← Older posts

The Top Five Reasons we like Top Five Lists

Posted in Best Practices, Online Marketing, Social Media, Tips and Tricks

I can’t help it. I always find myself reading articles that incorporate a numbered list. “5o best iPhone apps!” “15 practical tips for creating a simpler, happier life.” “10 awesome beaches around the world!” I recently looked through my bookmark list to find twenty articles with numbered lists, and wondered: WHY? I know I’m not the only one magnetized by the power of lists.

The top five reasons we like top five lists:

1. Scan-ability. Let’s face it, we have the attention span of squirrels. If we open an email and see long, text-heavy paragraphs, our eyes go cross-eyed. When material is condensed, numbered, bolded or bulleted, our eyes sigh with relief.

2. Curiosity. We like to try to predict what is on the list. Curiosity is what made me click on the recent Kansas City Star article 50 things every Kansas Citian should know. We want to know how our thoughts match up with the writer’s thoughts.

3. Easy action steps. Lots of list articles include self-help tips, teaching readers how to better their lives or solve a problem. There’s something comfortable about scrolling through the familiar numbered list format, and seeing action items clearly listed like punchlines. The list style fosters quick learning and makes action items seem achievable.

4. Organization for our messy lives. As Herbert Simon put it, “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” With so much information at our fingertips, it is refreshing to see content organized into simple bite-sized pieces.

5. Personal and engaging content. Lists can be targeted to a specific audience or  universally appealing. Either way, the list format makes people want to chime in and add their two cents. In fact, check out this snarky NPR article “The 20 unhappiest people you meet in the comments sections of year-end lists.”

A numbered list may immediately spark our interest, but it is the content in the list that ultimately holds our attention. Consider incorporating numbered lists with compelling content into your communications. Your readers will thank you for it.

Tagged Holly Eckold, Morningstar Communications, reasons we like lists | Leave a comment Posted on April 26, 2012 by Holly Eckold

Mobile Friendly Websites: Why now is the time.

Posted in Online Marketing

I recently attended KC/IABC’s 2012 Business Communicators Summit.  A common topic at the conference was understanding and using technology to best reach our audiences.

Website mobile compatibility is one technology component that many businesses still avoid. Without a mobile compatible website, companies lose out on prospects, plain and simple. They also risk losing current customers who will quickly move on if they don’t have quick and clear access to the information they are seeking.

The mobile world is expanding too rapidly to discount the effect it will have. Skyrocket’s diagram, derived from Google data, clearly draws out why now is the time to get friendly with mobile.

 

Tagged KC/IABC, mobile compatibility, Morningstar Communications, Tracey Anderson | Leave a comment Posted on March 6, 2012 by Tracey Anderson

Consumer Trends for 2012

Posted in Best Practices, Executive Insights, Integrated Marketing (IMC), Online Marketing, Social Media

A few months ago a friend asked me what business title I would like, if I could have any title. Some people would say President or CEO, but for me, the perfect title would be Chief Knowledge Officer. I would love to spend my days reading the news and researching trends and then determining how to make that knowledge a competitive advantage for our company.

I may not ever be able to devote myself just to gaining knowledge, but exploring trendwatching.com is a small step in the right direction. trendwatching.com scans the globe for emerging consumer trends, insights and innovations. They recently published their 12 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2012. Here is their list:

1. Red Carpet – businesses around the world will shower Chinese customers and visitors with even more tailored services and perks, and in general, lavish attention and respect.
2. DIY Health – DIY goes ‘good for you’ in 2012: novel apps and devices will increasingly let consumers discreetly track and manage their health by themselves.
3. Dealer-chic – For consumers, securing the best deals is fast becoming a way of life, if not a source of pride and status.
4. Eco-cycology – Next for recycling? Brands taking back all of their products (and recycling them responsibly and innovatively).
5. Cash-less – Why a cashless future is (almost) here, and why it will be about convenience and an entire new eco-system of payments, rewards and offers.
6. Bottom of the Urban Pyramid – In 2012, the opportunities to cater to hundreds of millions of low-income urban consumers will be unprecedented.
7. Idle Sourcing – Expect crowd-based problem solving to fuel endless innovations in 2012, especially as for consumers, contributing will be more effortless than ever.
8. Flawsome – Brands that behave more humanly, including showing their flaws, will be awesome.
9. Screen Culture – In 2012, ‘life’ will take place via ever more pervasive, personal, immersive and interactive screens.
10. Recommerce – For smart consumers, ‘trading in’ is the new buying in 2012.
11. Emerging Maturialism – Why in 2012, experienced, open-minded consumers in traditionally ‘conservative’ emerging markets will embrace campaigns and products that are frank if not risqué.
12. Point & Know – 2012 will be about instant visual information gratification.

