Five reasons why talking boobs, good news and marketing works

I recently attended a blogger conference called Cybher – the major UK event for women who blog – fashion, parenting, food, craft – a meeting of minds – over 400 in total, many of whom are women who only knew each other via Twitter and have never met in person before.

Organiser Sian To has been heavily involved in blogger events in the past – co-organising CyberMummy for the past two years.  This event became quite swag heavy with many ladies distracted from networking and the workshops by the brands ready to ladle out free stuff – toys, clothes, shoes, DVD’s, games, smellies, you name it – you could take it.  People were dragging their hauls home, too heavy to lift.

So this year, Cybher had a distinct anti-swag policy – on arrival you received a smart satchel from the Leather Satchel Company, a notebook, pencil and an apple.

There were a handful of sponsors with stands including Palmer’s Cocoa Butter and Disney.  All were well placed.

The winners of the day though was lingerie brand Freya.  I confess to sniffing and wondering what they would get out of the day initially – I was here to talk blogging not buy underwear.

But a buzz was circulating – there were squeals of delight and surprise coming from a small tent by their stand.  Over coffee and biscuits I heard a few conversations in more detail - ‘I’ve been wearing a 34D for 20 years – I’m only a 30FF!!’.

And so the theme continued – 95% of women were wearing totally the wrong bra size.  For the smaller ladies amongst us the general consensus was ‘I’m not going, I’ll be the one person who’s wearing a bra that’s too big’.  But even these women felt compelled to meet the mystery bra fitter extraordinaire – and came away pleasantly surprise.

Twitter was awash with new found confidence and sharing of statistics.  Every break out session was full of talk surrounding the little tent of delight.  And where will many of us now head to buy our properly fitting undergarmets?  I bet a decent percentage head to Freya (at Debenhams apparently).

So five things about boobs, good news and marketing.

1. Flatter us, be honest, share something we didn’t know and we’ll be putty in your hands.

2. Talk about something intimate, make us giggle and give us ways to tell our friends and you have your word of mouth campaign right there.

3. Make it easy and incentivise us to use our new found knowledge and the chances are we’ll become new customers

4. Find a spokesperson for your brand who we’re going to love and make sure your sales and marketing team love them too. Make us want to take that person home, or at least hug them before we leave.

5. Capture our data but then tell us something interesting when you contact us.  If we can purchase from you online, make our shopping experience as personal as possible to continue the feeling we had when we first met you.

 

Any boob-equivalent marketing stories you want to share? Fire at will.

 

Image courtesy of White Zine (Freya Lingerie) and Geek is the New Chic (Satchels).

Nope, you’re still Joey from Friends

Did anyone see Matt LeBlanc’s interview trail this week – promoting the second series of Episodes where he plays a darker, butt of all jokes version of himself (with his blessing).  His voice seems to have dropped several scales and he is very clearly trying to educate the UK that he is more than just Joey from Friends.

So, he was probably seething when he appeared on BBC’s The One Show on Monday night to be lured into a poll on the streets showing a cut out of his face with passers by being asked who it was – the outcome being yes, of course the majority answered Joey from Friends.

His tone of voice was so flat and monotone throughout everything I heard which simply came across as a strange attempt to distance himself from the hyperactive sometimes squeaky ladies man who was Joey.  Rather than encouraging people to embrace his role in Episodes it just felt like he was fed up – the suit didn’t help either, it looked like he’d left the ironing board down the back he was so rigid.

I didn’t hear any interviews with Warwick Davis when Life’s Too Short launched but I can’t imagine he was as blah as this – I’m sure he talked it up – he probably had to be loud and animated if interview alongside Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

So it’s a shame, because the clip of Episodes I just watched looks quite funny.  The Chris Moyles Show concluded that their interview was quite hard work, but Twitter informs me that Matt’s interview on Radio 5 Live with Richard Bacon was far more informative (about 12 minutes in), so I’m off for a listen. What did we do before the iPlayer?

I’ve not seen the show before but shall be tuning in with interest on May 11th (BBC 2).  The series follows a husband and wife team of comedy writers who take their show to Hollywood, are then cornered into casting LeBlanc as the lead, totally changing the script with disastrous consequences.  Having discovered that Stephen Mangan is in the show I will definitely clear my Sky+ diary accordingly as he’s pretty funny.

