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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And let’s face it, I didn’t expect to be in a position to be advising anyone on which products to stock.

But over the course of two years, I had the unique opportunity to be a part of the Organic Beauty Now brand from idea to full-fledged online retailer of organic beauty products.

That meant delving into a new industry and applying strategic skills as well as copywriting chops to a bi-weekly blog on organic beauty products. It also meant wearing lots of hats, not the least of which was assisting in product evaluation.

As a marketer, I’m trained to look for the differentiator in any situation. It’s in my blood.

So when I saw my own daughter, whose love of the pretty little bangles and baubles of Claire’s, home to beauty accessories galore for tweens, had turned to their new makeup kits, I got curious on several fronts.

First, I looked at the ingredients, as anyone who knows organics would do. Sure enough, I spotted several on the no-no list.

Immediately after, I wondered, do moms know there are cancer-causing ingredients in this stuff? (I bet they didn’t.) And if, like me, they were horrified at the prospect, would they be able to find an organic play makeup alternative? Did one even exist?

So with a few hunches in hand, I did what any good consumer and marketer does. Market research.

I started with our competitors. Nope, no one carried anything for kids other than shampoos, soaps and toothpastes.

Then I looked for organic play makeup altogether. Turns out, almost no one made organic play makeup for kids. Almost. There was one little-known wholesaler who made a cute little 5-piece kit.

Bingo.

With a swift decision to stock it right before the holidays, plus a strong outreach campaign to mom-centric blogs and move to put some of our PPC dollars into focusing on the kit, we sold out. Three times over.

The organic play makeup kit was our hottest-selling item of the 2010 holiday season and remains one of the company’s biggest-selling items to date.

So, if you hire me, will I pick your next big seller? Maybe. (I’d love to try!) More to the point, I’m always thinking about your business, not just when my hands are on the keyboard. So contact me if you want a copywriter who’ll do more for you than just put words on the page.

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Of the seven new features covered here, it seems like the Gyroscope will have the most impact on marketing as there are myriad ways to use it to deepen a marketing experience.

For example, imagine a brand sponsors a citywide treasure hunt where you use your iPad2 to collect clues around town. You could even share the experience as you’re doing it via the front and rear cameras.

Or going to the local mall with your iPad2 and being able to create a video wish list at your favorite store that tags items as you move in 3D space.

The possibilities have my head, er, spinning. (Sorry, I had to say that.)

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TOWS Analysis, on the other hand, is seeing what you don’t want to see, but what you need to see. You drop the pretense and ask the hard question: what is wrong with our business? As Bob Lewis said in Infoworld, “looking first at threats and opportunities, then evaluating strengths and weaknesses in that context, provides a way to decide what to focus on that’s more intelligent than throwing a bunch of stuff onto a flipchart and choosing the favorites.” Favorites, meaning the ones that are easiest to solve.

Don’t get me wrong. SWOT is a great tool for making plans. But TOWS is an action tool, and a good one to turn to in the face of immediate threat. You use TOWS when you discover your competition puts out a new product you didn’t anticipate or suddenly buys a smaller competitor, for example, and you want to develop a fast response.

Here’s how you do a TOWS Analysis.

1. Identify the threats

Drop the pretense, drop the ego and talk about the really painful stuff. What’s taking a big, nasty bite out of your best laid plans? What just kicked your marketing campaign to the curb? Painful as this is, going here first gives you your best chance to think about what’s really cutting your best efforts short, and then focus on the actions you can take to turn it around. Go here before you even talk about your organization’s weaknesses and strengths. This is hands-on tactical business warfare at its best.

1. Start with a traditional SWOT analysis. Identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

2. Focus on your pain points. While the matrix (and your ego) may entice you into focusing on strengths first, start in the red zone on the threats, then move up to weaknesses. You know, the ugly stuff no one wants to talk about:

• Red Zone: Weaknesses and Threats (WT) – What’s the main threat to your business and your main vulnerabilities? This is the marketplace and your competitors firing arrows right at you and the chink in the armor where you’re most exposed, so do the opposite of what most people do when faced with problems: don’t try to go around it, go right through it. Once that bandage has been ripped off, you’ve done the hardest part. It’s now time to think about how can you minimize the weaknesses and move past threats.
• Yellow Zone: Weaknesses and Opportunities (WO) – Those annoying armor chinks you’ve identified always come with opportunities to patch the suit and even make yourself stronger, thereby outflanking your competition in doing so. Discuss how you can use your opportunities to overcome the weaknesses you are experiencing?
• Blue Zone: Strengths and Threats (ST) – Hooray! It’s time to focus on the good stuff. What’s best about your company that you can use to cause those nasty arrows to fall away like water off a duck?
• Green Zone: Strengths and Opportunities (SO) – How can you use the good stuff to take advantage of all the possibilities you envision?

3. Choose your best options. Develop your strategy, or enhance it, with the stuff that gives you the best opportunities, given your vision, mission, and most importantly, what’s going on the market right now—especially the scary stuff.

