The Brainzooming Group

Brainzooming regular contributor and retail marketing sage, Woody Bendle bring a fantastic quantitative perspective to his analysis of Super Bowl Advertising. Woody used a rating scale exploring relationship and creative strengths to assess this year’s crop of Super Bowl advertising entries. Check out Woody’s methodology and see how your favorites fared with his analysis:

Mike reached out the weekend before the Super Bowl and asked if I’d be interested in writing a blog post about this year’s Super Bowl advertising.  I had no idea what I would write but I’ve always found the pressure of a deadline invigorating so without even giving it much thought, I immediately said yes!

OK… so now what?

Super Bowl Advertising by the Numbers

It is estimated that there were approximately 120 million viewers for the Super Bowl this year.  Come Monday morning, these viewers talk not only about the game, but also the Super Bowl advertising.  This conversation happens from the water cooler to the boardroom.  Everyone watching instantly becomes an armchair Creative Director with a lot of advertising opinions, some favorable, and some…. well, not so much.  What do they know anyway!?  Oh yeah, they’re actually potential customers!  That’s right, the folks who Super Bowl advertising was, in theory, created for in the first place!

This year, the average 30 second spot in the Super Bowl cost about $4 million to air.  This is up a staggering 14% from last year!  Talk about inflation!!!  Four Million Dollars for 30 seconds.  Man, that ad better work!  OK… maybe there’s a little pressure associated with creating an impactful advertisement for the Super Bowl.

So let’s pretend for a moment, that you had a spare $4 million lying around.  And for some CRAZY reason, you decided to run a commercial during the Super Bowl.  I already noted that you’re going to have 120 million people judging you, and they’re going to be comparing you with some advertising heavyweights such Budweiser, Doritos, Volkswagen, E*Trade and probably every car manufacturer on the planet.

Still feeling up to the challenge?

Oh, and remember that some of those 120 million watching the Super Bowl are potential and current customers (see above)!  And, last but not least, some of those 120 million people are your bosses, shareholders, and board members – and they’re going to want to know if your Super Bowl advertising “worked.”

Are you prepared to answer that question?

Measuring Potential Advertising Effectiveness

In my opinion, the goal of TV advertising should be to create (or build upon) a profitable relationship between your brand and your consumers, and to clearly register a memorable (preferably favorable) impression that can build upon your brands equity over time.

In television advertising, there is usually a very STRONG relationship between creative execution (that is aligned with the brand’s personality and promise) and the ad’s ability to create (or further build upon) a relationship with your brand.  And, being the geek that I am, I decided to perform a highly unscientific quantitative evaluation of the Super Bowl advertising this year with an extremely unrepresentative sample (13 people made up of my family and some friends – with a slight sample bias towards high school students).  Well, maybe we’re not all that unrepresentative.  We do live smack-dab in the geographic middle of the United States, and I suppose that make us the “average” in some way, shape, or form.

OK, so the objective of my little Super Bowl advertising research project was simply to demonstrate the relationship between creative execution and relationship potential.  To do this, we rated each ad that ran from the kickoff through the end of the Super Bowl.  And, each ad was rated on five simple measures (that’s over 3,000 scores I had to crunch).

Relationship Potential was measured through:

1)     Consideration – “The ad made me interested in buying from this company (or buying this product)”

2)     Connection – “The ad made me like this company or product”

Creative Impact Potential was measured through:

3)     Message Clarity – “I clearly knew who the ad was for and what this ad was trying to tell me”

4)     Likability – “How much I liked this ad (or not)”

5)     Buzz Worthy – “Is this ad worth sharing online with my (Facebook) friends”

Let’s see how your ad did!

By plotting Super Bowl advertising based on its Relationship Potential score vs. its Creative Impact score, we end up with a 2 x 2 grid that helps us quickly see who the Super Bowl ad winners and losers were (at least according to my family and friends) this year.  And, as we hypothesized earlier, there is a VERY STRONG relationship between an Ad’s Creative Impact and its Relationship Potential!

