Tag: best practice

All of the attention

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A 30 seconds spot during the Super Bowl sells at $5.6 million.

And while I assume most people use breaks to do stuff they can’t during the match, the buzz it generates and the consideration of the almost totality of the Americans make it probably worth it.

It’s just a pity that such a memorable and expensive opportunity is often wasted with trite cliché and ground level irony. Some random stars, a couple of jokes, a pinch of visual effects and most agencies call it a day.

This year, among those who have gone against the tide, my personal favorite was Google with Loretta. It resonates because it tells a story from the end user perspective. It answers the question “what can I get done with Google Assistant?”, rather than “what does Google Assistant do?”. And as a bonus, it is inspiring and moving.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xSxXiHwMrg

The experience

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If there’s one thing that everybody in marketing agrees on is that to effectively market a product or service you should not talk about that product or service.

And if you look around, you know that very few practice what they preach.

https://youtu.be/G9TdA8d5aaU

This video from Apple is something to aspire to.

There’s loads of products, actually there’s virtually no frame that does not feature an Apple device or solution (I stopped counting at 25 shots).

But it is not about the products.

It’s about the transformation that the product can produce in the world. It’s a story about taking a piece of paper and translating that idea into something concrete and worth presenting. It’s about the excitement, the fear, the tiredness, the anxiety, the juggling, the mistakes, the rebirths, the preparedness and the unpreparedness, the unsecurity, the will to make things happen.

Apple would be entitled, more than many others, to spend hours talking about their technology, their features, their apps, their ecosystem. But they understand that’s useless.

What matters is the experience. That’s what this ad is.

Cover letters

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There are four key elements to any cover letter, and they are often missing or misunderstood.

First, the appeal of the company. The question you are trying to answer is why do I want to work for this company?. You might not have a reason when you see the job ad, but you better find one soon. This require some research online. Look for stories that might resonate with who you are and what you stand for, or even for characteristics the company has that meet some of your outstanding experience. “I have heard a lot about company X”, or “I have always wanted to work for company Y” does not really cut it anymore. Basically anybody can claim the same, and you should start singalling uniquess from the very beginning.

Second, the passion for the role. The question you are trying to answer is what makes this position important for me?. Here is where you start telling about your passion for the field, about the times you have worked in the same role elsewhere and have excelled, about how you have tailored your curriculum to exactly arrive at this moment, applying for this position. Even if you are a new graduate, you probably have some passions or preferences for one field or another, and expessing them is always better than “I am just ok with any job you could offer me”.

Third, your experience. This is what most people get wrong. It’s not about making a list of places you have worked, roles you have covered, skills you have accumulated. There’s a CV for that. The question you are answering here is what have I done so far that matches the requirements listed in the job ad?. Many applicants preach to the wind, figuring that their experience would be good enough for most jobs. But actually, you want to look at the list of requirements carefully, think at what you have done so far (professionally, academically, personally, in order of importance), and see what you have learned that might be applicable in the role you are applying for. It will take a while, and you really have a chance to stand out in this section. It helps if you look at your career horizontally rather than vetically. Pick two, maximum three, relevant examples, and use a story format: “We had this problem at company X, we tried this and that, we eventually achieved a x% improvement in A, and this tought be the importance of B” (where B is what the target company is looking for).

Fourth, and last, the deabreakers. In this final section, you want to list things that are a must for you. “What could the company fail to provide that would make me change my mind about all of the above?”. Here is where you list availability to travel or relocate, salary requests, need to work remotely, and so on. If you have more than two or three items, carefully think if they are all _so_ important that you really want to point them out in the cover letter. Eventually, you do this to avoid a waste of time, but you also want to signal some sort of flexibility to further underscore that this role at this company is truly what you want.

Off the road

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If you play on trite stereotypes, and execute poorly, marketing can easily backfire.

When you take it off the road, on the other hand, you can have fun with it and entertain people.

It’s mainly a matter of personality.

Only if you kill it

FabrizioLeave a comment

A couple of examples of how to make advertisement in the shape of content, or content in the shape of advertisement.

Anticipated. Personal. Relevant.

Both are from the last episode of the podcast Pivot, with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway.

First, around minute 19:10, during the break for commercials, Kara interviews Gavin Belson, the fictional CEO of the fictional company Hooli from the HBO series Silicon Valley. The interview is fictitious and funny, perfectly in line both with the tone of the podcast people are listening to and with the irony of the series. A perfect match.

Then, right after the break, at about 22:10, Arielle Duhaime-Ross, host of the podcast Reset (that shares the same producer with Pivot) jumps on the show to ask a thoughtful question to Kara and Scott about sharenting (parents that share the life of their kids on social media), that’s of course the topic of the last episode of her show.

There is a whole lot of space to be creative, original, interesting and entertaining with promoting products and services in today’s content-driven landscape. As marketers, we should just make the effort to understand: the channel and the audience, first of all, and the irreparable damage that gets done when instead we feed commercials wrapped in plastic to an indistinct mass of people, violently interrupting whatever they are doing.

Advertising is dead only if you kill it.