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First, let’s take a look at the fundamentals of these successful offers:

• Free Trial. A customer can try out your product free and without obligation for a specified number of days. It removes risk for the prospect, overcomes inertia, and works with just about any product.
• Money-Back Guarantee. A customer pays upfront but, if dissatisfied, can return the item for a refund. Like the free trial, this offer removes risk but allows you to use inertia to your benefit since few people will bother to return something.
• Free Gift. Freebies that customers want usually out-pull a discount of similar value. That’s because a gift is a more tangible benefit. It also has the advantage of not devaluing your product with a price reduction.
• Limited Time. An offer with a time limit gets more response than an offer without one. You can display an exact date or suggest a response time frame, such as 14 days or 30 days. It works because it forces a decision and an action, often in your favor.
• Sweepstakes. This increases your order volume if you’re selling easy-to-understand impulse items.

And without further ado, enjoy these clever, albeit it sometimes wacky ways to employ each of these offers:

#1. Free Trial: The Lazy Man’s Way To Riches

The $10 The Lazy Man’s Way To Riches make-money book sold a cool 3 million copies in the mid 1970s, due to the genius of one man, Joe Karbo. Joe was “so sure that you will make money with my Lazy Man’s Way” that he made “the world’s most unusual guarantee.” He promised not to “even cash your check or money order for 31 days after I’ve sent you my material.” The ad ran worldwide and even appeared in the Wall Street Journal. Joe reeled readers in with a knockout headline “Too busy earning a living to make any money?” It’s like punch to the gut. Not only will most people relate to it, they’ll feel it at a deep level. Interestingly, the ad only taunts you with the possibilities of untold wealth, and never gives you any details about how it might be possible or what you’re going to have to do. You can read the rest of Joe’s original ad here.

#2. Money-Back Guarantee: Pizza in 30 minutes or less… or it’s free

Back in the day, Domino’s became famous for its unique 30 minutes or less… or it’s free delivery promotion. This little guarantee put a struggling pizza chain on the map by playing into a simple human need: hunger. Sure, there may be better pizza out there, but when home and hungry, many people opted for a guaranteed delivery timeframe over the “best pizza” that might take an hour to get. The added benefit: if they didn’t deliver, you didn’t pay. Simple, to the point, easy to understand. It worked like a charm until Domino’s had to stop in 1993 because of an auto injury lawsuit. And until recently, Domino’s rode that success in spite of delivering, at whatever speed, a pretty bad pizza. Still, today, more than 1 million people in 50 countries worldwide eat Domino’s pizza.

#3. Free gift: Buy tires, get free beef.

Once a year for 47 years, Les Schwab, a regional tire store chain, gives away free beef to those who buy tires. Although quirky, the tradition began for a good reason. Les Schwab started the giveaway to support his customer base—farmers and ranchers—when times were tough. The fresh meat is purchased locally for the stores so the idea of focusing on customers and community remains strong after 47 years.

#4. Sweepstakes: TP for a year.

Last summer, employee-owned grocery store Hy-Vee launched a contest called Everyday Giveaway Sweepstakes. All you needed to do to win was simply visit the website each day and enter for a chance to win something fun. My favorite of their prizes was Free Toilet Paper for a Year, which was awarded as an $80 Hy-Vee gift card.

#5. Limited Time: Hire me now or it’ll cost you extra.

Many offers are constructed using the limited-time method to force a decision to purchase, but how many intreprid job applicants have used it as a ploy to get an interview, or even get hired? Well, the advice from Collegegrad.com is to do just that. They suggest that one way to entice unresponsive employers to interview you is to schedule a visit to their area, then call them again to let them know that you plan to be in the area and offer them the chance to interview you during your stay. If they still don’t bite, “remind them that you will only be in the area a short time, after which, there would, of course, be travel expenses involved in getting together.” In other words, your limited-time visit could save them hundreds of dollars in travel expenses. Pretty crafty.

Bonus Round. Freebie, sort of: The All-You-Can Eat Ballgame.

If you’re a baseball fan that loves Dollar Dog Day then the All-You-Can Eat package many teams are offering is downright thrilling. Ranging from $30-$45, All-You-Can Eat sections have been designated by the Athletics, Orioles, Rangers, Royals, Braves, Dodgers and Padres for fans hungry for more than just watching the game. (Remember, it’s all you can eat, not all you want to eat. Act accordingly.)

Double Bonus Round: What I wouldn’t do for $5.

Don’t miss Fiverr, the site that features all the crazy, weird things people are willing to do for five bucks. Maybe it’ll give you some ideas for your next offer.

