Why the ‘я’ight MARCOM strategies are so critical 4 $uccess!
Why the ‘я’ight MARCOM strategies are so critical 4 $uccess!
By Brian McLaughlin
Copyright 2022
Proper Messaging, Communications and Marketing Strategies R critical for success!
You’re in business for the long-haul but struggling with how/when/who to get your branding messaging out to. Should you use social media (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok), your company’s new landing page, local advertising, local or regional business/trade magazines and publishers, local or regional broadsheet/newspapers or digital news media, digital online media, promotional videos, or hire freelance custom content consultants? Your choices are exhausting – so many to choose from!
Too often after investing thousands, tens-of-thousands, and even millions of dollars on snazzy messaging, marketing professionals complete a post-campaign analysis to discover their investments in messaging completely underperformed or missed the mark. Worst case, terrible marketing campaigns have alienated large segments of culturally sensitive and gender-specific markets with offensive or politically incorrect messages. Perhaps, their message or campaign was brilliant, and they simply posted their blog, articles, adverts, videos, or How To message in the right venue, however, on the wrong day and time! Perhaps, in the company’s haste at growing business and their ambitions to join the digital internet (noise portals), they didn’t optimally align with the ways-and-means of business-as-usual realities of social and cultural norms of their primary customer-base and vertical market(s).
Who really wants to be the marketing minion cringing and crawling up to their C-suite bosses with post-campaign reports revealing in these tough business times, they ineffectively pissed corporate funds down rabbit holes without working smarter versus harder at ensuring their superiors and investors get the best ROI for their marketing and advertising dollars?
Case-in-point: An interesting experiment between severity and inanity can prove my point of how proper messaging and communication can turn clear concise messages and outstanding solicitations into SNAFU.?As a teenager my wife, and her younger sisters and girlfriends used to visit the local mall and play amusing pranks on the unsuspecting Kiosk attendants.?Looking ever the trustworthy teenage shoppers, with rosy apple cheeks and blonde ponytails, one of them would approach the Mall Kiosk attendant, and hand them a note asking: “Could you page ‘Bob Loblaw to the food court’ for me?” Then she would walk back into seating at the food court to the hysterical laughter of the rest of the girl-gang, as the Mall’s overhead paging system repeatedly paged: “Would Bobloblah report to the food court please! Bobloblah to the food court! Bobloblah please report to the food court!”
What seemed like a clear communication, when delivered via the wrong platform, simply got jumbled! So obvious a clear message being communicated outward, but evidence of how delivery and the medium as the instrument of attention grabbing can turn an ordinary communication into an embarrassing message for the Kiosk attendant. Also, it’s evidence of how when a concise message is written down what is heard by the human auditory system comes out completely missing its mark – especially when it’s communicated through the wrong instrument for dissemination!
An example of the confusion which can originate with the auditory senses is the 'Mairzy Doats' novelty song, written and composed in 1943 by?Milton Drake, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston. It contains lyrics that make no sense as written, but are near homophones?of meaningful phrases. The song's title, for example, is a homophone of "Mares eat oats".
With ‘Mairzy Doats’, here’s an example of 'auditory accuracy' jumbled with how the brain receives the lyrical confusion. What most of us hear is exactly what sounds like another language…
Oh, mairzy doats and dozy doats and little lambsy divey
A kiddle divey, too. Wouldn't you?
If the words sound queer and funny to the ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey, try singing...
"Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy
A kid will eat ivy too. Wouldn't you?"
For adult readers, here's a mature example of another thing called McGurk Effect. In music, there's a phenomenon called the McGurk effect. It’s a?perceptual phenomenon that demonstrates an interaction between hearing and vision in speech perception. The illusion occurs when the auditory component of one sound is paired with the visual component of another sound, leading to the perception of a third sound.
Perhaps, like me, the Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush, duet of the 1986's hit song-official video Don't Give Up – when sung from a Londoner's timbre (by Bush) in the final chorus – also elicits misinterpretation of the lyrics for you.
What I mishear is the following...
Don't give up 'cause you have friends
Don't give up, you're not the only one
Don't give up, no reason to be (ashit)
Advertising, commentaries, news, features, blogs, all manners of communicating are no different and the buyers/investors of messaging dollars should consider all available options before investing in simply running with bullhorns to herald the news, pitch the brand, and/or attempt to persuade readers and viewers about critical corporate and community messages. Even Fortune 500 companies and rising stars on The New York Stock Exchange have committed tremendous messaging and advertising mistakes, which have swiftly come back in this internet age to haunt them.
