Mediaboss Marketing

Mondelez, the manufacturer of Oreos cookies, has made marketing mistakes at times. Like when it sent out single nickel-sized mini Oreos to households as samples. Even splitting the top and bottom wouldn't make them go far.

But the company is usually savvy, particularly when it comes to social marketing. It pulled off 40 million likes on for Oreos. And when its Honey Maid graham crackers brand used a same-sex couple with child in an ad and was buffeted with hate mail, Mondelez turned the entire thing into a viral win with a brilliant YouTube video.

So forgive me if I raise an eyebrow at the reports about how avocado Oreos might be the next flavor to show up in stores. There is something going on -- Mondelez is making itself beloved by consumers while trolling the press and getting attention for a big promotion that won't be over for another week.

Mondelez has been running a promotion called the #MyOreo Creation Contest. People submit flavor ideas and someone, whose idea is chosen, will walk away with $500,000. Sweet. Literally.

People have sent in all sorts of ideas, as you might expect. Apparently Mondelez made limited batches of some for the people who made the suggestions. The flavors include:

And, in addition, galaxy, unicorn, and ... avocado. Galloping green glob, the last one sounds terrible. (And I'm hoping no unicorns were hurt, either.) That led to people getting some of these and a few media outlets running headlines like Avocado Oreos Are A Thing Now, So If You'll Excuse Me I Have To Go Leave The Planet and Oreo Is Making Avocado, Unicorn, and Carrot Cake Fan-Requested Flavors.

Some in the media are either over-reacting, having fun, or both. But, not to worry, there is no way Mondelez is going to mass produce avocado Oreos, with or without corn chip-flavored cookies and a suggestion to dip in glasses of salsa. This seems like a smart way to get positive attention from customers who post about getting their suggested flavor, manage media coverage, and extend attention for the contest. Plus, the contest doesn't end until July 14.

Not to doubt how far some people will go, including eating avocado sandwiched between two Oreo cookies, like in the video below.

Overall a smart move -- the marketing twist, not necessarily this video. However, there is one place Mondelez may have messed up on the social front -- the domain oreos.com is owned by someone else and available for anyone who wants to pay enough. But, to put everyone's minds at ease, no one has avocadooreo.com. Yet. Sometimes you have to look toward the little things in life.

Read the original:
Oreos Pulls a Genius Social Media Move by Freaking People Out - Inc.com

Its been a little over a year since direct mail marketing tech firm QuantumDigital rolled out its Facebook ad automation service, TriggerMarketing Social, which integrates with MLS data.

With the use of geo-targeting, the social media add-on distributes auto-generated ads to mobile users within close proximity to the listing. Agents have the option to launch a campaign as listings enter or leave the market, and they receive the email and phone number of every consumer who clicks on an ad.

Since its debut in the summer of 2016, TriggerMarketing Social has generated for agents:

Now, the Austin, Texas-based company has added Open House marketing to the list of online automation features incorporated into its targeted direct marketing platform.

The upgrade to TriggerMarketing Social gives real estate agents the ability to disseminate a swift geo-targeted Open House Facebook ad campaign without having to log into the social media giant at all.

TriggerMarketing prompts real estate agents to circulate an Open House Facebook ad campaign with automatically generated MLS-driven ads. Agents can easily launch their campaign in seconds from their email, and ads are displayed only to those identified and qualified by advanced geo-targeting, which ensures all contacted mobile users are located near the listing.

Prospects will click on the Facebook ad, which signals TriggerMarketing Social to send the leads email and phone number in real-time to the corresponding agent. The automation tool offers three, seven and 14-day campaigns that can generate up to an average of 20 to 28 leads and 3,900 views of their open house announcements, according to the company.

Adding the automated Open House Facebook ad feature to QuantumDigitals existing suite of products was the result of requests from real estate customers seeking additional ways to simplify the marketing process and to accommodate their need for mobile-friendly tools, said the company in a press release.

Email Fabiana Gordon

Read more here:
QuantumDigital enhances TriggerMarketing Social with new Open House marketing feature - Inman.com

The Bronx, the only one of New York Citys five boroughs that is on the American mainland, once had a sociological as well as geographical distinction. In the 1930s it was called, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan noted, the city without a slum. It was the one place in the whole of the nation where commercial housing was built during the Great Depression. In the third quarter of the 20th century, however, there came, particularly in the South Bronx, social regression that Moynihan described as an Armageddonic collapse that I do not believe has its equal in the history of urbanization.

