Because marketing has a huge story-telling component, it can be subtle. Surprisingly, great marketing doesn’t have to spell everything out. It doesn’t need an 8-page color brochure or detailed instruction manuals.

One of the things I love about buying a new ipod or iphone is that when you open it, you just turn it on and go. “Let’s see what this thing can do.” The instruction manual is usually hidden in the packaging and very, very basic. The new iPod Touch doesn’t even come with an instruction manual. They leave the discovery up to the user.

Marketing… no… your approach… should be subtle.

Always believed it, always will.

I was on the phone last week with a potential client who was interested in our company when I realized that what we sell is not a service, but a story.

Even though this person has a great practice with lots of potential, they were drowning in debt and extremely discouraged.

So I told her stories.

I began to tell her about other clients who were in the same position. I began to tell her why we thought her practice had so much potential and why we were excited to work for her. I told her where we thought she could be financially in the next two to three years.

Most of all I talked to her about success, belief and optimism.

The reason I made the sale was partly because of the service we are selling, but it was more about the way she felt on the phone.

We don’t sell a service or a program.

We sell financial independence and freedom.

We sell “anybody can be successful beyond their dreams.”

Most of all we sell peace of mind and quality of life.

That’s our story.

Howard Schultz recently took the reigns back as the CEO of Starbucks. After admitting that the company has gotten off base in it’s values and customer care, Howard is slowing nationwide expansion and making some leadership changes.

If you’ve been in an SBux recently, you’ve probably noticed some little things that Howard has implemented right away to get the ball rolling. One of them is The Starbucks Promise that is posted in every store:

We Promise to make you a PERFECT beverage every time!

This isn’t a promotion, this isn’t “for a limited time only,” this isn’t “while supplies last.” This is every coffee, every day, forever.

And last week, I noticed they rolled out a new website called mystarbucksidea.com to promote feedback and develop new ideas/strategies.

I like what I’m seeing and I think this goes to show why Howard built it into such a great company to begin with.

Last fall Radiohead released their new album InRainbows online. Not only did they completely bypass the middle man, but they allowed customers to name their own price.

A good idea?

Radiohead already knew who was listening. They left it up to them to determine the value of their new project and they left it up to them to tell their friends. Huge fan trust. Huge risk.

Did it work?

I had five different people tell me about the album in a matter of two weeks after the release.

Radiohead won’t release its sales numbers, but experts estimate the profit to be in the millions. It’s speculated that the online release brought in the same revenue for the band within the first two weeks.

Everything after that is just frosting…. that really good cream-cheese frosting.

Guinness Book of World Records lists Joe Girard as the world’s best salesman… undisputed.

Joe is a car salesman from Detroit.

His record is 18 single, retail cars in one day. 174 sales in one month and 1973 in one year. No one has ever come close to that.

How does he do it? What’s his secret?

Joe sends 12 greeting cards a year to all his customers.

Everyone will give a salesman permission to send greeting cards to their home. And the cards gently remind them 12 times a year about their business and their relationship.

He slowly turns them from strangers into friends.

Has a high referral rate because of the relationship created. People know Joe and they know he will give their friends the same loyalty.

1000 True Fans

Kevin Kelly releases an article online last week that I had a chance to read over the weekend. It’s about musicians/artists/film-makers/creatives in regards to the long-tail economic model.

I think it’s spot on.

I think it’s worth a read.

“But the point of this strategy is to say that you don’t need a hit to survive. There is a place in the middle, that is not very far away from the tail, where you can at least make a living. That mid-way haven is called 1,000 True Fans. It is an alternate destination for an artist to aim for.”

I think a great marketing question for this Web 2.0 world is, “How many True Fans do you have?”

Or better, “How many True Fans do you need?”

Why is there always a line at a theater’s concession stand when it accounts for 95% of the its profit?

