Pull Your Pants Up! Stop The Sag! We’re Better Than This! These are political rallying cries that can lately be attributed to everyone from President Obama to comedian Bill Cosby. The goal? It is a plea to urban youth to upgrade their fashion statement from “pimpin’” to “professional.”

So how does one counter, counter-culture? Well, it’s a simple case of marketing 101 – Knowing Your Audience.

Does anyone reading this remember the term “For-Shizzle?” For-Shizzle was a piece of slang brought into this world by Snoop Dogg. Initially, he was the only one to use it, but eventually it seemed like everyone under the sun was adding “-izzle” to the end of everything to give it a touch of “cool.”

The marketing 101 lesson here was that if Snoop Dogg was able to bring that term into the world, he was also very much capable of taking it out. And that he did. By slinging his signature catch phrase for the now largely defunct AOL in commercials with Jerry Stiller and Lee Iacocca, he took the cool right out of For-Shizzle. Once mainstream America heard those words coming out of Mr. Iacocca’s mouth, it was just about the last time anyone ever uttered the term in a non-ironic attempt at humor. By bringing For-Shizzle to the masses, and in particular, the older masses, Snoop had sucked the cool right out of it.

So, what would the perceived leaders of our culture have to do to take this knowledge and use it to their advantage? The answer is simple. Bring it to the masses. The surest way to kill a trend is with oversaturation, and surely as Lee Iacocca and Jerry Stiller were able to help Snoop kill off “For Shizzle,” that same demographic could be used as an invaluable marketing tool by our fashionably frustrated leaders. 

Generations Beyond’s proposed solution: Want to get kids to wear their pants around their waists again? Just throw Betty White in some sagging pants in the next awful Scary Movie trailer. Have her do a terrible rap and plaster it all over the airwaves. Invite the creepy old man from the Six Flags commercials to join the party. Within weeks, magically, pants will start to rise. No kid in their right mind wants to take his fashion cues from an elderly woman. The lesson? By knowing how your audience will react to marketing, both positively and negatively, you can achieve the goal you’re after. Now, if  President Obama or Dr. Cosby ned us for anything else, we’ll be here Monday through Friday, as usual.

So who takes home the coveted prize for Viral Video Marketer for the toughest month of October? The top 3 ingredients of a typical, successful viral video is funny, sexy or scary. This makes October a month of high competition and the top dog always turns out something great. This month’s winner is a bit of a weird experiment…

Can you be a viral video marketer if you are not really marketing anything?

Stipulations aside, we’d feel remiss if we did not share this viral video marketing experience with you this month. Check out Take This Lolipop, sit back and “relax?”

Creator, Jason Zada claims “I just love Halloween” and that’s that. Write ups in the New York Times and Forbes coupled with tying into the holiday spirit along with everyone’s fears with sharing anything online certainly is helping this one make the rounds in a big way.

Bravo!

Going Beyond. What does that mean to you? If someone told you your dream job was out there, just waiting for you, but you’d have to “Go Beyond” to get it, what would you do? Would you buy a new suit? Make a video resume? How about create an entire website dedicated to expressing your love and devotion to that possible employer?

That’s exactly what Netta Marshall, a web designer and developer did in order to land herself a job at Instagram. Instagram is an organization dedicated to bringing a unique memory mosaic to each one of us through the act of sharing iPhone photos between friends.

On the Instagram website, they have a page to upload a resume, and we’re sure that thousands of people have done just that, but how many of them went beyond like Netta?

Netta created www.IWannaWorkAtInstagram.com to help her land the job of her dreams. On top of being a wonderfully graphic representation of her artistic and programming abilities, it showcases her passion and creativity as well. The site is clean and well designed. It’s friendly, but professional. It includes everything a prospective employer could want and more. THAT is what going beyond means to us at Generations Beyond. It means that in addition to covering your bases, you recreate the entire ball field from scratch and make it your own.

In a time when sequels and remakes rule the day, it’s inspiring to see Netta’s kind of creativity. We love to see that level of commitment and dedication in other members of our field and we’re looking forward to adding the next Netta to our own team. Of course, the next Netta won’t make a website, she (or he!) will have to find another way to go beyond. Luckily for us, and for everyone who enjoys watching great ideas unfold, that’s bound to happen. There’s always an artist out there reaching for their dreams, and with luck, a few of them will succeed.

