Mini’s Trash is Advertising’s Treasure
December 29, 2009
Great advertising is absolute trash. At least, it is when it comes to Mini and their insufferably cute Mini Cooper.
Click on image to see full size
Good Ol’ CP+B continued a tradition of great non-traditional advertising for the Mini Cooper line with these fantastic trash piles, adorned with a Mini-sized cardboard box. When it comes to marketing automobiles as a logical holiday gift, Lexus could learn a lot from Mini’s lead.
On How NOT to Request Attention on the Internet
December 9, 2009
One of the first marketing mistakes I ever made happened early. It had to do with this blog, Post Haste. And, it had to do with my naivety in regards to other people’s time.
I had convinced our partners that we should develop a company blog. Very few other marketing agencies in our area had blogs, and it was time to take a dive into the ever-expanding world of Internet marketing and social media.
Searching for an audience – and looking forward to a jaunty dialog with our naturally intelligent readers – I developed a “Look At What We’ve Done!” e-mail. I sent it to every marketing and advertising blogger I could find. I said, essentially, why I thought our blog was great.
I gave them a look at something new. But I failed on one major level.
I never told them why it mattered to them.
Of the 100+ e-mails I sent out, I received only a handful back. Some were congratulatory. Some were dismissive.
One really stood out. The name doesn’t matter – I can’t remember it, anyway – but the tone was distinct.
It chastised me for asking people to care without offering a benefit. It hounded me for blindly grasping for attention - not by participation and discourse, or by giving anything of substance (because, at this time, there was very little on the blog), but by the assumption that I deserved it.
It taught me an important lesson: no one cares until you give a reason to care.
Fast forward to today.
A magazine I’ve never heard of sends me an e-mail. They assume I’m willing to help them pre-promote an upcoming issue. They open with a salutation of “Dear Blogger.” There is no mention of what I’m getting out of the deal, or why I should care.
I see this e-mail, and I see a little of myself that first time around, when I was promoting Post Haste by sidestepping relationships and blindly throwing darts, hoping some would stick.
It’s the same as sending out press releases that make more work for a journalist, or – even worse – assume a store promotion is real news.
It’s the same as blanket spamming a thousand Twitter users with a new e-commerce site.
It’s the same as knocking on my door, asking me to tell all of my friends about your product, and then leaving without even acknowledging my time.
And I know from experience. It’s not impressive. And it doesn’t work.
The OFFICIAL 2009 Gingerbread Man (Or Woman) Decorating Contest
December 8, 2009
The Great Gingerbread Cookie Decorate-off is over, and with a bevy of bejeweled bakery goods scattered amongst our break room tables, we have made our difficult but oh-so-satisfying decision.
But first, the cookies. Be warned – there are a lot of images after the jump.
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The heart of search: marketing Google
December 2, 2009
When it came to marketing, Bing went with humor. It went with the assumption that users couldn’t handle the amount of information they were given, that the Internet commoners wanted something more attuned to their thoughts. That their algorithm was better than Google’s, despite the difficulty in proving it.
Google? Well, they simply went for the heart.
We use search every day. It’s as much a part of our lives as the car we drive, the restaurants we frequent, the people we meet. Except for one thing: search leads us to those cars, those restaurants, those people; in a way, it’s so much more.
(Via Make the Logo Bigger)
David Feherty’s Veterans’ Hunt
December 1, 2009
David Feherty, former PGA Tour golfer and current CBS Sports analyst, loves the United States. And, he loves the troops that help defend it.
While this may come as a surprise – after all, he is Irish – it only takes a look at his feverish progress at becoming a United States citizen (and his adoption of Dallas as his official hometown) to understand a passion as foreign to the ex-pat lifestyle as grasping American football.
He simply loves this country.
It’s this love – and his undying support for the country’s military personnel – that prompts Feherty to reach out to injured and disabled troops year after year with a once-in-a-lifetime pheasant hunting trip in South Dakota.
Our own Kirby Schultz was fortunate enough to tag along and document this year’s trip, and it was nothing short of monumental. Sure, there was emotion. But there was also a feeling of accomplishment.
And, there was a hidden agenda – one that strikes at the heart of what a disabled veteran goes through: offering a slice of normalcy to someone who now lives life differently, all in the name of defending freedom.
The goal wasn’t to treat veterans with kid gloves. On the contrary – Feherty wants to treat these veterans like real people, offering the roughness of hunting without holding back, challenging the vets to work hard, just as they did before, just as they’ve always done, giving them a reason to feel strong again.
The trip is designed for fun. It was created to give back to vets who laid their lives on the line – and left a little behind in the process. But it’s also a way to dispel any feelings of hopelessness. To put control back in a disabled veteran’s court.
To feel human. To feel free. Which, at the center of it all, is one of the things our country strives to offer every day.
No wonder Feherty has adopted this place as home.
- Wishing for the Attainable
- Let Your Voice Be Your Guide
- Penn and Misspeller
- Eat Your Brussels Sprouts
- Rhymes With Rice
- Embrace Losing, Embrace a Tree
- Buses Attract Attention, and Most Recently, Awards
- From the Mouths of Babes
- Needed: One Awesomewriter.
- To Inform and Delight
- Joe: Your building is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen –I’m more thinking the kid is going...
- Joe: Your building is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen –I’m more thinking the kid is going...
- Joe: Your building is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen –I’m more thinking the kid is going...
- Corey V.: That kid’ll surely be better than the one that just left.
- Mark Cummins: Here’s my awesome copywriter resume: Mark Cummins 6007 S Cliff Ave #204 Sioux Falls, SD 57108...
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About HenkinSchultz
HenkinSchultz is an agency. An advertising and marketing and branding and design and production agency. All of those things, and then some.
But, underneath all that, we're really a bunch of thinkers. As in, we think about stuff, both pertinent and not, with and without boundaries, as if our lives depended on it. And this right here, Post Haste, is where we write about it.
Visit us at http://www.henkinschultz.com.