If you haven’t seen at least one of Miracle Whip’s recent commercials, it might be time to Take a Side. With the Dow down (again) and the news about Kraft Foods making the split into two companies,  Miracle Whip’s strategic focus on consumer relations has also stirred up some controversial buzz. So what’s all the hype about?

Love to Hate: Marketing for Everyone

The great “love it” or “hate it” debate has encouraged lovers and haters of the Mayo rival to share their true feelings about the product. Miracle Whip even has a “not for every relationship“ video contest. Let Miracle Whip know how you and your significant other feel about the product and you could win $25,000 for your marriage…or divorce. For marketers, honesty is increasingly important even if you cannot fit the consumer’s needs.

Miracle Whip’s debate has people all over the U.S. discussing the positives and negatives of the pseudo-mayo via social media. Social media whether we like it or not, can make or break a brand. According to the Facebook page, the mission of the debate is this: “Some people love us. Some people hate us. And that’s cool. What’s not cool is people who’ve never tried us or don’t even know who we are. So we’re setting out to change that. If you’ve never given us a go, check out our YouTube channel for a free sample and then tell us what you think.”

Meaningful and Commercial Relationships

Marketers connect with their customers on a personal level when they engage in casual conversation and encourage product feedback. Miracle Whip creates more meaningful relationships with their consumers because they go beyond traditional marketing. Their advertisements tell a story, about real things and real people. When people have experiences with a product, they relate to others who have gone through similar situations.

Power of Influence

Miracle Whip admits that they are “not for everyone.”  The message is targeted to their desired audience as well as their competitor’s audience.  Miracle Whip knows that some people like Mayo better, but they use that to their competitive advantage. Not everyone is going to love what you have to offer, but if you market yourself to both the lovers and the haters – the power of influence may take its course.

It doesn’t matter what side you are taking, you are still talking about Miracle Whip. And that my friends, is intelligent advertising.

(And for the record, I do not like Miracle Whip.)

As you begin to think about 2012 marketing plans and budgets, it’s a good idea to review your media mix. The first step is to categorize your efforts and budgets by breaking them down into paid, earned and owned media categories.

Owned vs. Earned vs. Paid Media

The common idea is that “paid” media is advertising; “earned” media is PR; and “owned” media is all the other channels companies use to reach their customers directly – their website, email campaigns, Twitter and Facebook pages, etc.

These three media types are defined primarily by the level of control a company has over the message or interaction channel. It’s easy to see why companies would be interested in having more control over their messages and interactions—and therefore allot a greater share of their budget to owned media. Meanwhile, earned media can be appealing thanks to the credibility it lends: Third-party endorsements (via trade journals and other new sources) are a crucial part of a comprehensive marketing plan. With such a longstanding focus on advertising and PR, companies might neglect the important third channel: owned media.

Via company blogs and advanced search-engine marketing efforts, owned media has the ability to reach a broader audience–and deserves a greater long-term share of your marketing budget.

Advantages of Owned Media

1. Control – When done right, owned media allows you to tell your company’s story in a way that not only does the brand justice, but that also maintains editorial integrity and brings value to the marketplace. Ultimately, it’s a better way to ensure that a user’s experience fulfills your brand promise, because you control the medium—a significant advantage over earned media.
2. Cost – With owned media, you invest more significantly in creating your own content – white papers, videos demonstrating valuable how-to tips or best practices, and ongoing case studies that demonstrate your brand’s value and provide support to your target market. While creating engaging, attention-grabbing and sharable content is an investment, there’s no cost for placement, since your distribution channels are your own website, social pages, email campaigns and PPC or SEO efforts.

In the long run, you can bolster the overall return on your marketing investment with owned media – and enjoy far more valuable lead generation.

How new online tools and techniques can benefit from traditional direct response tactics

The marketing world has gone through some dramatic changes in the last decade. There are countless new tools offering incredible opportunity for marketers to reach their customers in new and exciting ways. But the opportunity comes at a price. PPC, SEO, CTR, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Orkut, StumbleUpon, Foursquare … nearly all marketing professionals have thrown their hands in the air at some point, and wondered, “How do we keep up?”

Did you forget something?

