Dear Reader,
Hi from a freezing cold New York City.
It’s so cold that my words seem to emerge as elongated icicles.
While many of our friends complain about how hot their apartments are, we suffer from the windy draft that blows through our pre-war apartment even when the heat is on.
In the New York City real estate market, pre-war apartments are considered better made than new ones. But that depends on which war you’re talking about (most often, they mean World War II.)
By contrast, our building was originally a five-story, middle-class single-family townhouse built during the city’s housing boom in the 1850s. This makes our home pre-Civil War.
Table of Contents | Volume 11, Issue 6
- Intro – Nimble Actionable Marketing Opportunities
- Marketing Lesson of The Week – Super Bowl’s Super Advertising
- Voice Talks – Generative AI Takes Center Stage
- Marketing Reads – Is Your Marketing Ready For Valentine’s Day?
- Mark Your Calendar
Around 1910, the building was converted to commercial use. In the process, the front of the building was extended to the property line and another room was added to the back of the building’s first two floors. Now, it’s a combined residential-commercial condo.
Today, contractors and real estate agents drool over its original details and the quality of craftsmanship compared to current building standards. For example, our apartment has an original tin ceiling and a wood-burning fireplace. However, due to the expense of cleaning the chimney flue and the cost of firewood in the city, we don’t use it.
But the building lacks insulation.
To increase the warmth, my husband has sealed our larger than human size windows and air conditioners with plastic sheeting and tape. The layer of plastic blows out like igloo-shaped balloons.
But even with our heat on high, I wear 3 layers of clothes to combat the chill. As I tap this newsletter onto my computer, I feel like a character out of a Dickens novel because my hands are wrapped in hand-knit fingerless mitts.
Nimble Actionable Marketing Opportunities
As a marketer, a change of weather provides a perfect marketing opportunity. While at a client site in Pennsylvania, I visited the local mall-based Home Depot where the local television news team was interviewing patrons about how they were getting ready for a coming Nor’easter storm.
Even better, many businesses can take advantage of last-minute opportunities with careful preparation and nimble marketing response. Of course, you shouldn’t use these promotions as a reason to increase your prices.
Here are a few marketing options to fight off the winter chill:
- Offer window and air conditioning coverings like my husband used. Also, sell caulking to seal gaps between the window and the wall.
- Sell space heaters. My husband and I own 4 of them.
- Offer an array of products to block cold air from entering between the bottom of outside doors and the floor. They can be utilitarian plastic or attractive long pillows. (BTW – In a pinch, a rolled towel will work.)
- Sell curtains that add a layer of warmth between your windows and your room. one of my friends owns this beautiful handmade heirloom wall hanging; it was made to keep the house warm in cold weather.
- Feature clothes that keep warmth in. In my experience, Uniqlo and outdoor sports retailers sell clothes tailored to meet this need.
Don’t Be Limited By This List!
Consider how your broader audience can use your offering during these cold Winter days.
- Light up people’s lives with energy-efficient light fixtures and bulbs that compensate for the weak sunlight.
- Keep your customers entertained. Spotlight a variety of alternatives from winter sports to streaming alternatives.
- Teach your audience a new skill. As a knitter, this is my go-to option. Winter is the best time to knit with warm wool since it helps keep my hands warm.
Heidi’s Knitting Plans For A SweaterCaveat: Take care not to overload electrical circuits and other fire hazards!
Actionable Marketing Tip:
- Use weather changes as a non-commercial reason to communicate with your customers. ConEdison, my utility provider, sent this email with the subject line: “Start Planning For Higher Winter Bills” on November 3, 2022. While their emails have a utilitarian design, they achieve their goal by providing help to their customers. (Note: They effectively use inks to their website.)
Marketing Lesson of The Week
► Super Bowl’s Super Advertising
As the US equivalent of the ancient Gladiator Games, this year’s LVII Super Bowl showcases the Philadelphia Eagles versus the Kansas City Chiefs. While the kickoff isn’t until next Sunday, February 9th, the marketing play-off has already begun.
A 30-second spot on the Super Bowl costs $7 million, up from $6.5 million last year and inventory is already sold out. Beyond the media spend, companies must pay for ad creative and production, high-profile talent and other related promotions.
Since this game is one of the most viewed network television shows all year, advertisers seeking broad, mass reach are willing to spend big bucks to attract attention. At a minimum, expect entries from beer, soda and snack companies. Last year’s big game was viewed by 99.18 million people! (Source: NBC)
To maximize their advertising investment, many marketers continue to run the ad over time. Sometimes they use shorter versions of these promotions which often fail to provide sufficient context to work as stand-alone promotions.
In the early days of the internet and digital marketing, some advertisers did a great job of driving additional traffic to their websites with related promotions.
Recommended Reading
Kellogg Super Bowl Ad Review
To understand the Super Bowl’s marketing impact, Northwestern University developed its “Kellogg Super Bowl Ad Review”. About 65 students and 2 marketing professors watch each year’s ads to understand whether they were strategically sound business investments by applying techniques taught in their Advertising Strategy and Marketing courses.
