Fresh ID » Social Marketing

The @CamryEffect: Toyota’s Twitter Spam Campaign for Superbowl Fans

Kristi — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 23:42:21 +0000

Today I witnessed something really annoying. I mean, it got under my skin particularly. My friend Scott Stratten, @unmarketing, posted on Facebook that it was pathetic that there were 10 Verified (by Twitter) accounts, all spamming people who were talking about the Superbowl:

https://twitter.com/#!/CamryEffect
https://twitter.com/#!/CamryEffect1
https://twitter.com/#!/CamryEffect2
https://twitter.com/#!/CamryEffect3
https://twitter.com/#!/CamryEffect4
https://twitter.com/#!/CamryEffect5
https://twitter.com/#!/CamryEffect6
https://twitter.com/#!/CamryEffect7
https://twitter.com/#!/CamryEffect8
https://twitter.com/#!/CamryEffect9

You can try looking at the accounts, but within a few hours and lot of griping online about it by some of us, they seem to be unverified (no more logo next to the name) and they are now protected so you can’t see the tweets they’ve been sending. Note: protected, not taken offline, which is standard Twitter protocol in response to enough spam/block reports.

I believe these accounts and the verification were paid for and Twitter was aware of the campaign in advance. Why? Check this tweet out:

That’s one of the Directors of Sales for Twitter, praising how CamryEffect was going to be using Twitter, and then they had 10 accounts sending non-stop spam messages to people who mentioned Superbowl-related keywords (from what I could tell by clicking on lots of their tweets before they closed their accounts off.

So what’s the big fuss, anyway, you may be asking? I’ve had several conversations about this today. There is a fundamental difference in advertising, and partaking in events that result in ad delivery, such as a Google search, watching TV, going to a movie, using a free platform, listening to the radio or reading a magazine, vs. SPAM, which is a direct and personal solicitation to you, using an account of some type that you have (your phone, your social network account, your email.) There is also the concept of “cold” solicitation, which hovers somewhere between the two. If I say I need a dry cleaner (for example) and someone who doesn’t know me – a person, or a dry cleaner – says “Hey, we do that, if you want to check us out we are here” that is a little more appealing to me personally than spam, which is often the result of an automated delivery, and therefore impersonal and meaningless.

What Toyota’s CamryEffect campaign was doing was pure and total Twitter spam. Set up bots (someone on Facebook said this was done using http://localresponse.com/#brand which delivers advertising real-time. Their ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi LA has been tweeting repeatedly to watch the ad they created for the campaign, so we might assume they had something to do with this Twitter campaign also. So really, all the culpable players are Toyota who approved it, Twitter who helped enable it by making accounts look Verified and Official, and the ad agency who boneheadly decided that what Superbowl football fans REALLY wanted tomorrow is a big old can of SPAM, otherwise known as the CamryEffect.

I feel sorry for the car. It really had nothing to do with this short-sighted money-grab and textbook worthy negative social media case study. And, as always, my concern is for the end users. One tweet about a car today, because you mention watching an event on Twitter, could well be 50 unwanted tweets about everything from zit cream to make impotence products based on watching The Mentalist. Or whatever it is you watch and people think you will buy.

And THAT is the single thing that really could be the death of Twitter. People will stay for ads, they’ll stay if you charge them… but if you suck them in and then sign them up against their wishes for canned SPAM, they’ll go elsewhere.

This didn’t happen when Ev and Biz were running the show. I knew something bad was going to happen when they left. If you care about this stuff, don’t just tweet or Facebook it. Put it in a blog post. Send it to Twitter. Say you don’t mind promotion but you expect them to promote responsibly. Yes, the site is free, but you create the content that keeps this crazy rat wheel turning. Don’t sell yourselves short as the end user. You DO matter! And maybe the Camry is even a good car, I have no idea. Ask your friends if they have one and if they’d recommend it. That’s a good way to find out.

Wake up big ad agencies. This is NOT your oyster. Our accounts are not your free-for-all. You’ll get it eventually because if you keep acting like this, you’ll have to come up with yet more ways to do push marketing because we’ll abandon in droves the sites where you abuse us.

