Category: PR

Saturday Night Live’s audience has waxed and waned for the better part of a decade. It seems they’re finally getting it though. Weeks ago I saw an article on a video game blog about how SNL staffers (Tina Fey in particular) were avid gamers. Silly little fluff pieces like this really make small subsets of people behave more favorable to you. They seem to understand niche marketing more than many of the “smart marketers” I encounter daily.

Last week they put out out a really funny Beastie Boys-ish rap parodying a ‘Lazy Sunday’ in Brooklyn, preparing to go see the Chronicles of Narnia. This “Chronic of Narnia” rap is funny, amatuerish in feel, and looks like something you’d see on ebaumsworld or big-boys (two of the stickiest sites on the net). This is exactly what their audience is looking to see. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I didn’t see it on SNL.

I first saw it on Google Video. Now, the thing has spread across the net so much that most everyone who is an avid net junkie has seen it, at least once. The funny thing is, SNL and NBC didn’t fight it or call piracy when they found out it was making the rounds, they embraced it.

Unlike most companies, they embraced it and released it for free on iTunes. NBC/SNL recognized it as the best kind of marketing WOM (word of mouth). Ever heard the saying, you can’t pay for that kind of marketing? It’s that powerful, that honest, that trusted, that powerful…

Companies (like Sony) try to do this on their own and fail, so when it falls in your lap, PLEASE, I’m begging you, embrace it.

The two obvious secrets of every service business
from Seth Godin (excerpt)

1. Take responsibility
2. Pay attention to detail

You’d be stunned to see a hotel clerk stealing money from the till or a bartender smashing bottles or a management consultant drawing on the client’s wall with a magic marker. But every single day, I encounter “that’s not my job” or “our internet service is outsourced, it’s their fault.” More subtle but more important are all the little details left untended.

All the magazine ads in the world can’t undo one lousy desk clerk.

If you’re not subscribed to this feed you’re missing out. Seth Godin’s a marketing genius, in that he tells you just how to give the customer exactly what he wants.

I tell clients to just put themselves in the customer’s shoes and imagine what the customer might want. Empathy is a powerful tool in marketing.

Of course, if you’re not making your product to solve a need, that’s just silly. Don’t waste your time…

Anyone else think this is absolutely ridiculous? This company wants me to pay to use between 5-20 words of their article with attribution and a link back?

Grrr… Maybe MSM shouldn’t take part in the blogosphere.

… “The Best & Worst Marketing Ideas” reminds us of the old joke about sex and pizza: When they’re good, they’re really good; when they’re bad . . . they’re still pretty good. Unfortunately, the latter half of that equation does not hold true for marketing. When it’s bad, well, it stinks.

The worst was Boeing’s ad that seemed to be anti-Islamic. Here’s the full list.