So, take some direction from Netta, and stretch beyond what’s expected of you.

Until you go beyond, your dreams will always be beyond you, but once you do, they’ll be right there waiting.

Where does the year go? Already September and not too many viral video campaigns have caught my eye this year, but fear not, Halloween season is right around the corner which is typically ripe for Virals.

I wanted to squeeze in this campaign from FX Networks new show American Horror Story before something from October knocked it out of it’s spot. Not much is known about the show which is already due to debut in a few days (surely part of their overall awareness or unawareness approach for this mysterious property)!

Somehow FX Networks actually got people to volunteer to have the sh*t scared out of them at any given time. Can’t imaging the legal hoops that had to have been jumped through, but this groundbreaking network got it done and Ill let you view, laugh, and share the awesome results as Im sure everyone at the network expects, enjoy my personal fav:

For a full youtube page of dozens of these scares from the show visit the official page at: http://www.youtube.com/user/americanhorrorstory#g/a

There’s an old (and, very likely NSFW) joke that’s the subject of today’s post; we’ll call it “Two Bulls On The Hill, ” and it goes like this:

There are two bulls standing on a hill overlooking a pasture full of cows. The younger bull, eager, but lacking experience, says to the old bull “Hey, let’s run down there and f@#k ourselves a cow.” The old bull, who has spent season after season in this pasture, turns to the younger bull, chuckles, and replies “Nah, how about we walk down there, and f@#k them all.”

Now, anyone who’s ever heard me speak at a seminar, or who’s scheduled a consult with me, knows I’m a BIG FAN of analogies. They’re a great way to take a big and complex idea and break it down into something more manageable.  At Generations Beyond, not a week goes by without the phone at the studio ringing, and on the other end is a client who’s just “heard of a trick” or “found a great tactic” to increase their rankings within Google.

With the recent headlines  about Google’s “massive update,” and the way it punishes those it labels as “cheats,” (JC Penny is an excellent example of a company that was swatted down in the ranks for violating Google’s sense of “fair play”) we feel it’s a good time to reiterate the fact that Google does have a method to its madness. Google’s stated goal (aside from “Do No Evil”) is to sift through every corner of the Internet and find the most important, relevant Web sites and to deliver those results to the Google user. It’s simple, if your Google searches end up giving you irrelevant, or useless results, you’re going to stop using Google. It’s in their best interest to ensure that the people they label as “cheats” aka Black Hat Service Providers (or what some clients or “young bulls” in the story would consider providers of hot SEO “tips”) fail. It may not happen today, or even tomorrow, but sooner rather than later, the company that you’re paying good money to in order to “cheat” Google is going to be discovered and those “hot” tips will go ice cold in a hurry. A good rule of thumb for “tips” like these is that by the time they trickle down through the grapevine, it’s not going to be long before Google shuts them down.


This takes us back to our bovine buddies on the hill.  As the old bull in the story had clearly learned, slow and steady wins the race. Rather than rush out and try to steal a small success, it’s almost always better to take a steady and focused approach to your goal. In almost every facet of life, and certainly in every facet of growing your business, this is what will reap the greatest rewards. This is what our  philosophy relating to SEO is built upon. The slow, steady and quality growth of your website, with new, and quality content, is THE key to building a solid search ranking over time with Google. Sure, the young bull in all of us wants to run to the finish line and reap the immediate benefits, it behooves us (no pun intended) to take a step back, survey the pasture, and know that with experience comes knowledge, and a little planning, and a little finesse, will always garner the best rewards.

What is social media?

This might seem very obvious to some of you but what exactly does the broad term “social media” cover? What about “social media marketing,” “digital marketing” or “content marketing?” Are these all umbrella terms under “social media?” Do the terms cover overlapping topics?

Social media is still in it’s infancy. It’s important to note that the definition of social media is not clear in any way. This post should clear up a few misconceptions and help further define “social media.”

Definition

According to Wikipedia, Social Media is “the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue.”

The analogy we like to use over at Generations Beyond is that traditional marketing is talking into a megaphone at a group of people who might be interested in your product or service. There might be several different people with megaphones trying to shout over you, those are your competitors. Whoever has the biggest megaphone wins, not necessarily the best product or the best offer. Social media marketing, on the other hand, is a conversation. You need to talk but listening is key. Building relationships with people will get you engagement which will affect sales. The key word is “dialogue.”