Should You Try Using Different Words to Tell Your Story?

Kristi — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:35:44 +0000

This simple, but poignant video might help you think of new things to try and do for your business if you’ll sit back and think about where you could say things another way, or give your customers the unexpected.

What words are you using to tell your story?

Thanks for sharing this with us, Jake! (Our client, owner of Pandolfi’s Deli.)

Two New Communities Coming!

Kristi — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:47:37 +0000

I wanted to tell you real quickly about two new communities we’re forming and how you can participate if either of them are right for you.

#SMbyDesign Weekly Twitter Chat

#SMbyDesign is a Twitter chat I have long dreamed of starting. A Twitter friend named Daryl Woods and I had this discussion probably two years ago but I did not make it happen, though it keeps coming up. So today, another friend, Emily Fitzhugh who is a social media consultant and I decided to make it happen! We’re kicking off this Thursday (yes, day after tomorrow) and will do this every Thursday morning at the following times:

PST 7:00 AM
CST 9:00 AM
EST 10:00 AM
UK 3:00 PM
KUWAIT 6:00 PM
BANGALORE 8:30 PM
HONG KONG 11:00 PM

I’ve shown a few representatives from different countries here as we tried really hard to make this time work around the globe. #SMbyDesign chats will cover a few different aspects of social media design:

the actual design processes and challenges of branding and doing interesting things for clients or your company on social media platforms
great examples of social media channel design we see that is inspirational or pushes the envelope and gets us thinking about new ideas for engaging fans
interviews with designers, agencies and marketers who have done a phenomenal job of branding social media channels so we can learn from them
strategy and tactics for different platforms for those just starting out in social media (though it will help you to be somewhat savvy as many conversations will be of an advanced nature)

A lot of advice can be found online for how to market yourself on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or LinkedIn. But advice on maximizing these channels from a design and branding standpoint is not so readily available. To truly do “social media by design” it takes more than a strategy – execution of the brand being extended visually and emotionally is important and yet not talked about as much. Let’s discuss it together!

Girls/Women Who Love MLS Soccer Community

Also in the process of being formed is a social community for women like Sherry, Heather and I who love their pro soccer team here in the US: MLS pro soccer. Some great sites like http://kickette.com exist but are largely focused on soccer overseas. We noticed a missing presence of female-oriented blogs and personalities, though they exist scattered around the web and social channels… we want to bring these women together and create a safe and fun place to both learn about the sport (a lot of us don’t know the technical aspects and so some reporting goes over our heads) and to show other women that there are crazy, soccer-addicted females all around them that they can relate to. This is not so much to exclude men, as it is to be able to freely talk about things that interest us that don’t interest and usually annoy the men (player hair and fashion IS a very important topic!) Some phenomenal women around the nation are part of the founding group – you’ll get to know them after we launch. The community is open to any female of any age that loves her MLS team and watching pro soccer.

This site will be launched prior to the season opening games. If you’re interested in being notified when it launches head to our temporary site and submit your email to be notified. We will be so happy to meet you and play with you in our new community when we launch!

I hope you’ll join me in the #SMbyDesign Twitter chat on Thursdays or the soccer community if you’ve been bitten by the MLS bug like I have. If you have any questions about either group, let me know in the comments!

Brands of Any Kind: Do You REALLY Know Why People Follow Your Social Media Accounts?

Kristi — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:06:24 +0000

I read a very interesting article called CMOs Need to Change How They Communicate to Their Fans in 2012, that is worth a look. In a survey of consumers and marketers, the expectations were not aligned regarding the reason someone “Likes” a brand on Facebook. The most glaring gap is in the questions shown below:

While it’s true that these consumers in the survey ranked high a desire to learn about new products, that is not the same as what the marketer thinks… that people want news on the brand and products. “New and different”, vs. “continually tell me about your products again” are very different things. And by and large, in this game-playing, high-expectations world we live in, customers, friends and followers don’t just want content – they want games, incentives, promotions and something to do, moreso than something else to read. The YouTube generation has a less than 2 minute attention span – they aren’t going to spend it reading a press release.