The top marks for this year’s ads goes to Best Buy, Doritos (goat ad), Budweiser and Taco Bell.  These ads scored well for both their ability to build a relationship with the audience, and their strong creative execution.

The bottom marks go to Cars.com, MiO Fit, Bud Light (Voo-Doo Dolls), GoDaddy.com (Walter), Gildan T-Shirts and Mercedes Benz (although I gotta give them props for the Stones tune!).  These ads were rated poorly for both Creative Impact and their Relationship Building Potential.

And by the way, the Calvin Klein ad in the Super Bowl did very well with the High School girls (I’m expecting that to be “shared” and “liked” a lot of Facebook over the coming days by teenage girls).

So how did my family and friends do?  Do our ratings reflect your opinions? - Woody Bendle

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Here is my Super Bowl advertising recap from watching the game and the Twitter activity on the live #SBExp Twitter chat. This year, I hosted my own solo Super Bowl party, which is pathetic, but at least I got as many chicken wings as I wanted.

Amazingly, after a start where it looked like the 49ers couldn’t cover a Ravens player within five yards, the game got competitive after the lights went out (more about that later). The game ultimately came down to the last play of the game, making the football better than the advertising, in my opinion.

Nonetheless, let’s get to the ads:

The Super Bowl Advertising Winners

The first half Amy Poehler appearance for Best Buy was a satisfying change of pace – the brand was clear, Amy Poehler was funny as always, and she said the word “dongle” . . . The second half Tide ad for the Montana Miracle was product, benefit, and game-specific, plus it incorporated surprise and emotion. That’s a hard working ad from a familiar brand . . . Before everything got started on the Super Bowl braodcast, there was a pre-game ad for Buffalo Wheat Thins that played on everyone’s fears of Yetis and neighbors breaking in to steal snack foods that was amusing, and kind of made me remember the brand.

Several brands pursued sponsor bombs and got into the Super Bowl advertising mix without paying the premium rates on CBS by using promoted Twitter messages carrying strong strategic tie-ins. The Society of Human Resources Management took advantage of an NFL Network draft ad for its promoted Twitter ad, while Outback Steakhouse twisted its Bloomin’ Onion promotion to encourage patrons say “Super Bloom” for a freebie order the Monday after the Super Bowl. When you’re on a limited budget, sponsor bombs are a smart strategy to pursue.

Amy Poehler for Best Buy

Tide - The Montana Miracle

Really?

Doritos apparently used up all the good amateur advertising people in the world in previous years with its earlier crowdsourced Super Bowl advertising entries . . . I’m not sure any of the first half Budweiser ads (Bud Light or Bud Black Crown) worked. Calvin Klein on the other hand? It’s underwear ad featuring a guy with incredible abs (which was a complete rip-off  of the H&M – Beckham ad from 2012)? Budweiser only wishes it could sell six packs that well . . . Audi’s ad with a young man taking Dad’s car solo to the prom and all of a sudden becoming an apparent rebel seemed off brand until the tag line explained it was all about “Brave engineering.” Brave engineering? Can you say, “Reach!”

The chasing Coke ad gave me no reason to care about voting or who would win the chase, even if it meant deciding which pre-shot ending would be chosen. The other Coke ad with the security cameras shooting pictures of people was supposed to be representative of shared moments. Feeling like you’re being spied on with your every move is a connection we all share, I guess . . . Both Jeep announcing Oprah and Dodge RAM announcing Paul Harvey as voice overs is like an editorial cartoon labeling all the characters – you just shouldn’t have to do that. Both of these ads are getting attention as among the best. They stood out because of lower production values (photo montages in the Dodge ad) and heart-tugging messages, but the format is getting tiresome – especially when Chrysler does it in exactly the same place two years in a row.