Of the several causes of descent, there and elsewhere, into the intergenerational transmission of poverty, one was paramount: family disintegration. Some causes of this remain unclear, but something now seems indisputable: Among todays young adults, the success sequence is insurance against poverty. The evidence is in The Millennial Success Sequence published by the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies and written by Wendy Wang of the IFS and W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia and AEI.

The success sequence, previously suggested in research by, among others, Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution, is this: First get at least a high school diploma, then get a job, then get married, and only then have children. Wang and Wilcox, focusing on millennials ages 28 to 34, the oldest members of the nations largest generation, have found that only 3 percent who follow this sequence are poor.

A comparably stunning 55 percent of this age cohort have had children before marriage. Only 25 percent of the youngest baby boomers (those born between 1957 and 1964) did that. Eighty-six percent of the Wang-Wilcox millennials who put marriage before the baby carriage have family incomes in the middle or top third of incomes. Forty-seven percent who did not follow the sequence are in the bottom third.

One problem today, Wilcox says, is the soul-mate model of marriage, a self-centered approach that regards marriage primarily as an opportunity for personal growth and fulfillment rather than as a way to form a family. Another problem is that some of the intelligentsia see the success sequence as middle-class norms to be disparaged for being middle-class norms. And as AEI social scientist Charles Murray says, too many of the successful classes, who followed the success sequence, do not preach what they practice, preferring ecumenical niceness to being judgmental.

In healthy societies, basic values and social arrangements are not much thought about. They are of course matters expressing what sociologists call a societys world-taken-for-granted. They have, however, changed since President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed unconditional war on poverty. This word suggested a fallacious assumption: Poverty persisted only because of hitherto weak government resolve regarding the essence of war marshalling material resources.

But what if large causes of poverty are not matters of material distribution but are behavioral bad choices and the cultures that produce them? If so, policymakers must rethink their confidence in social salvation through economic abundance.

Reversing social regression using public policies to create a healthy culture is akin to nation-building abroad, an American undertaking not recently crowned with success. Wang and Wilcox recommend education focused on high-level occupational skills, subsidizing low-paying jobs, and public and private social marketing campaigns, from public schools to popular media, promoting marriage toward the end of the success sequence.

Success is, of course, more complex than adherence to the sequence. Much cultural capital often is unavailable to poor people. In J.D. Vances Hillbilly Elegy, his memoir of his rise from Appalachian poverty to Yale Law School, he recounts his experience in the recruiting process with prestigious law firms, during which he learned, among many other things he did not learn at home, use the fat spoon for soup and your shoes and belt should match. These may seem trivial matters; to upward mobility, they are not.

Much more important, however, is the success sequence. In Nathaniel Hawthornes day, as in ours, it was said that problems were so daunting that old principles must yield to new realities. Perhaps, however, unfortunate new realities are the result of the disregard of old principles. Hawthorne recommended consulting respectable old blockheads who had a death-grip on one or two ideas which had not come into vogue since yesterday morning. Ideas like getting an education, a job and a spouse before begetting children.

More here:
We know the cure for poverty but not how to apply it - New York Post

WASHINGTON The Bronx, the only one of New York Citys five boroughs that is on the American mainland, once had a sociological as well as geographical distinction.

In the 1930s it was called, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan noted, the city without a slum. It was the one place in the whole of the nation where commercial housing was built during the Great Depression.

In the third quarter of the 20th century, however, there came, particularly in the South Bronx, social regression that Moynihan described as an Armageddonic collapse that I do not believe has its equal in the history of urbanization.

Of the several causes of descent, there and elsewhere, into the intergenerational transmission of poverty, one was paramount: Family disintegration. Some causes of this remain unclear, but something now seems indisputable: Among todays young adults, the success sequence is insurance against poverty.

The evidence is in The Millennial Success Sequence published by the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies and written by Wendy Wang of the IFS and W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia and AEI.

