Is this newspaper boring? Or would you give it another chance if you saw it while waiting for the bus tomorrow?

Image Courtesy www.KravMagaTraining.com

If you follow me on Twitter you probably know that I’ve been taking Krav Maga classes for the better part of a year. Krav Maga is a self-defense system that was initially developed in the 1930s to protect Jewish people from growing antisemitism and violence. The founder, Imi Lichtenfeld, eventually became the Chief Instructor of Physical Fitness for the Israeli Defense Force when it was founded in 1948. Krav Maga is now the fighting style of most US law enforcement agencies, as well as police forces and militaries throughout the world.

In class we do a lot of drills and cover a lot of different styles of punches. Straight punches, hooks, uppercuts, elbows, palm strikes, hammer fists – all against a large padded shield that our partner holds. At least once or twice a class, at the end of these drills, our instructor calls out “All Out Hands!” which means that we need to work as hard as we can to try and destroy the shield. Any punch is acceptable, as long as we do it as hard and as fast as possible. Technique matters, but so does speed and force. When we first started our class most people simply punched as hard as they could. Now the people who are really good start with a couple of punches, but quickly add in hammer fists, elbows, palm strikes – varying hits that allow them to increase their effectiveness and deliver such force that their shield holder begins to be pushed backward. In a fight it would be this combination of attacks that would help you defeat your opponent and allow you get to safety.

If you think about it, marketing is a lot like this. We spend our time learning individual tactics – blogging, Twitter, direct mail, etc. But when we have a new client or a new product to launch, we bring together all of these tools to hit the public from all directions. We invoke Twitter for an instant connection to lots of relevant people, blog to help our SEO, and then launch TV or direct mail campaigns. We spend time learning about and researching individual methods of marketing, but we realize the most benefit not from one tactic, but from bringing all of our tools together to overwhelm the public and get them interested in the product or service that we’re working for.

If your business relies on only one type of marketing right now, you are missing out on the real power of marketing. Even adding one more type of marketing to the mix will supercharge your results. But when you are really great at marketing, you will be able to invoke several different methods of reaching potential customers, each of them expertly launched and targeted for optimum results. Your target audience is overwhelmed (in a good way) by the messages that they are receiving, and they purchase. Bam!

Your survival might depend on it.

That pretty much sums up the 3six5 project. I’ve been following the project since 2010 and I’ve seen some great blog posts, many written by people that I look up to and admire.

Today, April 19, 2012, was my turn.

I hope that you’ll point your browsers over to http://the3six5.posterous.com/april-19-2012-ryan-holota and read my post. I also hope that you will consider adding the blog to your reader. There really are some fantastic writers over there, and I’m honored to be a part of the project.

Again, this isn’t because I have some kind of mad-on for advertising – I love advertising. But advertising isn’t about telling you obvious things that you can believe, it’s about making you feel a certain way about yourself when you see a product.

This post is a sort of reminder for people to take the images that they see and the stuff that they hear with a grain of salt. Last fall I stumbled across a short video that showed the touch-ups that a professional magazine photographer did to EVERY subject in Photoshop. The image that came out of the computer looked almost nothing like the photograph that went in. I went looking for the video again recently to share it with all of you, but I could not find it. However, I did find another video that I thought was even more interesting. It’s long, but if you aren’t a professional photographer, I think you should watch it to see just how heavily manipulated the images that we see in the media are. In many cases, such as with H&M, the people represented in the ads represent an impossible ideal.

So, for your entertainment and amazement, I present to you: Remodeling A Figure In Photoshop

That being said, it’s not the same code of ethics.

Every product on the free market has a right to market itself to consumers. Marketing is essentially showing how you are different (better?) than your competitors. But, what if you’re not different than your competitors? What if the product that you offer is completely identical to another product? How do you make the distinction in a consumer’s mind between your product and another identical product?

In other words, how do Motrin and Advil advertise?

Let’s take a look at the list of active ingredients in each product.

Motrin: Ibuprofen 200mg (NSAID)

Advil: Ibuprofen 200 mg (NSAID)

A journalist who shows a truly unbiased viewpoint would say that both products contain the same ingredients, in the same dose. Choose whichever product is less expensive at the store. That’s honest journalism.

The journalist may point out that one box is blue and one is orange. They may say that one company has been around longer, that one company has more/fewer complaints, or talk about the stock prices of the respective companies.

Great, but it doesn’t sell pain relievers.

Now, let’s look at how a marketer approaches this challenge. The bold copy is from the websites for each brand.

“MOTRIN works by targeting pain precisely where you need it the most.”

Wow. Motrin must be like a laser-guided missile that seeks out the pain in my body and attacks it with the deadliness of a thousands ninjas. Wonder how it really works? Well, Motrin actually tells us: “Medically speaking, MOTRIN targets pain by inhibiting the prostaglandins your body produces when injured or sick.”

Prostaglandins? Sounds awesome. There’s no way Advil can compete with that, right?

Well, Advil says that “Nothing is proven stronger or longer-lasting on tough pain than Advil*” (That little * says “among OTC pain relievers”).

