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This soon-to-be-pulled Eska Water TV spot in Canada is a great example of "multicultural" advertising gone wrong.

Heard on NPR: How multicultural advertising is now the norm. Michele Norris interviews Jimmy Smith, creative director at TBWA/Chiat/Day, and Roberto Orci, Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies chair-elect and president of Acento ad agency.

Click this link to play the multicultural advertising interview.

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1. Unlearn what you know about marketing plans. Common marketing plan wisdom says: “Shiny is good. Formatting is good. Clever deployment is good.” Instead, successful marketing is not about doing something clever but rather about communicating something meaningful in a way that reaches your audience.
2. Stick to media that’s worked, but save room to experiment. Experiment with one or two new ideas but don’t break the creativity bank each time. It never works. Don’t feel like you’ve failed because you chose tried-and-true marketing ideas like newspaper ads and press releases and branded schwag over something more outrageous.
3. Create an Idiot’s Guide. Marketing plans tend to be about ideas and justification first and about “how will we actually do this?” a distant last. Justification is important but should play a brief role up-front while the bulk of your plan should be devoted to a PLAN. Create a step-by-step, no-brainer, “complete idiot’s guide” to doing what you need to do. Make it so simple that you could delegate it to your kid on “take your child to work day”. Put in the phone number of the person to call who will actually print your branded schwag, along with the location of the high resolution logo file you’ll need to send to them. If your marketing plan includes topical marketing like blogs and press releases, write the subjects into the plan.
4. White paper, staple, done. Skip the slides, skip the expensive coil-ring binding. Print it on white, 20 pound bond 8.5 x 11 and blast a staple through the corner. Save time and money and put your efforts into deploying your plan.

The perfect marketing plan is a dog-eared, coffee-ring-stained, highlighted, notes-in-the-margin, sticky-noted document that is used daily and never leaves your desk.

The perfect plan can be handed off to someone else with the comment: “I stopped on page 11. If you can start on page 12 and just follow the instructions, we’ll have more business than we can handle next year.”

That’s a perfect marketing plan. I get goose bumps thinking about it. Do you?

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1. You have to be vain. Vanity is not a bad thing. At least, not in the proper dose. Advertising and vanity go hand in hand. It’s why you see so many beautiful women and hot guys working in advertising. It’s why you’re willing to spend an hour watching Don Draper be a likeable asshole.
2. The definition of vanity is changing. Used to be, there were the beautiful people and the ugly people and some middle ground where celebrities like Mick Jagger and Sandra Bernhart occupied. But Andy Warhol (also in that middle) was right. Everyone is getting their 15 minutes of fame. So the face of beauty is changing faster than ever.
3. Everyone knows what sodium lauryl sulfate is. And why parabens are not good things. Sure, it’s wealthy white women who know it most, but a younger generation is growing up with that information available everywhere. Teens are turning green. And when they become 20-somethings, spending their hard-earned, adult cash on cosmetics, the definition of beauty will also include knowing what goes into the products you’re using.
4. No one cares what sodium lauryl sulfate is. They know what it is, but they don’t care—at least not as much as they do about looking good. So the winning brands will be the ones that give them both effectiveness and good looks. You can’t work less good.
5. Tell your color story walking. The beauty industry owes its lifeblood to telling a good story. That seasonal take on colors with its catch phrases and dreamy imagery sells pretty powders again and again, economy be damned. And now, since everyone has the ability to tell their story, they are. We’re pitching the written word back and forth at an alarming rate. Something on the order of several billion pages per day, according to Google. So if you want your story heard, not only does it have to be a good one, it has to be where the people who want to hear it are. That means online and off, on desktop computer and mobile phone, 24/7. The message is the medium is the message. The winners will be as sensitive to this as a good cosmetics saleswoman is to your emotional yen for a new lipstick.
6. Your compact will be WiFi. There is a marriage of beauty and technology waiting to happen. No one has yet to do it well. The avatar experiments and “your face here” apps are flawed failures and serve to make women feel less pretty and not involved. But we’re getting the hang of this tech thing. The time is ripe for beauty to release the killer app.

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Hard to believe that a major brand like Toys R Us can make it so hard on the consumer and their own employees in this day and age, and yet they do.

Two experiences just this week alone.

