Walt Disney didn’t need a master’s degree, and he certainly wasn’t an engineer, but he excelled at marketing. Those marketing skills propelled Disney success as an entertainment powerhouse. You have noticed their simple marketing ideas, haven’t you? I certainly have.
His marketing has become a benchmark for other companies that want to reach similar heights of recognition and revenue. Whether you are a top tier content marketing agency or a SaaS (software as a service) product, you can learn a thing or two from Disney.
Here are ten big lessons from Disney I have picked up and employed often:
Simple marketing ideas … leverage reviews
Disney has done well getting reviews from its customers. That is an understatement, isn’t it?
A free trial or sample can be offered in exchange for a testimonial or a review that appears on social media or a review website. Many times, customers are happy to give a review if you ask them. A coupon or some other exclusive deal is icing on the cake.
Make sure each testimonial has the person’s name and image or avatar. If it’s a B2B relationship, be sure to add a link back to their website for further credibility.
Give it a try.
Others have tried these, you should too. (Mari Smith and Josh Steimle, just to name a few)
Focus on the unique value proposition, not price
A big part of Disney’s marketing strategy is that they never get involved in price wars. They stick to their pricing albeit it is often much higher than any of the competition. They can do this because they focus on touting their unique value proposition that no other competitor has been able to emulate — beautiful service and experiences that work straight.
They also focus on providing a great user experience with cool features and extensive applications that put it in a product class by itself.
Whatever device Disney is offering, they make sure the customer feels like it’s worth paying the higher price. This method of thought can be used to market any product or service environment. Just focus on what sets you apart from the rest of the market.
Simplicity
Customers and prospects don’t need complex marketing campaigns that overwhelm them with information. Disney understood this concept early on and made sure that their marketing was as simple as possible. They took out product feature lists, price, voice-overs and special effects.
In Disney marketing, there isn’t typically any information on where and how to buy their services and products. Instead, the ads and other marketing messages are very straightforward — typically showing the experience and letting it speak for itself. Leave out the flashy noise, strip down the content to the bare minimum, and display simple graphics that translate your message.
There is no need for jargon or technical terms that take away from what you are offering your audience.
Simple marketing ideas … emotional appeal
Disney has created evangelists out of their customers primarily because they have been able to reach and hold on to them at an emotional level. Their ads show happy people having a great time with their products rather than focusing on small product details of the product.
The more their visual content appeals to emotions like happiness, enjoyment and inclusion, the more likely that content will be shared with others and generate the viral movement that the simple marketing ideas highlight.
This can be emulated by any business niche or company through strong visuals, emotionally charged language and a positive tone as the basis for all content.
They stand for something
Customers want to know that you represent something — core values that they can see in action to feel comfortable buying and using your products. This stand goes beyond just the product.
It must be apparent in everything else connected to it — the packaging, retail appearance, and marketing collateral. The messages must repeat those values throughout all platforms.
Messaging consistency reinforces the beliefs of your audience; that your brand can always be counted on to deliver what they stand for. You need to look at everything related to your marketing efforts and make sure there are a unified look and feel.
Disney does this extremely well in everything they do.
Simple marketing ideas … create good experiences
Anyone can make a product, but not many can create an experience for the customer that is memorable and entices them to come back again and again. From products that feel like going to a rock concert, to movie-style ads, to stores and online shops that revolutionize the experience — Disney knows the value of customer experiences.
Part of creating an experience that customers will remember is to use the art of storytelling to generate the experience and add sensory dimensions to the overall delivery. This immerses the customer in what they are doing, making it feel less like just shopping for a product.
Suggestion box.
Have you noticed this in Disney’s strategy?
Use the customer’s language
Because Disney has studied their customers intently, they know how to speak to them in their language, which creates a deeper bond and encourages more sales.
By avoiding terms and explanations that only serve to confuse and overwhelm, they have found a way to reach customers on a new level that the competition still has not figured out.
Focus on studying your customer, how they interact and talk on social media, and speak to those aspects of your product or service that they are most interested in, and use the words they would use.
Develop an aura and mystery around activities
The best marketing approach Disney has used to create mystery about what they are doing next with their businesss that keep what they are up to under wraps until the big unveiling.
This turns customers into rabid fans and gets them pumped up in a way that has them buying whatever it is rather than stopping to think if they even need what amazon is introducing.
However, Disney has gone even farther by leaking certain information and starting rumors to further stir the mystique around their marketing practices; They know how to stir up the audience.
Usually, marketers tell their customers everything about a product, but Disney creates more excitement by withholding information and making everyone speculate.
Very effective isn’t it?
Use product placement
Disney has the budget to get its devices on television shows and movies, but it’s fine to start smaller too. Any marketer can place a product with an influencer who can then share it on their social media sites like Instagram or Snapchat. Once an influencer shares your product and shows their followers how beneficial it is, the seed is planted, and leads are made.
