Category Archives: marketing communications
Andrea Long writes, Audience-Driven Web Development
This guest post is by Andrea Long, a Virginia Tech senior double majoring in Communications and Professional Writing.
Getting to know your audience, and what drives them, is the foundation to designing and developing any website. Everything about web design should be tailored not to the designer’s personal needs, but to the needs of your audience, visitors, and users.
Marketing Works! Pepsi Proposes Product Isn’t Everything
Many of us have heard of “The Pepsi Challenge,” a four-decade old promotional campaign by Pepsi in which testers visit public locations and perform sip tests. It’s done how it sounds: Participants are given two unmarked cups with small amounts of Coke in one and Pepsi in the other. After they have tasted both cups and chosen their favorite, the testers reveal which cola was chosen. Pepsi consistently found it’s product to be the favorite.
Targeting your marketing, and keeping your customers “whelmed.”
I just finished listening to Blink (by Malcolm Gladwell) on audio book. Yes, I said audio book—a technology I once found to be quite silly; however, en route to work, they are wonderful (I’m on my third of the same week!).
Gladwell spoke of a study: Researchers were interested in whether the number of product choices offered to consumers made any difference in the amount of product sold. They used jams. Intuitively, of course, we would say that the more choices a company gives it’s customers, the more likely there will be a product that satisfies the specific needs of each customer. Economic knowhow seems to dictate, then, that the more products the more sales. The jams proved otherwise.
Marketing to Your Instincts: The Effectiveness of Utilizing Curiosity
Curiosity, the need, the drive for knowledge, is central to motivation – and, it’s instinctual. Curiosity is the reason that people in horror movies venture into the creepy forest when they hear an eerie noise. They want, they need to figure out what gargantuan monster lurks in the darkness.
Brian Steinberg Responds: “The Ads Sound A Dark Chord”
I recently reinvigorated my “Random Person Might Be Wrong” blog posts with a rebuttal to Brian Steinberg’s “Apple’s Rare Ad Misstep: Celebrity Siri Ads That Slice the Wrong Way” post written for Ad Age. Steinberg posited the idea that using celebrities–Samuel L. Jackson and Zooey Deschanel–in television commercials, in which they sport fancy new iPhones equipped with Siri, is a tad elitist. (You can read my quote-for-quote rebuttal: “Brian Steinberg Might be Wrong: How Apple’s Recent Siri Ads are Fine.”)
Top 5 Must Read E-mail Marketing Articles
‘Tis the season for e-mail marketing, and, as always, if ‘tis the season for it, ‘tis the season for doing it right. (My best attempt at a witty, anecdotal lead.) Ultimately, all companies use e-mail—some more effective than others; therefore, all marketing professionals should have a good grasp on the current trends, concepts, and how-to’s.
In order to whet your e-mail appetites, I give you four posts I’ve recently read that I feel worthy of a second, third, and fourth look. Enjoy:
