American Spirit, the national magazine of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR)*, has a strong track record of bringing to light stories about brave and groundbreaking women of history whose lives aren’t very familiar to most people.
Nowhere is that focus more apparent than in the magazine’s third annual issue devoted to Women’s History Month.
The cover feature looks at the lives of Anna Claypoole Peale and Sarah Miriam Peale. The sisters not only found distinction as highly skilled 19th-century portrait artists, but they also were remarkable in another respect: They were able to support themselves financially in an age when women were supposed to be homemakers, not artisans.
Though Irish immigrant Margaret Haughery’s early life was marred by tragedy and she had no formal schooling, she persevered to become a successful entrepreneur in 19th-century New Orleans. This issue includes a feature examining how she dedicated her life to helping orphans in that disease-plagued city, inspiring many of her fellow citizens to call her the Angel of the Delta.
Credit: ThinkStock
A few days ago, Rex Hammock was featured on the blog of the Boston-based Venture Fund, OpenView Partners about his recent posts claiming that “Content isn’t King.” Don’t worry. Rex isn’t turning his back on a career in content marketing. His complete claim was, “Content isn’t king. Brilliant, creative content is king.”
The OpenView Labs blog is a great example of a company that utilizes an excellent content marketing strategy. Open View Patners is a Boston-based venture fund that, in addition to investing in tech startups, provides the type of knoweledge and resources (content) the founders of those companies need to succeed.
[Post by Rex Hammock]
According to one theory, the word ‘deck,’ when used after the word PowerPoint, is inspired by a deck of cards and serves a metaphor for how one can arrange and shuffle the slides created on software like PowerPoint and Keynote. However, anyone over the age of 40 or who has watched Mad Men knows that old-school presentation slides weren’t stacked in decks, but were placed in the circular part of a time machine called the Kodak Carousel.
On Wednesday, the White House posted an “enhanced version” of the President’s State of the Union address on Slideshare. (If you’re reading this on the Hammock Blog, it should be embedded below.) The enhanced version is a 107-slide, yes, 107-slide PowerPoint deck. As PowerPoints go, the quality of the graphics and design are superior to 99% of the PowerPoint decks you and I have ever endured. In other words, no deficits were reduced in the production of this 107-slide PowerPoint deck. (Have I mentioned there are 107 slides in the deck?)
But is a PowerPoint deck, even a great one, the best medium to use for after-the-presentation communications?
Read on, and you’ll understand why I say, “No.”
At Hammock, one of the things we do is work with large companies to develop sales presentation systems that are intended to help lead a customer to make the decision to buy a specific product or service. The presentations in these systems don’t merely run through concepts, and, most of all, they don’t just serve as an outline to remind the sales person the next thing they want to say. They sell something.
When we first start working with a client, the most shocking thing (to the sales person, at least) seems to be when we tell them this: Never give out your deck following a presentation!
Why is it shocking? Because that seems to be a universal practice. The prospect sees something they want to remember and asks politely and with interest, “Hey, can you give me a copy of this presentation?” The sales person, not having anything else to give them, says, “Sure.”
Seems harmless enough, so why would we suggest banning the practice?
“When we’re marketers, we think our job is to flex our brand muscles and tell the world how great our company and product are.”
[@Getty Images / Thinkstock]
Except when we’re at work, those of us who have marketing jobs aren’t marketers, we’re customers.
When we’re not at our marketing jobs, we experience the world of commerce through the eyes of a customer. We make purchasing decisions and interact with companies — all while in the role of buyer, not seller; as a user, not a maker or supplier.
We all are experts at being customers, perhaps even more than we are experts at being marketers.
But too often, when we punch in our time-cards at the marketing factory, we leave that expertise at the door.
For example, when we are customers, we buy products from companies that tell us how great we are — and how their product is all about helping us be or do what we want to be or do.
But when we’re marketers, we think our job is to flex our brand muscles and tell the world how great our company and product are.
When we’re marketers, we think our job is to target customers. But as customers, we’re tired of being target practice.
