It would be a rather large fib to say I don’t spend much time perusing the interwebs. I like to think I’m ahead of the curve, although at times any one of us can’t help but fall behind when a start-up erupts onto the scene changing what we consider to be the standards of social, content, or otherwise. Pinterest was a fantastic example of this in the last year.

It’s hard to avoid repeating material at times, whether through opinion, social media, or just plain interest. There are reasons particular articles pop through every social medium creating massive trends over a singular day; they are reporting rampantly popular news from or about a titular source. How can you not be part of sharing that information? How would you feel to not participate? Would your brand suffer?

Originality is often serendipitous. We can’t be too hard on ourselves. After all, the concepts for the paperclip, telephone, and television popped up at random around the same time, hundreds to thousands of miles away from each other. Let’s not forget that this all happened before we could all rush to Twitter and scream into the ether about any of them.

Good content needs strategy and aim. If you sit down and find that the only piece you’ll be able to write is a synopsis, of a review, of a YouTube video comment, maybe you should call it a day or ask for help. Your content should always have a purpose to further your brand or expertise within a certain industry.

Or maybe not! Perhaps random is part of your strategy! In that case, please allow me to suggest checking out TheUglyDance.com.

After having my eyes opened to the fact that the average billboard receives only three seconds of viewing time, it got me thinking, how can you evoke emotion from someone with only three seconds? 

Naturally, this came to mind while in my car where the most likely interactions to spur emotion arrive from other drivers. It was simple to find three second experiences that sparked my brain. Being cut off, those too close to the bumper of my car, those incapable of using a turn signal. All simple, little aggravations had the ability to tip the emotional scale in my head and imprint my surroundings into my mind. If I were to retell these experiences, I would most likely state where I was located when the occurrence happened.

After I had wracked up a solid list of a thousand things that could anger me within three seconds, I set off on attempting to create a list of experiences that would bring about positive feelings just as easily. Let’s cut to the chase - this is not simple.

In that case, how do you plan for a positive impression in three seconds? All of the examples I came across were deeply personal; a hearty laugh with a friend, a knowing glance, or a touch on the arm. What’s the best way to reach someone so deeply through a three second advertisement that gives the comfort of a hug from a loved one?

With so many factors that we concern ourselves with in regards to marketing and messaging, we need to keep the emotional value for our consumer audience in focus. After all, price is a fleeting thrill, two additional ounces won’t tell a good story, and not many advertisements go viral when they showcase the new shape of a product’s container.

While metrics and analytics remain at the heart of how we measure success, the delicate balance between the “art” and “science” of marketing is not lost in our methodologies. When honing a message, maybe it would be best if we took a few minutes to sit back and think about how the product and its message would make our consumers feel. It’s a great starting and sticking point.

Like clockwork every Monday I open my eyes to an inbox full of half-off deals and discounted products. I’m not entirely sure when I managed to sign up for every single subscription coupon newsletter but for the rest of the week I’ll spend more time deleting new arrivals than even looking to see if there is something worth purchasing.

Yet, I’m incapable of unsubscribing from them in mass, fearful that will be the week where everything I like to do will be half-off. If we break down the math, assuming that I received an offer every weekday for the last year from five varying sources, I’ve received 1,300 opportunities to purchase something potentially awesome. How many have I purchased? Three.

They were purchased based on the fact that the deals were simple, impulse priced, and something I would definitely do within the coming three months. I would certainly eat a burger, see a movie, or go bowling. These deals were also some of the most successful, selling out completely. Those three finds keep me receiving an additional 1,300 emails a year to possibly buy cheaper movie tickets again, and I hardly ever open them.

This seems completely illogical to me. As a marketer, it causes me to question how successful these programs really are for those purchasing them. Are there really people who open them every day or do they wait to hear from someone else that there is a fantastic deal that day? Have they reached their limit of discounted colonics and filtered them out completely?

A coupon may seem like a quick fix for a steady flow of new business to your product or business. However, a healthy amount of research about your actual customers may provide more valuable opportunities for you to get them back through your doors. Strategy is the keyto properly allocating your resources. After all, a coupon may bring people to your business once, but that doesn’t guarantee that they’ll ever be back.

Emblazoned with an imprint of a sextant, the white bound book with attached grey bookmark appears near holy as it commands attention from anyone who sees it. You’re guided through the life of Florentine Ariosto Jones beginning in Boston, who then traveled across the Atlantic to Switzerland over 140 years ago.

This story is the introduction to one of the best advertisements I’ve ever seen. A catalogue that doubles as a coffee table book; something that, unlike anything you receive on a regular basis through the mail, you’d be hard pressed to trash while tidying up. This could best be described as “forevertisement”. IWC (International Watch Co.) managed to create a marketing piece that looks like something you’d want to save if your home was burning down, and eventually pass along to your great grandchild. 

In a world where we are so focused on the next big thing to reach our audience it seems to travel the exact opposite direction of where many brands are going. Unlike any social media campaign or viral video, this book presents a solid permanence that is quite hardly the goal when it comes to many advertisements today. As we all question what will happen to Facebook, it seems that many have become focused on being the “it” thing now, and not being remembered as the one and only.

