Tag Archives: Marketing

Matthew Waller

Laughlin Constable wins three PRSA Paragon Awards

Posted: by Filed under: Agency Life, Marketing, PR, Social Media

It’s not the Oscars, the Grammys or even the Emmys, but to us, it may as well be: The PRSA 2011 Paragon Communications Awards. Ever hear of them? Well, chances are if you’re reading this blog, you’re interested in the world of marketing so the name may sound familiar. If not, well, StumbleUpon must have incorrectly guided you here. Either way, this is worth a read.

The Paragon Awards recognize outstanding work in public relations campaigns. Similar to the Oscars, these are the type of campaigns that make you laugh, make you cry, or in the marketing world, make you buy in.

Laughlin Constable is thrilled to have brought home not one, not two but three of these awards last night.

An award of merit was given for work on the Wisconsin Department of Tourism iPhone app launch. An advanced look at the app by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and well-planned distribution of a news release to select media helped make the release of the app a great success. Coverage in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and The Associated Press resulted in hits in ABCNews.com, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Times-Picayune and many more. The immediate result was more than 80 million impressions, $3 million in publicity and more than 2,000 downloads.

LC also snagged an award of merit for the 2010 Department of Tourism’s press kit. The team used sound media relations, creative ideas and strategic planning to develop a kit that generated significant awareness of all the unique events, activities and attractions in Wisconsin and ultimately, caught the attention of the media. Not to mention, it looked pretty cool (our designers rock). The team met with more than 25 different media outlets in New York, Chicago, Minneapolis and Milwaukee and also mailed or dropped off press kits to 30 more outlets. Many of the reporters complimented the team for having designed such a useful and easy-to-navigate press kit and supplementary USB flash drive.

And finally, there was an award of merit for the social media successes for the Department of Tourism.  When the Facebook page, Twitter account and blog were initially launched, consumers flocked to the pages within minutes (okay, not minutes, but quickly). The 2010 summer campaign character Miles Feldspar was introduced on these platforms, and unique content, trivia questions, and giveaways followed. From its launch, the Facebook page has grown to over 24,400 fans, with the Twitter account at just over 2,000 followers. The blog has received over 64,181 views since its launch and is consistently a top 10 content section on TravelWisconsin.com.

All and all, it was a great night. While these are public relations awards, the effort on all three of these campaigns was agency-wide. Our hard work and dedication to our clients really paid off.  So now, after a night of celebrating, where’s the afternoon coffee?

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What Women Want from Marketing

Posted: by Filed under: Marketing, Social Media

What do women want? So goes the question of movies, marketers and men. What Women Want, the movie, was named after this eternal query. It featured Mel Gibson as Nick Marshall, an advertising exec who experienced professional and romantic success once he was able to read the minds of women. The predictable plotline followed Gibson’s rise to demise, then back to everyday guy when he learned his lesson. (Bonus lesson:  Don’t cross-dress during a thunderstorm).

Nick relied on stealing ideas from his female colleague for campaign concepts that would appeal to women consumers. And according to She-Conomy.com, appealing to women consumers is important: Women are responsible for 85% of all consumer purchases – ranging from food to vacations to PCs.

If ‘What Women Want’ was made now, Nick would probably be better off checking Facebook statuses, downloading videos from YouTube or monitoring his TweetDeck; the rise of social media gives marketers a broader reach of what women really want. So, Nick Marshall, here a few brands you could learn from:

Medela
The breast pump brand’s site offers many ways for expectant and new moms to connect with each other and with experts in the field. There’s also plenty of information about breastfeeding, and a link to an active Facebook page featuring lots of mom interaction. Aside from being able to provide an incredibly dynamic outlet for their consumers, Medela is able to watch and learn from these interactions in order to shape the way they do business.

Kotex
The feminine care brand is complementing its “tell-it-to-me-straight commercials” for its new line of tampons, U by Kotex. A microsite with consumer interaction functionality allows women to engage in a space that feels secure and intimate for this private issue, and get questions answered by a health expert, a mom and a peer. Kotex is able to position themselves as a resource on the topic while also collecting market intelligence.

Coach
Holiday “Blog-a-day”

During the 2009 Holiday season, Coach enlisted popular fashion bloggers and vloggers to boost their holiday sales. The “Blog-a-day” program lasted 30 days, and featured a different site or video link with merchandise overviews, reviews and best of all – giveaways for the readers.  Coach was able to activate many new networks of ambassadors, interact with their audiences through credible sources and drive online sales through direct links from the featured sites.

These are just a few of many examples and we can anticipate that the way brands can speak to and interact with female consumers will continue to evolve. So marketers take heed – we are no longer just telling women what they want – they can tell us. We just need to listen.

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Asperger’s Syndrome and Today’s Marketer

Posted: by Filed under: Marketing, Trends

I am blessed to live in a house with a child who has been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS).  AS is a form of autism in which an individual can’t comprehend the social rules we all learn at an early age.  They can’t engage in the conversational give and take we all take for granted.  Their conversations with others often become monologues, and people quickly tune them out.  And the AS child is left wondering why no one is listening.

It dawned on me that many marketers are suffering from the same type of affliction.  They are holding on to the rules and norms of the past, and trying to reach their target audiences through one-way monologues.

The problem is, people’s expectations have changed.   People don’t want to be spoken to.  They want to be engaged in a dialogue with brands.  They want transparency and to be heard.

And it’s not just kids and Millennials that are engaging with brands.

In fact, according to a recent study of 354 top executives at large U.S. companies (those with sales of greater than $1 billion) by Forbes Insights in association with Google, more than half of executives under 40 say they use Twitter daily or several times a week.  86% of all executives said they occasionally or frequently click on linked words from web articles and content.

In other words, even in the corner offices of some of the country’s greatest companies, engagement and dialogues are occurring every day.

Is your brand engaged in conversations?  Or are people starting to tune you out?

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