Recently I hace stumbled on a conversation that’s about as old as the marketing itself. Someone was complaining that the autoshow in their town wasn’t executed properly. One of the main complaints, among others, was that sexy girls were unfriendly, didn’t quite let visitors take pictures with them, some were even giving cold and disgusted looks to occasional photographers. Overall girls seemed to be tired and uninterested.

Some of the comments were straight to the point, but my attention drew upon definitely off-the-way remark that “you are selling cars, why do you need girls there”. Additionally, the commenter was making a point that men are not the only ones who buy hot expensive cars, women now got the money and can afford same rank of Lexuses, BMWs and Mercedeses without being somebody’s paid “associate”. So the whole idea of girls with cars is outdated and obsolete.

Personally, I am a big proponent of change. The only reasonable excuse from changing that I accept from myself is lazyness, but that’s deeply personal. However, with “cars and chicks” I tend to be on a more conservative side – keep ‘em together. There’s a simple rationale behind that (sex sells) but I want it for a bunch of different reasons.

First of all – I like pretty women. The more – the merrier, so a trip to car show is like a free venture to a strip club with camera. Curves of women as well as those of cars are aesthetically pleasing (if we won’t mention the male part of my brain), so watching the show is definitely a positive emotion. Additionally, each car (as most of us, men) believe, posess a personality. By giving a new shiny car to shine next to a good looking pretty lady it has a chance to expand that personality. And it definitely improves the overall image of the brand.

It’s not like BMW or Mercedes or Aston Martin really need to establish their identity. But just think for a moment that one of the most important event in car-making industry – the car show (in NY or LA or Miami or Detroit) is done without girls. Car can’t smile, can’t walk around flowing it’s curvaceous body, can’t flash its cleavage left and right and most importantly – can’t make friends. Now there’s one more little thing to it. Think of all the guys with cameras snapping pictures of girls with cars behind them. These pictures will then be posted on blogs, Flickr, MySpace, Facebook and whatever else you can post your pictures on. A lot more people will see them. Now take that as a FREE VIRAL ADVERTISING AND PROMOTION – imagine how much that many posts, pictures and commentaries would cost if BMW would hire an advertising agency?

Interesting note on generating leads from Patrick Schaber. I would just like to add that prospective clients, while registering, are – conciously or subconciously – suggesting a way you should contact them. For example, if someone wants you to e-mail him, he will almost inevitably mess up his phone number. If another one wants you to call her, she will garble the e-mail address.

Subliminal messaging is just like the body language. Once human species moved on to a new living environment (that is – internet) they immediately adopted their body language habits to new setting. Instead of real emotion we are using smiles. Now, instead of body language we alter the information about us that we transmit.

So while advertisers are trying to come up with ads with subliminal messages built in – we, regular human beings, are being subliminally back to them. Neat, isn’t it?

Technorati : PR, entrepreneur, marketing

Small businesses, especially those that are not geographically “challenged”, should not limit themselves to small-scale marketing tools. Coupons, flyers, business cards, comp cards – it all can work for geographical regions of a small scale. Sending out postcards or distribute flyers can get really expensive as your targeted location grows in size. These marketing tools can’t distinguish among prospective clients, regular clients or, so-called, premium clients. Yes, big news, you have to keep promoting yourself to your premium clients too. It’s like dating – guy is supposed to bring flowers to his girlfriend or wife even after they moved in or got married.

Really neat idea was suggested by some of our customers. They give out free magazine subscriptions to their premium clients. Obviously, it’s not just any magazine – it’s the magazine about the industry they engaged it, and the magazine where their advertising shows up quite often. It may sound like a cheap trick. In fact – it’s just indirect marketing to your existing clients. Just a little something to keep them happy.

Small businesses identified by the number of employees they have. The following are criteria of a small business:

• financing for the business provided by one individual or only a few individuals;
• business’s operations are geographically localized, except for its marketing function (may not hold true for online businesses, but nevertheless);
• the number of employees in the business is usually fewer then hundred.

Small businesses in USA, according to Small Business Administration:

• represent more then 99.7 percent of all employers;
• employ more then half of all private-sector employees;
• pay 44.5 percent of total US private payrolls;
• generate between 60 and 80 percent of net new jobs annually;
• produce 14 times more patents per employee then do large patenting firms.

Nevertheless, small businesses have very limited means of self-promotion, comparing to the big guys in the industry. However, just like big guys, they can promote themselves in fashions that are both affordable and efficient. For example, for local retailers an online promotion of their web site would not do any good.

Most of our clients are small businesses. They often share some insights on how offline promotion helps them save or make money. One of the ideas they came up with was to print address labels and mail remainders of their dealer promotion packages to the potential customers instead of dealers. Receiving an attractive custom-printed brochure, booklet or wall calendar can make all the difference for some. Printing of cheap address labels was made very affordable by online merchants and local print shops and company has already invested in printing those promotional packages anyway. Idea was a huge success, and such mailings became one of the favorite promotional tools of this company.

