New York Series: Magnolia Bakery – In content is rad.

Still got a few New York stories up my sleeve.

If anyone had any doubt that mainstream media is ‘still’ the most powerful communication tool, here’s some proof. While in New York we just had to check out the famous ‘Magnolia Bakery’.

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The only way I had ever heard of this infamous business was via the TV show ‘Sex in the city’. It wasn’t advertised during the program, but in content. That is, discussed during the show, part of the story. This only ever happens when we have a ‘worthy business’, something worth talking about because it is so cool.On many occasions during my stay the line to get in was all the way down the street. And the cupcakes were tremendously yummy.

And so it proves a few things:

  1. Mainstream media ain’t dead yet.
  2. In content is way more powerful than paid for advertising
  3. Only ‘cool’ stuff ever gets talked about.

Startups,  go make some cool stuff.

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New York Series: So much advertising

I am absolutely flummoxed at how deep the media channels flow in the USA.

I’ve never such visual pollution in one city. So much advertising.The thing I’m most surprised about is the ethical (pun intended) pharmaceutical category. TV advertisements for Drug X, encouraging people to go to the doctor to see if they have disease Y, in which case they should ask the doctor to prescribe drug X. This is so wrong, on so many levels. Start ups out there, please be in business for good – sales should be your secondary objective – helping people your first.

times-square

Sure, Times Square is kind of cool to look at, a real visual orgy. But it just never ends.

If you’re in the media business in Australia or Europe, there are plenty of new spaces which can be leveraged. I’ll provide a summary of new media channels with a photo essay at the end of the trip. But in the interim here’s a link to an historical advertising photo stream I found on flickr. Quite interesting.

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Dubai series: Hijack Advertising

The photo below is on the car of the guy I am staying with in Dubai. Have a look at the wheel cover on his 4 wheel drive, of which there are more than sedans on the road in said location.

wheel-cover

You’ll notice that it has a cover on it for ‘Danube’ which happens to be a building materials company. Funny this is ‘Michael – the car owner’ doesn’t work there. He told me one day he returned to his vehicle to find it placed on his spare wheel.  I asked him if it annoyed him, and he proceeded to tell me, it doesn’t worry him as it protects his wheel, and it is a bit of a hassle to remove. Yep, he hasn’t got around to removing it yet…

Subsequently I noticed these on many cars in Dubai. Seems the other owners of the hijacked cars haven’t bothered to remove theirs either.

It’s an interesting piece of advertising and media invention.
It is giving an item of value to the hijacked, that is the wheel cover, but on the same token it’s very interruptive. If the cover get’s thrown away, it becomes a costly exercise for the advertiser. I’m not sure it would be tolerated in a western market, but it’s innovative non the less.

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Entertainment is not Advertising

This is clearly a very ‘entertaining’ piece of advertising:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riVFSIYUnh8]

The above piece of film is just awesome, entertaining, memorable and even worth ‘talking about’. But here’s how that discussion will flow….

“Have you seen that awesome ad with the little kittens doing the Ninja, break dancing stuff… it is so cool.”

“No I haven’t seen it, what’s it for?”

“Not sure, I think a car or something, it’s just the coolest thing, the cats just look wicked, I wonder how they did it. I love it.”

The above conversation says it all. Great entertainment value, but little brand recognition, or call to action. This piece of advertising can therefore never be ‘Radvertising’.

Startup blog says: Advertising should sell, entertainment is at best, ‘a bonus’.

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Cast the media net wide

When aiming to generate media coverage for our startup or business. We often get one thing wrong. The thing we get wrong is related to our training as marketers.

We are too targeted. We are too fussy on who’s right for our product.

Answer – the right media vehcile is the media vehicle who’ll ‘cover it’.

In fact we need to do the reverse and cast the net wide. In fact cast the media net as wide as possible. What needs to be targeted is ‘the message’. The message needs to be written for the forum. But, in truth most of us have way more messages in our business than we have bothered to think about, or even invent.

fishing-net

The message or pitch is all about them, their readers and their viewers. The bait has got to be right as well. So before you pitch – work out how many angles you’ve got and you’ll be surprised what you can dig up. Especially for startups – who can exchange at a minimum, a few learning’s from the battle field, some business insights.

Here’s my example of Media angles for rentoid.com

Altruistic – Helping people

Business methods

Making Money from idle assets

Saving money – rent instead of buying stuff

Web news – first of its’ type

Startup stories

Technology used

Ecologically sound (no we don’t mean carbon offset)

Green message

Making the web physical connect – going beyond virtual

Helping the financially challenged

Temporary needs

Temporary residents

Reduce storage requirements / household clutter

Virtual organisations / outsourcing

Vicarious living (renting things you can’t afford) ….

There’s more, but you’re bored already. I’m just showing what’s possible. And if you have your doubts check out the rentoid media page here, of which not a cent has been paid for.

How many ‘media angles’ does your startup have?

Steve – rentoid.com