We need to ASK, in a formal survey of our friends, fans, followers, prospects and customers, why they follow us and what they seek from us. That’s one place to start. Some of the things marketers believe didn’t make the list at all for people who answered this survey, so if that’s the case with your batch of followers, throw out the pointless activities, trim the fat, and spend your marketing budget giving people what they will actually interact with instead of more of the same.

: United Sponsored Sweepstakes

We do contests and promotions on Facebook for our clients, but haven’t done that for ourselves. I’m going to be looking at what we can do to make our updates – especially on Facebook – more interesting than noise this year. There are things even a creative agency can give away or do for people that don’t cost us much, but would benefit a prize winner greatly, like a site conversion to WordPress, or a rebrand of social media channels, for example. We could also design some unique things to make on zazzle.com to give away, like an iPad cover or messenger bag… not with our logo all over it, but with a cool design on it that benefits the recipient (or maybe our logo could be included, but very small and subtle.) Look at your business and see what you could do to bring a little fun to your social networks in the way of a contest or promotion of some type, even if you are a B2B service provider.

This is not the only study I’ve read that talks about the need for more interactivity and games, contests, etc. in the content mix. Below are some additional articles with more information and food-for-thought. If you have questions or want to brainstorm ideas about your Facebook content, let me know in the comments. Have a great week!

How Consumers Interact With Brands on Facebook

13 Best Practices for Restaurants on Facebook
This is an aside… I have noticed that whenever I post images of the food at Pandolfi’s Deli on the Facebook page, consumer interactions are increased, and quite often someone will come into the deli to eat because this prompted a reminder. This is EASY for you to do if you’re a restaurant or food seller of some type. People want to SEE and desire what they don’t have in front of them that moment. Help them, help you!

ExactTarget Study on Why People “Like” a Brand on Facebook

Why Brands Need Friends – Not Fans – On Facebook

CMOs Need to Change How They Communicate to Their Fans in 2012
Be sure and look at all the questions and answers from the survey I talked about in this post – very interesting.

Reasons Not to Beg for Facebook Fans

Kristi — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:20:55 +0000

I’ve noticed a number of disturbing posts from brands I follow on Facebook lately, and that is to request “I need X number of followers by Monday – please help us and ask your friends to like us!” Said once, it’s kind of… icky. Said repeatedly, downright annoying and embarrassing. This isn’t just coming from small businesses or amateurs. Everyone from major brands who already have a fair amount of followers there, to city governments, to event organizers are making these unseemly requests for no real reason except they WANT more fans.

Some people feel compelled to raise their fans and follower numbers, and often forget about nurturing and interacting with those they already have. One of our clients, Spa Insights, has the following stat they share with clients: “The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%. The probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%.” Even if those numbers are specific to their industry, that likely is similar for others. Think about that, and then think about what it says to your existing fan base when you spend your time (and theirs) begging for new fans.

Maybe it’s job pressure from a boss demanding more numbers, or maybe just ego, but this is not the way to do it. What is truly gained by adding “numbers” to your company’s bottom line? A number is not what we call an “advocate.” True influencers and brand advocates will follow/like/fan you willingly, and they are the most important brand evangelist you can have in a word-of-mouth era, not just showing off some big number to your competitors.

This post has to be short and sweet today, but I found an article I want you to read if you feel the urge for more Facebook interactions and are willing to earn them with a timely and relevant-to-your-audience focus. This article is on converting Facebook fans to event attendees, but the advice is solid for an everyday approach to interacting on Facebook. They recommend to:

1. Solve people’s problems
2. Be a thought provoker, not a thought leader
3. Take action

It’s well worth the read for the detailed explanation of each of those recommendations.

Another short lesson you should read is a negative experience that happened when a well-known coffee brand focused on gathering new fans and not the true value of what that meant, to the tune of thousands of dollars in giveaways that they did not necessarily plan to give.

Finally, some sweet advice from Hershey’s on how they approach Facebook interactions: with awareness, content and agility. Hershey’s has found that letting consumers voice their opinions on their products and just express themselves has enriched both the company and the brand relationship with people who buy the products.

