A Brand Goes from Cool to the Fool

Ed Hardy

Have you heard of it?

If not, you’ve likely seen it but it just didn’t register.

Ed Hardy is a brand of clothing, mostly t-shirts and trendy baseball caps, by designer Christian Audigier.

His clothing is distinguished by lavish colors painted across a wide swath of the item, often with motifs of skulls or jewels.

For awhile, Ed Hardy clothing was the coolest thing on the block. Or so I was told. Once I got married, fashion fell to the bottom of my priority list.

Celebs were wearing it. LA hipsters were wearing it. People at the World Series of Poker were wearing it. You could see it on MTV, VH1, E!, etc.

Then a funny thing happened.

In a very short period of time, the brand went from cool to a laughing stock in certain circles.

The first sign of this was when I found a bunch of Ed Hardy clothes at my local Marshall’s, usually the graveyard for designers.

If you’re a trendy, exclusive designer, why on earth would you allow your items to be sold in a mass-market discount chain? Right then and there should have been a huge warning sign that the brand was overreaching.

Backlash is growing on the internet too. Facebook has groups called (I’m not kidding) “Thanks to Ed Hardy, I recognize idiots with no sense of style immediately.”.

That group has close to 5,500 members.

Now Ed Hardy has become a brand that people snicker at when they see it being worn.

I’m not sure what the exact takeaway is from this, or if there is a concrete lesson to be learned.

I guess the moral of the story is this: in the day and age of the Internet, your brand can move from zero to hero quickly. But it can plummet to the depths of discount stores just as fast.

This often occurs because the original intent of the brand (in Ed Hardy’s case, cool designer wear) has been sullied (found in Marshall’s, doofus people on MTV wearing it).

If you’ve spent considerable time and money building a brand, remember that the work isn’t over. Carefully monitor how the brand is doing. It could save it from the brand graveyard.
———————————————————–
Looking for assistance in branding and marketing management? Firecracker is an integrated agency offering branding, PR, search engine marketing, social media and more. Visit us at http://www.firecrackerpr.com.

Partnering To Success

For the past 18 months, everybody’s marketing budget has been pretty slim (if you’re lucky enough to even have had a marketing budget).

This has forced companies to make tough decisions on how to generate leads and revenue while faced with declining marketing resources.

One area that is a potential bumper crop of leads is partnerships.

Partnerships or strategic alliances is a low-cost and very effective way to create a steady stream of leads.

There are 2 forms of partnerships, generally speaking:

1. Vendor. These are where smaller firms join established industry leaders who may have formal partner programs. Examples of these include Microsoft Partnership Program, HP, Dell, etc. Benefits include discounts, networking, support, sneak peeks, industry events and credibility.

2. Complementary. This is my particular favorite. It requires more work than Vendors, but the payoff could be much bigger. These types of partnerships are meant to do one thing and one thing only: increase your leads. Find businesses that go after the same prospects you do but with complementary services.

So in Firecracker’s case, we offer PR and marketing to small/mid-sized companies. What do these companies also consume? Web hosting, accounting, sales support and so on. Our services are a good complementary fit for what they offer while not directly competing with them.

The major benefits to setting up complementary partnerships include:

-immediately tap into new sources of leads
-gain the instant credibility that quality referrals offer
-give partners the ability to instantly offer a portfolio of new services for their clients
-add a new revenue stream for them with little to no work
-diversify their business offerings through complementary services

So what kind of partnerships can you set up?

A) Private Label. A private label service gives partners the ability to add new offerings to their branded portfolio, sold under their company umbrella. Services/products are then marked up by partners. Support is usually offered by you.

2. Referral Profit Program. Partners earn referral fees based on the amount they spend with you. It could be one-time or ongoing. These tend to be less structured than formal affiliate programs…speaking of which…

3. Affiliate Programs. Affiliates promote you mainly online, using banner ads, SEO, paid search, etc. For the initiates, affiliate programs can be tricky to set up and manage.

4. Simple Referrals. Informal, no referral fees, nothing. Sometimes you just want to refer a valuable client to a trusted provider.

For 2010, think hard about areas where you can partner your way to success.

To learn about Firecracker’s partner program, and to sign up, visit http://www.firecrackerpr.com/partnership

The Best New Year’s Resolution

This is the time of the year where articles abound of looking back at the past decade and making predictions for the next.