Examples of poor messaging include such failed TV commercials as when Pop Chips had actor Ashton Kutcher don a brown painted face and Indian accent to try to sell its chips in an offensive marketing manner. Or when Dr. Pepper tried to TV advertise its beverage as sexist, only for men – unwittingly excluding 50 percent of its available gender market! Or like in 2008, when Sales Genie went with an advertisement that tried to incorporate every racist Chinese stereotype it could into those?thirty seconds.
And, who can't forget the worst exercise equipment commercial of the 2019 Christmas season with the Peleton woman riding her holiday gift stationary exercise bicycle? The ad was met with online backlash: with some users calling it "the worst commercial ever", and accused it of being sexist in portraying the woman as having no concerns other than how her body appeared to others. At a time just before the world was hit by a global pandemic, which eventually led to record sales of indoor personal fitness equipment, the “give the gift of Peloton” commercial advertisement garnered more dislikes than likes on YouTube when it first aired. Peloton faced criticism over new holiday ad - YouTube – Great product but clearly bad messaging!
Also, though some commercial messaging can embarrass brand if done improperly even a subject as odious as defecating can be found amusing by viewers. A recent TV advert created by ad agency Humanaut about “Poopowerment” is a case in point. Though I find this ad completely asinine and tasteless, others find it hilarious! Which brings up the next caution about placement and timing. Perhaps, when I viewed this advert which when it concluded was immediately followed up by a Subway (Sandwich brand) TV advert, so maybe the two subjects running toe-to-heel upon each other, negatively affected my first and lingering impressions. Face it: the idea of taking a craptastic poodeenee immediately followed by the notion of breaking bread and eating an artisans Subway sandwich is hard not to find repulsive. In my opinion, I think Subway corporate should’ve asked that ad agency for a refund for that ineffective time slot! Which leads me to the next theme…Timing.
Timing & Placement Is Everything in Effective Messaging!
Did you know the best day and time to post a LinkedIn blog or post is on Thursday? And contrary to popular myth, LinkedIn readers prefer longer approximate 2,000-word (or longer) length blogs with at least 8 photo images, but frown on YouTubes embedded in the posts/blogs! Additionally, consider these LinkedIn best practises:
i) Your title should be be 40-49 characters long.
ii) Include 8 images in your post.
iii) Don't embed multimedia such as YouTube videos into your blog post.
iv) Write How-to posts.
v) Divide your post into 5 sections with headings (h1, h2, h3, etc.)
vi) Ideally, write between 1,900 to 2,000 words*
(*Note: a deviation from this rule applies with this specific blog on the simple merit, sometimes there's resource rich value in providing fact-based, and first-person experiences and examples too salient to shortchange the word count!)
Furthermore, YouTube offers many Pro’s such as educational, new content, branding out different mediums, collaboration, free posting, marketing content, and is available on every device. And yet it has just as many Con’s such as lack of privacy, copyright infringement, too long and too short videos, and is prone to inappropriate, unprofessional comments which can embarrass your brand messaging (example: Give the Gift of Peloton YouTube aired in December, 2019!). Or consider how TikTok, known in China as Douyin, is a video-sharing focused social networking service owned by Chinese company ByteDance. The social media platform is used to make a variety of short-form videos, from genres like dance, comedy, and education, that have a duration from fifteen seconds to three minutes. TikTok is probably the largest growing global social media platform in the world, but it originates out of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), a country not-generally regarded as preserving and protecting one’s individual or confidential privacies and personal human liberties! In the PRC, the STATE rules all! So, you have to consider your options: Use a social media PaaS, TikTok, housed within a rising dragon of social market economy versus a social media SaaS, like Facebook/MetaVerse, housed within a free market enterprise economy where individual creativity and democracy align.
Also, consider how Facebook, though probably considered the socially most popular online platform, has been criticized for being too slow to ban fake news and hate-communications compared to Twitter’s more aggressive censoring of inappropriate social content and fake news. Or how FaceBook was being scrutinized for its craving profits over social responsibilities.
Contemporary studies have shown effective online commercials can range from 15-30 seconds or slightly longer. And increasingly TV adverts are now dropping under the 15-30 second threshold. The shortest commercial in the world, according to Guinness World Records, was only 1 second long!
Cognitive Psychology says Even ‘Panda's’ Can NOT Interrupt Great TV Programming!
Another example of missing the proper message vehicle completely is an often referenced media psychology case experiment (source: A Cognitive Psychology of Mass Communication) where a study subject/person is fully engaged in a great TV program or movie as person in a Panada suit is quickly paraded by in the distant background within the setting of the controlled experiment environment: the results revealed the person fully enthralled in the fantastic TV program or movie does not even flinch an eyebrow of recognition of a Panda so close in their field of vision. If the intention was to alert, shock, or attract the viewer’s attention away from the great TV program or movie viewing, it completely missed the target!