 

There are many fabulous examples of how these trends are manifesting themselves on the trendwatching.com site; I’d like to share two here.

A great example of Eco-cycology is Patagonia’s Common Threads Initiative. The initiative encourages people to return items that have reached the end of their life to be recycled into new fiber or fabric. So far Patagonia has reclaimed 45 tons of clothing.

One of the examples of the Cash-less trend is about the company called Square. Square is an electronic payment service that enables users to accept credit card payments using their smart phones. I happened to hear Jim McKelvey, one of the founders of Square, speak at a recent conference for women entrepreneurs. His best advice, “Don’t look for opportunities, look for disruptions.”

Source: www.trendwatching.com. One of the world’s leading trend firms, trendwatching.com sends out its free, monthly Trend Briefings to more than 160,000 subscribers worldwide.

Tagged Global Women's Summit, Morningstar Communications, Patagonia, Shanny Morgenstern, Square, trendwatching.com | Leave a comment Posted on December 6, 2011 by Shanny Morgenstern

Creative Messaging: Food for thought

Posted in Integrated Marketing (IMC), Online Marketing, Social Media

Thanksgiving is only two days away. In a matter of hours, relatives will collectively gather in homes across the country for holiday festivities. While Morningstar Communications won’t be hosting an office turkey feast this Thursday, we would still like the opportunity to entertain and give our blog guests some food for thought.

Many businesses and custumers anxiously await holiday season sales, but before these big sales take place, all of the businesses spend money in advertising to draw customers in. These ads all have one thing in common – a message for the consumer.

Here is my personal favorite holiday advertisement I’ve seen this season: Gotta Go to Kohl’s on Black Friday.

Messaging is key for any business. But how are they crafted? In what tone? In what voice? Who is the intended audience? In what creative way are these messages delivered? These are all good questions, but the final product should be made of what Eric Morgenstern calls the anatomy of great messaging.

Within thirty seconds, the Kohl’s ad touches on each of the six elements of great messaging. And it does it in a creative, memorable, entertaining way. Not only do I know who they are, when the sale is, how it benefits me to go (christmas shopping done early, Kohl’s cash, etc.), but it is also simple, recipient-oriented, AND they brought it to us via parody of a notorious, viral song, which is stuck in my head on loop again. You too? You’re welcome. Bottom line – it works.

What else works? How about Ford’s unique approach to releasing the 2013 Escape? Or, how about the creative 404 pages found in this Business Insider article? I love creative messaging. Do you? What creative messages that exemplify the anatomy of great messaging did I miss? Let us know what you think!

Stay Digital.

Tagged holidays, Matthew Barnett, Messaging, Morningstar Communications, social media | Leave a comment Posted on November 22, 2011 by Matthew Barnett

Shifting from Scale to Engagement

Posted in Best Practices, Online Marketing, Social Media

When we first started Morningstar Communications I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to measure the effectiveness of a PR campaign. Even fourteen years ago I knew that the number of clips, or column inches of coverage or even the number of listeners or readers wasn’t what truly mattered to our clients. What matters is how we change behavior. Do more people buy our client’s products? Do more people publicly recommend our client’s products to their friends and colleagues?

So it seemed strange to me that when social media started taking off, people measured its effectiveness by how many people saw their messages. It doesn’t matter if you have a million likes on your Facebook page if they completely ignore your posts.

A traditional marketing campaign should engage and attract new customers and so should an effective social media campaign.

As Michael Lazerow, the CEO of Buddy Media said in a recent article in AdAge, Facebook is now focused on helping businesses develop effective social media campaigns – by shifting from scale to engagement. Instead of being limited to the passive like button, businesses will be able to use a variety of expressive verbs such as “read, watch, listen, buy and more.”

On the surface this seems like a small shift, but it truly requires taking an entirely different strategic approach. In Ian Schafer’s article in the Harvard Business Review he talks about how marketing companies need to change their emphasis from nouns – “impressions, commercials, search results, clicks” to “making consumers’ connections to content and activities more meaningful… The dawn of the engagement age and agency is near, and the upcoming Facebook platform changes will only bring it about sooner.”

Tagged Facebook, Ian Schafer, Michael Lazerow, Morningstar Communications, Shanny Morgenstern, social media | 1 Comment Posted on September 28, 2011 by Shanny Morgenstern

Down with Narcissism

Posted in Online Marketing, Social Media

I’m on Facebook a lot. It has become a key part of the communications toolkit – okay, that’s the business justification, but it’s also a great way to stay connected with friends and family. I get a solid ROI in exchange for my time I spend on this social medium.