The success sequence, previously suggested in research by, among others, Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution, is this: First get at least a high school diploma, then get a job, then get married, and only then have children. Wang and Wilcox, focusing on millennials ages 28 to 34, the oldest members of the nations largest generation, have found that only 3 percent who follow this sequence are poor.

A comparably stunning 55 percent of this age cohort have had children before marriage. Only 25 percent of the youngest baby boomers (those born between 1957 and 1964) did that.

Eighty-six percent of the Wang-Wilcox millennials who put marriage before the baby carriage have family incomes in the middle or top third of incomes. Forty-seven percent who did not follow the sequence are in the bottom third.

One problem today, Wilcox says, is the soul-mate model of marriage, a self-centered approach that regards marriage primarily as an opportunity for personal growth and fulfillment rather than as a way to form a family.

Another problem is that some of the intelligentsia see the success sequence as middle-class norms to be disparaged for being middle-class norms. And as AEI social scientist Charles Murray says, too many of the successful classes, who followed the success sequence, do not preach what they practice, preferring ecumenical niceness to being judgmental.

In healthy societies, basic values and social arrangements are not much thought about. They are of course matters expressing what sociologists call a societys world-taken-for-granted.

They have, however, changed since President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed unconditional war on poverty. This word suggested a fallacious assumption: Poverty persisted only because of hitherto weak government resolve regarding the essence of war marshalling material resources.

But what if large causes of poverty are not matters of material distribution but are behavioral bad choices and the cultures that produce them? If so, policymakers must rethink their confidence in social salvation through economic abundance.

Reversing social regression using public policies to create a healthy culture is akin to nation-building abroad, an American undertaking not recently crowned with success. Wang and Wilcox recommend education focused on high-level occupational skills, subsidizing low-paying jobs and public and private social marketing campaigns, from public schools to popular media, promoting marriage toward the end of the success sequence.

Success is, of course, more complex than adherence to the sequence. Much cultural capital often is unavailable to poor people. In J.D. Vances Hillbilly Elegy, his memoir of his rise from Appalachian poverty to Yale Law School, he recounts his experience in the recruiting process with prestigious law firms, during which he learned, among many other things he did not learn at home, use the fat spoon for soup and your shoes and belt should match. These may seem trivial matters; to upward mobility, they are not.

Much more important, however, is the success sequence. In Nathaniel Hawthornes day, as in ours, it was said that problems were so daunting that old principles must yield to new realities. Perhaps, however, unfortunate new realities are the result of the disregard of old principles.

Hawthorne recommended consulting respectable old blockheads who had a death-grip on one or two ideas which had not come into vogue since yesterday morning. Ideas like getting an education, a job and a spouse before begetting children.

View original post here:
The sequence to success - The Exponent Telegram (press release) (registration)

Last week, Nixon made some adjustments to its internal structure that included a round of layoffs to reposition the brand for growth.

Although there wasnt much elaboration on the positions that were cut, the brand was able to share with us which areas of the business they are strengthening moving forward specifically, Nixon will be shifting its resources to digital in both the marketing and commerce sides of the business.

The changes we are working through arent dramatic, said Nixon CEO Nick Stowe. Weve seen our consumers changing, moving much more into digital in terms of where they go to discover and learn about brands and where they go to shop. What we are seeing is as much about marketing as commerce, lots of social and some real blending of the two on platforms like Instagram.

Nixon is mirroring the fast-paced digital growth they are seeing among their retail partners, and looking at ways they can lean on those partners many of whom command mass followings of their own while also driving consumers back to Nixons own e-commerce platform, explains Stowe. Were seeing consumers look to a range of sites when they shop: Amazon is clearly the largest, but our accounts like Zumiez and Nordstrom are really important, and consumers also want to go directly to the brand, to Nixon.com.

The brand is making a significant push to move from traditional practices to a more streamlined, all-encompassing approach when it comes to e-comm. Stowe shares how the brands strategy has been realigned to meet these goals.

Interview has been edited for length and clarity.

In terms of restructuring the brand, can you speak to what areas of the business you are looking to strengthen? Can you also give us insight into the new positions you have created / will be hiring for?

Were adding positions mainly in digital. We have a search underway for a VP of e-commerce and marketing, and have set aside several positions for that person to build out the team we have, add some new roles in digital and social marketing and super-size the e-commerce team.

