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Though the economy is now hinting at improved conditions ahead, consensus remains that the recession’s effects on consumer spending habits will endure beyond the recovery. Much like the Great Depression changed the spending habits of a generation, the current recession has left consumers reaching past the lure of luxury in search of value-driven purchases. While this has been a boon to mass and value-priced retailers such as Target and Amazon, it has left many premium brands swooning.

To compete in this new environment, many marketers are finding themselves at square one, revisiting the basic tenets of connecting with consumers. Along with the economic shift, we have also seen a shift in the media landscape and audience media-consumption habits. So the fundamentals of how marketers approach and engage consumers must change as well. Here are a few marketing axioms and a look at how various brands are successfully approaching consumers in the new economic environment.

Connect on a personal level
Create opportunities to connect with consumers on a personal level. Find out what they think, what they dream and what they want. This affords you insight into their perspectives, motivations and needs. In turn, you can leverage this knowledge to benefit your brand as you provide real answers to the needs of your consumers.

Asus and Intel did this with the development of WePC.com. The two partnered with FM Publishing to create a site where users can share their ideas for computer features and uses, thereby giving the technology producers acute insights into consumer motivations. The crowdsourcing experiment has a yield of over 2,138 ideas submitted, 13,566 votes received and 3,944 “dream PCs” described.

This past year, the marketers at Lufthansa Airlines devised a method of connecting travelers with friends and family via MySkyStatus.com. Lufthansa established the site as a social utility to keep travelers connected with their social networks while flying. I had the pleasure of working on this campaign while at Profero NY (Lufthansa’s digital agency) and found that in the course of keeping users connected with each other, the airline successfully kept them connected with their brand.

This year, American Express put a social spin on crowdsourcing with its “Members Project” campaign. Leveraging social-media tools, American Express allocated a portion of its philanthropic spending and energy toward the causes advocated by voters at its site. Not only has the campaign been effective in generating a great deal of media exposure for the brand, but it also provides the team at American Express extensive insight into the values and motivations of its target consumers. This is precisely the type of intelligence brands need to facilitate connections with consumers.

Wear your heart on your sleeve
Develop a set of core values and create opportunities to communicate those values to your consumer audience. The more honest and revealing you are in communicating these values, the greater your brand’s potential to live in the heart of consumers as more than just a name.

As a corollary, join a cause that aligns your brand with a social initiative that reflects its core values. Social-cause marketing is an effective means of communicating that your organization shares a common set of values with your target consumer. Also, create opportunities for your consumers to get involved alongside your brand (either through sponsored events or purchase options that support your given cause financially through a portion of the proceeds).

Yoplait employs this strategy with its “Save to Save Lives,” where it donates $.10 in support of breast cancer research for every lid sent in by consumers (up to $1.5 million) with a guaranteed minimum of $500,000. The project successfully affiliates the brand with an issue that is of great importance to its largely female consumer base.

This year, Puma (in partnership with Fuse Project) is exhibiting this principle with the brand’s “Clever Little Bag” project. In attempt to reduce waste for the sake of sustainability, Puma has re-thought the consumer-packaging experience and reinvented the shoe box into something more eco-friendly. This initiative reaches beyond immediate commercial goals to satisfy larger social initiatives. Clever Little Bag is part of Puma’s corporate sustainability program that intends to cut its water, energy and diesel consumption by more than 60%.

When your brand stands for social progress, consumers will stand with your brand.

Constantly innovate
Innovation is the hallmark of a premium brand. Constant development and improvement distinguishes market leaders from their competitors. The economic performance of brands such as Apple, which has maintained a sales growth rate of 89% over the last three years, demonstrates that consumers recognize this commitment to excellence.

This year, Apple continued its legacy of innovation with the introduction of the iPad. At product launch, Gap was among the first set of marketers to establish a presence on the new device with its “1969 Stream” app. Gap partnered with AKQA to create a multimedia experience full of robust content intended to showcase all that the new platform has to offer. As an early adopter, Gap gained a competitive advantage as one of the few marketers with a presence on the iPad at launch.

This year, Domino’s Pizza communicated a sincere commitment to constant improvement with its “Pizza Turnaround” campaign, created by Crispin Porter & Bogusky. The campaign employed a viral documentary in tandem with a microsite and guerrilla-marketing tactics, all highlighting the company’s proactive response to long-standing criticism. It improved its organization. Its improved its product. And it improved dramatically. So far, the campaign seems to have resonated with consumers, as Domino’s celebrated $1 billion in online sales in February, just over a month after the campaign’s launch.