But, please pardon my attitude, I’ve had it with the self-absorbed, all-about-me kind of posts we’re all seeing. Why in the world would anybody care about the meal I just prepared, the fact that I’m sitting at an airport waiting for my late flight, or an amazing moment I just witnessed. I’m pretty sure you don’t.

This social media narcissism is spreading like the plague. Narcissism is defined as self-admiration and a personality disorder. While I often refer to this era as a “renaissance” for communications, never before have we had as much information and access, this trend towards self-absorption is frightening.

Educate or Entertain
I often get positive comments and engagement with the posts I make on Facebook. Perhaps it’s the trained journalist that lives deep within me that pushes me to make every post educational, or entertaining, or both.

I recently linked to a story about the end of an era:  the last manufacturer of manual typewriters finally went out of business. That post spurred many comments rekindling memories from our collective past.

Or the post about National Parks from Space. That inspired others to comment about their experiences in the parks. Or the recent link to the story about the first planet we’ve discovered with two suns – like Tatooine!

I stop following friends who don’t add anything to my knowledge or provide entertainment value. The time I put into Facebook is an investment and I expect a positive return.
So teach me something, or amuse me. But don’t just show me a picture of your dinner.

Onward and upward.

Tagged Eric Morgenstern, Morningstar Communications, social media | 1 Comment Posted on September 20, 2011 by Eric Morgenstern

Show me, then tell me.

Posted in Best Practices, Online Marketing

If a picture tells a thousand words, then a video must be able to replace 10,000 words.  Effective marketing programs for B2B companies now uses video to activate engagement with social media

Video is the “now” frontier to be utilized via social media.  Bandwith is expanding rapidly.  Connectivity is ubiquitous.  And great content, after all, is the holy grail of effective communications.

This 90-second video shows vibrations at 1,000 times a second via some gorgeous video.  This video has been seen more than 600,000 times.  Is it for a camera…or filmmaker?  Not hardly.  It’s for
Fluke Corporation (not a client) who describes themselves as “…the world leader in the manufacture, distribution and service of electronic test tools and software.”

It appears they use this film technique in their everyday jobs to analyze the effectiveness of their products.  But one day, somebody must have said, “This could be an amazing piece of video.  We can use it to entice people to learn more about what we sell.”  Brilliant.  It worked for me, and thousands of others.

Our very own Kansas City Chamber of Commerce created Chamber TV earlier this year and now boasts more than 50 individual videos.  In essence, The Chamber has become its own media outlet, with controlled content via virtually every format available.  Viewership is growing.

We’re in the middle of our own video test.   Our Spotlight Video series already includes three quick sessions with me sitting at my desk discussing “Think Excellence, Not Difference,” “Attraction Marketing” and “Message Orchestration.”  We created simple video bumpers for the beginning and end.  Each one is less than 90 seconds.

I’ve had dozens of people comment on how effective, clear and simple our message is.  That’s exactly what we wanted to hear.  It’s almost free to get a simple video camera, create a YouTube channel, upload them, then use social media to drive traffic. It’s working.  We have more Spotlight videos planned.  Stay tuned.

For way too long, I’ve heard that “social media and business-to-business don’t mix well.”  That’s hogwash.  Just ask Fluke.  But please treat yourself to 80 seconds of beautiful video by first watching “vibrations.”

Every single company and organization should start using video.  ‘nuff said.

Onward and upward.

Tagged Eric Morgenstern, Fluke Corporation, Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, Morningstar Communications, Spotlight video, video | Leave a comment Posted on July 19, 2011 by Eric Morgenstern

Imagine the whole world being invited to your wedding

Posted in Online Marketing, Social Media

I am getting married this weekend, so it only seems fitting to cover how the internet, in particular social media, has changed the way people communicate about the major events happening in their personal lives.

On Friday, April 29 the royal wedding took over cyberspace, providing up-to-the-minute details as Kate Middleton married Prince William. The television and web coverage of the event was the culmination of a long chain of record-breaking events.

