The Strange Story Of Marshawn Lynch and Skittles

December 12, 2011 By

Imarshawn_lynch_beats_eagles_eats_skittles‘m a big NFL football fan and while watching Monday Night Football tonight, I watched an odd bit of product placement/marketing. Marshawn Lynch, running back for the Seattle Seahawks scored a touchdown late in the fourth quarter to seal the victory and after he did candy Skittles rained down on him in the endzone from the fans. The camera showed fans celebrating, many waving homemade signs that said “Feed The Beast” and had Skittles wrappers on them. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what was going on. One Google search later, I had the story.

It turns out Marshawn Lynch loves Skittles. It’s his favorite snack and ever since he was little his mom has been giving him Skittles before his football games. Now he celebrates his touchdowns by grabbing  a handfull of Skittles on the sidelines after he scores. The story got legs after week 13 of the season when the Seahawks destroyed the Philadelphia Eagles and Lynch had a monster game. The cameras clearly caught him eating Skittles after his first quarter touchdown. Soon after the game, Skittles jumped on the opportunity and offered Lynch a two years supply of the candy and a custom dispenser for his locker. I can’t wait for the offseason skittlesSkittles ads featuring Lynch.

This is one of those great marketing moments. It’s nothing you could ever plan for or expect, but good on Skittles for being on the ball enough to quickly capture the opportunity. “Feed the Beast” is the Skittles marketing slogan and now it’s also the nickname for the Seahawks big time running back. In business, sometimes you have to be good and sometimes you just get really lucky.

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Old Fashioned Guerrilla Marketing

September 12, 2011 By

Bulletin BoardWe like to be all high tech and fancy free here at Connected World Media, but on a recent walk around town I noticed a good old fashioned marketing tool, the community bulletin board. Spaces in all kinds of establishments that the public frequents where you are allowed to post materials about your business. What could be better? It’s fairly easy and inexpensive to come up with a flyer you can carry around in the car and post on these boards when you are traveling around town. Just because we specialize in social media doesn’t mean we shun traditional media when it makes sense. Think about it, these free boards can be though of as an early generation of social media. It’s a place where people can share information with each other. It’s not as efficient or sophisticated sure, but why would you pass up a free advertising spot? I’ve made the mistake in the past of overspending on overly elaborate marketing materials. Guerrilla marketing isn’t always the sexiest thing in the world, but often it’s better than your over-processed marketing plan.

Filed Under: Blog, Marketing

Netflix Dreams Of A Future Not Quite Here Yet

July 12, 2011 By

NetflixOn-line movie rental service Netflix today announced it is changing its pricing plans for customers. Now customers will generally have to choose either an online only streaming plan for their movie watching or a DVD by mail only plan. There is indeed a combo plan, but the price for that has skyrocketed to $17.98 a month. Netflix is forcing customers to choose one side of the fence or the other.

The company says it’s customers are already watching more content streamed on the Internet than its traditional DVD by mail option. It’s true DVD by mail is getting old and the technology easily exists for Netflix to do most of its business online. But when CEO Reed Hastings says “We are now primarily a streaming video company” I have to call time out.

Netflix has done a great job of getting their streaming service on just about every piece of electronic hardware there is from DVD players to XBox, Wii and even the iPad. But the available streaming library is woefully lacking. There is nothing I would like more than to only use Netflix online and stop all DVD mailings, but if you look at my current movie queue, that’s just not possible. Of the 38 movies I have in que, 19 of them are available for streaming but 19 are only available on DVD by mail. There is no way I will give up DVD by mail until that percentage gets up to 90% of my que available streaming. The only saving grace is that Netflix says it will spend more on licensing for streaming this year than for physical DVD’s. If they really want to be primarily a streaming movie company, they are going to have to get a much larger percentage of their library on the streaming service. So far, that transition has been much too slow, especially if you compare what is available online from Apple and Amazon. Enjoy your DVD’s while you can, because in 5-10 years, they will be extinct as the dinosaur.

