Facttactic
Corporate and technical writers
Seems like us Kiwis trust people with a medal. Similarly, if you can get external recognition for your products or services it can be a helpful differentiator in the market.
Though not, it seems, for much longer in the United States if you are claiming green credentials: 98% of supposedly environmentally friendly products in US supermarkets reportedly make false or confusing claims.
I often get asked, “how would you spin that?” Both by clients wanting advice and people simply having a conversation when they find out what I do for a living.
But, rather than being a spin doctor, any good PR person knows that the best results for clients lie in helping people to more clearly and transparently understand a client’s business. Knowledge = power, for everyone. Spin simply confuses and obscures.
Below is a doctor of another kind, who definitely understands that honesty is the best marketing/PR policy. His marketing of his ‘Heart Attack Grill’ leaves no sacred cow – food-wise – untouched and he is pulling in the customers because of it.
You may find cynical the grill’s apparent mocking of obesity health issues, but it is simply a burger joint that makes no attempt to pass off its regular burger joint food as other than what it is … and, yes, warning: high-fat content!
Should your business embrace Twitter and start tweeting? Not always!
It can offer good promotional and marketing opportuntities, but to be effective, you’ll need to set clear guidelines for how to use it. If your business has a PR team, you should be looking into using it. If you’re a small business without resources to do it well, give it a miss, no big deal. This story explains why and what not to do.
But, even if you do not intend using Twitter, you should definitely register Twitter accounts for your brands to stop other people using them for their own purposes. This is becoming a major problem on the Twitter service where anyone can register any name or brand word. Tons of firms are finding their names used in bogus Twitter accounts.
Registering on Twitter is free, quick and easy to do — and I would suggest you get in quick and register your important brand names before some one else does.
It’s been interesting to read the media furore today over New Zealanders getting antsy with Canadians getting antsy with New Zealanders eating sweets called Eskimos, which are shaped as, well, Eskimos – er, make that Inuits.
Last year Kiwis ate nearly 19 million of them, making the Eskimo one of our most-loved lollies. Some Canadians have called the sweets offensive, saying Eskimo is no longer used as a term and, regardless, eating sweets shaped as Inuits is just not on and carries hints of cannabilism.
NZers have voiced their opinions in the hundreds on web and news sites, largely telling the Canadians to bog off. Email discussions at the client where I have been working this week were busy with with similar sentiment.
Pascalls, the makers of the Eskimo, has been reported saying they don’t plan to change anything.
Makes you wonder, though, what would happen if Canadians started eating lollies shaped as a person in a grass skirt called a Hori.
A restaurant in Latvia’s capital Riga has certainly found its marketing niche.
Decorated like a hospital, Hospitalis serves food, shaped like body parts, on operating-room dishes. Syringes contain liquids to go with the meals.
And just to take their image one step further, customers are treated liked patients by waitresses in nursing uniforms. From time to time deranged patients are wheeled through the restaurant in strait-jackets.
Personally, I’ve never liked dining on gore and nurses never help me feel relaxed, but I guess the owners of this places (real doctors, apparently) are confident the dining experience will live up to the publicity generated by the medical theme.
Don’t advertise, give people things! That seems to be the take-out of this U.S survey that found that promotional give-aways beat out all forms of TV, radio and print advertising as the most cost-effective advertising medium.
Give-aways had “a very low cost-per-impression, high recall among those who receive ad specialty items, and increased intent among recipients to make purchases from the advertiser,” the survey’s researchers said.
Key findings:
* 84% of people remember the advertiser on a product they receive.
* 42% have a more favourable impression of an advertiser after receiving an advertising specialty.
* Nearly one quarter indicate they are more likely to do business with an advertiser on items they receive.
* Writing instruments are the most commonly-owned advertising specialty, with 54% of respondents owning them, followed by shirts, caps and bags.
* The majority (81%) of promotional products were kept because they were considered useful.
More information on the survey is here (which, by the way, was undertaken by people who do promotional give-aways for a living, but interesting results none-the-less!)