Quite unique, yes?
Effectively leverage visuals
We live in a world of content where people are bombarded with words all the time. That’s why videos and other visuals have become so popular. There are far fewer words and more images that can make a greater impact on the customer experience.
Disney even used ads with only ten words because they understand that the words, especially the excess of words, is not what resonates with customers and prospects.
When creating marketing campaigns, fewer words mean more to the audience, especially when they are given images that resonate on a deeper emotional level.
Disney has a marketing strategy that continues to drive growing sales throughout the globe. Any company can do the same if they apply these lessons within their marketing strategy, and continue to use these tactics for both new and existing products and services.
The bottom line
Marketing used to be pretty simple. You developed a compelling message, used mass media to broadcast that message to large audiences and grew market share. Mostly, you aimed for the meaty part of the curve, where the law of averages conspired in your favor.
Then came the cable TV era. Audiences fragmented, and targeting became the order of the day. Instead of starting with the message, marketers thrived on consumer insight and tried to identify a specific emotional trigger that would win them, loyal customers.
Now mass marketing has shifted to mass personalization and messaging, and targeting has given way to activation. It is no longer enough to grab attention; we must hold attention. We need to make a fundamental shift in mental models.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of word of mouth marketing created by remarkable customer service. And put it to good use.
It’s up to you to keep improving your creative marketing strategies. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
Ever designed creative marketing campaigns, or thought about it? We’ve had to build creative marketing campaigns for our clients in small businesses for the past 6+ years. We learned much from how Jay Baer builds creative marketing.
We have learned a few things about making creative marketing campaigns and advertising look professional even on a tight budget. And the true measure of a successful marketing campaign design? That is having customers remember and talk about them.
Many small businesses don’t have a lot of time or resources to have their marketing campaigns or ads professionally designed. Marketing or advertising, you need to create information that your customers find interesting and worth talking about and remembering. Customers read and remember things that interest them.
So what’s a small business to do?
Here are eight important marketing design elements we rely on to design creative marketing campaigns and the best examples of each that we could find. Great way to learn and stimulate marketing campaign design ideas.
Consumer insight is a simple truth that applies to a significant set of your target community. Businesses must understand what customers are and aren’t buying and why. They should also understand the way and why customers behave the way they do.
Here are two examples of customer insights:
The first example is Sam Walton who put large stores in sparsely populated locations – the opposite of retail orthodoxy – because he ‘understood’ that the vastly improved highway system had made it easy for shoppers from the larger urban areas to travel to these stores and for the suppliers to deliver goods cheaply.
Another example is Steve Jobs insisting that the iMac was launched with four colors because he got that color is a way that people express themselves and makes the computer personal.
This did not go down well with the left-brained people who could say the negatives: delayed launch, higher inventory, more pressure in forecasting, etc.
Creative marketing campaigns address issues that are specific to given objectives. So one campaign strategy won’t be effective for all of your objectives.
Design marketing campaigns to specific business objectives.
Baer builds creative marketing … think strategically, not predictably
You want to think strategically and avoid predictability. Think to the brand, the positioning of your messages, and direct responses.
Branding – Your branding is all about showing consistent messages and personality all the time. This is not about us, but how people perceive us and our story, what we look like, and what value we offer others.
Positioning – Positioning is about finding a niche in customers’ minds, and filling it with a tagline and unique selling position (USP) that will capture their attention and be remembered. A USP is one of the fundamental pieces of any solid marketing campaign. Simply stated, it’s a summary of what makes your business unique and valuable to your target market. It answers the question: How do your business services benefit your clients better than anyone else can?
This is because a USP can give a great deal of clarity to your business model, what your company does and why you do it. It can define your business and most important business goals in just a sentence.
Direct response – A direct response is a trigger you want from customers that results in an action you are seeking. The final result will hopefully yield new business for your company.
Baer builds creative marketing … tell great stories
Good stories immediately focus on engagement, experiences, and emotion … central tenets that are attractive to most customers. The narrative makes your message relevant and memorable through personalization.
Stories are a great means for sharing and interpreting experiences, and great experiences have this innate ability to change the way in which we view our world.
Baer builds creative marketing … emotional influence and persuasion
Successful marketing campaign examples.
Budweiser puppy love that was, by most accounts, the biggest winner from the 2014 Super Bowl. There are no better means of influence or the power of persuasion than emotion. Hands down the best, in our opinion.
Experiences that trigger our emotions are saved and consolidated in lasting memory because the emotions generated by the experiences signal our brains that the experiences are important to remember.