Toys R Us opened a little temporary store called Toys R Us Holiday Express in a vacant shop in the mall near my house. Now, even though there are two locations within 10 minutes from me, this is a stroke of genius for the holidays. Toys R Us will now get all the foot traffic they’d otherwise miss being that their other locations are in drive-up malls, not the happy little foot-traffic shopping district near me. Genius. What’s not genius is that their own employees at the permanent big box locations haven’t got a clue that this little Holiday Express location exists. That’s what I found out when I went to the big store to try to purchase something I’d seen in the Express locale after it had closed and my daughter was giving me no peace about a certain kitty cat she just had to have because “I think she misses me, Mommy”. The guy I talked to at the regular store had no idea what I was talking about, but did tell me that another mom had just mentioned she bought something “near there” just a few days before. Turns out his manager knew about it—in fact, he works there. So how could other employees be so uninformed?

Just days later, I’ve found out that my child’s crib is on the recall list. To make a long story short, the crib I’d like to replace it with is an “in-store only” purchase. They don’t stock it at all. OK, inconvenient, but we know how these things go. The big problem? They wouldn’t allow me to purchase it over the phone—and there’s no means to order it online for delivery to the store. So if I want the crib, I have to drive to the store and order it for delivery in the next few weeks. Interestingly, when you look the product up online, it offers you a Buy Online option, even trying to upsell you with a Buyer Protection Plan—none of which you can actually activate. Apparently, they’re just there to frustrate customers.

What’s wrong with this picture? I probably don’t even need to ask. You’ve already spotted all the customer service and supply chain management issues for yourself.

It’s a shame all the missed opportunities Toys R Us stacks against them. Moms like me are a fiercely loyal audience when a brand treats us right. Toys R Us could be providing world-class service, a place for moms to gather, play areas for kids, an unsurpassed online experience that leads to more purchases, fun and educational areas in the store and online, and certainly better-informed employees. The list goes on and on.

Speaking of lists, looks like I’ll be taking my toy shopping one elsewhere this holiday.

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Our society is undergoing massive fundamental transitions. Learn how these forward-thinking brands seized the underlying marketing opportunities.

Article Highlights

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• The broader trends of globalization and corporate distrust are reshaping how consumers interact with brands
• The global sense of urgency to fix the world’s problems goes well beyond the green movement

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“If you’re in advertising, you’d better learn to speak digital, because that’s the way the world is going.”

Those words come from Josh Bernoff’s Groundswell blog today, summing up Forrester Research’s just completed five-year interactive marketing forecast. Over 70% of the marketers they surveyed expected the effectiveness of channels like created social media, online video, and mobile marketing to increase, while the effectiveness of direct mail, television, magazines, outdoor, newspapers, and radio would stay the same or decrease.

They expect digital marketing to grow to about 21%  of advertising spend in five years, while overall budgets are declining. And of all aspects of digital marketing, social media is the area expected to show the greatest growth, growing from $716 million this year to $3 billion in five years, between social networking campaigns and agency fees. (And this doesn’t include ads on social networks, because those are considered display ads.)

What does all this mean for you, dear friends? Time to get your digital on. Old school just won’t cut it for much longer.

We leave you with this eulogy from, well, a social media site.

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David (with help from Jack) stands up to Goliath
Romanelli Communications helps local lumber retailer take on the big guys

Marketing and communications expert Romanelli Communications doesn’t like to back down from challenges, especially those facing their clients. The economy was tanking, an extended housing and commercial building slump began, a Home Depot was flourishing down the road, and Lowes had launched a pre-emptive strike by opening a new superstore within sight of privately-owned regional hardware and lumber retailer JAY-K. Many of its kind had thrown in the towel in the face of similarly dire straits.

JAY-K and Romanelli have been taking them on successfully for several years now. While big box stores often employ teens and untrained salespeople, JAY-K’s employees all have years in the business, possess deep knowledge of their specialties, and are relied upon by professional contractors to meet their needs without hesitation. JAY-K’s pros are always happy to share that knowledge with shoppers as well. Romanelli branded them as the local and regional experts of choice, who knew the area and the special needs of its residents. Together they launched a campaign to strengthen that brand and engage the community at every level of promotion.

One unlikely hero: a mannequin dubbed “Jack O’Trade,” dressed like a store employee, who appeared on billboards and around the region to reinforce campaign themes in support of buying local and supporting the community. Jack created a huge PR buzz that resulted in JAY-K feature stories in the major local newspaper and on the NBC affiliate in their hometown. With the addition of a strong online presence and social networking (Jack even has his own MySpace page), JAY-K has posted strong sales through the worst of the economic downturn and in the shadow of the big box stores. They continue to thrive, and are making positive changes inside the store and online to reinforce their brand.

Romanelli has already applied their winning formula to another regional home improvement chain with similarly inspiring results, and is looking to help others beat the giants, and the economic odds, in their own regions.

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