Damn. It might not target my pain like a ninja, but this really hurts, and there’s nothing stronger than Advil, short of a morphine prescription from my doctor. I wonder how Advil actually works. Let’s look for the answer, right on Advil.com – “Advil acts by blocking the body’s production of prostaglandins, reducing pain and fever.”

Those prostaglandins sure seem to cause a lot of trouble, don’t they? But what about that claim? Nothing is STRONGER or LONGER-LASTING than Advil? Is it true? Of course it’s true. Motrin isn’t stronger than Advil. Of course, Advil isn’t stronger than Motrin either. They’re exactly the same product.

I still can’t decide which pain reliever I should buy. I wish one of the companies had a video that featured a pretty girl with an infectious laugh to make me feel warm and fuzzy about their product. Oh, wait….

Notice how the woman “trains professional athletes” and that she “knows how her body should feel“? Good copywriting.

I’m Still Not Convinced

If only doctors preferred one over the other, that would convince me. Oh, wait – from the Advil website: “In fact, to treat their own aches and pains, the medicine doctors use most is the medicine in Advil.”

Advil obviously kicks ass, right?

Well, no – because I can read critically. See, it doesn’t say that the medicine doctors use most is Advil. It says “the medicine doctors use most is the medicine IN Advil.” ie – ibuprofen, which is also found in Motrin and a thousand generic store brands in every pharmacy in the world.

The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most heavily regulated businesses in the world. No drug ad is complete without disclaimers and warnings. And yet, even under that scrutiny marketers can still find a way to distinguish two identical products from each other.

In AMCTV’s Mad Men, Donald Draper himself showed us an example of this type of advertising. I can’t embed the video, but please watch it on YouTube.

For what it’s worth – I use Advil. Not because Lacey is cute, or because the box is blue, but because I’ve always used it. I also think the coating on an Advil tastes a little bit like candy, which I kind of like.

If you can think of ways to market your product or service when it is identical to it’s competitors, you can certainly think of convincing ways to market your product or service when you have a distinct competitive advantage.

And if that fails, try coating it in candy.

I’m really excited to be a small part of the team that is bringing a world-class event like TEDx to Regina and can’t wait to share more as plans unfold.

Stay tuned.

Photo Credit: PaddockTalk/Scott Schilke

I’m not really a NASCAR fan. I mean, I love auto racing, but I have fickle tastes and I don’t really watch a lot of television. However, I did try to tune in to the 2012 Daytona 500 this past weekend.

Sunday was when the race was scheduled to run but rain delayed the race and it was pushed to Monday (for the first time in the race’s 54 year history). It was originally scheduled to run at noon on Monday, but rain further delayed the race until the evening. Broadcast live, the 2012 Daytona 500 unintentionally became the first prime time televised motorsports event. How did it do?

Pretty well actually. 36.5 million viewers tuned in to watch the race, about 20% more than watched the race in 2011, but still only the second highest rated broadcast in NASCAR history. Compare this to the 39.3 million viewers who watched this year’s Oscars on Sunday or the 38.6 million people who watched the American Idol season finale last year. For the record, about 17 million people watch Monday Night Football.

NASCAR is a marketer’s dream – fast cars, bright lights, advertising everywhere – what’s not to love? Given the viewership I think it’s likely that racing will be back in prime time again – probably a smaller race scheduled for the 2013 season. Will the audience tune in? Will track attendance suffer? Will advertisers pay more for prime time commercials?

Time will tell, but I predict this will be very good for the television industry, NASCAR, and advertisers.

Jeph Maystruck is a smart marketing mind. I was very honored when he asked me to be a guest on his podcast in late January, and we had a lot of fun doing it. The topics we discussed were varied, but I think my favorite conversation was when we talked about egotism in marketing.

You can click hear to listen to the entire podcast. While you’re listening to the podcast, make sure to bookmark his website and subscribe to his RSS feed. It’s worth your time.

Lately I’ve been involved in a number of discussions about QR codes and whether they are effective or not, whether they should be used or not, and whether they have a future in marketing.

As a quick recap, QR codes were created in 1994 by a subsidiary of Toyota to track vehicles and parts as they rolled down the assembly line. Almost anything can be encoded in a QR code, from a URL to a contact card and more. The technology is basically flawless and they work very well.

The same, however, can not be said about the people who use QR codes in marketing, or the consumer who scans them.

First of all, QR codes are notoriously misused by marketers. From the infamous NYC subway ads featuring QR codes (placed where there was no mobile access), to QR codes being placed on a web page (so someone sitting at a computer would have to pull out their phone and scan the code, just to go to another web page), the stories of their misuse abound. One of my favourite misuses was at the local CIBC where a sign behind the cashiers featured a QR code. Unfortunately, the image was so small that my phone couldn’t read the image. Also unfortunate was that the cashiers at the bank said that taking photos of the space behind the cashiers was against the rules.