Check out this ad here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQB7QRyF4p4
There are eight basic, universal emotions – joy, surprise, anticipation, acceptance, fear, anger, sadness, and disgust. Successful appeals to these basic emotions consolidate stories and the desired calls to action in the lasting memories of audiences.
Baer builds creative marketing … visual elements
Use pictures/visuals to convey the message much better than words. “Seeing is believing” and “actions speak louder than words” are two common sayings that reflect a bias and preference for visual presentation.
Does Samsung have another winning marketing strategy?
Here is a four-minute Samsung ad with 15-20 new features shown for their iPhone. No talking. And so simple that you quickly grasp the features and don’t lose interest. And the coordinated music has a way to keep you tied in. Creating customer interest doesn’t get any simpler than this. A very simple, yet entertaining design, don’t you think?
This ad subtly grabs and holds attention based on a great music soundtrack, no speaking, and total reliance on superb visuals.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of word of mouth marketing. And put it to good use.
It’s up to you to keep improving your creative marketing efforts. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
Check out these additional articles on customer service insights from our library:
Peter Ducker once said: The customer never buys what you think you sell. That is an interesting quote. Have you ever flown JetBlue Airline? Were you attracted by JetBlue’s creative marketing ideas? Do you agree with Peter Drucker in thinking that the airline doesn’t know what its difference makers are? Not us.
More importantly, did you decide to fly with this airline because of its difference maker? Not sure? Maybe you will be more certain after you read this article.
The JetBlue Marketing strategy and airline competition?
When choosing to learn from other companies’ marketing strategy, it is always helpful to choose one of the unique approaches to marketing.
Meet JetBlue. They have been successfully executing their marketing plan since the early days of their existence, and their strategies have played a significant role in their growth.
An introduction to JetBlue is perhaps unnecessary. But we’ll give a little refresher just in case. JetBlue Airways Corporation, incorporated on August 24, 1998, is a passenger carrier company. The Company provides air transportation services across the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America. The Company’s segments include Domestic, and Caribbean & Latin America. The Company operates various kinds of aircraft, including Airbus A321, Airbus A320, and Embraer E190. It also provides a premium transcontinental product called Mint. As of December 31, 2016, Mint included 16 fully lie-flat seats, four of which were in suites with a privacy door.
The Company also provides Fly-Fi in-flight Internet service across its Airbus fleet. The Company provides its customers a choice to purchase tickets from three branded fares, which include Blue, Blue Plus, and Blue Flex. Each of this fare includes different offerings, such as free checked bags, reduced change fees, and additional TrueBlue points.
What are their secrets to marketing strategy success? It’s pretty simple … exceptional customer service and unparalleled flight experiences. Their goal is to create customers for life. Here’s how they strive to achieve this lofty goal, with some great examples:
Creative marketing examples … brand identity
The heart of the JetBlue marketing strategy is their brand. The brand is built into and reflected by its tag line … ‘You above all.’ The brand image is the number one factor that drives business. Since the brand image is so important, it’s crucial for you to cut through the clutter and differentiate your brand as an organization that is truly relevant to consumer needs.
If you want to improve the public image of your brand, then what better way is there to do so than by defining it yourself? JetBlue does this by sharing stories about the engagement of the airline with its passengers through its online content strategy.
Creative marketing campaign ideas.
Their stories elaborate on ways in which their employees have gone out of their way to ensure a great experience for guests. They are excellent at not only framing their stories but in behaving in such a way – providing great customer service at every level – that great stories happen.
Understand the value of every employee
If you’ve ever held a job where you didn’t feel appreciated, you understand how frustrating it can be. Well, the JetBlue Airline avoids this pitfall by valuing every employee. By empowering the employee, the hotel creates a staff that is passionate about the airline, its services, and its success. Furthermore, happier employees mean happier guests.
Creative marketing ideas … build on reciprocity
In Robert Cialdini’s famous book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, he notes that:
The impressive aspect of reciprocation with its accompanying sense of obligation is its pervasiveness in human culture.
It is so widespread that, after intensive study, Alvin Gouldner (1960), along with other sociologists, reported that all human societies subscribe to the rule.
The point is straight forward: Reciprocity is likely something that has evolved in the human brain to keep a majority of transactions “fair.”
We often feel obligated to return favors, even if they are unasked for.
This is the ultimate reason why great customer service has such a fantastic value to the marketing objectives.
Surprise customers
Creative marketing examples.
The research points to this being a universal truth in social interaction and reciprocity: small surprises that feel like they were “just for you” can spawn some incredibly strong goodwill from the receiver.
Go the extra mile
Here is a great example of how this airline staff goes the extra mile for its customers.
