One of the areas where companies inevitably spend money but see absolutely no return is in the area of company clothing and trade show give-aways. The company clothing for your employees at trade shows is ok, so is producing some t-shirts or ball caps with your logo but please do not try to convince me that giving away crap (and let’s be honest for the most part it is crap) with your logo on it does anything for your business. I say this fully cognisant of the fact that it absolutely boosts team spirit to give your employees some logo’d clothing but in terms of appealing to consumers partners and as importantly investors, free spending in this area can actually be detrimental and be a sign of either ego or just poor decision making. Don’t take my word for it, Mark Cuban recently wrote on his blog “Never ever ever buy swag. A sure sign of failure for a start-up is when someone sends me logo polo shirts. If your people are at shows and in public it’s ok to buy for your own folks, but if you really think someone is going to wear your Yobaby.com polo you sent them in public, you are mistaken and have no idea how to spend your money.”

In fact, I actually think that in the economic times we are facing companies that can be creative with the whole idea of “swag” – taking it from pointless gimmicks to something that actually promotes your brand – can be huge winners. If you feel the need to hand out branded items why not be creative and at the same time do some good? My idea for you is very easy to implement, actually captures leads for you (something your hoodie sweatshirt isn’t doing) and at the same time is a way to give the same $ you are spending to a worthwhile cause.

Changing The Game – Be Charitable & Do More Business

Instead of whatever crappy gift you were going to get branded – let’s take a budget of $15 per item – get some really funky business cards (check out some creative ones here or here) or some other wallet size item and have it custom printed with some info about a charity of your choice and a URL to visit. Give the card holder notice that by visiting the URL (set a custom URL like www.yourcompany.com/charity so people know this is specific to the fed you gave them) and upon submitting their contact info (or whatever you seem necessary) you will donate $2 to the charity referenced on the card. Give each card a unique code to ensure it is entered only once and be sure to put up one of those fancy charity thermometers showing just how much money has been raised to date. You may also want to be generous and start off your fund with an initial donation which will have the bonus of people assuming many before them have participated.

The total cost to you of a promtion like this is actually probably lower than any other swag and you accomplish the business goal of gathering leads and building your business. Although it might be cool to think of thousands of people waking around in your branded gear, in reality it is not going to happen. Spend your money on something that will actually grow your business and at the same time will prove you have a staunchly business mind but a generous human heart.

Oh ya and if you really “must” have someone showoff your branded gear you may as well check out girlinyourshirt – at least that way you get the satisfaction of knowing your t-shirt gets some love (heck I’d love your shirt for $75 too).

I love when I am able to write what I consider to be bold and attention grabbing headlines so I guess I better follow it up with something of substance.

The concept of this post is extremely simple…You may think that you are the one shaping the identity of your brand and the way that it is perceived by consumers, but in actuality it is me (well not just me, but me and people like me who could be classified as “super influencers”) who might actually have more influence on how others perceive your brand than you do so it is to your benefit to arm me with as much editable content as possible.

I say this for several reasons but for the most part because (1) it is backed up by facts and (2) I know many of you can relate to the anecdotal idea that you have a “tech” friend, a “business” friend,  a “medical” friend and it is that person who’s opinion you accept as being the bottom line within their area of “expertise”…We can call these the “super influencers”

So let’s start with some cold hard facts (these facts comer from this Universal McCann paper) that at the bottom line show the growth of user generated content online and introduce the idea of the “super influencer”

• In the previous month over 44% of Internet users have shared an opinion about a product or service by Instant Messenger and 42% have done so by email
• While search remains the number one way to find out about a product or brand, email recommendations have virtually tied this number (80.2% vs 82.1%) with an 80% monthly reach
• Writing blogs has risen from 28% to 44% & Uploading a video clip from 10% to 42%
• Bloggers are very active in sharing opinions and recommendations with 32% having shared recommended websites, 29% their favourite music and 28% on products and brands
• Super Influencers are those who generate the most content, do the most research and generally consider themselves at the forefront of new technologies.

So as I said before, you may think you are shaping your brand through your corporate website the occasional blog entry and a monthly newsletter but in actuality it is these super influencers (and they do not only exist in tech, your doctor friend could easily be one) who are producing the content that other less knowledgeable users are seeking.

Users do not want to simply read your corporate website, they want real opinions from actual consumers and it is your job as a marketer to not only identify these potential super influcencers, but also to give them the tools with which to help evangelize your product.