The first Hyundai Santa Fe ad included pancakes, The Flaming Lips, bikers, and bubble boys, with nary a mention of Hyundai. A later Hyundai ad for their turbo-charge capability actually worked, i.e. it mentioned a feature (turbo charged engine) and visualized a related benefit (staying in front of bad vehicles to follow).

Calvin Klein

 Hyundai Turbo Charged Engine

And the Movie Ads

Movie ads just don’t work for me in the Super Bowl. Since nearly every ad looks like a movie with some attempt at a surprising twist at the end (such as finally mentioning the advertiser), the movie ads look like everything else except with no surprises.

The Skin

In a local pre-game break, Hardees tried to out-skin GoDaddy, but then GoDaddy changed things up with an international angle – couples worldwide and French kissing. How about if we all agree to buy a GoDaddy url if they stop Super Bowl advertising? I missed the 2 Broke Girls ad that supposedly put GoDaddy to shame, I can’t imagine what it featured.

Instagram and Oreos

In what you’d have to think was its first featured Super Bowl appearance, Instagram was at the heart of the call to action for Oreos and its Crème vs. Cookie debate. By half time, the Oreos Instagram presence had grown to more than 25,000. While the TV-social media integration was being applauded, others questioned the cost per follower Oreos had invested. The BIG question: Will Oreos continue to activate its Instagram presence throughout the year?

Lights Out!

Beyonce was in a pre-game commercial explaining that her skin is a unique story. Apparently there’s a recorded story about her lips, which she avoided by not even pretending to sing on Single Ladies. But right after Beyonce was done . . . there was a blackout? Did she cause it? As @rsarver shared on Twitter, “BREAKING: During the Twitter, Superbowl goes down” . . . Given the change in momentum in favor of the 49ers afterward, we now know which Harbaugh brother is the better Catholic whose prayers get answered. My main concern though was people would start blaming FEMA and the other Mike Brown all over again . . . They said during the blackout the coaches were busy organizing the players to help them deal with the delay. Really? I never had one boss who had to come help me cope with a meeting that didn’t start on time.

But speaking of coping, both Oreo and Tide were able to respond with real-time content about the 30-plus minute blackout in the second half.  Allstate and its Mayhem character also got in on the blackout on Facebook, with Mayhem saying he’d planned to simply shut off the scoreboard. It goes to show that social media IS the most flexible, broadcast-oriented marketing communications tool a brand has – if it’s ready with the listening and smart content creation talent real-time activity requires.

What’s Up for Future Super Bowls?

What Eminem was to 2011, Rock was to 2013 – who will be the multi-ad person be for Super Bowl XLVIII? Future sponsorship opportunity? An international airline should sponsor all the kicks out of the end zone and 108 yard kickoff run backs . . . Somebody needs to develop the app to let you know which break has the weakest Super Bowl advertising so you know to go pee then . . . Maybe it’s just me, but simply throwing random characters, celebrities, and objects at your brand in for your Super Bowl advertising push (i.e., Coke, Bud Light, Mercedes, Taco Bell and others) isn’t all that effective. I’d recommend less of that in future Super Bowls. - Mike Brown

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If you’re struggling to create or sustain innovation and growth, The Brainzooming Group can be the strategic catalyst you need. We will apply our  strategic thinking, brainstorming, and implementation tools to help you create greater innovation success. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call  816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you figure out how to work around innovation and implementation challenges.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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We were wrapping up the current phase of a corporate communications strategy planning effort for a large B2B company and discussing our client’s social media content strategy. The topic was the how / when / why the company should be creating social media content more actively. One topic of the social media strategy discussion involved, as it typically does, achieving the right balance of blog topic ideas that are both interesting to customers and prospects while having natural, non-obtrusive connections to your company.

When you are a large B2B company considering a dynamic social media content strategy, there are definitely different content options than for a smaller organization. With more employees, customers, and functional areas, there are many more blog topic ideas your large B2B company can integrate into its content strategy.