The moral of the story – sell yourself to your customers, not your wares and you will reap the rewards.

Five lessons we can learn from The Apprentice candidates

I’m not going to make this a post about shouting at the television every week – because we all do it.  We know the routine – they all look amazing on paper but put them in front of the cameras and they seem to leave their common sense at the door – £5.99 Morrison Value pasta and meatballs  at a football game – say no more.

I think I’d hate to be a candidate on The Apprentice – I’d realise I have odd facial expressions, or I’d get frustrated that no one would listen to my quirky (but good) ideas.  However I confess that on the Thursday morning after the Wednesday evening show, I’m brimming with new ideas – last week I was investigating the logistics of a vintage furniture business as a sideline but decided that one full-time job is plenty – for now.  I decided to browse the local car boot the following Sunday morning for vintage bargains instead – I drew a blank.

So here are five quick things that I think we can all learn from The Apprentice candidates.

1. You always come across better when the pressure is off.  Look at how much more intelligent and witty the candidates appear in their ‘You’re Fired’ interview.  When they’ve got nothing to prove or play for.  When you’re pitching for new business I always think it pays to treat it as informally as is professionally acceptable and build in plenty of time for conversation and reflection.  People buy from people so don’t just sell your services sell yourself too.

2. Listening to ideas is sometimes better than coming up with your own.  There is a case for too many cooks spoiling the meatball recipe, however sometimes if you’re running a business you need to take a step back and let the creative genius come from someone else.  And be aware that you never know where those ideas will come from – some of my best inspiration has come from my three-year old son.

3. Look in unusual places for inspiration.  I love the moment when Tom Pellereau, the 2011 winner was animatedly scouring the small ads in a shop window, trying to come up with ideas for his teams pie shop.  When we’re brainstorming we use techniques like picking random words from a newspaper or starting with words that conjure up the total opposite to the solution we’re looking for.  I hate the phrase ‘thinking outside the box’, so maybe it should be ‘thinking outside the shop window’.

5. Don’t always be the yes man.  Sometimes it’s better to say ‘actually I’m not the person for the job’.  Referring someone to another individual or company who is better placed to provide the right level of expertise will always stand you in good stead for future referrals and shows that you have a given area where you shine and that you’re not trying to be all things to all people.  Utterly Delicious is not a brand name in my eyes and if it came from me as someone who classed themselves as a branding and marketing expert, I’d be hiding under a rock.

So we’ll be tuning in next Wednesday as ever to delight in the misfortune of a gaggle of eager, talented and educated individuals who are coming to realise that pressure of the media makes you say some pretty stupid things.  ”What type of food do you think I’m selling today?” springs to mind – got to love Katie.

Has Skype had its day?

During a team meeting yesterday we were discussing the merits of Skype for briefings when we’re not able to be in the same place at the same time with clients or key contacts.  What did we do without it?  Sat on the M6 a lot!

However the drops in connection are frustrating, the delay in hearing the other person’s voice annoying and the picture quality irritating – entertaining sometimes if it freezes on a particularly awkward pose of your caller.

So it was surprising to see last week that when The X Factor returns to our screens later this year (I hear groans), that Simon Cowell is set to take a slightly different role and will be airing his views from a far and using the powers of Skype to connect him to the contestants, fellow judges and viewing audience in the studio and at home.  So are we set to see frozen Cowell’s, eyes half closed, mouth wide open?  Could be funny.  Annoying though.

Our conversation yesterday led from Skype to Google+ and their Hangouts function – definitely worth exploring and as far as we can see, very likely to blow Skype out of the water.  Better connections, free chat with up to 10 people (create a circle to chat privately) and all with audio and video.  The premium Skype service allows group chats but it’s reported to be unreliable.

What’s even better about Hangouts is that you can all view content at the same time – whether it’s YouTube or a presentation, you can all work from the same page.  It has a multitude of uses.  You can’t use in conjuction with Screen Chomp apparently which is a shame but you can share PowerPoint documents and there is a white board function making it a really valuable online tool for demonstrating ideas, systems, setups, brainwaves, you name it.

Hell if it’s good enough for the Dalai Lama, then it’s good enough for me (a reported Hangouts user).

