Marobella's Branding SoapBox

Free Promotion For LoJack

This week, I learned the hard way. My nearly-new MacBook Pro 17" was stolen along with the rest of the items in my backpack from the trunk of my car. The irony is that I always put it in my trunk so that it can't be spotted from the street or anywhere else. I had a client in town and my car was covered with salt, dirt and other stuff from a Chicago-winter, so I went to one of the "nicest" car washes in Chicago, Gold Coast Car Wash, and had my car washed inside and out. I took my eye off of my car for a few minutes to read the paper while I waited and that was enough time. Once I got back to the office, I opened my trunk to get the pack and it was gone. Uh oh, my stomach sank. I thought long and hard about where it could be. Did I leave it at home? Did I forget to put it in my trunk? The only explanation was that it was clipped from my trunk when they were drying the inside of my bumper. I found out later that my iPhone charger and a pair of sunglasses were also stolen. Well, that's enough of me whining.

The moral of the story is this: If I had known about LoJack For Laptops I would have had it. In fact, marketing that service to IT directors in companies like Wirestone should be a boondoggle for LoJack. It is short money for an insurance policy that at least gives you some options. All I've been able to do is go back to the car wash and listen to some bullshit from the manager. We've also called pawn shops etc. But, if we had LoJack For Laptops, we could nail the culprit red handed and I would have my precious information back. 

LoJack, if you're reading this, call me.

Maintain Your Brand's Reputation In The Recession

Desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures. We are human, after all and tend to get caught up in the newspaper headlines, lead stories on MSNBC, the content of the new President's speech and all of the water cooler talk. Sometimes this paranoia and fear trickles up to the executives in America's corporations, permeates the board meetings and finds it way into marketing strategies.

Via The Consumerist comes the case of a brand that is working hard to maintain their customer base in this era of uncertainty. Insurance and benefit companies have an indirect relationship with their group-based consumers. It can be a complicated situation as the group controls the business relationship, but the consumer is the closest to the benefits and services of the provider. When corporations decide to trim staff, people have the option of choosing COBRA, gambling with no health insurance or joining an individual plan. From the provider's perspective, losing a "subscriber" is not a good thing, it provides the company with a smaller consumer-pool with which to spread the risk. In simpler terms, healthy people pay for the sick people. So, when a company lays off people, the health care company could try and retain them into an individual plan.

So, when Aetna sent this letter to their subscribers, they probably had best intentions of pre-empting a possible layoff at their subscriber's corporation to try and keep them as a customer, one way or another. The issue with it is that they played the "fear-card" and clearly created one pissed-off potential current and future customer. A strategy like this raises more questions than answers and can wreak havoc not only for the consumer, but for the HR and benefits people. And, they are not to be messed with since they control whether or not they go out to bid when the program comes up for renewal.

If I were a fly on the wall in the strategy session where this marketing scheme was hatched, I'd bet that they discussion revolved around a strategy pillar such as, "We need to strenghten the relationship directly with our consumers and let them know we are there for them.""Let's make them feel better about having Aetna as their health insurance provider and put their mind at ease if they lose their job." Unfortunately, I imagine that the spirit of the compassion and sound strategy got lost in legal-translation and watered down by layers of marketing approvals. I would think that there are many marketing fingerprints on this letter and somewhere along the line, someone said let's be more aggressive and play into people's fears. Probably someone with a parking spot.

The learning here is that this downturn will end. And when it does, people will remember the brands that were authentically compassionate and altered their pricing and product strategies to help people get through the hard times. Like the Hyundai Assurance Program where people can walk away from their loan or lease without worrying about negative equity after qualifying. I must admit, I've even thought about looking at Hyundai after hearing about this promotion. It's pure genius, communicated with a genuine tone of caring and compassion. This is the way to market to your consumers that you understand times are tough and you'll be there for them.