*Bad Marketing: Movie Theater Concession Stands

*1000 True Fans

*World’s Best Salesman

*Good Marketing: Radiohead

One of my favorite pieces of marketing is Boise State’s Smurf Turf. It is the only non-green football field in the NCAA. It was originally installed in 1986, but really didn’t catch fame until recent years.

Boise State won the 2007 ESPY award for Game of the Year and Play of the Year for their unforgettable over time win against Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl.

Another interesting fact is the Broncos are 58-2 at home since 1999. On blue turf.

Is it expensive? Sure. It costs $750,000 every 3 - 4 years to replace.

But it’s remarkable. No other football team in the country plays on blue turf. It’s immediately recognizable from any tv and it can even be seen from space.

What I think is funny…. imagine the first conversations that took place over this, “Okay guys, call me crazy, but what if we turned the football field blue?”

I give a lot of props to the university for taking such a huge risk.

Marketing Is… Intentional, not Magical.

On the phone with a client a few months back who was worried about including a fifth testimonial onto a direct mail postcard. There were already four testimonials on the card which was about three too many for me.

The concern was the testimonial had something really good to say about the practice and could be “the one” that makes people respond.

There’s two problems:

1. When most companies start to talk about marketing, it’s usually too late.

They only talk about it when they need it and at that point they are already behind. And then everything starts to have a desperation about it. Marketing is intentional. It takes time and thought and long-term strategy.

2. Marketing is not magical.

Just because you market, doesn’t mean your problems will be solved. And throwing money at a problem doesn’t usually find a solution.

The quick fixes just don’t work…and we should know that by now.

Marketing must be long-term, strategic and well thought out.

The fatal flaw of most technology companies is this:

They lead with the technology.

Honestly, nobody cares about the technology.

The genius of good tech companies is this:

They lead with ideas.

Example: (and please forgive the over-played Apple examples) Apple’s first iPod wasn’t about the new technology of an MP3 player. It was “5000 songs in your pocket.” The IDEA of taking your music anywhere is what got me to buy one.

Now the new nano is “A little video for everyone.” They lead with the idea of truly portable video. Not how great the technology is.

So… here’s the question: do you lead with the technology?

Or do you lead with ideas?

Just something to think about.

The biggest opportunity in marketing right now (and for a long, long time) is… WOMEN.
Women buy big-time. Women spend men’s money and women spend their own money. They are not a specialty market. They are “the market.”

I was on the phone with a female client a while back and she asked whether it was important to communicate in her marketing that she was a woman. I told her that it was more important to communicate TO women.

Here are some crazy statistics that should shake up your approach no matter what business you are in:

Women buy or make the key buying decision in over 80% of purchases. And they influence over 95% of all purchases.

That means $7 trillion of the $11 trillion United States GDP is influenced by women.

In other words:

3rd largest economy in the world = American men at $4 trillion a year.
2nd largest economy in the world = all of Japan at $4.3 trillion a year.
1st largest economy in the world = american women at $7 trillion a year.

That’s staggering.

Scoreboard: Women =1; World Economy = 0

So this begs the question: Why aren’t more companies addressing this HUGE opportunity?

I don’t know why I’ve been picking on fast food lately, but here we go…

Arbys spent $85 million promoting an oven mit with the voice of Tom Arnold because they hoped it would cause more people to go to their restaurants and buy food.

My question is:

What could possibly be in an animated commercial with Tom Arnold that will get you to get in your car and drive to Arby’s to order food?

Two times I’ve gotten sick from eating Arby’s. $85 million and Tom Arnold doesn’t help me get over that.

But an agency somewhere told them they needed a “mascot.” McDonalds has Ronald, Burger King has the King, Arby’s has… an oven mit.

The marketing budget was wasted. The lesson: How their employees handle their food is worth more than $85 million.

Ten Thousand Things is a super great design blog that I have revisited several times. This post in particular lays out some amazing resources including what makes good web design, sites to jar you out of creative block, whitespace theory, and professional fonts. Have fun.