Super Influencers Are Going To Create Content – Deal With It, In Fact Help Them

You must face the fact that if I want to write about your product or brand on my blog, in my emails or even in a panel discussion I am giving, I absolutely will and I will speak about it with whatever level of knowledge I have and using whatever tools I have at my disposal.

I am the type of person you should be looking to appeal to with everything from easily accessible graphics (do you really want me to source your logo myself) to pre-written questions and answers about your product or brand (so I don’t have to guess if someone asks me a question you happen to get all the time).

Take a look at the graph at the bottom of this post and you will see that there is no way around the fact that content will be created. Therefore as a marketer it is your job to embrace these super influencers and their desire to create content. It is extremely simple to start and I will kick it off by giving you three easy steps to implement now, I guarantee this tiny effort will yield nice net results.

• Change Your Media or Public Relations Page To Read “Media & Bloggers” - I know this seems like a tiny change but it signals that you understand that not everyone who wants to discuss your product or brand will be writing for the New York Times. It is a little thing, but it’s a respect and recognition thing and people appreciate it.

• Give Away Your Logo & Product Images – Do you really want people to use a Google Image search and put up a version of your logo that is 5 years old? How about misidentifying one of your products with the wrong image (or even worse one you pulled for legal reasons)? – The content is going to get created whether you participate or not so why not at least ensure that it looks correct.

• Search Like Crazy & Create Google Alerts - If you do a bunch of Google searching (specifically blog searching) and set up proper Google Alerts for your brands and products you will inevitably find those “super influencers” who are already generating content and buzz around your brand. Read their posts and then engage them and let them know you would be happy to help the next time they are looking for information about your company. Again, a little effort for a huge win.

There are so many good posts on how to market using social media and other forms of digital marketing that trying to point to just a few would defeat the purpose, but recently two articles got me thinking about a point that I think is rarely discussed. That topic is creating enough trust with the clients who either are afraid of digital marketing or do not think that they need to engage in digital/social marketing that they are willing to put both time and money in your hands so you can create and excute on a strategy for them.

In the recently published Social Media Predictions 2009 paper David Armano kicks off this point rather well for me. He writes “in 2008 we saw many organizations waking Web 2.0 very seriously moving from “why” to “how”  they should implement these new strategies and tactics…Organizations will come to terms with the reality that although it is now “cheaper” to launch a initiative leveraging Web 2.0 technology – it requires qualified and passionate people to make them succeed. This will not be easy for many businesses/brands…”

There are businesses and brands that have adopted Web 2.0 marketing techniques because they are run by technically savvy people or because they play in a space where they simply cannot afford not to, but what about really traditional businesses like Law and Accounting. These are the businesses where there tends to be little (if any) income directly associated with the Internet and where for the most part the professionals that work in these firms are asked to write articles for newletters but there are little real digital marketing activities. Moving from a traditional newsletter to a blog seems like a simple enough transition but what about Webinars, Podcasts and even hosting a virtual seminar? For the most part these have largely been ignored by these professional organizations for a variety of reasons and in a time where every business is tightening budgets it will take tremendous trust to make them start now.

So how do you engage these clients who could clearly benefit from utilizing Web 2.0 technologies but are certainly not going to partake in digital/social marketing on the scale where they are Twittering with their clients? The first thing you need to do is understand that for the most part these professional firms are not looking for new and exciting marketing techniques, they work in an industry where the majority of revenue comes from large corporate accounts and they market for brand recognition rather than actually fishing for clients. If you keep that point in mind then you will realize that you need to show that especially in this economy the web is the most cost efficient way to both capitalize on current relationships and reach out to create potential new ones.

It is your job as the person looking to create and execute upon a digital marketing plan to ensure that your client feels comfortable that you understand their business to the nth degree. By letting them see that you realize that their business is about relationships cultivated over many years you will then be able to introduce them to ways in which they can utilize Web 2.0 technologies to continue those relationships and further capitalize as a more techno savvy generation becomes the person deciding on who to give the next legal (insert profession) file to.

It will be easier for some professionals than others to accept that they have to take an active role in their own digital marketing but it is certainly daunting to ask this group to allocate money to digital marketing techniques when for the most part they assume a website is good enough. As Armano puts it, “2009 will prove that the Web is not powered by technology alone. Organizations will realize they require warm bodies and bright minds in order to successfully execute programs, whether they be external or enterprise.”

