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I laughed out loud when I saw these and could completely relate.  I also love Victor Javier Blanco’s brilliant sub-copy, “Fixed before it gets nasty.”  I love simple but incredibly effective ads!

Which one of the above ads is you?  I have to admit that I’m a #1.

Source: Adgoodness

This week, I wrote an overview of the Red Pen Rule on Entrepreneur.com.  Here’s a snippet to give you an idea of what’s included in the article and discussed in greater detail in my book.

“You don’t ever want consumers to read or listen to your ad or marketing piece and think, “Hurry up and get to the point.” Instead, keep your messages short, sweet and succinct, and your results will prove that the red pen rule works.”

You can follow the link to read the complete article, called The Red Pen Rule for Marketing Copy.

The most powerful aspect of business blogging is the potential to generate word-of-mouth marketing from the content you publish. If you can engage your audience members and get them talking about your business, products and services outside of your website, you’ve hit marketing gold.

Blogs are a perfect tool to achieve that goal because they’re conversational in nature. They’re also filled with personality (at least the good ones are) that encourages readers to participate and build relationships with the bloggers and businesses behind them. Relationships drive customer loyalty and create vocal brand advocates who want to talk about the brands they love and are willing to defend those brands from criticism. When that conversation moves from your business blog and turns into online buzz, you’ve achieved a goal that marketing managers dream of.

Read the rest here.

You can take the Brand Perception Snap Shot by answering the three questions below:

1. What 5 words would you use to describe your brand today?
2. What 5 words would your customers use to describe your brand today?
3. What 5 words do you want to be used in the future to describe your ultimate brand (i.e., when your brand reaches your biggest, pie-in-the-sky goals)?

To complete your Brand Perception Snap Shot, simply review the words you used to answer the questions above.  Identify the gaps and successes.  These are the areas you need to focus on as you begin to develop your long-term brand strategy and short-term tactics that will help you reach those pie-in-the-sky goals.

Image: stock.xchng

• Cadillac = luxury
• BMW = performance
• Kia = affordability

Think of some of your favorite brands.  What word pops into your head first when you think of those brands?  It’s very possible that the word you think of is the same word that the majority of consumers think of in relation to that brand, and that means the company behind that brand has done an excellent job of positioning the brand and communicating the brand’s message, image and promise to consumers.

Owning a word in consumers’ minds is the ultimate goal for brand managers, and you can do it with your brand, too.

Consider how crowded the Internet is these days.  If you market business online, particularly on the social Web, then you need to find a way to stand out from the clutter.  Working towards owning a word in people’s minds, are critical steps to building brand.

How do you get started?  First, you need to determine what word you want to own in people’s minds.  Ask yourself the following questions to begin to define your brand strategy:

1. What is your brand promise?
2. Is there is niche that isn’t being filled that your brand can fill?
3. How stiff is the competition for the words you might want to “own”?
4. How can you differentiate your brand from others with the word that you own?
5. What are your ultimate goals and what word do you need to associate with your brand to reach them?

Branding is a long-term strategy, so it’s important that once you define the word you want to own in people’s minds that you commit to it for the long haul.  You need to follow the original rules of branding — consistency, persistence and restraint — while listening to consumers and keeping an eye on your competitors to ensure your strategy is working.

It’s possible you might need to rethink your strategy in the future, but the key to success is getting started by positioning your brand relative to your competition so it gets noticed, remembered, and talked about.

Image: Flickr

Following is an excerpt from the article, which you can read in its entirety here.

“With the growth of social media, marketers have learned that simply interrupting the online conversation doesn’t always lead to sales, nor does it lead to positive word-of-mouth marketing. Now the goal of marketing is engagement. Consumers want to know, what are you going to tell them after you interrupt them?  Marketers have discovered that there is tremendous value in building brands and relationships through long-term social media strategy vs. short-term direct-marketing tactics on social websites.”

What do you think?  Is interruption marketing dead?  Leave a comment and share your opinion.

Following is an excerpt from my article:

“Tracking online brand advertising and social media marketing success comes from tracking return-on-impression, the new form of ROI. Return-on-Impression encompasses two primary soft metric values: eyeballs and perceptions.”

To learn more about the shift from tracking Return on Investment to tracking Return on Impression, follow the link to check out my post on the Yahoo! Advertising Blog.

But what should you do when someone says something negative about you or your business online?

This is one of the most common fears of individuals and businesses considering leveraging the social Web conversation to build their reputations, brands and businesses, and unfortunately, it’s one of the main reasons that people and companies are not getting the results they want and need from their social media efforts.

Don’t be afraid to let the audience take control of the conversation. That’s where the power of the social Web comes from in terms of building brands and businesses. And if someone publishes something negative about you or your business online, don’t try to squash the conversation. Overtly trying to control the conversation can do far more harm to your reputation than good. Instead, follow one of the three paths described below to effectively respond to a negative online buzz about you, your brand, or your business.

1. Fight

While you don’t want to appear controlling nor do you want to stop the online conversation (even if it’s negative), you can fight without looking like a bully. Join the conversation and nudge it in the right direction (i.e., the direction that is best for you and your business) by addressing misconceptions, admitting mistakes, and demonstrating your desire to fix them and put customers first. The more time you spend building your audience of brand advocates across the social Web, the more you’ll start to see those people standing up for you. Therefore, the fight path offers two effective options — nudging conversations yourself and allowing your band of brand advocates to nudge it for you.

2. Flight

While you don’t want to actually run away from negative online conversations about you or your business, you do want to consider the source of those conversations and evaluate whether or not ignoring them is your best course of action. The social Web is filled with people who like to stir the pot under the veil of anonymity. Savvy Web users typically recognize these people and ignore them. It’s perfectly acceptable for you to ignore them, too. Always consider the source of the negativity, evaluate it’s potential to spread further across the social Web, monitor its progress, and determine if by ignoring it, the negative conversation will die a quick death.

3. Flood

While it’s important to consider the source of a negative online buzz about you or your business in terms of both the person talking and the online destinations where those conversations are happening, it’s also important to consider how they affect your overall online reputation. That’s because people who conduct keyword searches using search engines like Google might find those negative conversations. Even worse, those negative conversations might rank higher in search engine results for your target keywords than your own Web site or blog does! That’s a problem. Fortunately, you can fix it by flooding the Internet with amazing, shareworthy content with a focus on search engine optimization to effectively bury negative content in search results.

Each path to respond to a negative online buzz has positives and negatives, and in some cases, you might need to pursue multiple paths to massage the online conversation to best benefit you and your business. The most important thing is that you’re aware of what’s being said about you online (e.g., set up a Google Alert using your name and business name and use tools like Monitter to track Twitter conversations), evaluate those conversations, and follow the appropriate path to respond to them.

Image: stock.xchang

You can follow the link to listen to Harnessing the Power of Social Media with Susan Gunelius.