Remember the love
Probably the most important of steps, remember — or discover — what you love about your product. Remember what your consumers love about your product. And most importantly, remember what you love about your consumers.

ESPN employed this axiom when it teamed up with Wieden & Kennedy to produce the “One Game Changes Everything” campaign in support of the sports network’s FIFA World Cup coverage. The campaign led with a spot featuring a voice-over by U2’s Bono emphasizing the power of sport to unite men in the face of opposing politics, religion or other issues that divide humanity.

Another example of this principle at work is how BMW introduced its new “Efficient Dynamics” engineering, which the company touts as the linchpin for new innovations in its 2010 line. Instead of getting lost in science and tech speak, BMW simply states that “Joy is Future-proof,” reminding us that, beneath it all, it is the same car consumers have relied on for the ultimate driving experience for over 80 years.

Marketers, hold off on Foursquare — for now. That’s the verdict of Forrester Research on location-based start-ups, which, despite their reputation as the hot new media, are still too small for major marketers. The research firm finds that these heavily-hyped apps currently make sense mainly for brands seeking male influencers.

In a study out today, Forrester finds that only 4% of U.S. online adults have ever used location-based mobile apps such as Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt. Only 1% update these services more than once per week. What’s more, 84% of respondents said they are not familiar with such apps, leaving the vast majority of Americans online still in the dark about location-based apps, which have had the marketing world obsessing over them in recent months.

The report could also be a wake-up call for social media on mobile phones, especially when comparing the location services to the last social-media darling, Twitter. The micro-blogging service reports 35% of its 125 million registered users are in the U.S. and only a fraction of that number access Twitter via mobile. In April, Twitter said 37% of its usage comes via mobile clients. Apply that percentage to U.S. tweeters — we must extrapolate because the company does not break out U.S. users via mobile specifically — and the 16 million Americans using Twitter via mobile is about comparable to the location-apps audience in total.

Almost 80% of location-based service users are male. Close to 70% of them are between the ages of 19 and 35, and 70% have college degrees or higher. Forrester also found these location-app users to be influential (the report finds they’re 38% more likely to say friends and family ask their opinions before a purchase) and they are especially receptive to mobile coupons and offers. This set is up to 20% more likely to consult their phones before a purchase, and are far more likely to research products and services and read customer reviews.

This small audience is still attractive to some marketers. Forrester recommends that gaming, consumer electronics and sportswear marketers lead the way with testing these apps. Location apps have already proved they’re not only for male-oriented brands. PepsiCo, Starbucks, Oil of Olay, Bravo and, most recently, Campbell’s Soup have all launched campaigns with location apps.

Forrester analyst Melissa Parrish believes that male-oriented brands should forge the way and other marketers should hang back until these apps get bigger audiences. To date, Foursquare has more than 2 million users; Loopt 4 million and MyTown 2.5 million. Scale could come to the category if digital behemoths such as Facebook, Google and Twitter, which have already made moves toward location services, develop their own products.

Legitimate email marketers still have to contend with spam filters. Consider the filters while you are designing and writing your email.

1. Maintain a good balance of graphics to text in your HTML emails. Many experts recommend you try to maintain a balance of 60% text and 40% graphics.
2. Never send an email that is one big graphic.
3. In addition to the HTML version, always include a text only version. The filters reward those who take the little bit of extra time to create both versions.
4. AVOID HYPE!! Ideally, you would avoid exclamation marks and ALL CAPS and in the subject line and the content or use in moderation.
5. Do not use phrases that seem too good to be true. Yes, there are “once in a lifetime opportunities” but they don’t arrive in your Inbox.
6. The filters don’t like “money back guarantees.”
7. “Urgent!” It is not that urgent if the email ends up in the junk folder.
8. Don’t claim you have made a “breakthrough.”
9. Avoid using unusual fonts, all red type, flashing objects, and other assorted weirdness.
10. Avoid very small fonts.
11. Avoid excessive text about money. Of course, if your topic is money you have to talk about it but try to be economical.
12. Configure a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record in your Domain Name Service (DNS) records for your domain name (yourcompany.com).
13. If you are getting too many spam complaints, then consider putting the unsubscribe link at the top of your email. Many times if people cannot find the unsubscribe button right away, they will default to pressing the complain button or spam button (found on email services provided by AOL, Hotmail, MSN, Yahoo and Google). It is much better to have people unsubscribe than to register an electronic complaint.