All I know is, we all deserve a drink for making it through one of the most challenging periods of time perhaps in our lifetime.

We all know that New Year’s resolutions go by the wayside faster than those new gym memberships in January.

So instead of resolutions that are sure to be broken, instead make a list of the top 3 to 5 marketing priorities you will focus on in 2010.

I have within my eyesight a whiteboard with my top priorities written down. These priorities are high level enough to be strategic yet not so vague as to be unachievable. Every day, sometimes multiple times a day, I will look at the board and think about one or two things I can do today to help me with those goals.

Think about it: if you can just do one or two things per main goal a day (even if it’s sending an inquiring email or looking for an influential contact), how many things will you get done after 365 days?

As a radio ad I regularly hear says, success in business isn’t from doing thousands of different things. It’s doing a few things over and over again.

Here are some potential marketing priorities you may consider:

-creating a pipeline of regular press releases (4-6 weeks each)
-starting a Social Media presence (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
-finding a keyword niche important to your business and targeting SEO to dominate that keyword
-test direct marketing (email/mail) to drive prospects to take action
-improve your website by adding stuff that visitors will find interesting (polls, papers, blog postings, free tools, etc.)

So let’s review:

Take 15 minutes to jot down your top 3 to 5 marketing priorities.

Do just one or two things a day for each.

Then look back in 2011 and see how far you’ve come. You might just amaze yourself.

Have a fantastic start to 2010, and here’s hoping the new year is one full of peace and prosperity for us all.

Why Good Enough is Good Enough in Marketing

We live in a new age of instant information, Twitter and social media. All of the above have one thing in common: speed over perfection.

In past decades where marketing was mainly confined to print advertising, television, Yellow Pages and direct mailers, the much longer lead time from conception to the marketplace made it much easier to spend lots of time proofreading, tweaking and running numerous revisions until the perfect ad copy or the perfect print ad was ready.

This was justifiable by the longer shelf life of a color magazine ad or a direct mailer that someone might file and take out at a later date. But in an age where print newspapers are falling by the wayside faster than the ratings of Jon and Kate Plus Eight, most forms of marketing these days have the shelf life about the same as the lifespan of a fruit fly.

The ephemeral quality of the Internet means that emails are read and quickly deleted. Search engine ads appear and just as quickly disappear. Blogs are read and archived. Banner ads here one day are gone the next.

As the velocity of communicating to your prospects increase, something must give. That something is quality.

I am not advocating that emails be full of spelling and grammatical errors. Far from it; the surest way to turn off prospects is to have websites and marketing materials with typos.

What I am advocating is that you break free from the notion that something has to be perfect before you launch it (I am only speaking of marketing). It’s less important that the email be 100% perfect, and more important that it’s 85% good to go and sent on a regular basis.

Similarly, don’t agonize over the exact details of a promotion or discount. Why not put it out there and split test the results? After all, that’s one of the biggest advantages of online ads.

In summary, speed is everything these days. Spend less time perfecting and more time pumping out compelling messages, information and promotions through all your channels.

Does all this give you a migraine? Turn to Firecracker to manage your public relations, social media, search engine marketing and other marketing needs. Visit us at http://www.firecrackerpr.com.

Download our free report on “PR 2.0″ at http://firecrackerpr.com/seven-ways/.

When Best Practices Aren’t Best

There’s a term I really hate in business.

It’s called “best practices”.

What it’s meant to convey is that a certain method the best way of doing something. The unspoken side of that coin is that other methods aren’t optimal.

The truth of the matter is that marketing is half art and half science. For all the efforts to quantify marketing activities, much of the success sometimes comes down to “intuition” or “gut feeling” (terms many marketers may shun or shy away from).

Try a simpler method for marketing success. Get rid of “best practices” and switch to “test small, keep what works and chuck what doesn’t”.

Here are two examples where success was found in contradiction to “best practices”.

Conventional wisdom in Search Engine Marketing states that the best lead generation is found by driving traffic to landing pages and not a general homepage. On the surface, it makes sense; landing pages are more tailored and relevant with clear call to actions. But landing pages don’t always outperform homepages, and you will never know unless you test.

It’s as simple as setting up two identical ads and having one destination the landing page and the
other the homepage.

A previous campaign we ran for a client actually had significantly better conversion rates for ads that directed to the homepage, bucking “best practices”. Our best guess was that the services being offered were of such a complex nature that prospects wanted to browse around the website to gather enough info before submitting a form to contact them.