A while back I was sitting on the runway in Orlando as my homeward-bound Jet Blue flight was about to taxi toward takeoff. Like just about every other flight that hadn’t already been canceled that day on the Eastern seaboard, ours was a couple of hours late departing. The lead flight attendant gets on the P.A. system and says something very close to:
“Ladies and Gentlemen, we know we’re late taking off, and even though it’s the weather and not something we caused, we’re going to comp everybody’s movies for this flight. We know you’ve all had a long day and we want it to end with something nice and relaxing. And for those of you who were supposed to be on the Continental flight and ended up here, we don’t ever want you to go back.”
The mood on the flight — which could have been a rather dreary late evening affair — took an immediate upswing. People joked and smiled and made eye contact. They were noticeably brighter and calmer as the flight progressed. And I’m writing about the experience today, and several thousand business travelers are reading about it.
What enabled this relatively small act of kindness and allowed it to become a major brand statement? Midflight, I went to the back of the plane and asked. I wanted to know the policy that allowed a flight attendant to make such a call.
“We’re allowed to make almost any decision,” the flight attendant explained, “as long as we can justify it by one of the airline’s five core values: Safety, Caring, Integrity, Fun or Passion. If we can tie doing something back to one of these principles, the decision is going to be supported by the company.”
What JetBlue is saying to its employees … “If you act in support of the values that matter to our business, we want you to take risks to care for our customers.”
Be prepared
One lesson that you might not expect to find, however, is how proactive JetBlue employees are in planning for mistakes and accidents. Since complaining customers are unavoidable in totality, JetBlue always focuses on being prepared and ‘planning.’ One of my favorite examples is their practice of “resetting a customer’s internal clock” when the service is taking too long in responding to customer requests.
Notice how this tactic works: With a relatively small gift, the staff can reset the internal clock with a customer by establishing a new time reference point. While it’s not as the meal delivery early delivery, it’s certainly better than an employee returning to a customer multiple times to say ‘I’m sorry.’
Wow, talk about unexpected service. Have you ever received an unexpected service from a business that you would share? Do you have any comments or questions to add below?
The bottom line
To be effective in this new era, we as service providers need to see our jobs differently. No more just focusing on metrics like clicks, video views or social media shares. We must successfully integrate our function with other business functions to create entire brand experiences that serve the customer all the way through their experiences throughout the business.
So much of marketing is about psychology. This simple exercise of observation has convinced me that observing human behavior is as important as reading books, attending conferences and classes when it comes to learning how to create effective marketing.
We can do better. Much better. But first, we need to stop seeing ourselves as crafters of clever brand messages and become creators of positive brand experiences.
There can never be enough focus on continuous improvement on brand service, independent of how well the business is doing. It seems we all are looking to take our success to a new level. This is an excellent time to make a statement with their brand service to the customer. Changing before you have to is always a good idea.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of word-of-mouth marketing created by remarkable customer service. And put it to good use.
It’s up to you to keep improving your creative marketing strategies. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
Do you make continuous improvement a focus of your marketingstrategy? Most of the best marketing strategies we study and follow certainly do, and that is an awesome way to do marketing. Yes, the innovative marketing ideas of NASA marketing is making their messages better and better all the while. And their success has a ton to do with their marketing strategy. Of course, if you are a family with interest in space and science you certainly know this.
Have you noticed? It is hard not to notice, isn’t it? Let’s examine the reasons their marketing strategy is so effective:
Brand identity
Youthful, magical, fun, and family oriented making this organization true to its space brand.
While establishing a differentiated meaning for a brand is tough, perhaps the greater challenge facing marketers today is the growing number of places consumers touch a brand. It’s become incredibly more complicated to execute a brand promise. This is what we call bringing the brand to life.
Consumers are interacting with brands in myriad new ways, but brand organizations have to move much faster. They have to show greater agility and responsiveness to potential followers actions and reactions. This often must be at warp-speed in this rapidly changing environment.
The heart of the NASA marketing strategy is their brand. The brand is built into and reflected by its tag line … the happiest place on earth. They understand that their brand is not about them.
Rather it is about how their community sees them, feels about them, and talks about them. They realize that their brand represents their current and future relationships. Their goal is to deliver an emotional connection to their public products. And they are doing it very well.
Creative marketing campaign ideas … real time marketing
In their recent book, Marketing the Moon (MIT Press, 2014), Scott and Jurek trace the Apollo-era collaboration between private industry and NASA’s internal public affairs office. They contend that the massive campaigns launched then were some of the first deployments of what we’d call brand journalism and “real-time marketing” today. In fact, what Mars One is doing, with reality TV, brand partnerships, and an upcoming book called Mars One: The Human Factor says Scott is largely “the same as Apollo — but updated for today.”