In some areas, well continue to use agencies to help us, and weve seen a benefit to the right blend of internal and external expertise. Were also looking geographically, and will be adding some more support to our business in Japan, working alongside our distributor partner there, launching Nixon.com in Japan and doing more in terms of digital marketing for that market.

Well also be strengthening a new area of the business, something were excited about in terms of reaching a whole new set of consumers, and will be announcing that more formally in the next few months.

Making cuts is never easy, especially with a close knit team like yours. How did you decide which areas of the business needed to be adjusted?

Its hard to lay people off and weve tried hard to avoid it. As we looked at the organization we tried to focus on positions, not people. Some of it was just about filling gaps in terms of getting the right capabilities in place and putting in some depth.

But it was also about looking at efficiency across channels and geographies. That has mainly been about making our US wholesale business more efficient, as well as improving our overall business in Europe. Explaining that to the people affected doesnt make the news any better, but its the analysis we did and it should serve us well as we look ahead in terms of having our people and resources focused in the right places.

How much will we see Nixons marketing strategy change over the next few months with this realignment? What types of marketing is resonating with the Nixon consumer and what strategies will the brand use to leverage this?

It wont really change in terms of what the brand stands for. But youll for sure see more in terms of how we publish on the major digital platforms, and that includes social platforms like Instagram and Facebook, as well as commerce-focused platforms like Fancy. And our investment in search is also ramping up, getting sharper in the terms we use. Our goal is to get better at how we target different groups of consumers, what we publish to them, where that takes them in terms of e-commerce landing pages (ours and our partners).

E-comm is an area that most companies are looking to ramp up and it sounds like this is the case for Nixon. Can you describe what your strategy currently looks like and how you plan to modify and build it to reflect your current audiences needs? How is Nixon attracting a broader audience?

Weve had a pretty traditional e-commerce strategy up to this point. We redesigned the site for more commerce, moved it onto Demandware to get that platforms robust performance, and weve added some better imagery and more recently with The Mission, customization, which has been a huge hit for us. Some of the changes we have coming are more evolutionary: for instance, changing up content and imagery to reflect what weve seen work on social.

But our ambitions are bigger than that. The big direction for us is to move away from hierarchical navigation and much more into search. Navigating using our drop-down menus is kind of like Yahoo! back in the day, and our consumers are much more likely now to use search on the site or enter the site straight from Google search. That means they want relevant results, strong recommendations, and reviews. They want a set of products that is more curated and specific than our hierarchical navigation. Think of many more curated landing pages than we currently have, some pre-merchandised, others created on the fly.

In terms of reaching a broader audience, some of that is about targeting our growing digital advertising to new consumer segments and backing that up with the right landing experience. But our retail partners are really important for growing our audience: individually many of them have much greater reach than we do as a brand, and collectively they have orders of magnitude. We want to extend what were doing in e-commerce to help them.

Weve focused very much on our in-store experience with retailers, and now we need to focus on the in-digital experience with them, as well. That includes simple things like better digital assets to represent Nixon and our product. It should include more commercial support, like helping them always be in stock with drop-ship programs: if youre shopping on Zumiez, and you search for The Mission but they dont stock it, it would be great if we served that up. And it should include extending more service offerings to them, giving authorized dealers post-sale service benefits like free battery changes for instance.

Along with the internal restructuring, will we see an outward realignment of Nixons brand image or focus in terms of who the brand speaks to outside of the core action / adventure sports demographic? If so, what will that look like?

Youll see some new approaches to campaigns over the next few months. I dont think we need to tell many of our core audience who we are and what we do, but well continue to work really closely with our athletes in our core space. But we need to introduce the brand more broadly, particularly with some of the product that we have that is very much on-trend (like our more simplistic Time Teller or Porter watches).

Were going to ramp up our digital marketing collaborations with friends of the brand who have an audience that overlaps with ours, but that stands more outside of our core demographic; we have a few people in mind in the music and art spaces outside of core action sports. Well use imagery that reflects how they see us, and product they want to represent and share. It means publishing more to their channel and audience than we have in the past. Weve occasionally blasted our voice pretty broadly, but this time its more like an introduction from a friend. That feels like a better way to grow and reach out.

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CEO Nick Stowe on Nixon restructuring, updated strategy - GrindTV