Nostalgia, which has long been there to hold the attention of consumers, is gradually being glossed over as if the market has no memory. Yet, I can assure you that people are still buying Tide because their family used it and the smell reminds them of home. We stand to learn something from this catalogue that subtly champions the longevity of its product and brand with a two page spread featuring the Pantheon dome.

The point here is not to remain in the past with your efforts but rather to cleanly tie together your brand’s value with the new and old. After all, I can’t remember the last time I sat down in a living room and picked a Facebook fan page off of the table to look at. Remember, branding comes from you and not from the medium you so choose to deliver it.

Walking away from a good idea is difficult, but it's often just as important as creating one in the process of making a concept come to life.

The agitation that flows from a poorly conceived idea can be endless…I recently told myself that I’d create a relevant and inventive post about the backlash issues regarding the Kony 2012 campaign. A week later I’m deleting drafts, accepting that I simply won’t be writing on that topic.

I had overindulged in information about the foundation, and even reached a point where I was researching tax law and angered with each new Google alert, convinced that everyone had somehow found out my idea and stolen it. This was the nod I needed that my idea was no different than any other marketing blogger and I needed to reevaluate.

Walking away from an idea is difficult. I had created a state of personal angst that I couldn’t complete a project I had assigned myself. I found myself wishing someone had said to me that it was a poor choice, that it would simply be washed away with the flood of other bloggers pouring out similar ideas. Yet even then, if warned, would I have walked away from my own idea?

Learning to accept that what you had conceived is not the best, packing up the side notes, and saying goodbye can be one of the hardest things to do as a marketer. If you’re anything like me, there are at times, periods of grandeur where you can’t imagine the idea failing. It’s a great mark of confidence but an immediate set up for failure since you’re already convinced the concept will be hallowed by critics for ages, turning your small proposal into a best selling novel, and eventually leveraged for a high budget film.

...The Great Gatsby started out as a print ad, right?

On a personal level, this is why a team atmosphere is extremely important. Professionally, even in the branding process, we may divert to a line of thinking much different from where we started. At the heart of it, getting rid of ideas can be just as important in the process of making a great concept come to life.

Ultimately, I found a way to express exactly what I had aimed to say about the Kony 2012 campaign. Not every idea can be the best, and if you can’t foresee multiple outcomes other than success for your work, you should look closer before you launch. When you have skeletons in the closet, at the very least, contemplate cleaning them up. When the negative aspects of your campaign become newsworthy there is often no one to blame but yourself. It may be time for people to start considering an advertising factor similar to karma. Never expect that even the tiniest pebble can't cause the largest wave.

Most people within the marketing community are no strangers to seeing QR codes attached to advertisements and products these days. Even many tech-savvy consumers know how to create QR codes for promotion or information sharing, which is the beauty of their open platform design. Anyone can use them, read them, and get creative.

QR codes have created a new way for brands to engage their audience with products and services, and there are already quite a few examples of ways that “traditional” QR codes are getting pushed further, including the logo-friendly SnapTag. SnapTags are a gussied up version of the mobile interactive code options. Instead of the static-like appearance of QR codes, they’ve created a sleeker option that focuses more on branding with a cleaner code look based on gaps placed throughout a ring. Digimarc, another QR code boundary pusher, takes the cake by attempting to create mobile interaction with everything from an image to sounds.

Clearly, this mix of technology and advertising is steadily improving with new forms and functions constantly. That being said, functional improvement is meaningless if the platform is not applied with the right strategy and tactics in the real world.

I recently found myself standing in the Philadelphia subway and spotted a QR code on a candy advertisement across the rails. At the safest distance, without dangling myself out in front of a pending train, the closest I could get to the QR code was about 12 feet. The QR code took up a small portion of the lower left corner of the ad, and when zoomed in on became blurred. When I got back above ground, the decoder application was incapable of deciphering it. This brought another issue to my attention, if I hadn’t already known what a QR code was and installed a reader application, how would I even know that it failed or received additional information if it had been successful? Quite frankly, how much time are we anticipating the average commuter will put into interacting with that advertisement?

It’s quite easy to see how far down the rabbit hole you can go. Depending upon the platform, there are different applications for your mobile device. What if you can recognize the symbol itself as something you should be able to interact with but don’t know how? Are the creators anticipating that brands will use valuable ad space they could be using for brand recognition to explain to their potential customers what the symbol is and how to use it? Is multichannel marketing turning into something everyone feels they must do on every form of advertising, for every product, every time?

All of these questions boil down to an engagement and demographic stew. If your product’s target demographic isn’t within the range of those who are always at the ready to find out what’s on the other side of that symbol, you should be reaching out to them in creative ways that they respond to, not simply attaching every button and symbol you can to each campaign. It won’t be long before your once full of impact campaign is doing nothing but help further other companies and gadgets for free on half of your advertisement.

The end result of this subway advertisement experience should be people stopping on their way home to pick up a candy bar and indulge.  There is very little commitment beyond just that. If the product is great they’ll be back. If it’s not a hit with the consumer, there is very little that tweets, posts, and fun codes can do.

I’ll continue to wonder what’s on the other side of that QR code, which I’d prefer to come across on the actual candy bar. Maybe I’ll have to stop on the way home to pick one up…in which case the QR code inadvertently succeeded.