Lansdorp would be lucky to recreate that success: in July of 1969, 94 percent of American televisions were tuned to the Apollo 11’s moon landing. And such widespread enthusiasm for the event was the culmination of a decade-long campaign to educate the public. At NASA’s inception in 1958, the agency hired public affairs staff “not as pitchmen, but as reporters,” according to the authors, a move largely at odds with the rise of a glamorous, oily advertising industry like the one portrayed in Mad Men.
NASA’s PR staff were broadcast- and print-media veterans and they served up copy like a newsroom. The team grilled engineers for stories churned out bylined articles and sent press releases meant to be copied verbatim by news outlets. They produced pre-packaged broadcast segments that often made it straight to the airwaves. In the early days, the office largely strove to introduce and explain complex technologies, tech that had previously been used mostly by soldiers and military men, to both the press and the public.
It was a task that, for over a decade, private companies involved in spaceflight were eager to augment. As a government agency coordinating with the military and Congress, NASA ultimately dealt in the release of information and facts. But private companies who earned NASA contracts often employed more glamorous tactics, including colorful press kits and advertisements for the watches astronauts wore, the Tang they slurped from packets, the cameras they used, and the companies like IBM that helped build their spaceships.
NASA did, however, enforce some restrictions. The agency’s photos were taxpayer-funded, so private companies could use them in advertisements without paying to license them — as long as NASA’s public affairs office approved how they were used. But NASA found itself blindsided by what would become its most in-demand asset: the astronauts themselves.
To maintain control over the astronauts’ public profiles, the agency signed a deal with Life magazine, essentially granting the publisher exclusive rights to the astronauts’ lives. Until the contract ended in 1962, the magazine ran cover stories featuring the astronauts and their families (“Making of a Brave Man,” “Astronauts’ Wives”) and spun off a handful of books as well, including a collection of first-person space tales. As Scott and Jurek write, “The astronauts and NASA worked with Life … to carefully craft the image of the astronauts, not as military men, but as middle-class average family men thrust into service for the good of their country.”
Innovative marketing ideas … content marketing
Build excitement: Let’s face it; NASA is not a low-cost organization. By providing custom touch points filled with useful and exciting content, unique to each families’ touch, NASA strategy is helping to build excitement. It works, and it’s brilliant.
Personalize: All customers are unique, have different needs, especially in travel. Since this is not a one-size-fits-all world, what everyone needs is different from just about every other person. NASA takes advantage of that and delivers value somewhat unique for each family.
Times have changed since NASA’s early space travel to the moon, but their marketing ideas are still amazing.
NASA case study … the power of prizes
Most people recognize Charles Lindbergh as the man who achieved worldwide fame when he made the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris in 1927. But relatively few people know that Lindbergh did it to win a $25,000 prize (worth approximately $340,000 today) offered by a New York City-based hotel owner.
Lindbergh’s story unfolded nearly a century ago, but it continues to serve as an example of the extraordinary things people can accomplish when incentivized by awards, public honors, and cash prizes, as well as the ingenuity unleashed by competition on a level playing field, where underdogs can make their mark. Recognizing the power of this principle, in 2009 President Obama urged Federal agencies to pursue “high-risk, high-reward policy tools such as prizes and challenges to solve tough problems.”
Answering this call, NASA has increasingly turned to public competitions as a source of fresh ideas to help meet engineering challenges in aeronautics and space exploration.
“Prize competitions have become a keycomponent in NASA’s toolkit for developing technology and solving problems,” says Gladys Henderson, executive of the Agency’s Prizes and Challenges Program. “Because we only pay for success, we have found them to be remarkably efficient regarding getting the job done—which is a win not just for NASA but ultimately for taxpayers.”
The Agency’s flagship effort in prize competitions dated to 2005 when the Centennial Challenges Program was established to engage the public in advancing technologies relevant to NASA missions. After proposing a set challenge for competitors—say, to build a robot capable of finding and collecting geological samples from a large field with varied terrain—along with precise criteria for success, NASA holds an event. Teams use either their funds or outside investments to develop a technology beforehand and then bring their creations to the competition.
Social media marketing and NASA
There aren’t many businesses or brands in the world that can rival NASA’s social media game. While the stereotypical image of NASA employees is that of serious people wearing lab coats and discussing incomprehensible rocket science, the premier space organization showed the world that it could form connections with even those people who have an aversion to science.
Today, NASA boasts of over 120 million followers across all social media sites, on which it handles over 500 accounts. While you may think to gain such a massive following wasn’t a particularly difficult task for NASA (after all, they’re posting pictures of space, and who isn’t interested in those, right?), the organization put a ton of effort into making it happen.
NASA marketing … educate and entertain
One thing that has boosted NASA’s popularity on social media sites is their unexpectedhumor. As one of the foremost pioneers of technology in this century, no one could have faulted NASA if they had decided to adopt a serious and scientific tone for their social posts. But the company did what no one expected – they were funny. Using a first person voice peppered with witty phrases for their spacecraft deployed on extra-terrestrial missions, NASA brought a whole new dynamic to engaging audiences on social media.
