Marketing Muse from Silver Square

Create an idea mill for your business

This week's lesson to learn from the big guys: Ask your clients for their ideas. Michael Dell started the concept with a sounding board for feedback, ideas, etc. for his Dell computers. Starbucks has taken the idea more mainstream and has been getting rave reviews for it. I took some time to look around on the site today and it's great. Every business should consider creating a platform such as this for their client's voice (and even their employee's voice and ideas) and ideas to be shared and heard.

If you haven't checked it out, do so. Look at the numbers of people posting ideas! I even like the approach Starbucks took in making sure this idea thing was a success. They hired 48 employees to manage and monitor these ideas both externally and internally. Here are some of my favorites:

1 = obviously the splash guards on the cups were great - got those from the idea site

2 = one woman wrote in about needing a shelf in the women's restroom for which to place her coffee

3 = Starbucks is an "earth friendly" company without any recycling bins for their cups or for people to leave their newspapers... put some bins in your stores! says one member. OK, valid idea...

See how this works? Can such a concept work for you and your business? We are launching a new website for one of our clients and this idea is exactly one of the tools inside the site. We're excited to give it a whirl ourselves with this new site. Discuss it in your next marketing meeting and see if it will work for you!

State Fair time at Silver Square

This time of year is always a busy and exciting time for us at Silver Square... we get to work on State Fair items for a couple of our clients. This year, it made us all talk about fair food....

When I was in college, they served corn dogs each day in the student hall where all the freshman ate. Believe it or not, I kept a steady diet of corn dogs and Lucky Charms for a solid year (and amazingly enough did not gain the freshman 15 - not sure how that happened). I have a friend to this day who sees corn dogs and she cannot help but giggle a little and think of me (thanks Elli). So here is to the arrival of the State Fair and to our fair favorites....

Karli = Cotton Candy   Angela = Elephant Ears   Raquel = Corn Dogs

And here is to one really large display in the Normandy Barn for the Indiana State Department of Agriculture. If you're attending the fair this year, stop by and check out some of our handy work.

Horton's Media Blitz

Since I just read this story to my son over the weekend, the headline caught my eye. Horton's such a good guy. We can all take an idea or two from the story, and likewise, from the new media blitz surrounding it's launch this fall. Enjoy the read... and the tie in to green.

A DVD Marketing Campaign Horton Would Definitely Hear

By BROOKS BARNES

Published: July 28, 2008

20th Century Fox Corporation is backing the arrival of “Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!” on DVD with one of the biggest marketing pushes in the medium’s history.

Chank it up!

If you have ever found yourself in a font funk, look to Chank for some medication. His fonts are alive and sure to add some fun spunk to your next project. As a designer, you'll also like his font catalog so you can easily and quickly glance at his options from one simple book.

Here is my favorite Chank font... Ballers Delight (and it's free!)

Get Tiny - www.tinyurl.com

Have you ever needed or wanted to send a link via e-mail and the link breaks through the process? Worry no more - go to Tiny URL and they'll take care of you. Your link is permanent and, well, tiny!

Postcards as normal business correspondence

Have you ever given thought to using postcards in place of letterhead and envelopes for your normal business correspondence? While not every business message is appropriate to place on a postcard, many topics and points of communication are more than appropriate to be placed on a postcard. This saves you a little money, both on the cost of the paper and envelopes, and on the cost of postage, and, helps you be green in your business practice. Be different and become known as the postcard people - give it a try!

Interact with your audience - an American Express example

There are so many cool things I like about the American Express Members Project, which launches today, that I'm not really sure where to begin.

First, as a designer, I'm drawn to the design. It's clean, simple, I know exactly how to submit an idea and I know exactly what happens next. The visual communication is A+.

Second, as a marketer, the mix of media and interaction among card members is a platform we could (and should) replicate in our own lines of project effort. Creating an idea to engage and support our clients, or  our company employee's, ideas for the better good of our communities and our larger environment is simply a great model.

Third, as a person who does a lot of volunteer work, I appreciate the scope allowed for the project. It's real. It can happen. It's a dream and doable, the perfect marriage of challenge and achievement.

Take a look at the project. It's inspiring and will surely spark an idea for you in one of the three areas I've outlined above. If you have incorporated something like this in your business, let's hear about it. Comment on this post and share your wisdom with us!

Puppy makes an icon for the city

I always love to see when an artist helps make something amazing for a city... let's take Bilbao, Spain, home of the Guggenheim Museum and permanent residence for Puppy. This 40 1/2-foot-high scuplture of flowering plants (more than 40,000 flowering plants) made its way around a few viewing spots and museums before finding its home at the Guggenheim. The scuplutre has since turned in to a major attraction and icon for the city.

Sometimes, you have to think big. Maybe even 40 1/2-foot-tall big.

If you recall, the cows exhibit throughout Chicago was also a big draw for tourism and downtown/Michigan mile and involved public art in a big way. Taking these two examples, and thinking how you can add art, dimension and fun to your next marketing project, and of course thinking big, brainstorm ways you can make a splash about your business or project through using art and thinking big.

Design doesn't have to just be on paper, and a great marketing partner doesn't think just on paper or web either. Expose yourself and your team to a diverse pallete of art and you'll be surprised at the ideas that you'll gather to incorporate in to your next project.

Explore a vertical market

It's true. Some markets today are experience a downturn or slow growth... and some are not. In a downturn, vertical markets that are doing better in the 'times' can help you reach an audience that is less affected by the economy and allow your company's focus to hit that segment.

Host a brainstorming meeting with your entire staff and look at all the different types of audiences you could reach. Who are you targeting now? What is their current experience in the market? Should you continue to spend money marketing to them? If so, can you better partner with them to help them deliver results? What are some creative ways you can help your market better win in the economy? Is there a totally different market segment you can reach out to who is thriving in today's conditions? What do they look like? What appeals to them? Would it be possible for you to break in to their market successfully? How much time would that take? How much effort? At what cost?

Let us know how you are working in the current economy and what you're experiencing. We want to hear about your experiences. Post your comments below.

Create a "try things" fund for your budget

We have recently performed two employee review sessions for clients where we meet with their employees and/or sales team and facilitate a session on company strategy. This session is typically part of our marketing process, however, we have taken it a step further and have begun incorporating this step in to our service offering all on its own. We have started this because we feel, as your marketing partner, there is not any one thing more important to your business than your people. Your people make or break your company... companies that understand and embrace this are much more successful than those that don't.

One of the ways we have helped our clients plan for outcomes from these employee sessions is to add a "try things" fund to their budget. This allows them to allocate dollars for asking, hearing and responding to their employee's ideas. This way it helps everyone plan and allow for new things to "try" and implement without having to make immediate decisions and consequences to your current budget (obviously this is assuming ideas from this session require money in order to implement them... often many ideas take little or no money, but you can be flexible on those without dipping in to your budget). This also tells your employees you are taking their ideas and concerns seriously.

So give this one some consideration and figure out a dollar amount you can give to your team's strategy in the coming months or in your next fiscal year. The more you allow your employees to speak, and the more you listen and embrace their ideas and concerns, the closer you get to having employee endorsed strategy and having your company goals go through the roof.