22 Large Company B2B Blog Topic Ideas

For B2B marketing executives struggling to see where blogging fits into your customer growth strategy, here are twenty-two potential blog topic ideas along with six key messages your social media content sharing can actively support:

You Have a Dynamic, Learning Organization

• Learnings related to business and personal success for customers
• Business books, magazines, and blogs your executives find beneficial
• Interactions when company executives and personalities were meeting with customers and industry figures

Your Company Is Up-to-Date on Industry Issues

• Commentary on important industry stories
• Recaps of social media sharing by you and other industry players
• Perspectives on general news stories with an impact in your market

You’re Company Is Focused on Customer Service

• Challenging customer and prospect questions answered
• Solutions to frequent customer issues
• New issues you’re solving for customers
• Hacks you’ve figured out to help customers get more from their own processes
• Special things you’ve done to help customers achieve their goals
• Recent customer successes

Your People Are Smart and Outstanding Representatives

• How your company is making itself a better place to work
• Community service activities in which your employees are involved
• Ways your people demonstrate kindness in the workplace
• Perspectives from experts inside your organization

Your B2B Company Is Human

• A funny business-oriented event or occurrence
• A customer perspective on an event your company held
• An intriguing or off-the-wall story in your industry

Your Company Has a Community Focus

• Government or public affairs issues your organization is involved with that affect customers
• National issues your company is addressing that have local community interest
• Local issues your company is involved with that have a broader impact

What Could Your B2B Company Be Blogging About?

While someone suggested to us the other day that every big company has already nailed social media and is moving on to deeper integration of social business in their processes, evidence still suggests many B2B companies may be pursuing social media, but haven’t found the best social media content mix yet. How about your company – especially if you are in the B2B market – are you blogging? And if so, what is your brand blogging about?  - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!”

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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What role do public relations efforts play when new product launches fail? Can public relations be the sole cause?

How significant a role can the public relations strategy for a new product launch play in mitigating other launch-related issues?

And what can a public relations professional do to play a more active, strategic role to contribute toward new product launch success even if problems surface in other support areas?

These questions are all part of a talk I’m presenting at the PR Consultants Group annual conference in Kansas City. Chaired by good friend, Alex Greenwood, of AlexG PR, the session will focus on how public relations professionals can hone their strategic, creative, and innovation-oriented skill sets to be more effective with product launches.

You Tell Me the Strategic Thinking Exercises to Cover!

And in what has become a typical presentation technique for me, the strategic thinking exercises for PR consultants we’ll cover during the session will ALL be chosen by the group as the presentation progresses.

Yes, that means when the presentation starts, I’ll have no idea what specific topics we’ll cover!

I’ve been using this presentation technique more frequently since a “you decide what matters to you and we’ll go there” presentation strategy tracks with the Brainzooming brand promise of being highly flexible and interactive when developing successful market strategies.

The presentation draws on ideas about why product launches fail from a Harvard Business Review article titled, naturally enough, “Why Most Product Launches Fail.” I’ve reshaped the article’s list of forty reasons for why most product launches fail to a manageable list of twelve reasons with ties to public relations. Even though the audience is comprised of all public relations consultants, the presentation topics will be valuable to anyone involved in developing successful product launches.

In that spirit, here are links to numerous Brainzooming articles on how being more strategic, creative, and innovative can help address the reasons for why new product launches fail.

Developing a Strategic Business Perspective

Being More Strategic

• A Simple Strategy Check
• Great Strategic Questions – A 3-Step Strategic Question Formula  
• BrainzoomingTM – First Questions
• Tactically Influencing Strategic Situations

Being More Creative

• Sharing a Creative Perspective
• It’s All Invented
• A Poor Question for Valentine’s Day: “Can You Change Your Look?”
• Unwrap New Insights this Holiday Season!
  