In an effort to stay out in front, we charge full-steam ahead—following this blog, watching that webinar, attending seminars and conferences—all to come up with our own strategies for integrating new tools and tactics. It’s exciting to be doing something new and different, but what is sometimes lost in the rush, is attention to the fundamentals— integration of the tried and true.

The power of an offer

When it comes down to it, most online marketing is good, old-fashioned direct response advertising. We’re trying to get someone to do something—to click, to buy, to join, to respond. If we want people to act, we need to give them an incentive. A compelling offer has always been a critical element of any successful direct response effort. It is important because it adds value and incentive.

Offer = Value = Incentive

Why should the viewer bother? Although money talks, the offer doesn’t have to be “20% OFF” or “Buy One Get One FREE.”  It could be membership in an exclusive group or access to something not available to the general public. The bottom line: If the target is going to act, he needs to feel there is something in it for him.

Turning up the heat

Another critical element of direct response is urgency. If your target feels the offer is available any time, then she has no reason to pull the trigger now. Maybe she’ll come back next week? Maybe next month? Maybe.

You’ve worked hard to get your audience’s attention. You have an offer they’re considering. The key is to make them feel that if they don’t do it now, they‘ll miss out.

While a short expiration is an effective way to instill urgency, there are alternatives. To give your offer time for proper exposure, perhaps you might provide the offer until the end of the month, but give potential customers a bonus for acting now—a free month of membership for a friend, for example (which would also serve as a nice viral referral mechanism). Or perhaps you advertise the fact that the offer is only available in a limited quantity. Whatever it is, potential customers must see the value, feel like the stars have aligned and be inclined to act now.

Incentive + Urgency = ACTION

New online marketing channels provide more ways than ever to creatively reach and engage your target, but don’t make the mistake of thinking everything has changed.  Basic motivations are the same as they were 10 years ago, just as they will be 20 years in the future. People act when they feel there is something in it for them and they don’t want to miss out—online or off.

We want to know what you think. Have new online tools and techniques eliminated the need for traditional direct response incentives and calls to action?

David Fabbri is Creative Director of LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency specializing in content marketing strategies and customer acquisition for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by David)

Being responsive is at the core of interactive marketing.

Consumer empowerment has taken over marketer power for what seems like the past decade. With the tremendous growth of social media, consumers expect marketers to know everything about their buying habits and patterns. Social media has enabled consumer loyalty, but not necessarily the consumer experience. A company may have a massive brand presence on Facebook, but having one million fans does not mean they are giving the consumer the desired brand experience.

Interactive Marketing Plus

Social media provides the opportunity for market researchers to listen to and mine consumer insights, but this is not the only opportunity presented. Social media allows consumers to directly respond to the changing marketing conditions. Social networking has created a virtual space for people to be advocates for their fellow brand ambassadors. However, interactive marketing involves more than just internet marketing.

Crowdsourcing & Measurable Results

Consumers are more likely to talk about a brand via social media rather than through surveys. Although social networks use analytical software to produce measureable results, they are slow to make the data, analysis, and insights available to marketers. Marketers need to reconnect with consumers to optimize the consumer promise and the brand promise.

The mission and challenge for marketers is to be responsive to consumers’ concerns and behaviors with a more measureable, data driven approach by customizing the marketing experience.

It is time for marketers to engage with consumers and effectively meet their expectations. The question remains: when it comes to interactive marketing, who is really in control?

Many b-to-b organizations have an abundance of technical and practical resources that can help them connect with their customer base. Unfortunately, much of this content is often buried within technical sales presentations and internal documents that only reach customers in one-on-one meetings and trade-event presentations. This exposure is valuable, but the impact evaporates quickly, the information is difficult to share and the reach is limited.

The Shift to Sharing

A fundamental change has occurred in buyer behavior — most now conduct the majority of their product research online. This shift has forever altered b-to-b marketing leadership practices. You can achieve marketing leadership by becoming a trusted resource for strong, practical information.

Large or Small — This Opportunity Also Represents a Threat

If your company is large, with a deep pool of technical resources, you can have a significant advantage. The move from yesterday’s model, however, requires an investment of both manpower and capital. Making resource sharing a priority requires buy-in from the C-suite; they must agree to share more information, endorse the assignment of new accountabilities and approve related spending decisions. So, with the exception of companies with marketing-savvy executives, large companies are proving to be slow to react — creating opportunity for smaller companies to improve their position.

