marketing briefings.

I love Denny’s. A hearty bacon and egg breakfast is one of my all-time favourite meals. A Grand Slamwich tastes phenomenal – especially if after a night of drinking. (I’m glad Denny’s is opening up to the fact that being open 24/7 means that many of their late night patrons may be intoxicated). 

With that being said, some of the reasoning behind some of their recent communications campaigns makes perfect sense: when I go to Denny’s, I generally pick between the same two menu items, every single time. Grand Slam or Grand Slamwich. Grand Slam or Grandslamwich. I don’t always browse the menu.

I had seen a couple of the Always Open videos before and I love the concept behind them. Similar in concept to Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee with Jerry Seinfeld, producing viral videos such as these are quite an effective way to connect with the younger audiences and reinforce the Denny’s brand in a subtle way. People love the comedians and actors that are being featured in Always Open, so it wouldn’t be surprising to one day wake up and see a video branded with Denny’s on the front page of Reddit or being shared on my Facebook newsfeed.

Here are a few key takeaways from Jeff Beer’s article about Denny’s content marketing:

1. A brand is a feeling, first and foremost – If people aren’t feeling connected to the brand, much of the content you create or communications you release can be meaningless. Understanding how you play a role in the lives of your customers and, thus, how they genuinely feel about you can help dictate the way you communicate with them.
2. Social media is used to remind people you’re there, and it needs to be transparent and true. – The worst kind of social media is the type that simply spits out and broadcasts press releases and promotions on the daily. Sure, people love promotions. But promotions won’t explicitly help customers connect with the brand itself. If a brand can release relevant and interesting content, be up to date with pop culture and world events, and actually have a personality, they are generally far more likely to connect with audiences and reach mass appeal. Using Denny’s as an example again: most people probably don’t set up their Twitter accounts with the intentions of following the American chain – but when they release content such as the iPhone mock or responses to major news items, people notice, it gets shared, and their following increases. All of a sudden, Denny’s has an online personality behind it, the brand name is infused in people’s daily digestion of their online social media feeds, and people follow along. Social media can be very powerful when interactive, honest, and full of personality and charm (even if it’s quirky – as long as it’s true and honest). Some more examples of strong brand Tweets can be found here.
3. “Read, react, and refine.” Test and monitor very closely. – It’s okay to experiment and take calculated risks with your brand. That was a key takeaway from Beer’s article. What’s important, though, is that these risks are monitored very closely. If something doesn’t seem to be working, the brand needs to react and refine their approach. There’s no sense carrying on with a campaign or a message that doesn’t resonate with an audience. With digital and internet communications being able to be updated almost instantaneously these days, and content scheduled or released hour by hour, a brand cannot wait for month-end reports to roll in before evaluating if a message or approach is resonating. Those working behind a brand need to constantly have their finger on the button and their eyes on the dialogue surrounding what they’ve released. The good news about the internet: feedback can be almost instantaneous.

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Lever 2000 has been around for years. It’s also backed by one of the biggest CPG companies in the world, Unilever. It makes you wonder, then – why does the brand suck so much? How often do you encounter people who have an emotional attachment to Lever 2000? You probably don’t.

What stuck out to me first in Graham Roberton’s slide deck on Building Beloved Brands was his breakdown of focus and strategic choices dependent on a brand’s position on his “Brand Love Curve” (slides 15 & 16). I feel as if early level marketing conversations, especially in university, tend to centre on how you drive out more people to buy your product (or as Robertson labels it, “The Feet”). More customers is obviously important for any brand, but it was interesting to see Robertson visually placing “The Mind” first. It’s tough to really drive out large quantities of shoppers if they don’t think about your brand, if they can’t differentiate who you are, and if they don’t recall your brand. Thus, if you’re a brand which consumers are, by and large, indifferent to, then you need to focus on tapping into “The Mind” and “get consumers to think differently about [the] brand.” In order to do this, a company could do something such as launching something new to gain attention or driving a new position in order to shift consumer thought about the brand.

A few other key points stood out to me from his slide set:

“Build a big idea you can shout from a mountain.” (slide 35)

Why does the idea have to be big? Is Coca-Cola a big idea? Sure, it’s a major brand – but I don’t necessarily see the correlation behind a “big idea” and making a brand beloved. People love Dove Soap, but Dove Soap is not necessarily a big idea. They communicate their brand idea exceptionally well, this is why consumers have connected with them so well. With that being said, crafting a feel good campaign that touches on inner beauty and personal strength isn’t necessarily a “big idea” – but it’s an emotional one that people can relate to.

