Morawski & Company Business Development for a Left Brain World Through Social Media

What does a Cheesy Pickup Line and a Poverty PSA have in Common?

What do Cheesy Thanksgiving Pickup Lines and a very powerful 5 minute PSA about poverty have in common? 

Pickup lines never worked for me. But then maybe that’s because I never tried them (just wasn't suave enough). I think Mrs. Morawski would have fallen on the floor laughing too hard to answer me anyway. Watch.

 

On a decidedly more serious note is this PSA from Nuru International. Although the video is nearly five-minutes in length it just might be one of the best I've seen this year. Jake Harriman is the organization's Founder and CEO. He's a former Special Ops Marine. He speaks passionately and tells an extremely powerful fast-paced story that uses animation and real news footage.

 

What do Cheesy Thanksgiving Pickup Lines and a 5 minute PSA about poverty have in common? They connect with the intended audience.

 

Mike Morawski

Chief Instigation Officer

 

 

This Week's Lottery- 8 New CMO's and VP's

Since last week's post of client changes, there have been at least 8 new VP's or CMO's of Marketing/Advertising appointed. Each new appointment represents an opportunity for new agencies and creative suppliers to get that ever-precious foot in the door. And if one of these listed is your client? What steps are you taking to insure that the door stays closed?

  

1.    Frito-Lay- Ann Mukherjee to Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President.

2.    Dunkin Brands-John Costello to the newly-created position of Chief Global Customer and Marketing Officer

3.    ParagonRx-Ellen M. Derrico as its Chief Marketing Executive

4.    Celebrity Cruises-announced the appointment of Lisa Kauffman as Vice President of Marketing.

5.    Baskin-Robbins- Brad Wahl joins the company in the newly created position of Vice President of Marketing USA

6.    NeoStem- Teresa Lepore, to Vice President, Sales and Marketing.

7.    AutoVirt- Brian Gladstein to the position of Vice President of Marketing

8.    Fiberon®- Edie Kello  to Director of Marketing

 

Buy your ticket and decide how you'll get that foot in the door.

Mike Morawski

Chief Instigation Officer

19.5 Email Tips, Tricks and Best Practices

I have designed, executed and, managed email campaigns for large retailers all the way to small interactive boutiques. Whether the client was La-Z-Boy or PlayBox Media, campaign success or failure depended on adhering to a few simple rules.

Building a successful email message begins with a well crafted subject line. Subject lines have the single biggest impact on whether your message will be opened or deleted. Jupiter Research found that 35% of email subscribers open messages because of what’s contained in the subject line. Fifty characters (and we thought Twitter’s 140 was short) is all the space you have in a typical subject line to catch your reader’s eye, entice them to open your email and take the action you want. Communicate your offer and its’ benefit succinctly.

Here now is the lightning round of tips, tricks and best practices to improve your email results;

1.    The three E’s in Email- Engage, Entertain, Easily get more info

2.    Creative content is King

3.    Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the most popular days to open email

4.    10 AM- 7 PM most popular time to open.

5.    Try to make your subject line no more than 50 characters

6.    Keep HTML file size to no more than 85-125k

7.    Keep HTML 580- 800 pixels wide

8.    Design for the preview pane

9.    Communicate your message above the fold

10.   Combine browser safe text and HTML graphics

11.   10 links or more = higher click rates

12.   Use text and image links

13.   Spreading links throughout the page increases response

14.   Test everything

15.   Provide a Subscription-Administration Center in each message

16.   Visually highlight the call-to-action

17.   Provide a telephone contact number

18.   Display the recipient's email address

19.   Provide an email address for feedback or sender contact

19.5   Sender from name: Company or brand name, not email address, generic department or unfamiliar person's name

These tips, tricks and best practices are excerpts from the White Paper “Hi-Performance Email Marketing for Furniture Retailers”. Send me an email or a Twitter DM if you would like to read the entire paper.

Mike Morawski

Chief Instigation Officer

5 Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

Do you make client presentations? “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs” by Carmine Gallo should now become essential reading. Steve Jobs has elevated and mastered the art of Sales Presentations. Here are 5 of his secrets;

1.    Introduce an antagonist- everybody loves to despise a villain and root for the good guy. Apple started in 1984 with IBM, since then it’s been those other guys. Who can be your antagonist? Perhaps the sterility of the computer or maybe the lack of really different choices CGI provides?

 

2.    Make it easy for prospects to remember your benefits with Twitter-like headlines. Short, sweet and to the point. Apple introduces the MacBook Air and instead of saying it’s really light, has a 13.1 inch screen and has blah, blah, blah, they described it in one sentence, “The World’s Thinnest NoteBook”! Give your clients a unique benefit. United Airlines tagline used (maybe it still is) to be “Fly the Friendly Skies of United”. This implied that all other airlines were being swarmed by the Luftwaffe.

 

3.    Sell dreams not products or services. Steve doesn’t sell the iPod. Steve sells the “transformative experience” of being able to have your music, the way you want it, when you want and where you want it. My goodness, he just showed me a better life. And all it costs me is $149.00. Wow.

 

4.    Eliminate the clutter and focus on a Zen-like simplicity in your presentations. How many words and how many bullet points? Get rid of them. Now, how many pictures are there? Add more. Show visual images, drop the bullet points and speak your story. Nothing has changed since grade school. We all like looking at pictures better.

 

5.    Never let them see you sweat or stumble. Practice makes perfect and makes your presentation look effortless. Practice relentlessly. Practice for a hundred hours.

We’re not selling a campaign, storyboard, layout, picture, video, film, copy, headlines, excel spreadsheets, web sites, SEO, or space. What creative people are really selling is confidence.

 

Mike Morawski

Chief Instigation Officer

5 New CMO/VP's, 1 Agency Change and 1 Client to Watch.

Last week was our semi-regular listing of client changes. Since that post, there have been at least 5 new VP's or CMO's of Marketing/Advertising appointed. Each new appointment represents an opportunity for new agencies and creative suppliers to get that ever-precious foot in the door. And if one of these listed is your client? What steps are you taking to insure that the door stays closed?

 

1.   Ed Valle is the new Chief Marketing Strategist at Choice Hotels International .

2.   Nestle Purina PetCare has promoted Steven Crimmins to VP and CMO of U.S. Pet Foods.

3.   Kevin George is SVP global CMO at Jim Beam.

4.   Mike Sparkman Joins PCT International as Executive Vice President, Worldwide Sales and Marketing.

5.   Rene Bonvanie is new head of worldwide marketing at Palo Alto Networks.

 

One brand chose a new agency:

The O Group is now handling global design, merchandising and below-the-line marketing for Belvedere Vodka.

 

Clients to watch:

Panera Bread is looking for a new CMO.

 

How will you reach them?

 

Mike Morawski

Chief Instigation Officer