Gold

Although the Canadian Investing Conference is targeted to cover Investment Management topics, some of our Keynote Speakers, such as Bob Rennie, are experts in more than just investing.  Bob Rennie is the Director and Founder at Rennie Marketing Systems & Rennie Associates Realty.

The other day, I went down to his office on the boarder of China Town in Vancouver.  Let me just say – this guy is so cool.  After talking to him for an hour about real estate, marketing, life, Vancouver, and personal experiences Bob gave me a tour of his office.  Bob’s passion is modern art.  He has devoted half of his office space to his own personal modern art museum. Bob also serves on multiple museum boards such as the Tate Modern in England and is the face of many of the local arts boards in Vancouver.

Acting as Chair of an investing conference, I thought I would just expand my knowledge of Finance.  Oh boy – was I wrong.  Bob has sparked my interest in other topics, and has solidified my belief that all areas of business are integral to each other.  Seing how successful Bob is with both of his firms, marketing and real estate, has made me really appreciate the significance of all areas of business.

When searching for stuff to write my next marketing blog about, I stumbled across this strange photo in The Consumerist.  220 Countries… Last I knew, there are less then 200 countries.  So I decided to do my research… The UN only recognizes 192 countries while the US State Department only recognizes 194 countries.  Obviously there was some miscounting.  Where are these other 26 countries – maybe Verizon has secret locations ideal for a secluded vacation?

After realizing that, even as a Verizon customer, it made me think about other marketing ploys that use numbers to make their service look more appealing.  Living on my own now in an apartment, I have utilized the cable jack in my living room and am currently a Shaw customer.  Besides being greatly disappointed with Canadian cable, I remember hearing that Shaw offers a large number of basic cable channel.   How come every time I change the channel the message of “Unavailable” comes up saying that I do not have service for those channels.  So after getting up to about the high 900’s I realized that 50% of my marked channels by Shaw were music channels… Awesome Shaw, shame on me.

Seeing this advertisement and through my own experiences, especially with Shaw, I have come to the realization that numbers in marketing strategies are greatly deceiving.

William Shatner – is – the best – celebrity spokesperson – of all time.  William Shatner became the face of Priceline in 1997.  Priceline is a company that operates a commercial website that helps consumers secure discounted rates for airlines and hotels.

Shatner has done a series of commercials for Priceline, making the craziness of travel planning have a comical twist.

Priceline plays on the Shatner persona.  “You get the feeling that he’s very much in tune with the brand and the company.  That kind of longevity and dedication can be [very] effective,” says a top Priceline executive.

On top of Shatners involvement with Priceline he recently did a commercial for the computer game World of Warcraft:

Shatner’s comical yet serious tone makes anything interesting and personally catches my attention.

Point is, a little fun can go a long way.

Shatner – is – the best.

I love this show.  I can sit through the whole season as if it was just one movie.

HBO’s East Bound & Down stars Danny McBride as Kenny Powers, a washed up former professional baseball pitcher.  After winning the world series, Kenny’s career slowly faded away and forced him to return to his hometown middle-school as a substitute physical education teacher.

After a very successful first season, HBO has gone on to complete a second season.  To get the word out HBO posted these flyers on telephone and street poles:

Along with these flyers stapled around towns, HBO had people dressed up as Kenny Powers in Eastbound and Down baseball hats, curly mullets, and the classic #55 jersey.  The posters and “street teamers” brought direct attention to the show and provided the direct link to the website.

Marketing on the streets is not easy, however, HBO hit the ground running and did a comically fantastic job.

Kenny Powers is back.

Talk about utilizing social media!  Recently, Microsoft’s Bing ran a campaign on Zynga’s FarmVille facebook game.  If the Facebook user became a fan of Bing’s Facebook page, they received FarmVille cash.

FarmVille has 83 million monthly users and 28 million daily active users.  Only ~%1 participated in the one day event.

The incentive was located on the bottom of one of the FarmVille pages.  Bing’s Facebook page saw a 400,000 fan increase from to 500,000 fans in just one day!

The use of Facebook has shown to be an awesome marketing strategy, especially when the competition is Google.

Not bad Bing… Not bad at all.