How Do You Treat Your Audience? Do You Meet Their Needs?

Actionable Marketing Lesson of the Week

► Squeeze Fun Into Holidays

Post-pandemic, as we feel our way into the new normal, we look to connect and to find joy in our lives. We’re emotionally tired from the past year.

The perfect antidote:
A fun holiday where we dress up.

When my nephew was in pre-school he dressed up everyday. One day he’d be a fireman and another he’d be a pirate. Every morning my sister would ask him, “Who are you going to be today?”

Now that’s how many of us feel.

Heinz leaned into the Halloween spirit. It advertised: “If you have Heinz, you have a costume!” with the hashtag #HeinzHalloween. Since the popular American condiment adds a touch of blood to any costume.

To celebrate, Heinz created a collectible edition of 20 ounce squeeze bottle. They labeled the Halloween makeover, “Tomato Blood”. At $2.99, I wonder how many customers will keep it unopened to see if it increases in value on the collectible market.

In addition, Heinz created a Halloween pop up store in Santa Monica.

Actionable Marketing Take Away

• Help your customers have fun. People want to be entertained. How can your business use a holiday to accomplish this?

Voice Notes

► New York City Boosts Its Fiber Diet

On Saturday, I was awoken by jack hammers. Outside our front windows, workmen were tearing up most of the street. Traffic slowed to a crawl.

When my husband went out and talked to Gilbert, one of the workers, he discovered they were part of a project to put fiber optic cables into the streets. In addition, they were wiring up street lights so people could get WiFi and 5G connectivity.

A man walking his dog listening to this conversation responded that he already had a 5G smartphone and Gilbert smiled. The man didn’t realize that a 5G phone can only provide 5G functionality if a cellular network exists to tap into. And, the user has to pay for that service while the city’s WiFi is free.

What does fiber have to do with Voice?
Like the man with the 5G phone, you need to have a network that supports high speed Internet in order to use it. Otherwise your device can only use what’s available and chances are that it’s a less powerful level of service.

But New York City is transforming itself to meet evolving Internet needs.
Translation: More fiber that is more efficient!

New York City’s Department of Information, Technology and Telecommunications Department (aka: DoITT) has a plan to roll out 5G capabilities across the city. It includes:

• “Multi-tenant” design to house mobile telecommunications equipment from multiple wireless carriers on individual street poles to accommodate the increased infrastructure that 5G needs. This reduces costs since multiple carriers can use one pole. It accelerates equitable build out of 5G across the entire City.
  
• LinkNYC Communications Network provides fast and free public Wi-Fi and other functionality at no cost to taxpayers.
• Free WiFi service in all 282 of New York City’s underground subway stations.

The DoITT Goal:
Provide 5G to all neighborhoods across all boroughs for fair recovery for all residents to improve equity and enhance access to health care, education, jobs and other needs.

Why is this important for being voice-first?
Pew Research shows that income is the biggest factor in technology adoption when it comes to broadband.

Social Scene

► How Social Media Changed The Publishing Industry

Yarnies have their own social media platform called Ravelry. Whether or not you knit, you should pay attention to Ravelry.

Why?
It connects and provides social interactions for knitters and crocheters around the world through a variety of community features and bulletin boards to exchange insights.

Beyond this, Ravelry has destroyed the publishing industry for the knitting and crocheting world. It takes a smaller cut than Amazon for patterns or book sales. As a result, its top designers in any category earn a 5 to 6 figure income.

Stephen West has a massive following on Ravelry and Instagram. Look at his fall MKAL (or Mystery Knit Along.) It’s a gamified knitting adventure where one clue is released per week. For his Fall, 2021 MKAL, 6,300+ people signed up. At 6 Euros per pattern (about $7.25) that’s roughly $42,000+ in revenue.

In addition, each knitter inspires other members of the community through their photographs of their knitting and detail notes to explain difficult or confusing parts.

Actionable Social Media Tips:

• Build your community on one platform, then expand to other platforms. West did this with his Ravelry shop and expansion to Instagram.

NYC Marketing Marketing Minute

► Building Community To Give Back

Last week Second Chance Studios, a not-for-profit company that trains and employs formerly incarcerated individuals, officially launched and welcomed its first cohort of fellows. Second Chance Studios provides these services:

• Original content creation
• Podcast recording and production
• Video production and
• Digital advertising.

If you’re like me, jail is something you know from watching movies and television shows. It’s not a reality that you or people you know have actually experienced.

Yet in any given year, 8,500 New Yorkers are released from prison Joining about 96,000 people on probation and 43,000 people on parole. And that’s the good news.

Yet, within 3 years of being released, 53% of these people are rearrested. BTW, it costs $117,700 per felon in contrast with $337,524 per inmate in New York City per year.

So how did Second Chance Studios come into being and why should you care as a marketer?

Second Chance Studios was started by Coss Marte, a former incarcerated individual. I met Marte at Michael and Amy Port’s Heroic Public Speaking. You could hear the audience gasp when Marte’s background was announced.

Faced with the prospect of dying due to being grossly overweight, Marte turned his prison cell and his own body weight into a workout routine losing 70 pounds in 6 months. He refined his method by training 20 other inmates.

Marte’s story is powerful. He went from running a multi-million dollar cocaine operation to building a legal business, ConBody, with 25,000+ clients to help fellow formerly incarcerated people. Further, Marte hires formerly incarcerated people to teach these fitness classes. Don’t take my word for it—Marte has been featured in 200+ media outlets.

In addition to ConBody, Marte co-founded Second Chance Studios to give formerly incarcerated individuals an opportunity to build a better future. And Marte didn’t take a chance with his leadership team. Read their bios and your mouth will fall open. He’s gathered a group of Who’s Who from top schools with a track record of giving back to society.

Actionable Marketing Tips:

• Give back to your community. Marte figured out how to use what he learned to help others with his ConBody workout regardless of their backgrounds.
• Get others to help you make a change. Marte has attracted a top notch team to help him realize the potential of Second Chance Studios. How can you work with others in your community to create change?

Marketing Reads

New Posts on the Actionable Marketing Guide:

► Mad Men Marketing Quotes: How To Improve Your Results

The brilliance of the top Mad Men still lives today even though we use different media and ways of communication.

As Bill Bernbach famously said of marketing:

“Our job is to bring the dead facts to life.”

Regardless of whether you’re a content marketer, social media or other form of marketer, these words still hold true today. Your job is to make your business real for your audience regardless of when, where and in what context they want to engage with you.

► Content Creation Skills: 10 Fundamental Abilities Your Team Needs To Succeed

Want to improve your team’s content creation skills?

Then make sure you have these 10 fundamental abilities to make your content marketing succeed.

Plan Ahead: Mark Your Calendar

Join me at these marketing events:

► November 2nd at 2pm ET – 6 Ways Brands Can Win with Today’s Visual Storytelling [Live Webinar] Find out how Made.com, Guess, and others have set up a visual storytelling framework that resonates with consumers. Presented by eMarketer and Cloudinary.