In the seven days before the wedding, 2.1 million tweets concerning the event were sent, according to ABC News. In addition, more than 1.75 million Facebook comments were made over the past month that mentioned “royal wedding” in the United States alone. Nearly one million people watched “Royal Wedding Invitation,” an official wedding video. Some of the other figures that ABC pulled together: 11,225 results returned for a search of “royal wedding” on Flickr; 70 percent increase in Google searches worldwide for “fascinator,” the name of Kate’s hair piece; 1199 percent increase in Yahoo! searches for “What Is Prince Williams Last Name;” and 5,000 videos tagged “royal wedding” uploaded to YouTube over the week of the wedding. The list goes on and on…

It’s safe to say that my wedding will not generate hourly updates on Facebook. And unlike Kate Middleton and Prince William, the whole world will not be invited to watch our wedding live and the soundtrack of our ceremony won’t be released on iTunes within hours of our nuptials either. However, planning a wedding in today’s online world did provide a variety of ways to share our special day with others, including an online registry, a wedding website and an online engagement video.

Weddings are intended to be a public pronouncement of a couple’s love and devotion.  Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have certainly expanded the meaning of “public.”  But even though we can share our moment with the whole world, I’m most looking forward to sharing it with my closest friends, family and the love of my life!

Tagged ABC News, Meg O'Neal, Morningstar Communications, Royal Wedding | 1 Comment Posted on May 9, 2011 by Meg Schulte

Top 10 Royal Wedding Marketing Promotions (I mean souvenirs)

Posted in Best Practices, Online Marketing

From across the pond, Britain’s marketing bonanza invaded. Under the guise of commemorative items, you too can enjoy a piece of Royal wedding history. Here is a list of my favorites:

1.              Royal couple refrigerator wrap – caters to a specific group

2.              Coffee mug with the happy couple. Oops, wrong groom

3.              Royal Wedding Bookmark Business Card Template – hmmmm

4.              Royal romance CD – can’t get more romantic than that

5.              Kate’s engagement ring reproductions – affordable for all without the sentimental value

6.              Royal Wedding Prince William and Kate Middleton Round Tray – currently sold out, sorry

7.              Kate’s wedding dress knockoff

8.              The coveted tea towel – another item backordered

9.              Princess Kate bride doll – not quite available yet

10.           Royal coasters – a must have in a variety of colors and prints

Whether you are obsessed with the royal couple or amused by the whole thing, the British economy is having a king-sized boost.

Tagged Andy Woodward, Marketing, Morningstar Communications, Royal Wedding | Leave a comment Posted on May 3, 2011 by Andy Woodward

Phone vs. Web … Does it Work for Them

Posted in Best Practices, Integrated Marketing (IMC), Online Marketing

I know that I am not so young anymore, but I am not so old either. And yet in my lifetime the way I access information has changed drastically. When I was growing up we went to the library and looked through the card catalog, literally card-by-card to find the books that may or may not address the issue I was researching.

When my eldest son was in 5th grade, the Web was in its infancy.  I actually taught his class how to do research online. Can you imagine a group of 11 year-olds today who don’t know how to search the Internet?

Today, there are many companies whose Web sites are secondary to their phone applications. I imagine their staff meeting when someone said,  “We have millions of people using our phone application, do you think we should have some of our junior programmers put something together so we have a website as well?”

Here are three examples where the quality and usability of the phone applications far exceed their websites:

1. Shazam – their website is almost completely focused on downloading  applications for my phone. There isn’t even a link to tag a song on their home page.
2. Urban Spoon – their website has a lot of information, but it is overwhelming and what is impressive about their phone application is that it is so simple, easy to use and fun.
3. Flixster – their website is also overwhelming, but the key is that it takes me much longer using my laptop than my phone to find out what are the ratings and local showtimes for a specific movie.

The unifying thread for Shazam, Urban Spoon and Flixster is that their creators believed  their audiences would prefer to access their products from a phone instead of a laptop or desktop computer. This necessitates adopting the philosophy of less is more and truly identifying the key information.

90% of the time I access Shazam is when I’m sitting at a stop light in my car and a song I like starts playing on the radio. It would be incredibly frustrating and dangerous if I had to scroll through multiple screens to tag a song. Yes, sometimes it’s nice to see the lyrics or know what the top tracks are, but don’t make me sort through that information while I’m sitting at a stop light.

As communicators we need to determine how our audiences want to access our information. If they are using their phones more and more, which I suspect is the trend, then we need to laser our efforts to communicate what our audience considers the most important information, in the most efficient way possible.

And then we will need to adapt to how my future grandchildren will want to access information. I doubt that will be looking through a card catalog at the library…

Tagged Flixster, Morningstar Communications, Phone Applications, Shanny Morgenstern, Shazam, Smartphone, Urban Spoon | 2 Comments Posted on April 19, 2011 by Shanny Morgenstern ← Older posts