Another broader example of how best practices might not always be best is Craigslist, the popular online classified site. Looking at Craiglist, the user interface is exceptionally sparse and (some feel) ugly. Where are the graphics? Where are the drop down navigation menus? Where was any color?

Instead, Craigslist built a plain white website with nothing but links. Every city in every country had the same look and feel. Yet simply by using this type of barren, spartan site, Craigslist became one of the most trafficked sites on the Internet.

The rationale in retrospect was simple. People browsing classifieds wanted their pages to load as quickly as possible. By shunning anything that would bog down loading, Craigslist was a lean mean website machine. They laughed all the way to the bank when eBay took a 25% stake in 2004.

Today, Craigslist serves over twenty BILLION page views per month and has over forty million new classified ads per month.

What “best practices” are you taking for granted that might be suppressing extraordinary results?

You’ll never know until you buck conventional wisdom and boldly test where some have not tested before.

Contact Firecracker to create your own best practices.

Google Fast Flip and Press Releases

News of the press release's demise is greatly exaggerated.

While it is true that the press release's original intent as a
vehicle to create media coverage is highly diminished, the
area of SEO has breathed new life into the press release.

For many searches of key terms, you will find Google integrating
news coverage from various sites in what is known as Google's
Universal Search. Universal Search is Google's ongoing
attempt to integrate news, image, video and product results
for any searches.

Not only can press releases help you appear in the news
section for Universal Search, but oftentimes you will find
press releases directly in the organic results of search engines.
These press release results tend to have quite a bit of
longevity as well; press releases we've written for clients five
or more years ago still can show up in the first page.

Google's launched a new test feature called Fast Flip. This
is essentially taking Apple's cover flow model of flicking through
images of CD covers and applying it to news articles and sites.
So instead of a list of text, you see a visual collection of thumb-
nails you can flip through.

Who knows if Fast Flip will stick around, but the point is that
properly written press releases with an eye on SEO can now
serve two purposes. Make sure to have a pipeline of press
releases for your company.

Firecracker can help you research the top keywords your
prospects are using to find you and your competitors. We
can also help you brainstorm topics for press releases, and
of course we can provide full writing and distribution services.
Visit us at www.FirecrackerPR.com to learn more.

Of course, please add us on Twitter at twitter.com/firecrackerpr

Join our Facebook page at
www.facebook.com/pages/Firecracker-PR/112794343903

Read other musings on our blog at www.firecrackerpr.com/wordpress

The Growing Irrelevance of Mainstream Media

Over the long weekend the Green Jobs Czar for the President
submitted his resignation.

If many of you are surprised you’ve never even heard of
Van Jones, you are likely not alone.

Even though the scandal hit its peak during the long weekend,
many of those in the “mainstream media” did not cover the
story at all until the resignation was tendered. This included
NBC, CBS, CNN, the New York Times and Los Angeles Times.

The story began from the Glen Beck Show on Fox News and
continued across web sites such as the Drudge Report and
Politico.com, not to mention the obvious conservative sites.

Within a few days, a story the general press didn’t cover was
done.

Regardless of your political leanings, this case study proves
one key central point: the mainstream media is irrelevant.

And this is a good thing for you.

It means the chances of you getting press is spectacularly
better, because no longer is the power of the press confined
to a select few.

No, with Digg, StumbledUpon, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn,
Huffington Post, Drudge Report, Red State and numerous
other sites out there, news can be broken and spread like
wildfire without the mainstream press ever having to even
broadcast it.

This means that social media absolutely, positively has to be
part of your public relations strategy going forward.

Another piece of good news? Social media marketing can be
done effectively and shrewdly for those on a tight budget.

If you haven’t already, start planning your social media
strategy. Because as the Van Jones story demonstrated, if
you don’t get ahead of the story, the story will get ahead
of you.

If you need assistance in planning how to create and integrate
your social media marketing with your public relations efforts,
please contact us at Firecracker http://www.firecrackerpr.com.

Of course, please add us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/firecrackerpr

Join our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Firecracker-PR/112794343903

Read other musings on our blog at http://www.firecrackerpr.com/wordpress

What’s Your Story?

Don Hewitt passed away last week. For those who
don’t know, he was the legendary TV producer of “60 Minutes”. His fresh
way of producing news stories was groundbreaking at the time.