• One Way to Be More Creative Each Day
• Strategic Connections – 3 Tips for Identifying More Opportunities 

Being More Innovative

• Creating Change and Change Management – 4 Strategy Options
• Managing Clients Who Love Their Creative Ideas
• Improve the Success of Your Letters to Santa – Guaranteed!

How PR Can Address Reasons Product Launches Fail

Unclear or Wrong Audience / Market

• An Example of a Persona to Clarify Audience Members

• Using Think-Know-Do to Generate Stronger Messaging Ideas

Little Market Research or Unclear Differentiation

• Brand Strategy and Brand Promise Definition Background
• Developing Conclusions with Few Insights

Product Is Too New or Too Different

• 1 Tool to Change Your Tired Old Perspective – Trait Transformation

Bad or Weak Product Claims & Advertising

• Identifying Who Else Does What You Do

• Winning New Business by Being a Nuisance Competitor

Product Priced too High

• Strategy Ideas for Dealing with Lower-Priced Competitors
• Creating Greater Value from Brand Attributes

Crisis Issues: Product / Quality Supply / Regulatory

• Strategic Thinking Exercise – Black Swan Events in Your Plan
• Brand Kidnappings and Social Networking – 5 Ways to Prepare

Not Enough $ for PR, Marketing, Launch and/or Sustaining Sales

• Identifying the Best Leftover Ideas

• Guerrilla Marketing Questions
• Activating a Social Media Effort
• Increasing Memorability – Even with Few Dollars

Everything Depends on PR

• Ted Williams – A Voice for Focusing on Your “Happy Zone”
• Social Media Metrics – A Whole Brain Strategy

Too Much or Little Social Media

• The Two Biggest Mistakes in Social Media
• The Brainzooming Social Media Strategy Framework

• 26 Pieces of Advice for Relationship and Social Media Success

The In-house Marketing Campaign Isn’t Objective

• Do You Have What It Takes (for a Marketing Plan)?

Spokesperson Issues

• 6 Reasons a Brand Manager Wouldn’t Do the Ford “Focus Doug” Campaign – and Why They’d Be Mistaken

Sales Buy-in or Knowledge Lacking

• New Year’s Resolutions – Be More Derivative, Creative, Fun
• Reaching Employees by Advertising to Customers

Lack of Influencers Supporting Launch

• You Find Experts Everywhere You Look
• Incorporating the Expertise of Lead Users

Mike Brown

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If you’re facing a challenging organizational situation and are struggling to maintain forward progress because of it, The Brainzooming Group can provide a strategic sounding-board for you. We will apply our strategic thinking and implementation tools on a one-on-one basis to help you create greater organizational success. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you figure out how to work around your organizational challenges.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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I listened in on Dan Rockwell (aka “Leadership Freak”) and his “Writing Blogs that Get Read” webinar. Dan has built a very successful blog and social media presence with a large audience in a few years. “Writing Blogs that Get Read” was his first webinar and targeted at sharing his blogging success ideas.

While Dan Rockwell certainly shared many familiar ideas during the webinar, I kept a running list of ideas we haven’t pursued with the Brainzooming blog. Sometimes it has been because of priorities; sometimes is has been because of conscious decisions we haven’t adopted a particular strategy.

Regardless of the reason, since we share social media lessons from our experience, the page full of alternative blogging success ideas I captured makes sense to feature since it’s new to Brainzooming readers.