Next Time: Social Media 101 – Pt 2: It is more than just Twitter and Facebook.

Every month we’ll mention campaigns, companies and brands who we think rocked or missed out in the world of internet marketing.

Win: The Chrysler Road to Literacy Campaign

The jist: Test drive an all-new 2011 Town & Country and Chrysler will donate five books to the school of your choice, plus an additional five books to a school in need. The goal is to donate 150,000 books to schools across the country.

Why we like it: Who doesn’t like a campaign that promotes literacy? The main reason why this campaign is a winner this month is because of it’s sweet Facebook application. It breaks it down into three easy steps what the customer has to do to make the donation happen. It also lets you track the donations already made and filter the donations by state. Additionally, the campaign is driven by a legitimate, real-world action by the consumer: the test drive. Anyone in marketing knows that getting the customer to try your product is an important task.

The downside: The Facebook book page shows that only 380 books have been donated so far, pretty far cry from the 150,000 goal. Maybe with a little love from the Generations Beyond  blog that’ll change.

Fail: American Girl

Dear American Girl,

I remember the many hours I spent playing with Samantha and Josephine. Despite the fact that they are separated by 80 years of history does not change the fact that they were best friends in my 12-year-old bedroom. I also fondly remember my sister and I spending even more countless hours making our own plays on the computer with American Girl Doll Premiere. (It would make an excellent Broadway musical.)

Please be assured that I am still fond of your company even though my dolls have been in the attic for 10 years. However, your facebook page well, sucks.

You haven’t made an update since 2009 despite the fact that you have 15,000+ followers and the last one asked you a question 4 hours ago at the time of writing. How disappointing.

But take heart! Plenty of other companies are making money promoting their businesses and selling American Girl style clothing using your facebook page. I’m sure it gives you great pleasure to hear that other companies are benefiting from the community you have abandoned.

Most fondly yours,

Generations Beyond

 

In the late 90′s, when we first began building website most small businesses didn’t have, and, honestly, didn’t really need a website. But,within a few short years, the undeniable growth of the internet began to reach out in every direction, including that of the small business community. The tremendous potential for a new form of very effective marketing, combined with the “everyone else seems to be doing it, so I have to as well” popularity of internet branding, soon had websites for every type of business sprouting up all over the place. No one who was anyone could get by without a website, and if your answer to the “Are you online?” question was no, you were clearly not a “serious” contender for success within your industry.

However, as with most impulsive business decisions into unexplored terrain, the results tended to be a little lackluster. People who just wanted to be able to say “yes! We’re online!” were suddenly aware that having a bad website was actually a worse situation to be in than having no website at all.  In just another few years, one of the most common thing we heard from incoming clients was “HELP! We have to redo our website ASAP, what we have up now is just embarrassing, and hurting our business!” And so began the age of internet marketing for the small business.

With that in mind, I can’t help but draw similar parallels to the whole “social media craze” that we are currently experiencing. I can no longer count how many businesses impulsively ask clients to follow or like them on a social network without so much as a second thought as to why thier clients should, or if they do… well, what then?

With the ever growing importance and potential of social media marketing you can bet in a very short time, we’ll be hearing quotes like “We have to revamp our social media campaigns! What we’re doing right now (or not doing!) is hurting our business!”

Jesse Wroblewski is the founder of Long Island, NY based digital marketing agency Generations Beyond. Jesse has been known to throw up the devil horns at the site of beautiful CSS code.

Having taken the last few months of 2010 off from blogging about those who are using the medium truly creatively it took something very special to make me exclaim “THIS IS GENIUS” out loud from behind my monitor and get back on the blogging horse. I overexcitedly present to you “Your Mom Hates This“, now THIS is genius!

Your Mom Hates This is a viral campaign for upcoming horror shooter Dead Space 2 from Electronic Arts (which I will no doubt now be purchasing on launch day). It’s funny, scary, viral and couldnt be more on target for the demographic.

On my personal social feeds it seems everyone is already flocking to this genius campaign, both gamers and non-gamers alike. With the exception of this 1 person who apparently doesn’t “get it” EA looks to have a major hit on their hands:

Well deserved!

Anyway, be sure to check out www.yourmomhatesthis.com for all the videos as well as a contest to submit your own mom reactions.

Links:
http://www.yourmomhatesthis.com

Happy Holidays from Generations Beyond!