Dailey Marketing Group can help you with any of the issues you might be experiencing with your email blasts.  Dailey Marketing Group’s email system is a recognized white listed email system which allows us to provide our clients with the best way possible to get their message to the Inbox of their customers. Call us today to get started. 888.364.6584

Brands are more important than ever.

Sure it’s a cliché. It seems every book I have read on branding contains that sentence. Yet, the Internet has created an environment that makes that statement truer than at any prior point. The Internet enables incredibly fast access to an enormous amount of information and provides connectivity and community that can empower buyers.

According to a popular branding theory, when marketplace choices increase, buyers tend to have an increased preference for familiar brands, thus, saving them research time and limiting their exposure to risk. The Internet has, without question, increased the amount of choices for business-to-business buyers.

Buyers increased access to information often results in increased expectations. In markets where products and services are largely perceived as commodities, or  strong weight is given to technical  specifications and price, given that all other things are equal (e.g., delivery time, etc.), a strong brand may be the single characteristic that differentiates a product from competitive offerings.

The significance of geography, which had once created advantages for many companies and obstacles to others, has, in many instances, been greatly reduced. Customers can now quickly and easily research product information, detailed specifications, experience computer-based presentations, search competitor offerings, find peers through professional associations or affinity groups where they can ask questions and share experiences, as well as make purchases online.

PROPAGANDA IS OUT. DELIVERING ON PROMISES IS IN.

There’s an old saying in the advertising world: “Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising.” With the mainstream adoption of the commercial Internet, the time it takes to kill poor or undifferentiated products (for the sake of simplicity, this paper uses the term “products” to describe both products and services) has been shortened considerably. Innovations are quickly imitated by competitors, rarely providing long-term sustainable advantages.

It is clear that the most sustainable advantage any company can have is a strong brand.

In the age of the informed customer, the concept of “image is reality” is dead. The revised formula is: Image + Information + Customer Expectations + Customer Experience (delivery) = Reality.

Customers new found access to seemingly endless amounts of information results in their being more demanding than prior to this access. While image remains significant, the new access to information often results in placing increased weight on specifications, capabilities and price during the buying process. This complex situation may appear to lessen the significance of brands, but, in actuality, it has elevated the significance of the brand.

Great B2B brands have the right technical specifications, connect with customers, deliver on promises that matter, exceed expectations and have a positive buzz within the buying community.

Consider the popular mantra of IT professionals: “No one ever got fired for buying IBM.” This is a good example of a brand that stands for quality in the minds of customers and provides them with a shortcut in the buying process that helps them avoid risk.

The ideal brand connects with customers on an emotional level.

Think B2C brands are the only ones that do this? Consider commercial photographers and Kodak; graphic and multimedia designers and Macintosh; business executives and recruiters and Harvard Business School; computer professionals and IBM; and mechanics and Snap-On.

Smart B2B brands use the Internet to deepen emotional bonding between the brand and customer. These marketers will often create places customers can go online that help encourage their bonding where they can find out more information about the brand, communicate with other brand advocates and feel a sense of a community that is connected by the brand. Microsoft is excellent at creating emotional bonds with the developer community through its various developer groups. These groups have their own special sections of the Microsoft Website, training (including some at no cost), special access to information (they can receive advance notification of announcements prior to the general public), membership, online events such as seminars, discounts on Microsoft products (software and books) plus offline meetings and events.

Microsoft understands how to meld the offline and online worlds together for the benefit of its brand.

THE FALLOUT FROM THE “NEW ECONOMY” HYPE

During the dot-com explosion, the Internet became so over-hyped it seemed that many people had lost touch with (or never understood) sound business principles. Huge amounts of cash were spent in a mad rush to be first to create strong brands in “Internet Speed.” Now, long after the Internet bubble has burst, in many instances, there has been a reactionary backlash –a tendency to discount all things related to the Internet.

Either extreme is unwise.

The Internet is certain to play an increasingly significant role in how business is done and the management of brands. Those interested in building and maintaining strong brands need to understand and exploit the Internet’s power, integrating it with offline efforts.