18 Blogging Success Ideas You Haven’t Read on Brainzooming

Here are eighteen blogging success ideas Dan Rockwell is using for content development, engagement, audience building:

1. Write each day’s blog post that day to increase the sense of immediacy.
2. Write in a “you” voice, not “I” or “me.”
3. Don’t ever go over 300 words in a blog post. If the topic could be longer, either don’t write everything or break it up into multiple posts.
4. Display your picture prominently on the blog.
5. Don’t feature guest blog posts. Readers want to hear the primary blog author’s perspectives and voice.
6. Contact industry leaders, business experts, and authors to connect and pave the way for interview posts. This strategy makes them part of your audience building effort as they point their networks to your blog when the interview blog post publishes.
7. Aggressively first follow on Twitter (i.e., follow many people first, and more people than are following you) – even after you’ve built a social media audience.
8. Reach out to book publishers to request author interviews. This also increases the range of connections and content opportunities you have.
9. Create awards you develop and sponsor. These grow the number of people engaged with the blog at multiple points in the awards process.
10. Incorporate excerpts from your blog posts into the tweets promoting the blog post link.
11. Keep extensive lists of how your blog promotion tweets perform and repeat the tweets creating the greatest engagement.
12. You can build an audience without paying much, if any attention, to SEO – if you use other social media audience building tactics.
13. Give away incentives for readers leaving comments.
14. Email contributors who leave comments to extend the discussion.
15. Have a specific set of needs you are asking readers and your extended network for help with on a regular basis.
16. Invest time to leave comments on high traffic sites, such as Harvard Business Review.
17. Avoid shifting the URL for your blog as it develops (we’re on our third URL).
18. Have a spouse who reads your blog (mine doesn’t…ever) to provide another perspective.

Blogging Success Ideas You HAVE Read on Brainzooming and Can Now HEAR!

Relative to blogging success ideas you have seen on the Brainzooming blog, you now have a chance to HEAR them as well. I was very excited to be a guest for the first SmallBusinessTalent.com podcast episode. During an interview with the host (and loyal Brainzooming fan) Stephen Lahey, we discussed a variety of ways to make sure a blog makes sense and produces results. It was a very fast paced discussion, and I invite you to listen to the podcast on Stephen’s website, SmallBusinessTalent.com.

You Have to Find What Blogging Success Ideas Work for Your Organization

Ultimately, determining your own content strategy and audience building efforts must make sense for you and your organization’s overall objectives. That’s why there are so many different blogs and so many varied ways of approaching them. - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!”

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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It’s fantastic that live event social media coverage of an incredible conference allows you to experience an event live from afar along with the blogs, presentations, and videos recapping the content afterward.

The only downside is you get to start kicking yourself while the event is still underway for not having ponied up the bucks to attend.

That was my sentiment with the New Media Expo (#NMX).

The Sunday afternoon tweets clearly confirmed the great content coming out of the Las Vegas event. By Monday, any remaining doubts were erased that the investment to attend the New Media Expo would have been a great one.

So while I wasn’t at #NMX, here are a sampling of tweets from the event. Again, this wasn’t my original content. These tweets are simply a sampling of great content I monitored and retweeted. Thanks to all the live tweeters for their efforts to share these ideas with the outside world!

This first link is to a Slideshare eBook with highlights from a broad range of #NMX presentations.

New Media Rat Pack – Content & Community Visual eBook from #NMX & @… ow.ly/gDbZj #SocialMedia

— Mike Brown (@Brainzooming) January 8, 2013

Audience Growth and “Viral” Content

These New Media Expo tweets underscore that it’s a different ballgame for bloggers than for traditional journalists. This point is lost on many traditional media outlets trying to look like social media sites, often with silly results. Social media content creators, however, would do well to consider adopting the ethics professional journalists operate under daily basis. And speaking of “daily,” there is value in writing more – even publishing daily.

RT @socialmediasean: RT @saravodak: “The goal is not to become mainstream media; it’s to be better.” @leolaporte #nmx — Mike Brown (@Brainzooming) January 8, 2013

MT @501ctechdc: RT @ramonray: If your blog traffic is STUCK – 2 reasons – NOT writing enough & the quality of your content is miserable #nmx

— Mike Brown (@Brainzooming) January 7, 2013

While I still contend viral content is largely a game of numbers and chance, these tweets provide an underpinning to creating content that will be better received, even if it doesn’t become viral content. The theme of a micro focus inside a macro sentiment provides a basis for both generating and refining ideas that are near this intersection.