5 Ideas For Breaking Into Advertising During The Recession

I graduated from school during the recession of '91-'92 and probably had the same feeling in my gut that many of the recent or upcoming college graduates are having about getting their first job in advertising or marketing. I kept thinking that nobody would take a look at me until I had experience, but how was I supposed to get the experience? It seemed like a chicken and egg situation. While people are losing their jobs in the advertising & marketing sector, there are still ways to gain that important experience and even more important relationships that will set you up for success. Here are 5 ideas that can help college graduates in this recession.

1. Leverage What You Already Know: Chances are if you are 21 or so, you live on the web. Your life revolves around your mobile phone, facebook, myspace or any of the other social applications that allow people (and brands) to connect and interact with each other. Agencies and their clients are trying to find ways to utilize the social web to get closer to their customers. While people in the agency are certainly catching up and are learning about the social web, we are all interested in having people that are engaged in the social web as deeply as the Millenial generation. So, 2 things here -
1: Study how brands are interacting with you on the social web and learn about who is doing it right and wrong, this will serve you well in an interview and make you sound like you know what you're talking about.
2: Apply for a social media internship at an agency, if they don't have one open, offer one. Maybe they haven't thought about it.

2. Leverage Who You Already Know: Networking is a skill that's typically perfected over time and usually a student coming out of school hasn't mastered it, yet. These are extraordinary times and knowing how to properly network until you find what you're looking for will help you achieve your goals. A few ideas on this topic:
1: Join LinkedIn and add all of your college friends and parent's friends. And then, request to connect with all of their friends. Make it known that you are searching for an entry-level or internship in an advertising or marketing agency.
2. Join Ziki and utilize their search engine locator tool - people will search for you on Google and your Ziki profile can help you appear in the paid search listings.
3: Use Facebook as a networking tool not  a place to post drinking pictures. You probably have hundreds of people already connected with you on either FB or Myspace, use them to get a job not a date.
4. Attend Local Marketing Events: If you live in a major market, there are probably marketing events either for interactive or advertising. Go to them to learn and to meet people.

3. Create a Google Reader Account and subscribe to the feeds of the top 500 marketing blogs. Sort your reader in folders that divide the content into areas such as, B2B Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Search, Mobile etc. Be religious about reading the content and learning it. Star the articles and posts you think are smart and be good about referencing them when you do get an interview. Being informed about what is happening in the marketplace is the best way to sound smarter and more advanced than the other people that are interviewing for your same position. Agencies hire people that can add value every step of the way, especially now when we need to do more with less.

4. Create A Social Media Resume which is a multi-media dossier that will give the potential hiring manager a layered and dimensional perspective on who you are and what you know. This would include not only your basic resume, but links to all of your social networks, papers you've written and a professional video introducing you to the hiring manager. This will certainly set you apart from the people that are just sending resumes to HR and praying someone calls them back.

5. Write a Marketing Blog that outlines your take on what brands and companies are doing in the marketplace. This is a great way for people to see your passion for marketing and your writing skills. This takes a great deal of effort, but is worth it. Not only will you be forced to analyze and study what is happening in the world of marketing, but it will most definitely set you apart from the other entry level candidates. And, if you do it right, you will be connected to other influential marketing bloggers that can help you network. Find a leader blog and emulate their content and widgets until you feel comfortable.

Breaking into our industry isn't easy, especially today. However, there are ways to separate yourself from the pack in the process of interviewing. These will test your will for how much you really want to break into the marketing/advertising world. And, if there is one thing you take away from this post is that agencies are needing to do more with less, we need people in our companies that will add value beyond answering phones or pushing paper. Make yourself a 'must-have' hire by pointing out ideas and thoughts that the agency and their clients can't live without.

Good luck.

Oh yea, one more small, but big thing - send your interviewer a handwritten thank you note confirming your key points from the interview. Best case, hand deliver the very next morning to the receptionist or assistant. This goes a very long way.

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Tips For Powerful IT Channel Marketing

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