Second, consumers are not all created equal. I consider myself to be an early adopter of technology, but I’m not one of the people who waited in line for the iPhone 4s. In fact, my Blackberry is almost 2.5 years old – mainly because of my cellular service contract and the hardware upgrades I am allowed. I had to find and download a QR code app on my own, which most consumers will never bother to do. Even if a phone does come preloaded with a QR code reader, the odds that the user knows what it is or how to use it are pretty slim. AND, even if you do have it, know what a QR code is, and know how to use it – there is still a chance that it may not work. My Blackberry, a Blackberry Curve 8300 has a crappy camera in it, uses the flash far too often, and doesn’t focus on objects up close very well. The result is that for me, unless conditions are perfect, the scan may not work, even if the QR code is printed clearly, the code was created properly, and the destination URL is set up perfectly for mobile browsing. In fact, the impetus behind this blog post was a discussion that began at the #yqrtweetup last night because of the number of people who had printed QR codes on their name tags. The lead image in this post was my phone’s scan of a QR code on an attendees name tag – an attendee who I have a lot of respect for and who is very capable with both marketing and technology. There was no technical problem with his QR code, the problem was with my technology.

What Can Marketers Learn From This?

First, you need to think long and hard about ever using a QR code in your marketing materials. Think about where the code will be used, where people will view the code, and what they will be doing when they view the code. Billboards on a highway are a terrible place to put a QR code (what do you want people to do, scan it at 110km/h? Pull over?), but a sign that people walk past regularly might be OK. Why do you want people to scan the QR code? I think movie posters would be great places to put QR codes – you could scan them and go immediately to the movie trailer. But if all you want to do is send people to your website, why not just include the URL ( if you still want to use it to send someone to a website, make sure you ALSO include the URL so that people can still type it in manually)?

Is the destination URL mobile friendly? It better be, because I’m not carrying my laptop around to take pics of QR codes. Who is your target audience? Do they have smartphones with large data plans? Are you interrupting your customers, or are you adding value to their experience? Are they allowed to and are they able to use their phone where you want them to scan the QR code?

QR codes will not be used forever. Eventually you will just be able to take a picture of an item, and your phone will do a search on that item (ala Google Goggles). Eventually, you will be able to scan a UPC code and get the prices for that item at all the stores in a 5 mile radius of where you are. Until then, QR codes are an effective middle step – a booster to get people used to using their phones to scan items for more information. But if we, as marketers, continue to misuse this tools, we will turn off consumers and cripple the technology.

Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben is famous for saying “With great power comes great responsibility.” As marketers, we have a lot of power to influence consumers – both in their purchasing habits and in the way that they use technology. But we also have a responsibility to use that power in the proper way. We can all benefit greatly, both for ourselves and for our clients, from QR codes, but only if we stop doing stupid things with them. If consumers become accustomed to QR codes being misused they will begin to ignore them.

One thing that hasn’t changed much however, is trying to rank well in search engines. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the process of optimizing your website for search engines. The theory is that if you manage to nail down exactly the parameters that a search engine is looking for that you will rank well in search results, get tons of traffic, and make millions of dollars.

The problem with SEO is that your target is always moving. Initially, search engines were very simple and could be fooled easily. There was a time when people would simply stuff their footers with keywords, change their color to match the background, and rank well in results. Once upon a time, you could stuff your meta tags, and you would rank well. Today, both of those things are very likely to get you blacklisted and removed from a search engine directory.

There are actual SEO professionals out there. However, much like Social Media people, there are also a number of con artists. Let’s assume that you want to rank well with Google, the world’s leading search engine. Google itself offers you all the information that you could ever want about making your site search engine friendly. They have free videos, articles, and Webmaster Tools to make it easy for you to let Google know when you make changes to your site. Here’s the thing, search engines are doing everything that they can to remove your ability as a webmaster to influence search results. The goal of search engines is to return relevant content when someone enters a query. Relevant content doesn’t come from pages that are SEO optimized, they come from pages that have RELEVANT CONTENT. Search engines try to determine which pages have the most relevant content based on a number of factors.

Which factors? I have no idea. The general assumption is that they look for pages that a lot of other people link to, pages that other people consider to be a great resource. How do they do this? I have no idea. To be fair, there are very few people that actually know what search engines are looking for. One of those people is Matt Cutts, head of Google’s WebSpam team. Let’s see what he thinks about SEO:

As a content creator, I believe that content is much more important than SEO. I also believe in making things as easy for yourself as possible – why bother coding a website from scratch when WordPress has such a great platform available, for free, for anybody to use?

I’m not saying that there is no future in SEO – those who can great both great content AND follow SEO best practices will ultimately win in the debate. Further, SEO isn’t going anywhere. There will always be people, especially in the 3Ps (porn, poker, and pills) industries who will push SEO in new directions and manage to rewrite all of the rules…at least for a little while. What I am saying is that, for most of us, creating great content should be the one thing that we focus on. For now, forget your META tags, and focus on giving your readers something that is really, truly valuable.

p.s. I borrowed the subheading ‘content rules’ from the title of a book written by C.C. Chapman and Ann Handley called Content Rules. It’s worth a read if you’re in the content business. Here’s a handy link to Amazon.comwhere you can buy the book.