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1. People love freebies. This is not news. Unless you’re a big-name brand, top celeb or a natural social networking guru, people will not  flock to you unless you give them treats. Said treats can be in the form of cash money, products, or just superb content, but it has to be of value. It has to be worth their time. We’re all fragmented and another amusing opportunity for something “free” is just a click away. Don’t get clicked away. Give good stuff.
2. Your freebies don’t have to break the bank. We got perfectly decent mileage from giving away a lot of lower-value gift cards as opposed to $500 worth of merchandise at Organic Beauty Now. For The Peanuts, we made excellent use of existing content to get fans engaged in a new way. Get creative.
3. Make your Facebook friends love you. Don’t be afraid to ask for your Facebook friends’ participation. We tested a campaign where we asked Organic Beauty Now Facebook friends to name the number one non-organic beauty product they wanted to switch to an organic version. Called The Big Organic Beauty Switch, it included a giveaway of five gift certificates to winners among the list of those who posted a comment about their wishlist switcheroo. First week, it seemed like a dud and we nearly pulled it, but then it grew, and grew, and grew. By the second week, we had the best level of interaction we’d ever had, 200 new Facebook likes, a huge opportunity to interact with them (as we gave personal recommendations to everyone, not just winners) and a lot of free consumer research. We’ve gotten similar results with campaigns that require our Facebook friends to dig into our website and name products they want to win. All of it is designed to deepen the interaction between your Facebook friends and your brand. It works.
4. Your Facebook friends will stab you in the back, in public. We had a customer service issue come to light on Facebook. Our CEO spent over an hour on the phone with the upset party, making everything right, smoothing her ruffled feathers, and ending the call with what seemed like a very satisfied customer. This same party went back to our Facebook page and flamed the heck out of us again. Why? Who knows. We did our best. The moral of the story is this: practice excellent customer service, and when, not if, mistakes happen, solve them, then watch the web for ongoing embers even when you think the flames have died. You cannot let your guard down. It’s just too easy for people to rethink and post something you don’t want out there, whether they’re a “friend” or not.
5. Be a celebrity. That’s my motto as Andy Warhol’s vision of everyone’s 15 minutes of fame comes to rampaging life now that we all have a worldwide podium. No, you don’t have to be Oprah or a Kim Kardashian (heaven forbid). I’m talking about being a persona in your own way, in your own market. We like bright, shiny, engaging people who we can follow with our hearts, minds and dollars. If you’re not the guy or gal in your company, find someone who is. That kooky guy who makes everyone laugh at the water cooler. A dedicated team of customer service people who are super enthusiastic. Or a hired spokesperson that you make a real part of your company, not just a talking head. Whatever it takes, be a person of note and people will follow you. Celebrities don’t become celebrities by staying on the margins and keeping quiet. Get out there, get known, and watch how it changes your business.

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Greg Ballard, CEO & President of Glu Mobile, gives an overview of why a successful business needs creativity in all areas of its operations.

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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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What I mean instead is tapping into your customer’s negative zeitgeist. Aka, what keeps them up at night?

Anyone worth their weight in salt has had nights where professional concerns keep them awake. Or worse, make them bolt upright out of a deep sleep going “aaahhh!!!”

I’m not talking about fear of losing your job (although if you’re an employment site, this is relevant to what you do). I’m talking about the stuff that makes someone worry about meeting the specific objectives of their job. You know, all the things they have to write about in their employee review.

For example, when I was in sales for a brief, shining, terrifying year, I worried about making my quota. I worried that, come the end of the month, everyone else would report all the deals great and small that they’d closed and me, I’d have a big, fat zero. I would’ve been a ripe target for anyone who could show me a fruitful system for cold calling or an easy-to-swallow guide to the psychology of prospective customers and how to structure your pitch. (I was also 22 and too young to be wearing a big ol’ suit and hawking telephony products for Pacific Bell but that’s another story…)

Whether you’re a B2B or B2C* company, you can—and should—be able to imagine your customer’s greatest fears and the areas of their job responsibilities they’re concerned about. And you must show understanding and empathy along with your solution.

This is not about scare tactics and fear mongering. Forget all that. It’s short-sided and will only serve to tarnish your professional reputation and brand. Let your competitors try that route and fail.

What it is about, however, is a way to cut to the chase. What does your customer really, really need in order to do their job well?

Sure, you can throw in all the demographics you could ever handle—age, income level, education, region, etc. That’s all good information.

But the truth is, I go for psychographics every time. Psychographics marketing means tapping into what your audience is thinking and feeling. Psychographics goes beyond demographics to tap into the lifestyles, behavior and attitude of your audience to build a more detailed picture of who they are. While a lot of psychographics focuses on lifestyle choices that may or may not be relevant to B2B marketing, you don’t have to focus there. The point is to focus on their perceptions. What is this person thinking about? What do they believe? What do they want?

What are they afraid of?

Since so many advertisers concentrate on demographics, using psychographics marketing not only gives you critical insight into more important questions of motivation, it also can help you stay a step ahead of your competition.

By way of example in the B2B space, I have a high-tech client who creates fabulous digital experience solutions. One of the big topics floating around right now (which you’ve probably heard about) is Apple’s announcement that they’re not going to support Flash on their mobile devices. See Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Flash for details.

If I’m CTO for, let’s say, a major insurance company considering my next big solution to help mobile insurance agents file applications in the field, I’m worried about which technologies to throw my hat in with. What if we choose a cul-de-sac and have to rebuild in a year? What’s our competition doing? How do we future-proof?

As a marketer, your job is to ease my mind by way of making me aware of your solution. Are your marketing efforts doing that?

Something to sleep on.

* Don’t think this applies to B2C? Imagine the 50-something exec who’s worried about balancing job responsibilities against taking care of her own aging father. That’s exactly what customers of a a health care client of mine had on the table. Is something similar on your customers’ minds?

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