5 traits of viral posts: 1 – they live at the intersection of niche and normal. #NMX

— Amy Lupold Bair(@ResourcefulMom) January 7, 2013

RT @resourcefulmom: Getting your post to go viral: focused, small theme, but one that affects hundreds of millions of people. #NMX — Mike Brown (@Brainzooming) January 7, 2013

MT @resourcefulmom: LOVE this tip: 4. Viral posts ride on back of a detachable rocket. If ur audience is small, can only go so far. #NMX — Mike Brown (@Brainzooming) January 7, 2013

Social Business

This slide from the “War of Words: Myth-Busting Social Media, SEO & Content Marketing” presentation by Lee Odden is a wonderful illustration of how social content interacts with traditional marketing to address wherever a customer is in the buying cycle. You can find whole presentation from Lee Odden on Slideshare.

Love this slide by @leeodden#CIOs should partner with #CMO to understand power of marketing #nmx twitter.com/TheRedZoneCIO/… — Bill Murphy (@TheRedZoneCIO) January 8, 2013

These additional #NMX tweets point to how adopting a social business perspective not only paves the way for a different way of creating a brand’s customer experience, it also opens up intriguing possibilities for ongoing content ideas.

RT @mrmikelangley: MT @valaafshar: There are more smarter ppl on the outside,than inside ur company. That’s why social matters. #NMX #socbiz

— Mike Brown (@Brainzooming) January 7, 2013

RT @kevin_lee_qed: MT @samfiorella: Lesson from Ford SocMedia: people engage w/ people, not products. Simple truth. #nmx (lesson 4 brands) — Mike Brown (@Brainzooming) January 7, 2013

RT @dsillsby: RT @bobbyisaacson: “Most brands are still using social but not being social.” -@susanborst #NMX #BusinessNext — Mike Brown (@Brainzooming) January 7, 2013

RT @podmedic: RT @valaafshar: Lesson from @danawhite – customer loyalty is based on your response time and execution velocity. #NMX — Mike Brown (@Brainzooming) January 7, 2013

RT @chrisyates11: RT @laurenmacewen: Build customer service issues into your content creation plan #warofwords #nmx @leeodden — Mike Brown (@Brainzooming) January 8, 2013

RT @mompreneurmogul: MT @ariannems: Myth: Quality content isn’t sustainable. Solution: Know ur consumers’ journey. Empathize! @leeodden #NMX — Mike Brown (@Brainzooming) January 8, 2013

RT @laurenmacewen: Creating content is about creating content for an audience to inspire a specific outcome #warofwords#nmx @leeodden — Mike Brown (@Brainzooming) January 8, 2013

#Custserv also MT @billdowns: Have your sales team BCC answers to customer questions to ur creators = content ideas. @leeodden#nmx — Mike Brown (@Brainzooming) January 8, 2013

Less costly – there’s ROI! RT @laurenmacewen: Easily discoverable content helps consumers educate themselves #warofwords #nmx @leeodden — Mike Brown (@Brainzooming) January 8, 2013

RT @josieedmee: MT @leeodden: Guy’s social media mktg model: “Provide great content and earn the right to promote from time to time.” #NMX — Mike Brown (@Brainzooming) January 7, 2013

Guy Kawasaki on Social Networking, Apple, and Marketing Success

Keynote presenter Guy Kawasaki was filled with tweetable one-liners – no surprise there. Here are several that prompted my retweets. The first one sums up his take on four social networking platforms:

RT @hensel: Facebook is for people. Twitter is for perspective, google plus is for exploring passions, linkedin is for pimping #nmx

— Mike Brown (@Brainzooming) January 7, 2013

I’ve tried to say what Guy Kawasaki says below in several posts about Steve Jobs and the fascination with doing what Steve Jobs did at Apple. There’s no modeling Steve Jobs because he didn’t have to operate with typical strategies because he was wired differently. In all those time of writing about it, however, I’ve never been able to describe the unique situation with Jobs so clearly:

