DQ please stop

If you have a TV or listen to the radio, then you have heard or seen commercials like this.  It is unfortunate that Dairy Queen feels that it can effectively advertise with a poor knock off of the Old Spice commercial.  I know that it is hard to re-brand a company, but to re-brand as a follower, a +1 of another companies idea is not the way to go.  Just another example of a company spending a lot of money to try to be trendy or hip and coming out looking foolish for copying an original idea that worked.

Terrible Advertising

Here is a commercial that I was much better having not seen, thanks to my room mate for this.  Applebees put out this terrible commercial to promote its new during lunch time offer.  I am not sure what is so special that they brag about being able to deliver microwaved food in less than 15 minutes, but they have found the most annoying way to do it.  The song, while very annoying, does at least convey its message about the deal, but the visuals are terrible.  I would be adding Applebees to my list of places I do not frequent until this campaign goes away, but I long ago refused to eat at Applebees, so I have no consumer threat to bring to bare against them.


Look forward to next week for a large post on radio advertising, with a look as some local, (to Cleveland) national and internet radio advertisements. 

In the social sphere, you must be aware of what is going on.

With many people talking about the recent ruling in the Casey Anthony case, somehow the social sphere watcher at Entenmanns saw the slew of #notguilty on twitter, but did not understand what they were for. Jumping onto the #notguilty band wagon, Entenmanns asked "Who's #notguilty about eating all the tasty treats they want?!" which is not terrible, but caused a bit of a stir with those who were following them. 

Once the mistake was realized they deleted the tweet and issued an apology. I do not think that this will greatly effect the company, a small mark that will be forgotten, but it is a lesson to everyone about awareness.  The biggest question that this raises is how does a person tasked with running the social media for a company not keep track of not just what, but why people are talking about or using something.  If your job deals in social media, staying current is one of the most basic things that you have to do, and I think Entenmanns will be on top of this in the future.

Advertising failure

Day to day, everyone sees or hears a ton of advertising, and while much of it is inane, some is effective, every once in a while someone comes along that is just horrid. This Kia Ad is one of the worst things I have seen in a while. It makes me wonder, is there and oversight in their ad department. Perhaps Kia feels that they can compete against white windowless vans in the now highly competitive "pedophile" market segment. As part of the promotion, Kia throws in a $100 Sam's Club gift card for the purchase of candy (thereby making it free candy).

I understand that companies want new ways to reach people, to find ways to make an ad come to the top or all the things a person sees or hears in a day, I am just not sure that any brand wants to become a synonymous with having to inform your neighbors in accordance with Meagan's Law.

Beer review podcast

Here is the beer review for the North East Ohio beer review podcast, I hope you all enjoy.

Right click to download this mp3

Marketing Twitter

The best way to connect with customers is when they are in need of a product or service, and today social media can provide that.  As I have said before, I work for www.textbookly.com doing marketing and advertising, so far the most effective use of social media that I have found is twitter.  Textbookly is a price comparison engine, we compare textbook prices on multiple sites to give our users the lowest price for new, used and rental textbooks. Thanks to social media, during times when textbooks are being sold, we can see the direct thoughts of people, for twitter we use TweetDeck to look for what people are saying about textbooks and other key search terms.  From their we can directly talk with them, inform through tweets, either a specific price comparison or that our service can be used to save money.  This is highly effective for us, by talking directly to the person we see not only a high rate of visits, but also a very high conversion rate.  I will warn others against using bots, I tried to automate the entire thing, but the results where poor, having a person on both sides of a social media conversation is key.  On a side note, I recorded the special beer podcast last night, and I hope to get it up as soon as possible.

Ohio Craft Brewery Pack

I was able to get my hands on the Ohio Craft Brewery Pack, which was supposed to be released October 2010.  I will be releasing a Podcast with El Goro from Talk Without Rhythm where we will sit down and drink and discuss the various beers from this pack.