim Walsh-Phillips CEO, Inside Out Creative

Stay thirsty my friends

Recently I had the pleasure of attending AdTech NY as press for our Marketing Insiders publication. My number one take-away from the day-- there shouldn't be separate events for advertisers, public relations professionals and social media gurus

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