Here’s key advice to consider when planning to invest in the Right messaging portals/partnerships:
领英推荐
You can lead an elephant and bear to water. Then observe them both drinking in your message! So, why only lead horses to water by yourself, when savvy marketers can solicit horses, bears, and elephants to all drink from your brand streams.
Exercise shrewdness and caution researching proper messaging portals and partners:
Search out potential media and messaging partners with due diligence. Shortlist those who offer the most effective targeted participation of those you really need or want to ARREST with your content. You don’t need to be All Things to All Viewers: you simply want to your messaging to resonate and linger within the psyches of those who get your brand appeal. Moreover, don’t always be misguided by thinking fancy, schmancy (High Def) digital messages outperform strategically published or traditional analog media portals such as community newspapers, or ideally situated billboard advertising mediums in your targeted local or regional community. Often old-style roadside billboards situated across from busy intersections arrest cognitive gazes of thousand of vehicle travelers, who must “STOP” at red lights for 30-seconds to 45-seconds at least twice a day, if not more, during busy early morning and late-afternoon commutes back and forth to work everyday. That’s a lot of suspended awareness time for drivers and passengers to gaze afield, or ahead at your strategically posted message, advert (or even digital animation), and billboard message! Also, don’t buy all the hype about HD images, or loud multimedia rapid ads appealing to contemporary online audiences. There’s truth to this photographers' adage: “If you continuously take photographs of any-and-every-thing, you will eventually fail to recognize unique beauty in anything.” Don’t ignore the psychological hook that nostalgic mono-chrome imagery or grainy images have on the inner artist in all of us. And don’t mindlessly copycat shouting LOUDER, or dancing FASTER at your viewing audience! Because, in an increasingly, insecure and neurotic world, the soul still seeks calming cousins, achieved from the justices of balance and serenity.
?Sagely 'Sniff-Out' Out Your Niche Trade/Industry Media Partners and Publishers!
?I recently researched a much-touted podcast start-up entrepreneur for a client of mine – on a referral from someone in their industry – only to discover that I knew more about Tik Tok’s reach and origination from China then they did! And, while picking that upstart’s brain, I discerned that anyone who does not have time to offer more than impatient advice “to just go check out my website” in establishing fruitful business development discovery dialogue for possible future business potential is not worth investing my recommendations in my client’s best business interests at getting their critical messages out. Also, not all podcasts/podcasters are created equal. Often entrepreneurs are too eager to jump onto the first podcast bandwagon without considering the who to, the where, and the when that messaging is going out. While recently researching a niche industry podcaster, I asked the critical question: “How does your podcast coordinate with X, Y, and C industry tradeshows which are critical launch venues that my client is considering participating, showcasing at?” When the answer came back, “I have no way to coordinate with (my industry niche) trade shows at this time” (as an off-the-cuff remark) that spelled a weak discovery point for investing anymore time in talking with that much touted upstart podcaster.
Who Doesn't Enjoy Free Kisses? Attract Earned Media!
Earned Media offers many advantages. Best of all it’s Free!
It boosts your brand. It complements other media. And it saves and makes you money simultaneously!
In this dog-eat-dog world, who doesn't enjoy 'free kisses'?
When starting out in PR-marketing many moons ago, I once advised a small novelty shop/retail owner that if he had a complete stranger call the local newspaper newsroom about his ‘dynamic Kite display’ exhibit hanging from the atrium of our local multiuse shopping complex (where I was employed as an events and promotions manager) that, that “public interest lead” would probably land him more 'free publicity (awareness)' and ROI than any paid ad in the same local newspaper. It worked: he received a full-page cover spread in the “Local” section of the regional newspaper (note: an add of similar or even half-the-broadsheet size would’ve cost him thousands of dollars!) – and consequently droves of spectators and viewers came into the mall during the promotional campaign and, subsequently, took time to go visit his retail store, which was located in a completely different town. Proving that there’s added value in local public interest journalism stories and “earned media” as small business news!
More recently, a former high-profile Saas/Paas client of mine experienced repeated free kisses that money just can't buy through the POWER of regional business awards recognitions via “earned media” after some behind the scenes fyi was shared with the folks who organize the leading annual business community awards event in Atlantic Canada. The kindness of simply paying it forward as a community fyi to folks I network with delivered legitimate ROI for a very deserving and exemplar community business leader – and, rightly so, that company’s CEO won “Top 50 CEO Award*” recognition in 2020 and 2021 (*and now 2022) within a dynamic and diverse community of business peers!