Hewitt’s motto for success was simple: Tell me a story.

For companies like you looking to succeed in PR, this motto alone will help catapult you to success.

Because the biggest mistake that companies make when reaching out to
the press is talking too much about themselves and their
self-promotional stuff.

Forget all that. Editors and reporters have to tell their readers a story. So tell them a story.

Telling a story is more than “who, what, why, where, when”. It’s also
about feelings. It’s about personalizing the story. It’s about elements
of human nature that drives us all: pride, greed, achievement,
assistance, underdogs, etc.

For all your future public relations campaigns, start from the premise
of story-telling. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at the positive
results.

Firecracker PR helps small and mid-sized companies with creative and
cost-effective public relations and marketing. Visit us at
http://www.firecrackerpr.com

Get useful (not useless) information on our Twitter:
http://twitter.com/firecrackerpr

Join our Facebook group at:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Firecracker-PR/112794343903?ref=sgm

Bing > Google?

Well not really, but it’s a catchy headline, isn’t it?

And every time a new search engine comes out, the media love to trumpet the question: is THIS  the Google killer?

For those closely following tech, a similar question was asked of Wolfram Alpha just a short while ago.

But Bing took many by surprise as there weren’t too many indicators that Microsoft was working on such a big product release.

Before we get into an analysis of Bing and some changes to Google, let’s just say that we can all agree that more competition is good.

Even though Google’s creed is “Do No Evil”, there are many areas of criticism and fear of Google. Ironically, Google is shaping up to be potentially the new Evil Empire of Web 2.0 the way many make it sound.  Thoroughly dominating Pay Per Click has led to many a marketing campaign blowing through its budget with nary a sale to show for it. But without much competition from Microsoft or Yahoo, online marketers have had no choice but to play the Google AdWords game.

Here’s hoping Bing succeeds.

What does it mean for your business? First, if you  don’t currently have an SEO strategy in place…you better hurry. Not being on Google or the main search engines is a serious hurdle. Second, make sure your marketing/PR firm is up to date on all the constantchanges in Search Engine Marketing.

Reader’s Digest version on Microsoft’s Bing:

1. Bing Local is competing directly with Google Local. Local search is huge and only growing. If your business depends on a physical presence, it’s CRITICAL you  stay up to date on Local search happenings.

2. Bing Maps is going head to head with Google Maps. Clearflow is a Bing Map technology that provides traffic conditions locally.

3. Bing Health provides trusted info from sources like Mayo Clinic, the NIH and MedicinePlus.

4. Bing Images allows you to quickly scroll infinitely  through results. By the way, image is also another weapon in your SEO toolkit (as is video).

5. Bing News is just that. This makes it even more important that you are putting out press releases with targeted keywords for SEO purposes.

6. Bing Shopping means that online merchants need  to be aware of both Bing and Google Base.

7. Other features include Bing Translator, Travel, Videos (again, an important part of SEO).

8. Bing xRank tracks famous people in the news and ranks them in order of search query popularity. This Trend Based Marketing is becoming more and more important for online marketers.

9. Bing’s search engine (positioned as a “decision engine” by Microsoft) uses semantic technology for its results. Results are displayed in an Explorer Pane to drill down results and skip through different formats. Bing also provides related categories. Bing puts Related Searches front and center on the left main bar while Google puts it below search results.

All very interesting and we’ll see how Bing does in the near future.

If you don’t have an SEO strategy, or you feel your SEO efforts need a kick in the pants, contact Firecracker, a leading technology PR and marketing company. We’ve helped numerous companies take charge of their search engine marketing and can do the same for you.

Google Increases Share = SEO More Important

A recent article on MarketingVOX shows Google increased their share of Internet searches to 72% in the month of January of 2009. For those interested, read the article here. 

What does this mean for you? Obviously, optimizing your website so Google likes it is growing more and more important.

If your site is not currently optimized for search engines,  you are missing out on a huge part of generating traffic. Maybe you don’t rely on web traffic, but for those companies who do, SEO is no longer an option but a necessity.

The cost of hiring a firm like Firecracker to do your SEO is small compared to the benefits of having a top ranking for desired keywords. And compared to the cost of say, print or other forms of advertising, it really isn’t much at all.

Do your website and your business a favor. Take the first step in getting optimized. Your business will thank you for it.

Firecracker offers full SEO services to get you top rankings on Google and othe search engines.