More about Google+ Hangouts here.  I’m looking for a reason to use the pirate hats, leave it with me….

Why we’ve fallen in love with stationery all over again

As I look around my desk, it’s dotted with brightly coloured pens, highlighters, fancy paperclips, note pads, different shaped post-it notes and postcards.  Yes, my iPad sits neatly alongside this little cacophony of feint ruled paper and pens with a tip equipped for any project, but I have made a definite decision that I still require both in my life.  For ever.

I confess to always having been a bit of a stationery snob, Paperchase being my retail outlet of choice, but since the dawn of social media it feels like we’ve become a little more obsessed – because we don’t really need it anymore do we?  It’s become a luxury item.

I was thinking about this new-found importance for stationery and its nostalgic appeal and then read a great article by Lucy Mangan in The Guardian – a fellow writing apparatus geek.  According to the article, John Lewis has seen a 177% increase in sales of their premium lines in the past year as we all go bonkers for desk décor.  Liberty even opened a stationery hall last year – a whole hall dedicated to writing instruments, pads for our musings and doodlings, things to hold other things together, natty systems to remind us about important stuff….. I would be like a child at the pick and mix stand.  Paperchase by the way, opened 14 new shops last year, and thankfully one of them was right near to me.

I also confess to feeling far more productive and organised armed with an attractive notebook and fine-tipped Muji pen in pale green.  And of course any new client warrants a new folder system and colour coded labels.

Have a look around your desk.  Have you started to hoard such things?  Are you clinging onto the hand written word like me?  I feel the need to stat a stationery appreciation society page on Facebook – which would be ironic considering that Facebook was kind of the start of the end of letter writing, and therefore stationery.

Bring back letter writing sets!  And notepads that come with little stickers for various occasions for that matter.

Oh and don’t get me started on Pinterest and the death of the scrap book..

I’ll leave you with my current lust list…

1. Swallow card from Muji.  2. Letter tape by Wild Olive.  3. Sticky Notes by Pony Brown.

By the way, Muji does some great apps – so maybe you can have the best of both world…

5 good and bad ways to go about getting a job in PR

We’ve had a fantastic final year PR degree student working with us since last summer, and secretly I’m hoping she wants a job as soon as she graduates and doesn’t want to travel the world…

Ok so travelling and soaking up culture is really important – and will probably help a lot of people to get a job, so hopefully she’ll want a job when she gets back.

She’s really employable for a number of reasons – she asks a lot of questions, she’s punctual and well presented, she wants to learn, she’s happy to have a go at anything and she enjoys what a PR role encompasses.  And that last point is really important because when she started with us she wasn’t to0 sure if she was going to or not.

Not everyone can bounce into your office, roll their sleeves up and declare that they’re ready to get stuck in with a big smile on their face though.  And at the moment the job market is tough.  We get a handful of CV’s every week – we’re not even actively advertising for positions but we still get a lot.  Some we read, some we don’t.  It’s a bizarre place the job market at the moment; we are constantly hearing stories of people not being able to find work at the same time as employers screaming that they can’t find good people.

So let’s start with how not to go about getting a job in PR – and these are all real examples that we’ve encountered.

Bad ways to go about getting a job in PR

1. Don’t send a tweet saying ‘hi there, do you have any jobs I might be interested in?’.  Lazy.  By all means use Twitter to stand out but use it in a way that’s going to get us interested and follow it up by email or phone.

2. Don’t send an email addressed ‘Dear Publicity Oxford’.  Take a minute to find out who you should be addressing.

3.  Don’t email your CV to companies outside of your area of desired employment asking them to pass it on to anyone they know who might be relevant/interested/know someone else who might know someone.  You have to do a bit of the leg work and/or register with a specialised recruitment agency.

4. Don’t ask your mum to find you a job.  Ok, so there may be some exceptions here if your mum is well-connected, but still, take a professional approach and try to do the contacting yourself.  If you want a decent job, it pays not to arrive having to say ‘my mum sent me to see you’.

5. Don’t go crazy with the buzzwords.  Yes you want a snappy profile piece that sums up what’s great about you, but an opening line in an email which crams in ‘amazing’, ‘versatile’, ‘dynamic’, ‘can-do’ and ‘multi-tasker’ is a little like listing sports, socialising and cooking under your hobbies section.  Think about what really makes you different, because there will be something that ticks that extra box for an employer.