If you start with an even more techno challenged group like that which discussed herein, I believe that you must first create the trust in you as a marketing specialist before you can even broach the discussion of how your customer creates their own online trust persona.

“Throughout most of the Depression, Americans went assiduously, devotedly, almost compulsively, to the movies…the movies offered a chance to escape the cold, the heat, and loneliness; they brought strangers together, rubbing elbows in the dark of movie palaces and fleapits, sharing in the one social event available to everyone.”

At an average price of $.27 a ticket, movies offered a relatively inexpensive way to vacation from reality. Always popular, this sort of diversion was especially sought-after during the Great Depression. Now fast-forward to today, December 12, 2008 and I read an article that in the month of November video game sales closed in on the $3 billion (US) mark. According to the NPD Group US retail sales of video game hardware, software and accessories jumped 110 per cent last month from a year ago which makes me wonder if in 2008 maybe we have turned to video games in the same way people turned to movies in the 1920′s and 30′s.

The times are not so different, people are losing jobs, money is tight and we are looking for some way to escape in a safe (i.e. not hitting the bottle) manner that still allows us to engage in some social interaction. While people may argue that video games are inherently anti-social, in fact if you look at the facts on the way in which people play these gaming systems they paint a completely different story. Most video game players actually play with another participant either in-person or via the Internet.

In thinking about the above parallels, I did a little research on the gaming industry and so I thought I would present you with 10 industry facts that I found particularly interesting.

• The video game industry (including hardware, software and accessories ) is expected to reach $22 billion in US sales this year.
• The average game player is 35 years old and has been playing games for 13 years
• 65% of US households play computer or video games
• 97% of US Teens (99% male & 94% female) play games
• Nielson Media Research predicts the in-game advertising market to be $1 billion by 2010
• A computer and/or video game is sold every 9 seconds of every day
• 41% of Americans have purchased or plan to purchase one or more games in 2008
• The video game industry is a larger economic generator than the entire motion picture industry
• The video game industry stimulates complimentary product sales of $6.1 billion per year
• $73 million in HDTV sales are directly attributable to the Microsoft Xbox 360

Having previously worked for a major music label it has often baffled me that music labels and artist representation companies do not do a better job of leveraging the exposure an artist gets when they are featured on a daily talk show.

I am not talking about the songs that get used within a television show or a movie (you can certainly go out and purchase the CD or iTunes version of a movie soundtrack and television shows have long been releasing compilations of the music that is weaved into programming). What I am talking about is the live performance that usually ends a late night talk show or one that hits in the middle of Ellen or another day timer.

In the age of digital music, where buying (I won’t even address stealing music) a single song is not only plausible but actually more likely than purchasing an album, I do not understand why marketers have not done a better job at ensuring there is a connection between hearing a song and buying that song.

Live Music Daily & Nightly

Every single night in prime time (and practically every day on the Today Show etc…) Letterman, Leno, Kimmel and Conan all have a musical guest and each time they perform a song live that should logically be for sale on iTunes at the time of airing or at the very least the next day. I understand that sometimes performers do not like to release live material, but for many of them exposure on Letterman is larger than any billboard they could purchase.  For many watching it may be their first real exposure to that musical artist and expecting (the next time they sit down at their computer) that viewer will remember who the artist was and what they sang is a bit far fetched.

These shows are taped in the afternoon and therefore there is really no reason that the live song from the musical guest could not easily appear in iTunes that day or the next. It would be so simple to have a page in the iTunes store where you could purchase the live performances from the previous night’s late night talk shows. Why these artists would not work with their music label and Apple to ensure that their live track (and a link to their other albums and artist page) was available for purchase is beyond me.

What I envision is simple, I hear a live performance on Letterman (I have found more than a few artists this way) and when I log into iTunes I simply go to the Letterman Live Performance page. On that page would be the dates of the show, who the artist was and the song they sang with of course a link to buy. If you wanted to give even more bang for the buck, whey not sell these singles at $1.99 and include the video portion of their performance on late night?

It is certainly not my contention that selling a live single will make any one artist fly up the charts, but it is another avenue of exposure and purchasing one song when combined with Apple’s Genius feature can lead to an entirely new set of artists and music being introduced to one’s personal repertoire.

Finally, as a lawyer I know there are many rights, royalties and copyright that need to be dealt with, but lets be honest if there is money to be made everyone will figure out how to make it work.