A long time ago I dreamed about a start-up that would manufacture custom-made backpacks. Not just “put-your-name-there” customization, but an actual, full-scale custom made backpacks, that any customer may assemble from different parts available from manufacturers that would be sewn together. As far as I remember – I even created a write-up on this idea. Of course, it won’t sell as hot as iPhone covers, custom made jewelry, pens with your company name on them and so on.

Much more ambitious dream that followed, was that of a custom made car. What we see now on the web is just the beginning. By year 2020 we’ll be able to assemble our own cars from various parts. Just like we select custom features when buying computers today.

Stay tuned, I warned you!

(This is a guest post from the DontDateGuy.com – an upcoming blog on dating advice. Zealus Web Design helped DDGuy with hosting and WordPress set up and, if they will not spend all earned money dating,  hopes to help get their web site more useful and pleasant.)

There is hardly anything older then human relationships. From the moment a Neanderthal man killed whatever animal he hunted down and first brought the corpse to the flock of women to impress them instead of just eating out alone – that was the dawn of dating. Little has changed since then, but what did change is the ability of us, men, to find ways of bringing our killed animal in front of as many women as possible. Corpses rot, so we had to go and hunt one more animal. Then one more again. When roaming from one woman to another with dead animal on our hands became too cumbersome – we invented photography and dating web sites. Now we can show off a picture of same animal to numerous women simultaneously, from the comfort of our chairs.

But being as manly as we are, we kept creating as many dating sites as we could possibly do, always thinking about “what if some of the women didn’t like this one”. What it boiled down to is that now we have drag ourselves to almost all the dating sites out there, just like we did in Neanderthal era, but with added comfort of our chairs and photography. So we decided to get up, stretch a little and take the woman who’s picture we like to the dinner out there. Little did we know about the wild wild world of dating that was awaiting outside. We’ve made mistakes. We’ve been sloppy. We’ve been ignorant. In responce women never told us what went wrong, it was always “it’s not you, it’s me” excuse.

Our goal at DontDateGuy.com is to shed some light on what is going on behind the scene. What is she thinking about you? What are you doing wrong? How to capture the attention of the lady you are interested in. And, ultimately, how to create and maintain a respectful and romantic relationship. We are no cure for every problem out there, but we hope that we can help you avoid certain mistakes and pitfalls. We want to give you that little extra edge, a competitive advantage, if you will, to get what you want.

Subscribe to our blog’s RSS feed or navigate to web site itself and don’t forget to answer the tag line question: would there be dates if everyone wasn’t dating material?

Bank of America has this bunch of very useful online workshops on advertising and promoting your business. Click here for list (opens in a new window). Even though most of the things there are trivial, the whole thing is compiled in a very concise manner. Must have

This morning I discovered a new ad from Manhattan Mini Storage in subway cars. Yep, the guys who put that “huge ass in a fishnet stockings” banner over the FDR Drive. The new ad is a very logical way of continuing advertising campaign – at least from my perspective. The ad in the subway is a bit different from the one on their site (the picture on your left). The difference is minor, yet very entertaining. The subway ad (which I couldn’t take a picture of) features the URL for web site to vote on, slightly different message and signature “Marketing Department” on a pink post-it note.

Now to the simplicity and te brilliance of the move. As a small business entrepreneur without any specific marketing skills I always try to learn from the environment that surrounds me. New York City, in this sense, is a perfect environment that allows me to see both good and bad marketing during a simple one-hour trip to work (or back home). Why do I think this ad is brilliant? Because the series of previous ads was controversial, because it got people talking about them and now it get the message out that you can simply go and voice your opinion. In simpler terms, it created traffic to company’s web site. No matter how one vote – he visits the site and, obviously, spends some time there. The company’s image is again reinforced in the consumer’s memory. Company gets feedback for ad campaing. In addition to that, old ads a reviewed and reused (which by itself is another great move, something like reusing old blog posts). By the way, you can even download all campaign ads in a single .zip file to review or share with those, who missed them.

As GigaOM writes (linking to Steve Job’s statement on Apple’s web site):

Now there’s a way to annoy the people who have stuck by the company through thick and thin. Today, realizing that Apple’s goodwill was at risk, Jobs announced a $100 credit to all early iPhone buyers, promising to do the right thing.

I see this as another marketing trick targeted specifically at Apple fans. They WOULD use this credit one way or another. As a different example, myself – the iPhone is the first product by Apple I have purchased in my entire life (and not even for myself), such credit is absolutely and perfectly useless.

Good thing I bought mine less then a week ago.

Out of all the latest lawsuits this one is particularly hilarious. Here’s the quote:

Online media company’ Zango, which gained notoriety for redirecting adult affiliate traffic and the first ever MySpace worm, is now suing the anti-spyware vendor PC Tools, maker of an application called ‘Spyware Doctor’, for removing Zango applications off the consumers’ PCs.

As some sharp Slashdot reader pointed out: “This is like Osama Bin Laden filing a federal lawsuit in Washington D.C. alleging that George W. Bush is interfering with Bin Laden’s rights to advance the agenda of fundamentalist Islam and kill innocent Americans.“

By the way, if Zango decided that they need to clean up their image (for real), maybe they should have started with removing self-installing spyware first?