If your company is a smaller, niche player, this type of resource sharing can be equally advantageous. Specialized product and service providers often have a very compelling competitive advantage when speaking to the right prospects. Sharing content in the right way enables customers and prospects to find you more easily. If you don’t claim your space however, you will miss out on buyers searching for your products or services.

Stop Guarding Your “Secrets”

The only people you are hiding your best content from are your customers. Chances are, your competitors already have most of the information you’re afraid to share. Today, you need to leverage your valuable content—through every channel you have at your disposal. This becomes very dynamic, as you link content to and from landing pages, ads, email, websites, blogs, social sites and others. You need a staffing and marketing mechanism in place to provide constant support for information dispersal and management across the web.

PR, DR and Branding — The Walls are Melting

The big difference today, compared to years past,

is that your control is gone—until prospects experience your brand first hand, they build their perceptions based on the results of their online research—from trade magazines, peer reviews, forums, websites and any number of sources. This is why having a strategy for quality content is vital; it is also why PR, advertising, email marketing, social media, paid search and SEO are now so completely intertwined.

Some of the boldest business successes of late come from unveiling what many would regard as a competitive advantage that should be protected. In this way, companies such as Google, Apple, Lynux, WordPress, Amazon and many others have changed the game. People want to do business with approachable, transparent and resource-rich companies—and this often requires a change in the way organizations approach marketing and business. In the age of information, sharing yours is the ideal way to build trust, credibility and brand equity.

Scott LoSasso is President of LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency specializing in content marketing strategies and customer acquisition for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by Scott)

Evolve or become the next fossil in the wake of social media and brand management. The days of sitting in the ivory tower on a pile of cash are over, you’ve got to be with the masses in the muck to get any kind of footing in the new business of curating the attention of others.

But how?

Be a thought leader, become a peer, and transform your brand into a competitive, free-content driven resource for others to utilize. “It used to be so easy when dollars equaled dominance, but now there’s a digital fly in the ointment,” (Brand Week, 4.4.11, p. 12) and that fly is causing huge ripples for brands.

It’s all well and good to be a big dog brand but without drawing people’s focused attention to your content, a big old fossilized dog your brand will become. Content can be bought but the reality is content is generated every second by a spectrum of free agents, and catering to and providing for that new power is essential.

It is important now to bolster one’s in-house talents and recruit those well-versed in generating interest in the new way — social media. Whether brands adapt or not, those who are watching them are most likely tweeting, facebooking and blogging about them — after all “a person’s a person no matter how small” (thanks Dr. Seuss).

The TEDTalks have been a constant source of inspiration for me with their seemingly simple mantra of “Ideas Worth Spreading”. Those of us who love TEDTalks and those of you who are new to them, should be excited about the TED Conference’s newest contribution to our world — “Ads Worth Spreading“.

“Ads Worth Spreading” is a challenge to the ad world to submit truly creative work and not just a 30 second regular commercial to bombard a viewer.

The charge is to inspire a conversation, an action, a move towards social good — to create an advertisement that is worth more than its quantified profits. Maybe people would buy more Ho-Hos if they knew that a portion of the proceeds went to funding urban farming or school gardens to insure proper nutrition in young children. Chris Anderson, the curator of the TED Conference, even cites Wal Mart as a partner in the conference that wanted to discuss how they could become more sustainable as a company.

I’m in love with the idea that we ought to be tapping into our advertising as a means to inspire others. How many times have you felt harassed by these commercial “come-ons”, as Chris Anderson puts it, and quickly turn the channel or leave the site? Chances are high you lose interest with boring, “sales-y” adverts and probably get awfully annoyed.

Advertising should follow the short film aesthetic – buying into this continued conversation with engaged consumers we keep talking about – and make an ad that tells a story, that provides more intrinsic value than cold profit. We are a global community surrounded by devices and even clothing/accessories that perform more actions than their base purpose.