So you can participate while you’re watching the big game or viewing the ads as they’re released online, here’s the scorecard used by the Northwestern business students.
Super Bowl Advertising Recommendations
At a minimum, make sure that your audience can respond to your business directly. At a minimum include an easy-to-remember URL and/or QR code. BUT trod softly! Take a soft approach to viewers who want to connect with you. For example, ask for the minimum amount of customer information. I recommend just first name and email address.
Recommended Reading
Also, monitor social media analytics in real-time and respond where appropriate. Oreo’s quick tweet during the February 3, 2013, Super Bowl when the lights went out worked well and garnered lots of earned media.
Even if you don’t have a large marketing budget, you can create promotions related to the Super Bowl. (But take care not to use “Super Bowl” since the NFL owns the IP rights to those words.)
Regardless of the size of your budget, get creative. For example, one of my favorite local yarn stores runs a “Big Game Sale”. While you may wonder what knitting has to do with a football game, many crafters practice their art while their television plays.
Recommended Reading
Actionable Marketing Tips
- Assess whether your marketing investment will yield profitable results, not just advertising awards. Make sure to include all relevant costs.
- Provide a way for viewers to contact your business directly in all of your promotions and advertising. At a minimum, use a QR code that opens a tailored landing page.
Voice Talks
► Generative AI Takes Center Stage
Increasing from $200 million in 2020, generative AI technology, like ChatGPT and DALL-E, garnered an eye-popping $1.4 billion of US venture capital funding in 2022 according to PitchBook. This pot of money was distributed across 78 deals in 2022. (Source: Insider Intelligence)
Based on decades of AI research, generative AI goes beyond analyzing data to create content including images, videos, blog posts, code, podcasts and music that didn’t exist before.
Sequoia Capital predicts generative AI will “generate trillions of dollars of economic value” due to its ability to augment creators’ work. (Source: Insider Intelligence)
Beneath generative AI’s rosy veneer hides a variety of issues for marketers and businesses such as:
- Outsourced data detoxification to under-paid laborers with terrible work conditions;
- Increased copyright lawsuits related to using human-created work;
- Problems with errors and search results in AI-generated text; and
- Increased amount of content entering an already saturated environment.
Generative AI Example:
Greg Rutkowski, a Polish digital artist, has a distinctive style that appeals to fantasy landscapes. Having created illustrations for Sony games, his work is now a top source of scraping by programs like the open-source AI-driven art generator, Stable Diffusion.
Bye, bye, grandmasters!
Rutkowski’s name was used as a prompt roughly 93,000 times according to Lexica, a company that tracks Stable Diffusion’s 10+ million images and prompts. (Source: MIT Technology Review)
The major question for businesses and users alike is:
- Who owns and has rights to the resulting generative AI, the original human creator or the person who used AI to program the new content?
In a low-trust environment, it’s not surprising that the top business concerns are cybersecurity, data privacy, compliance with local regulations and legal liability.
Actionable Marketing Implications
- Expect generative AI to change your organization’s workflows including increased personalization, image generation and marketing text.
- Take care when using generative AI since discovery and findability engines favor human-created work based on human experience and expertise.
Recommended Reading
Marketing Reads
► Is Your Marketing Ready For Valentine’s Day?
Of course, this means that your holiday promotion must make sense for your offering. Not like my boss at The Economist who wanted to promote subscriptions as Valentine’s Day gifts.
I can tell you that if you do that there’s one way your relationship is going and it’s not good!
Recommended Reading
To ensure that your holiday promotions fit within your overall marketing, here’s how to create a promotional calendar. It’s chock full of tactics and tips.
Recommended Reading
Plan Ahead: Mark Your Calendar
► Voice Lunch Fridays – Every Friday at 1 pm ET
An open and often free-wheeling discussion of all things Voice and AI hosted by Alan Firstenberg and Mike Novak.
► Project Voice 2023 – April 24 – 28 in Chattanooga, TN
The number 1 event for Conversational AI / Voice tech in America
► Creator Economy Expo – May 1-3 in
Cleveland, OH
If you run a content-first business this is the event to be at!
Use the code AMG100 to get $100 off any pass. I’ll be there along with Jesse Cole (Savannah Bananas), Jay Baer, Joe Pulizzi, and more inspiring/smart creators.
► The Conversation Design Conference – July 24th – 25th in London, UK
Bringing together the leading thinkers and doers in Conversation Design
Organized by VUX World.
► Are you hosting an event that you’d like us to add to the Marketing Calendar?
If so, let us know by using our Contact Form with the Subject Line:
Event For AMG Newsletter Calendar.
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Happy Marketing,
Heidi
P.S.: Want Heidi Cohen to contribute a quote or other commentary to your next article, presentation, video, research, or book? Then hit reply to this email and ask.
P.P.S: Did you miss last week’s AMG Newsletter? Previous newsletters can be found in the AMG Newsletter Archive.