Let me repeat, remember the four reasons why business marketers need earned media:
i) It's Free.
ii) It boosts your brand.
iii) It complements other media.
iv) It saves – and makes – money.
Tenured & 'BIG Agency $pending' is NOT always the best investment in creative resources!
Even a seasoned Pro like me can learn a new multimedia tip, and trick, or two!
Stay current with the digital (r)evolution – attend Adobe MAX Online Webinars and more. Plus, tap into savvy, creative, digitally persuasive applied artists, who’ve recently graduated from applied arts and technology colleges, and polytechnical institutions. My ever-expanding list of LinkedIn network of creatives includes such award-winning young, and digitally savvy professionals like Nadia Zaidi (Canada) , Alec Brown (US), and Tara Audibert (Canada). Keep building your evergreen, network of talented resources and creative professionals with the youngest and brightest upstarts – eager at working collaboratively – who want to make their digital creative presence known.
I don't need to be hit on the head with an animation anvil to know that if Hollywood actors/directors (the likes of Robert Redford, or Mark Ruffalo) notice a young animator like Alec Brown of New Mexico with a prestigious award; or how Tara Audibert, an indigenous animator/film producer (from my own backyard in New Brunswick), who is garnering awarding-winning national and international praise from Canada’s coast-to-coast-to-coast First Peoples, and from US (California’s American Indian and Indigenous Film Festival) native communities for her insightful, indigenous cultural creations; or how the emotional intelligence of Nadia Zadia, who operates Films For Change (dba Reel Voice Productions), and produces impressive and impactful creations that garners impressive reactions and praise from my clients/partners in the US, Europe and the Middle East, then it’s definitely worth reaching out to those top-caliber young creatives to add them to my e-Rolodex of globally available creative resources for possible future project collaborations.
Why not check out these three dynamic and creative talent assets for yourself – or better yet, give them a ping or a call directly!
Alec Brown, Film Editor |Animator | Youth Film Camp Teacher - Film Editing, Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States
Nadia Zaidi, Films For Change Production, Journalist |Documentary filmmaker |TV & Film Producer | Social Advocate, Greater Toronto Area, Canada
Tara Audibert, Owner Moxy Fox Studio, Miramichi, New Brunswick, Canada
I also have an ever-expanding, global 'network of creatives' spanning the Earth's six populated continents.
?Bonus Tip: Be Selfless – Pay It Forward for Reciprocity’s Sake!
Face it: Doing good, feels good! It-and-of-itself is its best reward.
So, if you’re too busy to take on a new project, pass on the names and contact details of people in your e-Rolodex of Creatives Network to prospective clients. These young-and-seasoned creatives could offer the best value and/or media investments for anyone who approaches you for a needed it yesterday, need it now, or need it tomorrow urgency, or for any too-rapid-a-turnaround projects you simply can’t get to, or take on.
It’s an exciting, dynamic, expansive, and evolving creative, digital world out here. In this 21st Century cyberspace rush to cut through the global saturations of near, approaching c 2-noise, there’s lots of work to go around for targeting, near perfection in your critical communications and marketing strategies.
Key takeaways:
Timing-&-Place Are Everything in Effective Messaging!
Psychology Survey says: Even ‘Panda's’ Can Not Interrupt Great TV Programming!
Research Best Possible Communications Canons!
Pick Your Messaging Partners Carefully!
Never Frown on Free Media Coverage/Earned Media - Everyone Enjoys 'Free Kisses'!
Try on New/Smart/Tech-Savvy/Upstart Multimedia Partners!
Be Generous – Pay It Forward to Dynamic & Newly Graduated Creatives!
A parting shot: why not check out the 12 absolute worst TV ads ever made.
(* Note: this embedded link was updated on Friday, May 13, 2022. I had a hunch this CEO was in line for 'a hat trick' with Atlantic Canada's most prestigious business recognition event.)
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?My Bio – Brian McLaughlin Consulting (dba Triple C-Si) is a locally, regionally, nationally, internationally successful freelance writer, videographer, and custom content and messaging services aficionado. His commentaries/op-eds, feature news articles, and creative content and multimedia messages have garnered praise from news editorial, political, academic and business leaders, as well as from ordinary 'John-and-Jane-Q-Public' readers/viewers for over three decades. He has received four- and five-star accolades from his industry peers, business superiors, and independent reader surveys.
Digital Storyteller [WRITE. FILM. EDIT. UPLOAD. REPEAT]
2 年A powerfully compelling piece! Thank you Brian McLaughlin !