The secret to successful marketing is to stop being a marketer.
Stop cranking out all that hype you can’t stand to receive when you’re a customer.
Stop telling customers how great you are — and start helping them be great at something they want to be.
You know all this — at least you do when you’re not at work.
[A version of this post was cross-posted on RexBlog]
Yesterday, Wikipedia added the “ePUB” file format as an export option for collections of Wikipedia articles you want to compile. This may not sound like something new, as the ability to compile — and even order a print-on-demand version of — such a collection of articles has been around for a while.
What makes this new feature significant is that ePUB is a format optimized for display using all the major ebook reader devices or apps (Kindle, Apple iBooks, Google Books, Nook, etc.). While PDFs of such articles were readable on such devices or apps, the ePUB format will provide you with a document that is more book-like.
[Cross-posted in RexBlog]
The third* rule of great marketing with content is “keep it simple.”
What does that mean? Here, let me keep it simple.
If your customers purchase guitars, make a video like the one created by the Chicago Music Exchange — 100 guitar riffs that capture the history of rock and roll. (Side lesson: Note the quality of the audio and the helpfulness of the song-by-song title graphics and text listing of the riffs on both the company post and the YouTube description.)
Feed the passion of your customers. Demonstrate how you share that passion. Remind them of the positive things they associate with your product and your company.
And remember the third rule: Keep it simple.
Later: In response to some questions I’ve received, there is not actually (yet) a list of “rules of marketing with content.” I say yet, because I have at least the first four rules. In addition to the first three, found elsewhere on this post, I’ve often tweeted the fourth which, I’ve decided, is actually a corollary to rule No. 3. Rule number No. 4 is found between the brackets in the following tweet:
[It’s very hard to create simple things] — Kikoman’s teardrop dispenser took 3 years, 100 prototypes to design. [NYT].143.blork.ly
— Rex Hammock (@R) June 16, 2012
*As with Fight Club, the first and second rules of great marketing with content are to never talk about marketing with content. I broke those rules with this post.
Do you recognize the guy with the cigar in the photo accompanying this post? He was a comic character, Raymond J. Johnson Jr., created by comedian Bill Sagula in the 1970s, who was forever introducing himself to anyone he’d meet with a string of names, like: “You can call me Ray. And you can call me Jay. And you call me Ray Jay. Etc.”
At Hammock, we are beginning to feel like Ray (or Jay or RJ, or RJJ) …
When Hammock Inc. started more than 20 years ago, the services we provided (and still provide) put us into a segment of the marketing and media world called “custom publishing.” We considered our service to be assisting our clients in building strong relationships with customers, something we thought “loyalty marketing” was a good term to describe.
By John Lavey, Hammock President & COO
Creating editorial slates or designs in advance of research is merely guessing, and an exercise in competing aesthetic sensibilities. In other words, it’s a waste of time. Four basic areas of research are required to build a successful content marketing plan. These areas help fulfill the following critical marketing commandments:
The eye-catching cover girl for American Spirit’s March/April issue might surprise you — it’s a young Martha Washington! Is this really what the very first first lady looked like in her 20s?
Although it’s impossible to know for sure, the painting is a very educated guess at what Martha looked like as a young woman. Michael Deas painted the portrait based on a computer-generated image created by forensic anthropologists at Louisiana State University’s FACES (Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services) Lab.
Starting with the bone structure from a miniature painted of Martha in middle age, anthropologists used age regression techniques to simulate how she would have looked decades earlier. The cover story in the magazine’s Women’s History Month edition examines her vital role of morale booster at Valley Forge and other Revolutionary War encampments.
Earlier this year 20|20 Research approached Hammock with the need to drive more qualified leads to its salesforce. We were already working with 20|20 executing an online content strategy with a clear objective: to position 20|20 Research as a thought leader in its industry while improving their organic search results on relevant search terms. This work included the management, creation and measurement of blog posts and research content for their online Learning Center.
20|20’s assignment to Hammock was to assist them in gathering contact information from potential clients that have a specific need for executing qualitative research.