And onto the most important part, really what should you be doing.

Good ways to go about getting a job in PR

1. Writing a blog.  CV’ s are really dull, I don’t think I’ve ever read one except my own from start to end, and that was a little dull too.  If you want to work in PR, consider your job application to me a media pack for ‘BrandYou’.  A blog is a great way to get across your level of understanding, opinions and personality.  It needn’t be solely about PR but could have lots of references to current news agenda and your take on those stories.  It could bring in your passions in a far more interesting way that the hobbies section of a CV does.

2. Using social media.  You can’t get away from how useful tools like Twitter and Facebook are for networking.  And if you avoid the pitfalls in point 1 of bad ways to get a job in PR, you can use these areas to really stand out.  Create a Facebook page for your job search with lots of information about your education, skills, experiences and ambitions and you could even get some local press coverage about how you’re going about your search.  Twitter will help you to better understand the market place, find key influencers and business events that could be worth attending.  If you’re hunting for a PR job you really need to know you’re way around the social media scene too so using them as part of your job application process will stand you in good stead.

3. Having a show reel.  This might not be for everyone, but having a YouTube Channel with some short vlogs (video blogs), interviews and opinion pieces will speak volumes to a recruiter.  Take a look at this video CV – this is as good as they get so don’t be put off, if you’re willing to switch on the camera and have a go, it could well pay off.

4. Getting some work experience.  Even if you can’t go into an office regularly because you’re still studying, find ways of getting out there.  Offer to write for free for a local magazine, the college newspaper or a related blog.  Check out LinkedIn groups for opportunities and make a wish list of the types of experience you want to gain.  Consider a skills swap if you could do something like trading admin support for social media training.

5.  Getting the recruitment agencies onside.  We’ve heard lots of stories about agencies holding back CV’s, not putting people forward for jobs they really want, and not updating candidates about new opportunities, so you’ve got to get them to remember you.  Why would they?  Because you’re different.  You’re the best person for the job.  Make sure to treat that first meeting with them like a job interview, sell your socks off and give them a good reason to put you forward and tell potential employers why you’re that bit special.  I’m sure we don’t need to mention the firm handshake, but that coupled with your new media pack and we’re pretty sure you’ll be at the top of the pile.

 

If someone who’s tried out each of these five points is out there, I’d give you a job.

Is cashpoint marketing crazy?

Last week I stopped at my local Tesco’s to get some money from the cashpoint as well as popping into the shop to buy a few things for lunch.

I pressed the buttons for cash, £20, no receipt and then I was asked this:

“Will you be buying or considering buying Coco Pops today”

I wish I’d taken a photograph.  Honestly.

Not only did I not have the time or interest in answering the question, but also why should I be polled when I simply wanted to get £20 in cash?!

I jabbed the ‘no’ option and then wondered afterwards if I was to ignore the question, would I have been allowed my cash still?!

When I Googled ‘cashpoint marketing’ I drew a blank – one the first articles that came up via Marketing Week was from 1999 and talked about how cashpoints were set to become a regular feature on the high street.  What did we used to do on a Sunday afternoon if we needed money for a roast dinner?!  I didn’t come up with much else.

Another variation on this new technique is being asked questions like ‘was your cashier helpful and friendly today?’ when you enter your card to a PDQ machine at the till.  These I find slightly less offensive because the data collected will hopefully go towards improving customer service.  Hopefully.

But being asked if I’ll be buying a certain product today?!  Should companies be allowed to invade our space to this level?

On Facebook we are (mainly) happy and comfortable to interact with brands these days, and although they do invade our timelines somewhat, we still choose whether to answer a question or respond to a post.

With the recent news that the Twitter back catalogue is set to be opened up with our tweets from years back being available for marketers to survey our daily choices and life preferences, it leaves you wondering, what next?

Maybe we’ll have to press a button on our dashboards answering a question about what we had for breakfast before our car will start in the morning.

Maybe we’ll be asked how much exercise we do each week before the fridge door will open.

Or maybe we’ll even be asked what make and model of car we drive before the pump will dispense any fuel.  Or maybe Esso already know, after all, Big Brother is always watching….