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Barnes & Noble Almost Pull Off A Gutsy Marketing Move

July 1, 2011 By

Missed It“Missed it by that much….” – Maxwell Smart (Agent 99)

When I saw the headline, “Barnes and Noble offers 30 free e-books to switch to Nook” I thought, oh yeah, now we’re talking. When you are competing with the industry leader who has a stronghold on the market, you need to do something pretty dramatic if you’re going to get a leg up. Giving 30 free e-books to switchers would have been just the kind of bold, ballsy move that could have changed the tide, at least a little. Alas, it turns out Barnes and Noble isn’t that gutsy after all and this promotion isn’t going to do a damn thing. The 30 free books, you see, are chosen by Barnes and Noble and span a wide variety of titles from cooking to history to fiction. Great, you gave me 30 books, of which if I am lucky I might be  interested in one or two. They claim it’s a $300 value. Some value.

You see, the real problem is if I already have an Amazon Kindle, I have all my books already stored there. I don’t have access to them on the Nook and this creates a nice lock in for Amazon. Now if you allow me to take 30 of my favorite titles over, and make it even better, the rest of my titles for a nice discount price, you will be able to generate switchers. What would this cost Barnes and Noble? Plenty to be sure but what’s the value of a new lifelong customer? This game is hardball and either you step up and play or you’re going to be out of the game soon.

The same thing can be seen in the tablet wars. Apple is the dominant player with the iPad. Competition is coming now from various Android tablets and most recently HP. But the HP tablet starts at $500 and many of the Android tablets are close to the same price point. That’s the same price as the iPad and like it or not, those tablets are just not as good as the iPad yet. Price being equal, people are going to choose the iPad. If these alternative tablets are going to make any headway, someone is going to have to through down a price like $300. This is not about profit or loss at his point, when you are trailing a dominant player like Apple, you’ve got to grab market share anyway you can.

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Connected World Radio: Lessons from Pottermore

June 24, 2011 By

PottermoreWe look at the lessons gained from JK Rowling’s stunning announcement of Pottermore.com. eBooks will be available for the first time for the Harry Potter series but Mrs. Rowling cuts out the middle man opting to go straight to the consumer via her new website. Welcome to the new world of direct one to one relationships between business and consumers.

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The App Bubble

May 28, 2011 By

bubble burstI well remember the first Internet Bubble. Companies were being formed right and left. You could get millions of dollars of funding for quite literally an idea scratched out on the back of the napkin. It did not matter how silly the idea seamed and few questions as to any actual business model. If it was cool, that was enough and everyone was sure they would figure out a way to make money eventually. Of course that’s why they call it a bubble. Bubbles are temporary and unstable. The Internet Bubble popped  and all of Silicon Valley imploded with it. I was there and it was ugly.

I can’t help but feeling we are inflating a new bubble, an app bubble. Cell phones are now smart phones, handheld computers really and a vast wave of applications are being developed for them. There are  getting to be too many apps and they are getting a little silly. Witness Dryer Bro, an application that tells you when your dryer load is done. You have to put your iphone down on the dryer and the accelerometer determines when the shaking has stopped and sends a text message to, well, your iphone which is sitting on the dryer. Actually the app says it sends a text to a group of “bros” you determine so I guess they can go get your laundry…or tell you that it’s done. You can see, this is where apps have jumped the shark. In the coming Internet of Things you don’t think dryers and washers will notify us of their status themselves? Seriously, where is the business model? The core killer technology? There’s just no there there. TechCrunch reviewed this app and gave it a rave review. Remember when we all bought into that Pets.com and Webvan were surely going to be the next great thing?

Apps are all the rage but many of them are just dumb or terrible. There will be another popping of this app bubble soon and it will be a good and cleansing thing. As the popping of the Internet Bubble shook the industry back into the reality of serious ideas and real business models so will the app bubble pop clear out the apps based on, dare I say, nothing but air? Hopefully we will be left with fewer apps that are more valuable and backed by solid technology.

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LinkedIn Moves Past Classifieds For Job Searching

April 6, 2011 By

linkedinlogoNew data is out that shows social network LinkedIn has now moved past traditional newspaper classifieds in a survey of how the generation of millennials will search for jobs. Frankly I’m surprised it has taken this long. Newspaper want ads have been a pretty terrible way to look for a job for years now. Newspaper classifieds have been hammered hard over the years by the likes of Craigslist and this is the other shoe to drop, now taking revenue from the want ad section.

