Do You Know Who Your Customers Are? 7-Eleven Does
October 6, 2008
I found a great example of a brand that is learning who its customers are in a unique and indirect way.
Did you know that 7-Eleven customers have projected the U.S. Presidential Election winner accurately for the past two elections and with uncanny accuracy in terms of how the votes were split? Want to know how they did it? Since 2000, 7-Eleven provides customers a choice. Do you want to get your coffee in the Democratic nominee’s blue 7-Eleven cup or the Republican nominee’s red 7-Eleven cup?
Turns out the coffee cup preference of 7-Eleven customers exactly mirrors the voting preferences of Americans. In both the 2000 and 2004 elections, 7-Eleven Democrat blue and Republican red cups sold at a rate that directly reflected the final voting results from both elections. Coincidence? I think not. Read more
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Best Practice Awards: IR Society Shortlist
October 2, 2008
The Investor Relations Society have announced the shortlist for their Best Practice Awards 2008 (sponsored by Thomson Reuters). These awards are announced annually - this year the announcement will be on 25 November.
IR Society Awards
This set of awards covers companies from the FTSE 100, FTSE 250, Small CAP and AIM, as well as International, and the intention is to “honour those companies that lead the way in the practice of investor communications”.
The IR Society provides guidelines on their site, and also some very valuable information on the criteria they’ve used in previous years (for an example, see the statement for the 2007 awards). This makes good reading for anyone interested in improving their investor site.
Congratulations to the following companies for being shortlisted - and the best of luck for 25 November! Here are the links directly to their investor pages, so you can check them out for yourself:
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Retailers Want to Sell - Not Tell
September 30, 2008
Allow me to start with a gross over-generalization: retailers would rather investors get lost in their product offerings than find useful information about them. I say this after poking around on a number of retailers’ web sites. By and large, it is very difficult to find your way to the investor relations page from most retailers’ home page as the home pages are cluttered with wiz-bang deals for goods on offer you just can’t refuse. My poster child for this problem is Sainsbury’s, the British supermarket chain. I started out at their home page and went to the logical spot, “About Sainsbury’s”, conveniently displayed at the top of their home page. Nope, IR is not in “About Sainsbury’s”. Nothing remotely resembling investor relations is listed under that tab.
Then I looked at the “Online Community” tab. Nope, not there either. A perusal of their FAQs was of no use, and given all that went before, it was no surprise that their Help function was of no help either. I was a bit put off by this point, but hey, these are only the owners of the company trying to get information, so why should management care if it is readily available? Finally, after much searching and a high level of frustration, I found a tiny tab at the bottom of the home page entitled, “Corporate Site”. In desperation, I clicked on it and, what do you know, I finally got somewhere where I could learn about the company as an investment.
This is the worst design I’ve seen so far in terms of getting to the investor relations information area. It took me at least 6 clicks to get there, - three times as many as your normal site and there was a very high treasure hunt factor involved. Given that many investors today have an attention span roughly equivalent to the life span of a Mayfly, many will give up before they find out where to go. On my completely arbitrary ratings scale of 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest), I give this a 5, a failing grade. The only reason the ranking isn’t lower is that the investor relations section, when you finally get to it, is fairly serviceable.
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Special interest groups in the media
September 26, 2008
Special interest groups have long been known to persuade companies and organizations to support their causes in various, creative ways. Whether the causes are only of special interest to the special interest group themselves, or perhaps they feel that other organizations would benefit from their passionate causes, finding an audience to spout their cause to is highly important for them.
Often, the best way for special interest groups to market their passions is to be as extreme as possible. The idea is to get as much as exposure as possible with a poignant, direct and compelling message. Consider this:
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has a campaign to convince people of the healthy style and benefits of living vegan. They have celebrities representing them and outlining the many benefits of the vegetarian lifestyle. Since some people are highly-tuned to the opinions of celebrity figures, PETA is likely to be successful in convincing people to give the healthy lifestyle a try. Photos of famous singers like the one shown here is bound to get someone’s attention and make them a believer of the vegan lifestyle. This type of media relations is often more than marketing and can veer off into an attempt at branding, marketing, information sharing and even politics.