This is what really counts: do you matter to existing consumers, and can their enthusiasm and social sharing result in possibly new customers finding and trying your products or services? You can’t guarantee that with more Likes or bigger fan numbers. That takes time, care and dedication to social media as a true aspect of doing business, not just a flash-in-the-pan marketing tactic you may decide to abandon tomorrow.

Photo credit: creativedoxfoto

Malcolm Baldrige Introduces Social Media criteria in 2012

freshid — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 15:16:50 +0000

The Malcolm Baldrige program is the “nation’s public-private partnership dedicated to process excellence.” The Malcolm Baldrige is a customer-focused change agent that defines criteria to influence continuous business improvement and award performance excellence. There is a cost to apply for the award, however organizations receive at least 300 hours of review by a minimum of eight business and quality experts. Site-visited organizations receive over 1,000 hours of in-depth review. Every applicant receives an extensive feedback report highlighting strengths and areas to improve. An article in the Journal for Quality and Participation said, “The Baldrige feedback report is arguably the best bargain in consulting in America.” There are six eligibility categories: manufacturing, service, small business, education, health care, and nonprofit. I can assure you the application process is extensive, hard, long and worth every penny spent on evaluating and assessing your business to make it better. According to the Malcolm Baldrige program, there are seven integrated criteria categories that drive performance excellence:

Leadership
Strategic Planning
Customer Focus
Information & Analysis
Human Resources
Processes/Operations Focus
Business Results

The social media criteria has been included in the Customer Focus category, however as is the nature of the Malcolm Baldrige formula, social media impacts all 7 categories. The new criteria is as follows:

How do you listen to customers to obtain actionable information?
How do your listening methods vary for different customers, customer groups or market segments?
How do you use social media and web-based technologies to listen to customers?
How do your listening methods vary across the customer life cycle?
How do you follow-up with customers on the quality of products, customer support and transactions to receive immediate and actionable feedback?

We are quite pleased to see the emphasis put on “listening.” Even better is the criteria asks not only how companies are listening but more importantly what they are doing with what they are hearing. In Baldrige circles this is called making the “full loop” which is where so many companies tend to fall …they capture data but fail to analyze the data on what it is telling them or fail to make changes accordingly. I shared with the audience that never before have companies had access to the real-time data they have today but having access is only the start. Establishing a strategy that drives the organization to analyze what their customers are saying AND do something about it can be the difference between killing the competition and fading away in to the sunset.

End of Year Marketing Assessment… We’ve Still Got Work to Do. Do You?