What makes LinkedIn so good for job searching is the same thing that makes the Connected Age so powerful, it’s the connections. Personal connections have always been the best way to find a job, Internet or no. Now applicants have a larger pool of connections to call on. In addition, the entire LinkedIn profile, if done correctly, serves as it’s own resume including recommendations. The other thing smart people are doing is climbing the social graph. Find an individual in a company you want to work for and look for those six degrees of separation.

LinkedIn is a great social network because it has locked in on such a great niche market. LinkedIn knows exactly what it is and it’s tireless at fulfilling that mission. It’s the secret to their success.

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Leverage Your Knowledge

January 19, 2011 By

Did you realize, one of the greatest strategic advantages for your company is staring your right in the face each day?  It’s the knowledge of your employees. You have gone to great trouble to find and hire the best people in your field. They have a wealth of experience and knowledge they bring to bear on each job they work on. Now it’s time to unleash that knowledge as part of your social media business strategy.

Social media is all about content. Creating and publishing great content is the primary factor in social media success. Fortunately that content already lives right inside of your company. The trick is getting it out. Great content might not even be where you think it is and I’m sorry to say it’s most likely not going to come out of your marketing department. Your best content is more likely found down the org chart with the girls and guys grinding it out everyday on front lines. These people have stories to tell and valuable insights about how the product really works and what customers think. Your road warriors, the sales team also can give you great case studies and interesting new ways your customers are getting value from your product.

It’s also important not to stifle content. Legal departments will wring their hands about the risks of uncontrolled content creation and corporate marketing will gripe about not being able to control the message. There may be a good deal of pressure, especially in larger companies, to retain the status quo. This will make everyone feel more comfortable but will get you nowhere in your social media marketing efforts. It’s not to say there are not valid concerns from the legal department and content creation does need guidelines. Most larger companies have adopted a social media or blogging policy which, when written well, balances security and legal concerns with enough openness and trust in employees as to not completely neuter the message.

By leveraging your internal knowledge, you will put yourself a big step ahead of your competition. One of the best differentiating factors between you and your competition is your employees and their knowledge. Don’t be afraid to show what you know and let certain key people step out and be a star. People inherently don’t trust companies but they do trust other people. Building trust in social media is key and it can only be done with real, authentic individuals. You have lots of these authentic people in your company and they have an important part to play in your social media business strategy.

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Netflix New Streaming Only Plan

November 23, 2010 By

NetflixNetflix recently changed up its DVD rental options, singling a shift away from physical DVD’s and toward streaming of content. There is now a streaming only option for only $7.99 a month. Normal DVD by mail plans go up by $1.

Netflix has very smartly pushed their software onto just about every streaming media device available today from Xbox to Google TV, Apple TV, Roku and many Internet connected DVD players. It makes sense for them to offer a streaming only plan to go along with these devices. The only problem is that while Netflix has increased it’s streaming movie and tv offerings, it’s still nowhere near what is available for their DVD by mail customers. For this to really work, Netflix is going to have to push even harder and make many more  movies available for streaming. Eventually, in all reality, there should be no DVD by mail all and everything should be streaming only. You would think movie studios would love this as profits are higher and copying movies is make more difficult. But as with many things lately, the DVD business model is so firmly intrenched change is hard.

It’s becoming more clear that this is where we are going in the future. Content will be largely cloud based and will be available on demand as a stream. It’s best for all parties really even though some will be slow recognize it.

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Your Skin in the Game

November 20, 2010 By

Here is one big way new media is not like traditional media marketing; you’ve got to get some skin in the game. In traditional marketing you meet with your agency, they come up with some copy and art and you approve it. Out the ad goes and you’re done. In social media However, this will not do. You’re not aloud to pump out impersonal ads, shotgun marketing does not apply here.

You are going to have to figure out how much of you to let bleed through. There is a balance of course but you need to let some of your personality show though. This is the new more personals marketing and it’s the one big advantage small business has over the large corporation. For the most part large corporations have a much harder time letting personality show though.

Filed Under: Blog
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