The space agency has also taken to sharing the latest cosmic images, sent by its various spacecraft, on Instagram even before they’re released to the media. Since images of nebulas, galaxies, black holes, and the like are instant attention grabbers (a cursory look at their Instagram page will tell you what I’m on about), NASA capitalizes on it by providing information about the cosmological entities which most people would otherwise have no interest in learning about. Astronaut Scott Kelly’s regular posts during his year on board the International Space Station also proved to be a great hit on social media.
The NASA web sites are the physical center of this Agency’s marketing. Their designs are very user-friendly, yet contain the means to integrate all the strategy elements we discuss today. They encompass several ways to allow two-way client engagements, including live chat, email, and telephone.
Again little to no selling, as they let their accomplishments do the marketing. Their strategy reflects the belief that pushy sales pitches turn customers off, but personally relevant and interactive engagement switches them on. You can’t help but notice that all the material is put into the language of the client community.
It’s the stories
In 2016 NASA’s Astronaut, Scott Kelly returned from a one-year space mission aimed to test the limits of human endurance in space. While in space using the hashtag #AYearInSpace, millions of spectators followed the year-long adventure and its near endless stories.
Astronaut Kelly tweeted, posted content on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook (including Facebook Live Sessions), and Snapchat. NASA looked to engage a whole new audience, by using platforms that millennials would use. As a result, they sparked fresh interest in younger generations.
Adapting to change
The NASA marketing strategy is in a state of continual change with new and creative ideas. A very progressive organization which keeps up to speed on consumer trends and needs. Certainly always eager to adapt their expertise to new areas. And certainly always looking to try new things, to include marketing.
Sharing the unexpected
NASA utilizes all the main marketing elements, channels/platforms to engage potential clients. All channels are used to engage and conversationally share all their material. They are always looking to engage and learn and serve customers.
NASA’s mission to achieve the unexpected extends to its marketing initiatives, which have developed over time into a tremendously effective program.
Following the 2008 Twitter announcement that spacecraft Phoenix had found water on Mars, the NASA Twitter account gained 75,000 followers and became the eighth most followed account on the platform at the time.
This feat was the first big step in NASA’s development of an organization-wide social ecosystem that was designed to turn “NASA enthusiasts into brand ambassadors.” As a federal agency, NASA cannot fund promoted or sponsored content, yet over time it has been able to grow a large and loyal following using the organic content.
NASA’s social team publishes content to nearly 15 platforms, the agency’s Twitter handle boasts over 17 million followers, and the Mars Curiosity Rover handle alone has 3 million followers. NASA has nurtured followers-turned-ambassadors whose fandom is so serious that they stepped in during the government shutdown (while NASA was unable to tweet) with the #thingsnasawouldtweet hashtag, eager to keep the agency’s mission alive and well, even when NASA itself could not.
Today, the NASA headquarters include a specialized social team that uses a single, unified social platform. The team’s success centers around the concept of what NASA deputy social media manager, Jason Townsend, calls “brute force coordination” – regular communication across teams and levels, both top-down and bottom-up.
NASA has utilized its marketing prowess in many ways. Its technological prowess is storied, but it was its marketing genius that set them apart from everyone else. Use a little of NASA’s businessinsight in your content marketing campaign and enjoy renewed and continuous business success.
For a different way of marketing see our article on Marriott Marketing.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Are you devoting enough energy improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Do you make continuous improvement a focus of your marketing strategy? Most of the best marketing strategies we study and follow certainly do, and that is an awesome way to do marketing. Yes, the innovative Guinness creative marketing strategies are making their messages better and better all the while. And their success has a ton to do with their marketing strategy. Of course, if you are a family that likes good beer you certainly know this.
Marketers tend to like big, bold actions that grab attention and spew off metrics and the March on Washington would definitely qualify as that. Yet, all too often, we ignore the more mundane work that comes before. To market a product or an idea, you have to change minds and that’s the real lesson of the Civil Rights Movement. Marketers need to learn from it.
While establishing a differentiated meaning for a brand is tough, perhaps the greater challenge facing marketers today is the growing number of places consumers touch a brand. It’s become incredibly more complicated to execute a brand promise. This is what we call bringing the brand to life.
Get started with this short video on creative marketing tips.
Consumers are interacting with brands in myriad new ways, but brand organizations have to move much faster. They have to show greater agility and responsiveness to potential followers actions and reactions. This often must be at warp-speed in this rapidly changing environment.