RT @valaafshar: The odds of having a visionary, smart dictator is small in business – @guykawasaki #NMX

— Mike Brown (@Brainzooming) January 7, 2013

Always a challenge to force yourself to accept when you want to do a variety of things:

RT @belindaparmar: RT @bryankramer: Most companies who are successful are known for one thing says @guykawasaki #NMX

— Mike Brown (@Brainzooming) January 7, 2013

Two Final Random Thoughts from the New Media Expo

This is one of those tweets that you sort of agree with, and sort of makes sense, but I would never have said it this way:

RT @sinabuns: RT @tamadear: We don’t just need analysts–we need data storytellers. Data without insight is just data porn. @webby2001 #nmx

— Mike Brown (@Brainzooming) January 8, 2013

Definitely not the sexiest of the rewteets, but a tremendously beneficial idea, nonetheless. I’d throw in your attention and passion right in there with your time as the most valuable things you have:

RT @jkfleming: RT @ariannems: “Money will come and go, but your time is your most valuable commodity!” @chriscducker #NMX #NMXDucker

— Mike Brown (@Brainzooming) January 7, 2013

I’ve got to find a way to get to #NMX in 2014!

Mike Brown

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If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!”

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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A recent MarketingProfs story highlighted ideas about the best and worst product names for 2012. Since a Brainzooming post with eight creative thinking questions behind creating cool product names was at the top of our most viewed articles list in 2012, the MarketingProfs article was fodder for another post full of creative questions.

But the Brainzooming strategy isn’t to give you list of cool product names and simply say what’s cool about them (especially since that’s what the MarketingProfs piece does).

Instead, we took a look at what might have been behind the six best cool product names according to MarketingProfs:

• Microsoft Surface (affiliate link)
• Chase Liquid
• McDonald’s CBO
• PayPal Here
• Doritos Jacked (affiliate link)
• Nest Learning Thermostat (affiliate link)

From the background MarketingProfs provided on each of them, we devised a list of creative thinking questions that COULD HAVE yielded these six best product names.

Think of it as our best of 2012 product name generator list!

As with the previous cool product names post, these creative questions are intended to help you generate intriguing, real-sounding product name ideas. By asking some or all of these seventeen creative thinking questions, try to generate as many potential cool product names as possible. Afterward, you can work with individual words, phrases, and their combinations for further brainstorming before prioritizing the options having the most strategic and creative possibilities.

17 Creative Questions for Cool Product Names

Here are seventeen new creative thinking questions to add to your product name generator list:

• What words describe the product’s most significant characteristics?
• If the product were a character on a reality TV series, what would the show be about? How would the other characters on the reality TV series describe your product’s most prominent features?
• What words describe what the product looks like? Describe how the product feels to the touch? What sounds does the product make when it is being used? How could you describe the smell the product has (even if it doesn’t have a smell)? Whether or not the product has a taste, what words describe what it tastes like?
• What words or phrases are antonyms (i.e. opposites) of the typical customer complaints about other products in the category?
• What characteristics or needs should a customer have to get the most from the product?
• If you mainly use real words for other product names, what faux words would describe this product? If you mainly use faux words, what real words would describe this product?
• If you mainly use acronyms for other product names, what phrases describe this product? If you mainly use real words/phrases for product names, what acronyms work with this product?
• What words describe the people who use the product? What words describe where, when, why, how, and what it’s used for by the product’s best customers?
• Reviewing the list of words generated so far, what are more unusual or exaggerated synonyms for each word you generated as names?

What cool product names made your best of 2012 list?

Were there cool product names that stood out for you in 2012? And if so, what creative questions would you ask to come up with more product name ideas like them? - Mike Brown

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The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your strategy and implementation efforts.

       (Affiliate Link)

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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