“Execute with passion. If you don’t love your work, how do you expect your consumer to love the brand?” (slide 44)

I think this is an idea that is becoming increasingly noticed amongst employers, companies, and brands each day. It is exceptionally difficult to communicate a brand passionately and honestly, in a way that consumers would be able to feel, if the brand is managed and pushed out by cold corporate environment where everyone is working for the next dollar, not necessarily because they love the brand. There are, of course, likely exceptions to this rule. However, it’s very important that the philosophies and ideals behind a brand are communicated, exemplified, and valued between the employees managing a brand and the company that employs them. For Dove Soap employees to genuinely craft brand messages related to strength and inner beauty, that must also be a philosophy that is widely recognized within the company as well. This will connect the employees to the brand who will in turn want to connect others with it as well a la WestJet where “everyone is an owner.”

“People don’t really want a quarter-inch drill. They just want a quarter-inch hole.” (slide 36)

This is exceptionally important to remember when managing a company, developing products, and generating a brand image. People aren’t typically buying products simply because they love an inanimate object. They’re buying a product because it suits their needs. People buy drills because they need to drill a hole. People buy toothpaste because they want their teeth to be clean and healthy. Although you can add many layers of personality and connection to a brand, you should never lose sight of the core issue that your product solves for the consumer.

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So, if you look back past this post, you’ll see things related directly to internet and digital marketing. Look even further, and you’ll see my marketing education beginning from Intro to Marketing blog posts.

This post serves as a divider from those past courses and the upcoming posts for COMM 462: Integrated Marketing Communications.

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Source: http://performancing.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Freelance-Writing-Jobs-For-Beginners.jpg

I’ve never been one for levity when it comes to my writing. This has always been an issue. Day to day, I don’t necessarily talk a lot, but when I write I want to be thorough. I want the piece of writing to be properly structured, properly introduced, the subject matter explored from multiple angles, perhaps some opinion or commentary fused in, followed by a conclusion. Of course, this changes depending on what I’m writing: I’ve taught myself how to get to the point in a press release. I’ve taught myself not to drone on in an e-mail. But I’ve always hated the fact that it’s consistently drilled into people that the most successful blog posts and internet writing are short, 300-500 word posts.

That might not be the case anymore. 

Marketing Pilgrim recently summarized a report released by Searchmetrics, an SEO and research firm. In this, they found a few interesting conclusions that could be very important for online writers and marketers:

•   Content:High quality, relevant content ranks better on average, and is identifiable by properties such as comprehensive wording in regard to the co-occurrence of related terms in the context, a higher word-count and media enrichment

•    Technology: A well optimized technical performance of a page contributes to a good ranking, such as, robust site architecture with an optimal internal linking structure, short loading times and presence of meta tags. 
•    Backlinks: The quantity and quality of backlinks remains crucial as there are many new features introduced this year that have been revised to improve the quality of the results. 
•     Social Signals: The correlation values regarding coefficients out of the social sector have slightly decreased. The growth of the average total number of signals per position was rather small. 
•     User Signals: For the first time, user signals were measured and as expected there is a relation between rankings and higher click-through rates, lower bounce rates and a high time-on-site. (Credit: Searchmetrics)

Average Ranking vs. Length of Text Post Source: Searchmetrics Report

Most important to note in this situation is the idea that a higher word count could leader to better search rankings. This, of course, is still very much interdependent on strong content. Writing pages of nonsense will serve no purpose – but it appears that people on the Internet are open to reading more in 2014 than they were just one year ago. Perhaps this indicates why site like Medium have caught on.  

Very important to note is that, although readers are open to reading more, the ease of reading must also be considerably high. The top sites on Google, as determined by Searchmetrics through using the classic Flesch-value scale, are those sites that could easily be read by a 13 to 15 year old.

Additionally, key words are of utmost importance. In terms of Google rankings, all of your text means nothing if your key words are not directly related. Google will not rank highly those pages that use random keywords in an attempt to pick up more readers.

So, if this information proves correct, more long-winded writers like myself have reasons to rejoice: as long as we keep our writing easy to read and our keywords on point, we might now have the opportunity to write more online!

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