Category Archives: marketing

Jul 05 2013
3 Comments
marketing, Millennials, Writing

Dodge Courts Millennial Car Buyers One Piece At a Time

Chrysler is gunning hard for millennial car buyers with their revamped 2013 Dodge Dart and their marketing campaign is a bullseye. With DodgeDartRegistry.com, Chrysler has created a new way for consumers to buy cars based on online crowdsourcing, or having donors pitch in online to raise money. Here’s how the folks at Wieden + Kennedy explain it in their 30 second commercial for the car giant:

While it’s not easy to market cars to a generation growing more apathetic towards them, the stakes are high for auto manufacturers. By 2025, millennials will account for 75% of vehicles purchased. That’s why it’s so exciting to see a company market to millennials the way we want to be marketed to.

Enter The Dodge Dart Registry. The Dodge Dart is one of Chrysler’s first compact sedans in seven years and, according to Forbes’ auto contributor Matthew De Paula, is “arguably the first good small car the company has made in two decades”. Yet, against a tough segment including brand heavyweights like Honda Civic, Dodge Dart sales have been disappointing. They needed to get on the radar and reach millennials. Here’s what they’re doing and why I love it.

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Sep 19 2012
17 Comments
marketing, Writing

5 Quick And Dirty Tips From Content Marketing World and Inbound2012

Ever wish you could pick the brains of some of the marketing industry’s smartest people? Well…have I got a treat for you!

I recently attended–not one, but two– inbound marketing conferences back-to-back over two weeks. I met some amazingly smart people,  bought a suitcase full of marketing books, saw more orange articles of clothing outside a UT football game (my Knoxville TN peeps know what I’m talking about!) and, most importantly, learned a ton.

I initially wanted to share everything possible here (you should have seen my blog drafts on everything I learned), but I’ve decided to boil down the message to something super digestable. Here’s 5 quick-and-dirty tips I learned from Inbound2012 and Content Marketing World that you can implement in less than 5 minutes. I promise– they’re really that easy!

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Aug 24 2012
2 Comments
marketing, Writing

The PR Aftermath of One Autoshop’s Good Deed

This morning, I read a story that inspired me. An autoshop in Roanoke, VA completely made over Radford university student Jordan Addison’s car after it had been vandalized four times in three months as a result of anti-gay bullying. The damage included slashed tires, keyed anti-gay slurs and the word “die”.

Richard Henegar, Jr., the manager at Quality Auto Paint and Body, decided to pool his resources and connections with 10 other local businesses, to do $10,000 and 100 hours work free of charge. He stated, “Once I saw the vandalism that was done to it I said, ‘that’s uncalled for we’re gonna fix your car–that’s the least we can do.'” Here’s Jordan’s face after he saw his new car.

I can’t embed the video reaction directly, but it’s definitely worth the two minutes to watch. Check it out here.

Stories like these are inspiring and give great publicity to businesses that deserve them. Here’s my analysis of the PR aftermath for all parties involved:

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Aug 21 2012
2 Comments
Innovators, marketing, Writing

Sonicbids: Turning Brands into Rockstars

For my final innovative Boston marketing profile, I’m writing about Sonicbids.** To see how other Boston companies are innovating the marketing world, check out my posts on HubSpot and Pongr.

Many marketers today create buyer personas to better visualize their target consumers. Some statistics, like age, geography and income bracket, are relatively straightforward. However, marketers today have all sorts of tricks to get themselves into their audience’s frame of mind. One of my friends from marketing firm Holland-Mark asks her clients to picture what kind of car their customers most likely drive. Mark Schaefer, author of the Tao of Twitter and {grow} blog, asks his clients to compare their brand to a celebrity and their audience as someone who might relate to that celebrity.

Sonicbids, a social music marketing firm in Boston, would probably ask you what music your customers are most likely to listen to. After all, a Justin Bieber fan makes a much different buyer profile than a Grateful Dead concertgoer. After identifying your target market and goals, they would take that information to create an interactive experience involving your brand, a band and of course, fans. Here’s how they work.

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Aug 14 2012
4 Comments
marketing, Writing

Zooey Deschannel Syndrome: How To Avoid Writing Overly Cutesy Copy

I used to be a big fan of Zooey Deschannel. Why wouldn’t I be? She’s a talented actress with a fun sense of style. Even better, her band She & Him embraces some of my favorite, yet frequently overlooked, genre of music: old country. Not only was I a fan of her movies and cds, but I’d tell my friends about her too–every content creator’s dream!

Then I stopped. What happened?

Zooey Deschannel

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Aug 03 2012
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marketing, Writing

3 Posts About Marketing & The Olympics That You Need To Read

You can’t turn on the television or get online without someone talking about this year’s Olympics. Here are some of the articles you don’t want to miss!

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Aug 01 2012
4 Comments
Innovators, marketing, Writing

HubSpot: How Authority Translates into Sales

The second Boston company I’d like to profile is marketing software company HubSpot. I admire this company so much that I’ve applied for a job there. If you’d like to help me turn an application into a hire, tweet this article @HubSpot with the hashtag #HireLindseyHubSpot.

So, why HubSpot?

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Jul 28 2012
2 Comments
Innovators, marketing, Writing

Pongr: Capitalizing on the Photo-Sharing Craze

Since I’m back in Boston, I decided to profile three companies in the area that are doing interesting things in the marketing world. First up, Pongr!**

Photo-sharing is the most important social media trend of 2012.  Facebook purchased photo-sharing application Instagram for $1 billion, even though the acquired company had zero revenue.  A little company called Pinterest became the third most popular social media network in the US. From Facebook’s new Timeline layout to the introduction of the TwitPic app, a photo-sharing service for Twitter, the social media world is getting a lot more visual.  How do marketers capitalize on this photo-sharing craze?

Enter Pongr, the software service that connects brands and their fans through photos. Using image-recogonition technology, Pongr   filters through thousands of user-submitted photos, verifies pictures of branded product, and send fans back an appropriate response. Long story short, Pongr allows marketers to directly respond to the pictures people are taking of their product. Here’s how they explain what they do:

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Jul 21 2012
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marketing, Writing

Pepsi and Camry: Two Advertisements Doing It Right

It’s easy to pick out advertisements that could do better, but this week I’d like to focus on two that resonated with me. Not only are they effective in their own right, but both build upon criticisms I’ve made in previous articles. Without further ado, here’s how Pepsi and Camry are doing it right.

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Jun 22 2012
1 Comment
marketing, Millennials, Writing

Attention Nonprofits! Here’s How to Hook Generation Me With Social Media

Millennials volunteer at a higher rate than GenXers and Baby Boomers did at their age–82.9% college freshman participated in community service in high school.  This number is the silver lining from an otherwise gloomy portrait of my generation from the Journal of Social Psychology and Personality. Aside from our higher volunteer rates, millennials are more narcissistic, extrinsically motivated, aloof to social and environmental problems than the previous two generations.  As I reluctantly concluded with a thorough look at this study in the previous article, we are Generation Me. Our selflessly high community service rate? Most likely due to high school graduation requirements and boosting college applications.

For nonprofits, this grim picture masks real opportunity. More young people than ever are interacting with nonprofits–let’s figure out how to hook them! By applying findings from the Journal of Social Psychology and Personality (JSPP) study and The Millennial Impact Report (MIR), nonprofits can make the most of their millennial volunteers and donors–and hopefully turn the tide of Generation Me to Generation We. Continue reading →

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