Personality Marketing Get more business, more easily, with more fun, by being 100% YOU!

Wow - busy day for noticing useful stuff today!

A guy called Rohit Bhargava is launching his book today called:

“Personality Not Included: Why Brands Lose Their Authenticity And How Great Companies Get it Back
Faceless companies don’t work anymore.  In a world where consumers have more access to information than ever, and more power to share their voice … a brand’s identity is no longer controlled through marketing and advertising.  In this new era, what you say your brand stands for is no longer good enough.  What you demonstrate to your customers matters most.  This is the power of your personality.  Personality Not Included is an essential guide for brands on putting back the missing ingredient in their marketing to build loyal customers, foster consumer (and employee) evangelists, and create a connection that goes beyond profit.  The future of business requires new authenticity.  Personality is the secret weapon that brings authentic brands to life.”

You can read the introduction to the book here: Introduction to Personality Not Included

He’s singing the same song as me - personality matters!

If you would like to pre-order the book, you can do that at Amazon.co.uk: Pre-order Personality Not Included: Why Companies Lose Their Authenticity And How Great Brands Get it Back

Posted under Marketing

Similar to the article I wrote about the Virgin Atlantic safety video, Delta Airline has discovered how putting some personality into what is normally a very mundane and ignored piece of communication can really make a difference.

With (at the time of writing) just shy of half a million (499,373) views on YouTube, Katherine Lee (who’s been dubbed ‘Deltalina’ for her resemblance to Angelina Jolie) has brought Delta Airline some huge benefits:

1. People now actually watch the safety video (the original and admirable intent)
2. Delta is getting massive exposure on blogs, news channels and so on
3. I suspect there may even be some people choose to fly Delta purely to watch the safety video and find out what the fuss is.  At the very least, you can be damn sure they’ll be telling other people about it! (Watch for the now infamous ‘finger wag’ about half-way through )

Here’s my challenge for you.

Think about the ordinary, every day, regular communication touch points you have with your customers.  Is there any way you could put more of your personality into those communications?  It could be order confirmation emails, it could be invoices - any time you communicate with your customers and clients, you have an opportunity to inject personality.

Pick one thing and change it - today.

Posted under Corporations with personality

Sound marketing advice can be found in the strangest, and oldest of places - in this case, one of Aesop’s Fables.  In case you didn’t know Aesop was an Ancient Greek slave and story-teller - so we’re talking about marketing advice from about 600 BC!

I’m always trying to encourage you to put some personality into your marketing, and this story perfectly illustrates why:

“An old man and a young boy were traveling through their village with their donkey. The boy rode on the donkey and the old man walked.

As they went along they passed some people who remarked it was a shame the old man was walking and the boy was riding.

The man and boy thought maybe the critics were right, so they changed positions.

Later, they passed some people that remarked, “What a shame, he makes that little boy walk.” They then decided they both would walk.

Soon they passed some more people who thought they were stupid to walk when they had a decent donkey to ride. So, they both rode the donkey.

Now they passed some people that shamed them by saying, “How awful to put such a load on a poor donkey.”

The boy and man said they were probably right, so they decided to carry the donkey.

As they crossed the bridge, they lost their grip on the animal and he fell into the river and drowned.

The moral of the story?

If you try to please everyone, you may as well just kiss your ass goodbye.”

OK - honesty moment.  That’s not the original wording, but it made me smile more!

And the point made by the original wording of the moral is as true now as it’s always been: “PLEASE ALL, AND YOU WILL PLEASE NONE.”

Are you trying to please everyone?  Or are you being uniquely you - and attracting the kinds of customers and clients that love you for that?

Posted under Marketing

Came across a great blog today: http://www.smallbiztrends.com/

They asked their readers/contributors for their top marketing secrets and compiled it into a free report, which I’d like to offer you today.

It’s completely free, and you don’t need to register to download it: 100 Best Kept Marketing Secrets

There’s a lot of common sense in there, as well as some suggestions that I’ll be taking up. 

Have a read - it’s worth your time.

Posted under Marketing

I came across a blog post today about how some small (and not so small) businesses are absolutely killing business and projecting a very ‘penny pinching’/mean attitude to their customers:

“…as I was checking out, I noticed a sign that said $5 minimum on all credit/debit card transactions. But…the movie is only $4. So this means, a person can’t come in and get 1 movie (which is what I would normally do) and pay with their card. I don’t even know how to spend $5. 2 movies is $8!

I suppose their logic goes something like this…our merchant account fees just raised by $.10 per transaction. We just can’t afford for people to swipe their cards for less than $5 anymore. Besides…maybe this will motivate people to get more than 1 movie. So, we’ll make more profit because we’ll pay less in fees, and rent more movies at once. Great idea!

Well, I think that’s a real bad plan. I doubt it’s going to motivate many people to get more than one movie — in fact, I think it will cause people to choose to just “skip it” all together. If it were me (and it probably won’t be, now that I know their new policy), I’d be ticked off, out of principle. And I very rarely carry cash. I would probably leave. For me, crappy credit card policies cause me not to do business with places.”

The post goes on to give some really good ideas about how they could have structured it to add value to the transaction, and the customer, and encourage/incentivise (rather than force) the customer to spend more money.

I agree with everything they say - I get really turned off by penny pinching policies like this too.

Full blog post is here: http://www.gravitationalmarketing.com/observation/2008/3/27/how-not-to-make-a-profit.html

Posted under Marketing