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    Listening to Clients Brings Marketing Trends to Life

    Bill Kobel

    Working with marketing leaders and business decision makers from regional, national and global companies provides incredible perspective.

    While I look forward to reading the annual wave of “big picture” articles on national and global marketing trends, the fun part of my job is studying the short-term and longer-term expectations of our clients and prospects and making sure we are ready to help them grow.

    What are we seeing in our market place?  Here are a few trends I’ve noticed recently:

    Marketing Budgets

    JPL experienced 34 percent growth in 2011, a record-setting year for our organization. Without question, we saw companies re-investing in their brands and marketing programs over the past 12 months.

    With that said, I don’t think marketing budgets have fully recovered to where they were before the recession. Companies are prioritizing and spending their marketing dollars very carefully. They are totally focused on making sure their marketing efforts deliver tangible results. read more

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    How Marketing Can Save the Twinkie

    Kelly Kautz

    Hostess Brands, maker of Twinkies, recently fell into bankruptcy for the second time since 2004. The company pinned its financial problems to legacy pension costs and a weak economy. Hostess TwinkiesNews media pointed the finger at changing consumer diets. I think an absent marketing strategy is partly to blame.

    In today’s economy, it’s virtually impossible to run a business without some kind of marketing. This is especially true of consumer packaged goods (CPGs), whose marketing budgets often exceed 20 percent of sales revenue. read more

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    Sustaining the Season of Wonder

    Michael Endy

    The December holidays are a time of wonder. The anticipation, the lights and the warmth of the season create a special magic we don’t see the rest of the year. It’s in the lights that decorate our homes, the Hanukkah candles flickering in the window, and the bright eyes of children peeking out from coats and scarves.

    The holidays inspire a wide-eyed sense of wonder. Possibilities abound. Cynicism, callousness and gloom retreat. In spite of all the commercialization, the feelings in our hearts are simple and true. We only want to brighten the darkness, connect with others and believe that miracles can occur.

    The feeling is appealing. Engaging. Captivating, even. It’s all the things we want in our marketing communications. This is a good time to reflect on how we can capture that magic and use it throughout the year.

    It comes down to two words: authenticity and innocence. read more

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    Your 2012 Marketing Plan – Doing More of What Works

    Matt Kurowski

    Even if it’s not broken, you can still fix it.

    As we move through the fourth quarter, many businesses are planning for 2012. Typically, that planning includes an analysis of the past year’s performance.

    Maybe your organization is doing pretty well. Not great, but not awful. Just kind of moving along at the same pace. Could be worse, right? I mean, there are plenty of companies who would give anything to be doing “ok” in these tough economic times.

    So the obvious, safe path is to not mess with it. Keep things how they are. Don’t stir the pot. The temptation is there to simply carry the same plan into next year.

    We come across this mindset fairly often when talking to prospective new clients – “Things seem to be working pretty well. No need to change right now.”

    And, that way of thinking makes a lot of sense. When things are working, or at least not doing damage, it’s difficult to justify change.

    But just because things are going fairly well, it doesn’t mean it’s time to put marketing on cruise control and let it ride. read more

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    Make it Easy for the Reader

    Michael Endy

    In the classic text, The Elements of Style, William Strunk, Jr. pleads for simplicity and clarity in language. It’s a noble crusade and one we should all join. As marketers, it’s our job to help our readers – our target audiences – clearly understand our messages.

    Normally, we write in language that’s familiar to our targets. We want them to feel comfortable with our copy. It’s a subtle way of communicating our understanding of their world.

    If you’re involved in B2B marketing like I am, you need to connect with a variety of targets. Some of them are highly educated: doctors, lawyers, engineers, executives, educators and scientists.

    Trying to emulate the tone and voice of these educated professionals can be dangerous. Just because they’re capable of reading complex, technical copy doesn’t mean they want to. Especially if we’re trying to persuade them to think, act or purchase differently.

    They’re busy. They’re tired. They’re distracted. And we want them to read and process our marketing messages. Our job is to make it easy. To remove barriers to communication. read more

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    Google+ – Google’s Fascination with Social Media

    Joe Tertel

    Dating back to 2003 when the company first bought Blogger, Google has had a long history of social media. Some ventures have been successful, such as YouTube. While other products, such as Google Wave, have not been as successful. With their latest release, Google+, Google is hoping that this attempt at social media is its most successful project yet.

    This raises some important questions: Do we really need another social network, or does Google need us to need one? And why is Google so fascinated with entering the social media space? After all, isn’t Google a search company?

    Here are some answers. read more

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    PR Must Help Businesses Grow

    Bill Kobel

    In an integrated campaign, public relations must drive sales.

    Take it easy, PR professionals. I know that statement makes you crazy.

    Yes, it’s a bold comment, but honestly, when I went looking for a PR partner for JPL, I wanted a firm with that kind of philosophy.

    I found it in Abel Communications, a PR firm that isn’t afraid of tying public relations to business objectives like leads generated and/or sales.

    Data is Power

    In JPL’s Accountable Campaign℠ model, we use sales and marketing data to evaluate the success of each element in an integrated program. We track campaign performance using rich, granular information. We know what’s working and what isn’t. We trend data historically, and we analyze and form insights that help us adjust the campaign and plan for future efforts – all with a focus on driving leads and affecting sales.

    read more

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    LinkedIn Gives Companies a Voice through New Status Updates

    Susan Cort

    About a year after LinkedIn gave companies a way to promote themselves through product pages, the social network for business is giving companies a better platform to network and share.

    Today, LinkedIn announced its new feature for company pages called “Status Updates.”

    It is what it sounds like. A place for the administrators of a company LinkedIn page to share company announcements, product releases, promotions and other news.

    Prior to this addition, the only way to promote company news on LinkedIn was to ask employees to share company status updates on their personal LinkedIn pages. That’s still a must-do, of course, because you increase the chances your news is seen when it’s shared by numerous employees to their networks. read more

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    The Evolution of Facebook and What Marketers Need to Know

    Joe Tertel

    Facebook underwent several updates in the last few weeks, and according to last week’s Facebook f8 conference, we’ll be seeing even more. If you didn’t watch Mark Zuckerberg’s presentation, here’s a rundown of Facebook’s latest evolution and what it means to you as a marketer.

    Facebook Changes: Timeline, Ticker, the Open Graph and Graph Rank

    Timeline

    Timeline is the new Facebook profile page. It allows users to tell their life story on a single page. It’s a collection of top photos, posts and apps that help you tell your story. Content appears in chronological order and special moments can be added anywhere along the way.

    The further back you go, the more Facebook summarizes and collapses your content. Timeline can be sorted according to the type of content such as videos or photos. With the integration of Timeline and new social applications, users can share a complete picture of who they are and what they enjoy, the music they listen to, the places they’ve visited and the movies they watch.

    read more

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    Female 25-44 is not a target

    Matt Kurowski

    We work with creative briefs all the time in our business. We rely on them to communicate the information needed to develop the best work. The specifics of briefs can vary, but there is one element that you will find on every version:

    Target Audience

    Knowing our target is crucial to developing compelling work. Now let’s walk through the process, using a sample client. This fictitious client sells benefit services to companies. So we begin with the basics:

    Target Audience

    • Human Resource Directors
    • Work for companies with 300-500 employees
    • Typically female, aged 25-44

    Ok, that’s a solid start. Now we know something about this audience. But is there more? There better be, because this doesn’t give us nearly enough information to develop work that will connect with the audience. Another important piece of information is the role the target plays in decision making for the products/services being offered. read more

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