Guinness class
One of my favorite types of marketing is the “aspirational” kind — or as the Harvard Business Review defines it, marketing for brands that “fall into the upper-right quadrant.” Think Luxury cars, haute couture, and private jets. Things we aspire to own.
It’s that last one — private jets — that set apart the Guinness Class experience. For a few weeks, ambassadors dressed in Guinness-branded flight attendant uniforms entered bars across the U.K., where they surprised unsuspecting customers with a chance to win all kinds of prizes.
To participate, bar-goers had to order a pint of Guinness. After doing that, they would shake a prize-generating mobile tablet that displayed what they won. They could win everything from passport cases to key chains, but one player per night would get the ultimate prize: A free trip to Dublin — via private jet, of course — with four mates.
What we like about this experience was its ability to associate Guinness with something aspirational, like traveling by private jet. And according to Nick Britton, marketing manager for Guinness Western Europe, that held the brand up as one that doesn’t “settle for the ordinary.”
That’s important — and can be tricky — for a brand that’s nearly 257 years old: to maintain its authenticity, while also adapting to a changing landscape and audience. But Guinness didn’t have to change anything about its actual products in this case. Instead, it created an experience that addressed changing consumer preferences — for example, the fact that 78% of millennials would rather spend money on a memorable experience or event than buy desirable things.
Remember this
Think about the things your target audience might aspire to, and that you’d like to associate with your brand. Then, build an experience around that.
If you do require a product purchase to participate in the experience, make it convenient. In this case, people had to buy a pint of Guinness to win a prize, but they were already in a bar that served it.
I had heard that what some call the “Guinness Factory Tour” in Dublin was great. Its real name, the Guinness Storehouse, is the largest tourist attraction in Ireland. That is amazing.
In 2015, it was selected “Europe’s Leading Tourist Attraction” at the World Travel Awards. Double amazing. Though visitors can glimpse at the factory buildings, it’s not a tour of the factory.
It is really about a GUINNESS brand experience, a wonderful melding of history and fresh, new, engaging technology, that takes place in a 7-story building dating back to 1904. The structure simulates the inside of a beer bottle, so large; it would take over 14.3 million pints of Guinness to fill it.
On the ground floor, is a collection of antique, single-serve beer bottles, attractively displayed, from the days when bottles were filled from large kegs at individual bars.
On the next level are framed portraits of the founder, Arthur Guinness and key contemporaries that come to life through animation, and explain the role beer and Guinness have played in Irish culture and Dublin history. Guinness so believed in the quality of his beer; he had the amazing foresight to sign a 9,000-year lease on the property for a mere 45 British pounds annually.
Another level shows how beer kegs were made and then rolled onto large ships and transported to progressively wider geographies around the world.
One level down from the top is three restaurants, with beautiful exposed white ceramic, Victorian period, glazed bricks from the original factory. One features contemporary Irish food with recommended beer pairings. Another is more of a pub, with pub fare, and the third, simulate the factory cafeteria, Guinness workers would have eaten in.
Last but not least, visitors wind their way to the top “Gravity Bar,” with its 360° views of Dublin, where visitors can enjoy a pint. “Gravity” is a double-entendre. While in the beer industry it means measuring the sugar in the wort (the starchy liquid that gets fermented), most visitors assume the name relates to its height. It’s “the highest bar” in Dublin. Imaginatively, at each viewpoint, etched in the windows are the names of the site’s visitors are looking toward.
Unique marketing ideas … web site
The Guinness web site is the physical center of this firm’s marketing. Their designs are very user-friendly, yet contain the means to integrate all the strategy elements we discuss today. They encompass several ways to allow two-way client engagements, including live chat, email, and telephone.
Again little to no selling, as they let their products do the marketing. Their strategy reflects the belief that pushy sales pitches turn customers off, but personally relevant and interactive engagement switches them on. You can’t help but notice that all the material is put into the language of the client community.
It’s the stories
The story is king – Guinness has figured out that the story was a great way to create customer attention. Many Guinness ads have a story behind them. People relate to these stories. It’s just part of the human condition. They are great for engaging people on a human level. Their stories abound at every turn.
Creative marketing campaign ideas … adapting to change
Guinness marketing is continually focusing on creative change A very progressive company which keeps up to speed on consumer trends and needs. Certainly always eager to adapt their expertise to new areas. And certainly always looking to try new things, to include marketing.
Social media
Guinness utilizes all the main social media channels/platforms to engage potential clients. All channels are used to engage and conversationally share all their material. They are always looking to engage and learn and serve customers.
Most all of Guinness marketing messages are short and to the point. As we said previously, many topics are used to produce many messages so as not to over saturate the market with the same ideas.
Integrating the elements
All of these strategy elements complement the firm’s brand and messages. The integrating elements? The brand and the client educational element. The key is to have a central theme to the brand. In Guinness’ case, the themes are all built around a creative brand identity. Integration of all elements is the most important part of the strategy.
