Marketing Tip from Brown & Martin, Inc.
A Dummy's Puppet's Ramblings - from Chip Martin, Mannequin American
Marketing Tip from B&M
Marketing tools should avoid focusing on features. Talk about benefits ... results ... outcomes. What you sell is a means to an end. Focus on the end.
Your customers don't want to buy solutions; they want to buy what happens after putting the solution in place. Talk about those benefits and those outcomes. Constantly remind your prospects that you represent more than just a purchase; you represent the achievement of something bigger that will improve their business and/or their lives.
The firm I work for can help. Click here to go to our web site.
Enough Already
I'll admit it ... I typically like ads that use sex for the sake of grabbing attention, entertaining and selling. But even I have a hard time with companies like Calvin Klein that seem to use sex for the sake of ... I don't know what.
For example, everyone has sex in the middle of a playground, right? It's especially true if you're a hard-bodied model. Oh ... it's just a new commercial for Calvin Klein Jeans. And yeah, there's nudity (brief). But it's art. So it's all good, right? Click here to see it.
Axe Rescues Boys From Premature Embarrassment
From Copy Ranter: If you want an example of a marketing success story, Axe is it.
Unilever's Axe/Lynx has unswervingly positioned itself as the fragrance that aids males with the ebb and flow of their bodily fluids. Somehow, mooky manboys the world over have bought into this bullcrap. Now you can smell them coming a block away. I guess it's better than the way they used to smell.
Here's a TV spot for new Axe Full Control that's only running in Argentina ... because people would be up in arms if it ran in the U.S. Click here to see it. It's funny ... in a sick, disgusting way.
Clever Airport Promotion
If you have kids ... or even if you don't ... do you ever get sick of them running around the airport screaming and yelling while you're quietly trying to catch a little shut eye before the next leg of your journey? Well, this promotion for Colorado's FirstBank may not help, but at least it will keep the screaming kids all in one place.
The latest addition to the bank's ongoing "We're here to help" campaign turns a revolving display unit into a children's circular treadmill. At the Denver International Airport, a plexiglas rotating signboard is headlined, "Tire your kids out so they sleep on the plane." Kid-sized handprints appear three-and-a-half feet above the floor, and, above them, the instructions, "Have children place hand here." The signboard makes one revolution every 30 seconds, keeping kids entertained, well exercised and out of trouble.
Signs That Don't Work
I'm pretty sure that Mc Donald's didn't approve this southern franchisee's billboard.
Not sure if this sells fish or not? But it's kinda funny.
My Family Tree
Dale is on the Board of Advisors for Vent Haven Museum, in Fort Mitchell, KY. It's the largest museum in the world dedicated to ventriloquists and ventriloquist memorabilia. Above is one of my predecessors ... Chip Martin the first ... who resides in the museum (Doesn't the young Dale in the photo look like a dweeb!)
Above is an enlargement of the card on Chip #1's chest.
Because Dale is on the museum's Advisory Board, we are occasionally granted some private time to enjoy the museum and its thousands of photos, hundreds of puppets and gobs of memorabilia.
A few weeks ago we toured the facility with other advisors including Jeff Dunham, who posed above with Monty, his first vent figure, which now resides in the museum. If you go to the museum and even touch a figure, you will be shot. But if you're Jeff Dunham, you can pretty much do what you want (kidding). Seriously, Jeff contributes his talents to the museum, refurbishing figures, repairing figures, and restoring figures. That and the fact that he's made monetary contributions to the museum, allows him a few special privileges, like posing for this photo with a puppet that he donated to the museum.
