Using Social Media to Spread the Word

Using Social Media to Spread the Word

Marketing, Social Media
Wait! What? Yes, it's true. Believe it or not, I went to church recently. The Franklin United Methodist Church to be exact. The same church I went to as a kid growing up in the ridiculously awesome town of Franklin, Massachusetts. At the most, I go to church only a few times a year, on average. I always enjoy the experience when I'm there, though. Always. This was a particularly great day to be sitting in the pews with my wife, Barbara, and my mother - who's been going to this church for over 60 years. First of all, my sister, Cathy, was playing the organ, as she has done countless times there over the years going all the way back to when she was just a teenager. Watching her…
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Getting Customers to Wear Your Brand

Getting Customers to Wear Your Brand

Boston, Branding, Marketing
Many professional hockey fans will wear their favorite team's jersey, especially when they attend a game, like the scene I saw the other night when I was walking around outside the TD Garden in Boston. All those Boston Bruins fans milling about wearing black and gold jerseys like the players themselves. Why? Well, as fans, they're proud to wear that jersey, to wear the black and gold. They want to feel that sense of belonging to a close-knit community, a community of loyal Bruins fans. And frankly, they know they look wicked cool wearing that jersey. Tough. Rugged. Again, like the players themselves. Okay. So you're not a professional hockey team, but you do have products and services to sell. How can you do what the Bruins do with their…
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Social Media, Samuel Adams and More

Social Media, Samuel Adams and More

Advertising, Marketing, Podcast, Social Media
In this episode of my podcast, which celebrates its five-year anniversary next month, I talk about a number of topics. I start off by talking about how I'll be running the Boston Marathon again this year, the 15th time I have run this historic race for a charitable cause. I then share my feelings about how much I love teaching, something I've been doing a lot of at this new stage in my career, and being involved as a member of the leadership team - as president - of the American Marketing Association's Boston chapter. I talk about my new book, Twenty Jobs, Twenty Lessons - a Long, Strange Career in Marketing, from Junk Mail to Social Media. I go on about the importance of knowing how to use social…
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Spotify Wrapped is Ingenious Marketing

Spotify Wrapped is Ingenious Marketing

Marketing
Spotify Wrapped from Spotify is ingenious marketing. Users receive a ridiculously awesome visual presentation of the songs and artists they listened to most during the year. Along with this information comes a great deal of additional data including total minutes of listening time (my number was 47,878 minutes), top artist listened to (mine was HarryStyles), how many songs played (I played 3,598 songs on Spotify), etc. It is all such impressive data, if you ask me, data that users are inclined to share with their own respective online networks, amplifying the reach - exponentially - of Spotify's brilliant campaign. I explain a lot more how how strongly I feel about the ingeniousness of Spotify Wrapped in the video accompanying this blog post.
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Treating Your Customers to Something Free

Treating Your Customers to Something Free

Advertising, Boston, Business, Marketing, Public Relations, Restaurants
Boloco, a chain of restaurants founded in Boston, offered free small bowls to its customers in three of its locations in the area the other day. I saw the long line of people waiting to take advantage of this ridiculously awesome offer in front of its Longwood Avenue store. Good for those happy customers, getting such a great deal on such great food. And good for Boloco, too, for being so kind and generous to those folks. From a marketing perspective, why would Boloco do such a crazy thing? There are plenty of reasons, actually. Besides just being a nice thing to do for others, in doing so, the business may see a lot of those seeking freebies buying additional menu items at the same time. They may have the…
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Carhartt: A Great Brand in More Ways Than One

Carhartt: A Great Brand in More Ways Than One

Branding, Marketing
Workwear. Work clothes. Work gear. All of the above is what Carhartt makes. All of it is very high quality and very popular. Popular because it is so good-looking and long-lasting, but also because the brand itself is just so damn cool. I mean, I feel like I'm always seeing the logo somewhere on what people are wearing, from complete strangers on the street to the college students I teach to my own two sons. And now I'm proudly displaying it on a new hat I recently bought. Now I'm one of the cool kids. My point is this. Carhartt may say what they have to offer is for the tough and hard working among us, but I'm sure they know that their stuff is being bought for its looks…
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The Dairy Queen Brand Extension

The Dairy Queen Brand Extension

Branding, Business, Marketing
My wife, Barbara, and I recently had lunch recently with my mom at the same Dairy Queen in Bellingham, Massachusetts that my family went to back in the day. Only now it is a Dairy Queen Grill & Chill, not just a place to get soft-serve ice cream, milk shakes and other frozen treats. Talk about a big brand extension. I mean, this company has been around since 1940 and has over 7,000 locations today. When I was a kid, we'd get whatever we wanted for our birthdays. That was awesome. This time around, we got whatever we wanted, too.🙂 And I thought it was great. And the service, too. We got cheeseburgers. No ice cream. Times have changed. We went there for a meal, not dessert. The consumer in…
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Attracting the Attention of your Audience

Attracting the Attention of your Audience

Advertising, Branding, Business, Marketing
If you don't attract the attention of your audience in advertising and marketing, you won't have any customers and clients. It's that simple. And in this day and age, it's more difficult than ever to stand out among the competition and clutter, to get people to notice what you have to offer them. However, I couldn't help but notice a truck recently that was conspicuously parked in the huge, empty parking lot along Sudbury Street outside of Mill & Main, the old, historic mill complex in Maynard. Bull Spit. That was the name on the truck. Bull Spit. Catchy name for a business. Right? Attention-getting to say the least. Both the double entendre of the name of this brewing company and the fact that this truck was so strategically parked…
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