Category: Media

Business Northwest Virtual Summer Conference

I’ll be one of the presenters at the Business Northwest Virtual Summer Conference, happening over three days (July 9-11) later this week.

 The theme of the conference is “Getting Your Business Message Out in Today’s Economy With Today’s Technology.”

 There’s a live event at the Marriott on July 9th at 9:30am featuring a panel with Kent Lewis and Hallie Janssen of Anvil Media, Matt Kish,  Managing Editor of the Business Journal, and Tom Cochrane of TKC Solutions. The rest of the presentations, including mine, will be on the web.

 My presentation, titled “Brand New Technologies, Same Old Errors: The Seven Deadly Online Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them”, is tentatively scheduled to run at 9:30am on Friday, July 10.

 Attendees will be able to see all the presentations, ask questions of more than 20 speakers in special forums, and download written materials. You can have access to the whole thing — you can see it live or watch the archived presentations at your convenience for 30 days — for just $8.50.

 Find out more, and register, at www.businessnorthwest.org/conference.

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Check out Phil Bernstein’s Facebook Fan Page — and become a Fan – here

Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein, Portland’s Advertising Expert, at 503-323-6553.

Sales/Advertising Lesson From Vietnam

I flew halfway around the world for a copywriting lesson.

We’d spent the afternoon wandering through Hoi An — a Vietnamese  town near the coast that’s known for its clothing stores. It was brutally hot, and I’d already crashed back at the hotel.

My wife and sons had tired of wandering into a series of shops that all seemed to have the same merchandise, and they were ready to call it a day. They were heading for the hotel when a woman walked out of the Lucky Star Tailor Shop, poĩnted at my son Tyler, and said,

Suit for you, forty dollars!

Less than an hour later, my family walked out having ordered two suits and a dress.

At a copywriting class I attended, the instructor had us pick a client and try to summarize their value proposition in a maximum of six words. The object ot the exercise was to force us to use only words that matter.

Lucky Star did it in five — a benefit, an offer, and that’s it. No mention of the friendly, knowledgeable staff, or the fact that they also can make pants, shorts, and dresses, or that they’ve been serving the community since 1997.

Can you make your pitch in five words?

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Check out Phil Bernstein’s Facebook Fan Page — and become a Fan – here

Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein, Portland’s Advertising Expert, at 503-323-6553.

Online Search: Good; Online Search For YOU: Better

The Catalyst, a blog on television advertising published by Eckstein Summers Armbruster & Company, tackles the subject of “offline media’s growing impact on online search”

… an advertiser’s web site may tell them they’re getting leads from search engines, when in fact many of these leads originated with a smart (cost-efficient) television campaign. TV is tops among offline media in generating this sort of effect. Oh, and local broadcast television also drives down the cost of physically bringing new customers into a business. We have decades of evidence (not “research”) of that fact.

The second, and more obscure point is this: While it’s always great to have high organic search position for your search terms, you don’t necessarily want Google to be the advertiser’s first source in terms of online lead generation. Sounds counterintuitive, but it’s true.

David Eckstein goes on to tell the story of an electrician doing a broadcast campaign in Texas. The campaign is bringing new customers to his website and, as a result, to his firm; but while his Google ranking has improved, Google is no longer his top source of online leads.

The moral of the story is simple, and needs to be repeated. Yes, we want to be tops with Google, but we don’t necessarily want Google to be tops with us. A good offline and online media campaign will demonstrate this immediately, as consumers will open their web browsers and type in our domain names directly, without having to find us — and our competition — on Google.

They might also call and visit us too.

Eckstein Summers Armbruster works primarily in television, while my day job is in radio advertising. The principle is the same in either medium — if you can drive viewers, or listeners, directly to your web site, you’ve got a much better chance to convert them into customers.

I can help you do that.

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Check out Phil Bernstein’s Facebook Fan Page — and become a Fan – here

Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein, Portland’s Advertising Expert, at 503-323-6553.

How NOT to Use YouTube: KFC Botches the Apology

It’s hard to imagine a promotion as poorly planned and executed as KFC’s Grilled Chicken fiasco.

sales advice: don't be too chicken to apologize when you screw up
Photo by Tony Campbell

If you’ve been living in a cave for the past week or so, here’s a quick review of the clusterpluck:

To promote their new Kentucky Grilled Chicken, KFC offered a downloadable coupon for a free meal. And had Oprah Winfrey announce it on her show. KFC was completely unprepared for the response — their computer servers couldn’t handle the crush of downloads, and their restaurant servers either couldn’t or wouldn’t honor all the coupons.

A day later, KFC announced that it would no longer honor the coupons. Instead, they instituted a truly cumbersome raincheck procedure. Customers were instructed to bring their coupons to a KFC store, where they would be required to fill out a form requesting a rain check — and wait for KFC to mail them their rain check. At which time they would have to make a second trip to KFC.

It might seem impossible for KFC to make the situation any worse, but they were up to the challenge. Here is KFC President Roger Eaton’s astonishing “apology” video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdFJjeLYVjk]

[UPDATE: alas, after being buried in negative comments, KFC has taken the video down]

KFC was already in a hole before they released the video. From his unfortunate foreign accent to his smirky grin to his bizarre non sequitur (“Everyone wants to get the great taste of our new product, so we can’t redeem your free coupon at this time.”), Eaton just kept digging it deeper.

What has he learned from all this?

“Clearly, America loves the great taste of Kentucky Grilled Chicken!“

The take-away message: it’s not KFC’s fault — it’s America’s fault!

This one will be studied in marketing classes for decades to come.

[reminder]

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National Public Radio Wants You to Buy Radio Advertising

I’m not familiar with Warren Berger.

But if “All Things Considered” wants to run an interview with a guy who recommends buying radio commercials, I’m gonna post it.

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Check out Phil Bernstein’s Facebook Fan Page — and become a Fan – here

Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein, Portland’s Advertising Expert, at 503-323-6553.