We are a multi-tasking world and so it follows that click-through rates are falling because our ads are serving only the dollar and cents purpose. The rate at which we inhale media daily has not translated into close attention to this same media. “Ads Worth Spreading”  challenges those of us in the advertising world to create that which will keep the ever-illusive close attention, to cultivate a more informed conversation between consumer and company.

Facebook may have a serious following of 600 million worldwide but LinkedIn is the number one social media network in terms of growth; 1 million new users a week.  From jump street, LinkedIn established Q&A online communities through groups (both private and public). Self-identifying groups with large amounts of members are attractive potential markets.

B-to-B marketers are finding that LinkedIn and these communities, or groups, are the best platforms from which they can communicate with one another and create exposure for themselves. In the constant effort to appear more transparent, LinkedIn has a more buttoned-up, purely professional feel than Facebook or Twitter making it a good spring board for lead-generation and continued and open dialog.

Facebook’s answer to the Q&A feature of LinkedIn, that attracts so many, is the “Questions” tab. This recent and slyly added  feature hasn’t blasted users with the usual Facebook overhaul alerts, “we revamped the entire lay-out of Facebook, get ready for the switch-over”.

You’ll only notice “Questions” when you’re updating your status on your profile page. The move to the additional feature without any official announcement is interesting because of Facebook’s other intentions.

The minds at Facebook have delved further into discussions about implementing real-time advertisement solutions based on your status updates and “questions”. Will this be Facebook’s attempt to gain more users and compete in LinkedIn’s category? Food for thought.

Two dimensional QR codes have been alive and abroad for several years and yet, the U.S. hasn’t quite taken to them.  Customers and users still aren’t sure what to do with them or why they’re on packages and posters. The early adopters didn’t spread as quickly as other technologies that were more tangible.

Marketers must educate the public about using the QR codes, why they are useful and why they are integral to our mobile world. Perhaps they’ve been marketed wrong or not at all – there certainly was no debut like the unveiling of the iPad2 so the codes have largely fallen under the radar. B2B Magazine found that “1% of U.S. mobile phone owners and 5% of smartphone owners had used a 2D barcode scanner in the previous three months” (B2B 3.14.11, p.11).

The importance of the QR code is its ability to act as a bridge between our physical and printed world to the virtual world. The 2D codes offer a direct line to further information for consumers. Post™ Cereals, Macy’s and art museums now sport the codes as another way to attract their audience to the continued conversation (discounts, events, consumer appreciation, surveys, give-aways, contests) and further strengthen the feedback loop. The inherent risks of the technology are broken links, codes that aren’t compatible with users’ mobile devices and thus loss of interest. Given time to develop and greater accessibility this could be the new technology with which the U.S. finally gets on board.

We all know them, the mascots of large corporations — the creepy King of Burger King (since retired), Flo with her bump-it of Progressive Insurance, Mayhem (a personal favorite) of All State Insurance and now “Peggy” of Discover Credit-Cards in his Coogi sweater (tapping into call-center nightmares and a touch of xenophobia).

The latter two fall into a category of marketing that highlights the awful aspects of life or customer service as the antithesis to their great services.  Domino’s pioneered the first giant step into this category creating ads emphasizing how truly terrible their pizza was.

Instead of denying the problem, Domino’s tapped its customers’ complaints and made the necessary improvements. Then they televized it with customer pictures from the dark ages of pizza delivered with all the toppings stuck to the box, juxtaposed against customer pictures of the next generation pizza used in their national ad campaigns. You know you’ve got smart PR people working for you when you can talk into Oprah’s third ear, Gayle King about a pizza chain.

How does this affect change in other industries? I’ll sound like a broken record, but social media is the golden ticket. We’re getting back to basics where the customer is always right and away from the old school of marketing where the customer was merely a vessel to imbibe what we poured out.

Complaints can be addressed in real time; they can even be tracked to locate the person complaining so it’s easy to provide them with the nearest available store, repair center or customer service outpost. Change is scary and it’s especially scary if it’s what’s holding your company back from its full potential. In the case of Domino’s, a complete overhaul was essential to garnering larger market shares and new customers. Social media carries the conversation over from that half minute ad into the full monty of Twitter and Facebook and enhances that almighty bottom line.