The bottom line
Guinness has been created in many ways. The technological prowess is storied, but it was the marketing genius that set him apart from everyone else. Use a little of Guinness’ business insight in your content marketing campaign and enjoy renewed and continuous business success.
Here’s the thing, the Guinness creative marketing isn’t just a new way of attracting customers, it’s a new way of running a business. They certainly understand this concept well and are using social marketing to promote their business rapidly.
For a different way of marketing see our article on Marriott Marketing.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
11 Steps to Media Framing Messages for Optimum Engagement
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
Do you follow the Super Bowl brand creative advertising strategy? Do you follow the ads because you find them entertaining, or because you are interested in what is new in marketing campaign ideas?
The secret of all effective advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships.
Leo Burnett
We enjoy the entertainment value of the ads for sure, but we really fall into the second category and look forward to new advertising strategy ideas and design concepts.
What works best for advertising in your business? We would love to hear what it was. Would you do us a favor and post it in the comments section below? It would be greatly appreciated by us and our readers.
The ultimate goal of all the points I list below is this: eliminate the fluff from your marketing strategy and focus only on the things that work.
Every once in a while a brand and its agency try something new on the Super Bowl and fundamentally changes the marketing game. Apple’s Super Bowl spot “1984” falls into this group. This Super Bowl commercial is regarded as a key creative moment for Apple and Super Bowl advertising generally.
It borrows from George Orwell’s tale to suggest that Apple users could smash the PC oligarchy.
Ten years ago, social media was in its infancy. Nobody even heard of mobile marketing, content marketing or big data. The iPhone hadn’t even been launched yet. If you took a reasonably competent marketer from 2007 and transported her to today, much of what she knew about her job would be irrelevant.
We’re at a similar point now. Many of the most powerful technologies that will shape marketing over the next ten years are just emerging and many marketers will be left behind. Clearly, anybody who thinks that they can get by doing more of what they’re doing today is kidding themselves.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to perfectly predict the future, but we can look at today’s technology and make some basic judgments. Big data and artificial intelligence will become much more powerful and interact more completely with the physical world. That, in turn, will transform how we identify and serve customers to something very different from today.
Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl also falls into this group. Here Doritos used customer engagement to crowdsource the ad design through a competition. For Super Bowl XLI, Doritos launched a contest, Crash the Super Bowl, to allow consumers to create their own Doritos commercial. The general public was allowed to vote for their favorite of five finalists.
According to Doritos, the vote was so close that just before the game the company decided to run two of the ads rather than just one. Both commercials finished highly in ratings of commercials during this Super Bowl
It is becoming clear that Chrysler’s 2011 spot featuring Eminem also falls in this group.
Chrysler broke a lot of informal Super Bowl advertising rules with this 2011 ad. The spot was dark and gritty, not a funny, catchy piece of film like so many other Super Bowl ads. The ad didn’t prominently display a logo.
And it ran for a remarkable two minutes. On the Super Bowl, when every second is worth more than $75,000, buying such a long spot was in the rarefied air.
But Chrysler’s ad worked exceptionally well ( see our article ). It stood out in a very unique way and the story ultimately connected to the brand. The ad generated an extraordinary amount of buzz.
Most important, the ad became the foundation of a marketing campaign that has helped revitalize the Chrysler brand. By breaking the rules, Chrysler built interest and transformed its brand image.
So what should you expect from this year’s Super Bowl’s creative advertising strategy? Here are our strategy predictions:
Marketing campaign ideas … advertisement length
Just like the Chrysler ad last year, we expect more lengthy ones this year. In fact, we know that many will be a minute in length and at least 3 greater than a minute.
Creative storytelling
Storytelling is growing in marketing importance … watch for many brands to tell their story. This is one reason that advertisement length is growing.
One of my favorite experts in the field of creative advertising is Edward Bouches and Creativity Unbound. You’ll find lots of good examples and case studies to learn from in his blog.
Doritos will continue their strategy this year (we will have another blog on this subject before the Super Bowl) … their continued success will influence other brands.
Creative marketing campaign ideas … engaging people
There is no better example of engagement than the Doritos contest. We expect to engagement grow this year and into the future.
Creative advertising strategy … create the unexpected
Just like the ads that have been most successful in the past … all did new and unique things. We should see many strategies this year that is different by design.
The name of the game is to be talked about. The advertisements that are remarkable get talked about the most.
Related post: Case Studies to Evaluate New World Marketing Concepts
Remember, it is not what advertising does with the consumer; it is what the consumer does after seeing the advertisement.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Case Studies to Evaluate New World Marketing Concepts
How to Frame Marketing Messages for Optimum Engagement