Recently, PETA also made a public relation open request to the folks at 
Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream to start substituting their milk-based ice cream product with women’s breast milk instead of cow’s milk. Of course this outlandish idea was met with public comments across the board ranging from complete support to utter disgust. Perhaps it was not so much that PETA wanted to actually get people to take seriously that it would be a good idea to extract milk from women for ice cream (or were they?), but perhaps it was their marketing attempt to further establish their purpose and cause. For this story, PETA got a lot of attention from blogs and news articles, whether they were taken seriously or not.
News articles and developments in various organizations can bring the company lots of attention, often more than is expected or bargained for. Impassioned views, special interest subjects and unusual business ideas help companies develop strong media relations and uncompetitive exposure. Coupled with a strong presentation and the right timing, their story is almost guaranteed to never be boring or dated. For a company of any size to establish themselves strong in their niche, their focus must be on creating impacting, compelling ideas and stories that will draw their audience in, creating images, thoughts and ideas that turn window-shoppers into life-long customers.
Advantages of Social Networking for Corporate Blogs
September 19, 2008
One of the first things that a new blogger learns when he or she joins the online world of blogging is to network, network, network. This mantra is heavily engrained into his business through other blogs, blogging manuals and books and by studying other highly successful blogs. It is a widely held belief that a blog (or any business for that matter) cannot be successful without deliberate and calculated formulas in marketing and connecting with customers. Corporate blogs, often by their very own definition, are maintained by senior levelers or any other upper level manager within the company who has a vested company interest and wholly understand the integral importance of effective networking. Since they are ultimately responsible for the content and tone of the blog, it would stand to reason that the blog’s writer or author must have some degree of maturity and responsibility.
If your company maintains a corporate blog, no doubt you’ve also joined or participated on social networking sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, StartUpNation, YouNoodle and a host of others. Social networking is an invaluable tool for existing businesses and new startups alike. The benefit that a business or entrepreneur can gain from being an active part of social networking sites can create phenomenal ROI (return on investment) of your time, talents and creativity that you place in your blog.
Seasoned bloggers understand the benefits of networking with their sites and visiting and commenting on other sites. They know that in order to ramp up their blog traffic and connect with other power-bloggers who aspire to high-profile status, they must find and network with other bloggers in their niche industries in business. And in addition to networking with other sites in your field of specialisation, providing solid, valuable content is even more important while networking. It would be very bad business for your blog if your readers found the content on your blog unsuitable or worst, boring.
New bloggers are often jaded by all the hype and buzz that abounds on the internet concerning social networking. Often as loners, new bloggers make the mistake of thinking that they can make a go of it alone and increase their own blog traffic. This most often happens with new bloggers who are new to internet marketing, social networking or the online world altogether. However they fail to realize that nothing could be farther from the truth.
Corporate blogs need traffic to thrive. They need readers in order to have a purpose and an audience with which to share their information. Therefore, if a corporate blog has aspirations of taking their blogs to the next level, they must first realize the inherent benefits of consistently maintaining a valuable, enriched blog that readers refer to over and over again. Hence, the need for social marketing. Here are some advantages of social networking for blogs:
1.) Join sites that complement your business’ purpose. If you sell a specialized product or service, find the social networking site that responds well to it. You don’t want to make the mistake of selling or advertising (perceived) useless products to a third party.
2.) Visit other blogs in your niche area on a daily basis. Read and comment on their blog. This is a sure-fire way to drive traffic to your blog.
3.) Write compelling, crafty content on your blog and website. People want not just content but valuable content. Be sure to update the blog daily (if it is of that compelling nature), but no less than three times a week.
What other reasons can you offer that are advantages for network blogs? Does your organization employ any of these strategies?