*Bad Marketing: Arby’s

*Women

*Technology Isn’t Clever

*Marketing is…

*Good Marketing: Smurf Turf

What’s the fastest growing business in the mortuary industry?: Turning your loved one’s remains into a diamond ring.

LifeGem is the world’s first company offering synthesized diamonds made from the carbonized remains of loved ones or pets.

So why is it good marketing? Because it’s remarkable!

Maybe a little strange for my likes… but considering people are paying $14,000 for a one-carat diamond says enough.

LifeGem also completed a diamond from the remains of Beethoven’s hair in September of 2007 and donated the proceeds to charity.

I’m not joking.

People feel it’s worth $14,000 to say, “You like my ring? It’s my grandmother!”

Marketing Is… A Process, not a Moment.

Permission is gained over time, not in an instant.

But the fact is people want a quick response, “Can’t I just buy a list? Can’t I just send out a bunch of postcards?”

Yeah. But that’s not marketing. That’s interuption. That’s SPAM.

Marketing is about building a relationship.. building permission.

And that involves a process, not a moment.

You might not know that the term SPAM developed from a 1970 Monte Python sketch where the characters are trying to order breakfast from a menu that contains SPAM in every dish. The characters repeatedly sing “SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM” to mock the notion of pushing spam on everyone whether you want it or not.

We are all familiar with email spam and junk mail spam that we deal with on a daily basis. But I think the category is much broader than that.

Throw in tv ads, radio commercials, billboards, direct mail… the list goes on.

Why?

Here’s a new definition:

SPAM = marketing without permission

Anytime you don’t have my permission, you are interrupting me… and that is SPAM.

I was working with a direct mail company last week that was bragging about their 2% response rate.

So… 98% ignored you. That’s successful? And that’s not SPAM?

The problem is SPAM is easy and quick. Real marketing isn’t.

It takes time and hard work to establish permission.

Brand trust is the tried and true influence gained by companies. It’s how consumers feel when they purchase that brand: their expectations, satisfaction, likeliness to recommend it, inability to live without it… that kind of stuff.

Example: Starbucks and Bose have tremendous brand trust.

There is huge reliability. You always know what you are going to get and loyal customers express an unwillingness to live without them.

Brand trust is a hard thing to put a finger on, but more than half of all marketing dollars spent by big companies every year goes towards creating or securing brand trust.

On the other hand, brand trust can be real easy to loose.

Think about Microsoft’s release of Vista last year. Billions of dollars of brand trust were lost. I don’t know of ONE person who talks about Vista with fondness and that “I-can’t-live-without-it” attitude. Microsoft may never regain the trust that they knew from the American people circa 1995.

Think about AOL and the clutter that is now associated with their brand. AOL used to be a leader of online technology. A name you could trust. I know of ONE person that uses an AOL email account now. They compromised billions of dollars of consumer trust with the decisions they made.

Think about McDonalds deflecting criticism from Super Size Me or child obesity complaints. Brand trust disappearing right before our very eyes.

At the start of January, Steve Easterbrook, the CEO of McDonalds UK, issued a statement to the Times saying that the video game industry has more to do with childhood obesity than fast food.

Easterbrook told the Times that the food and drinks industry shares responsibility, but made special mention of the popularity of games saying, they have reduced the amount of time young people spend outdoors.

He went on to say, “The issue of obesity is complex.. there’s fewer green spaces and kids are at home playing computer games on the TV when in the past they’d have been burning off energy outside.”

Steve probably thinks he’s pretty smart for knowing what all good PR experts know: redirect criticism.

But Steve forgot the first lesson that all good marketers know: It’s All Marketing.

A press statement like this says more about McDonald’s brand than all their clever commercials for the year.

Just like when Apple fired hundreds of employees at Christmas for stealing iPhone rebates. It makes a statement as to the kind of company they are.

Marketing always starts at the very beginning.. the foundation of the company or organization.

I think McDonalds could add more to their bottom line by publicly addressing this issue head on instead of deflecting the responsibility to video games.