Kristi — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 18:09:29 +0000

Last year I wrote a post called Holiday Homework for Website Owners, on December 27th. As I am working on our portfolio and some minor changes to our site today I thought I’d pull this up and see if I’ve made any progress at all on the always-needed, but oft-neglected marketing of Fresh ID. Like working out and eating right, letting marketing slip when business is busy is all too easy… we just have to keep trying to do better! Below is the post from last year and my comments about each item in italics… It’s the last week of the year and I always feel a surge of energy at this time, for the coming year and our business. And then I realize I want to clean up some things around the site, make some long thought about improvements, and get ready to open the doors to a fresh new Fresh ID in the new year. Combined with several of our clients needing significant home page improvements, I’ve got a little checklist of site and marketing things I am going to address this week and I challenge you to use it if needed on your own sites. Let’s be fresh together in ~~2011!~~ 2012! 1. Is your homepage in need of an update? If it’s static, meaning, it doesn’t incorporate real-time or dynamically changing elements to keep it fresh, you need to change it at least monthly to create new experiences for repeat visitors. You can also do coding to have content rotate randomly so the mix of content feels fresh, and you can add real-time updates from Twitter or Facebook or YouTube so that users are presented with constantly changing content. We will be working on a new slider or key message for our site for 2012. This needs to be done before the year ends so check back to see if I got it done! We are torn between using a slider so we can change messages more frequently, or creating a video that has some motion and excitement. 2. Is the content you have in your site, hitting the mark? Using analytics you can determine what’s read, what is never read, and make choices to streamline your navigation and pages of information so that you have less to maintain and dig through, but visitors have more to read and look at that pertains to their needs. Our content just doesn’t seem to be read that much. I don’t know if it’s because a lot of our business, though not all, comes to us via word of mouth, so people just do some shallow checking and then call us or what. Lisa is going to do some analyzing of our traffic and as we work on our 2012 messaging, likely we will do away with some of our pages and tighten up the content. That’s the GOAL I have, at least. 3. Is your marketing copy up-to-date and clear and compelling? Ours is getting a fun re-do and we are going to focus on the “sweet spots” of what we offer (things we love to do + we are good at) and we are going to offload the rest to a simple, comprehensive list (we CAN do a ton of stuff… So much that it can be too much to absorb.) I don’t think we did this, totally. We need to re-assess some of our copy as we have some new products we’re working on in 2012 and so looking at how we want to position the company to focus on what we love to do the most. 4. Do you have links on the site that don’t have content? We’re guilty of this and need to get the content there, or delete the links and references to it until it is there. Yay! We don’t have links that don’t have content. Whew. 5. Are there things you want to do that you haven’t done yet, but feel passionate about? We have several things we will do in 2011 that are new for us and will be adding that information to our site so we can get started. YES, we still have things we want to do that we haven’t been hired to do yet. Creating proprietary products also fall into this list item, unfortunately they require an investment of time and money, so we will have to plan how to approach what we want to see happen in 2012 carefully. The joys of being bootstrapped! 6. Have you been procrastinating about getting marketing tools in place that you need to, including, but not limited to: a Twitter account, an email newsletter or campaign, a landing page to promote something, a Facebook custom tab to take your business page to a new level, a thorough scouring of Google to see if there are business directories or review sites where you should list your company, a Foursquare and Gowalla presence if you are a retail, food or hospitality business… In other words, if you are in need of more business, are you doing all you can to be found online by people who are searching? If not, this week is the time to get things done! We need an intensive effort on SEO and local search and Taylor will be working on that in the first two quarters of 2012. We will also be enhancing our own Facebook presence to show what we do so often for clients. 7. Is your portfolio updated, if you have some type of creative service business? Umm… I’m in the middle of updating it, and appallingly, I have 16 items to put in. I think I’m going to make a calendar entry for the last day of every month, and get the recent items done in a more timely manner so it’s not so overwhelming. It helps that we deliberately chose a theme that limits us – I will talk about portfolio management in an upcoming post. 8. Is your ecommerce store updated with all the products you sell, and out of stock products noted, and unavailable products deleted? Yes, our little Etsy stuff is all updated with what we sell. We’d like to add more and need to get on a more rigorous schedule of adding X per month or something. Room for improvement and marketing here, for sure. 9. If you need to be found online, discovered and trusted as a viable consultant or designer or writer or accountant, etc. are you blogging? People who don’t know you will get to know you and familiarity breeds trust to eventually do business with you or recommend you to others. You aren’t doing yourself any favors if you are capable of writing and aren’t blogging. I am the worlds worst offender on this and it is my solemn vow to blog more in 2011 because I know it leads to direct sales, and it helps me to articulate my voice and opinions and our ongoing mission as a company. I am HORRIBLE about not blogging enough. I promise to improve in 2012 – will be working with Taylor on how she can get all of the 3 owners blogging more… we have a lot to share, but just get overwhelmed and don’t write it down. 10. Are you having fun in your business? If not, are there things you could change to make it more fun, or less stressful, or more easy to accomplish? You know in your heart and head what you need and would help your workday be more sane. Make the plan to make the changes you need to make work a more pleasant place to be. Yes and no, depending on the day and moment. We have growing pains, which are unavoidable. We’ve been tired, but are feeling a little breathing room as a giant project is winding down. We are continually working on how to make work pleasant, not unbearable though, so I think this is something we will always be striving to ensure and if we ever deviate from caring about this, we will be too big for our britches and will re-read this to remind ourselves of what is important about doing this work! I’d love to know what you’re working on this week. I better get busy! Lol! ~Kristi

Sassano Surprise

freshid — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 22:42:33 +0000

At Fresh ID we love to orchestrate surprises, make people smile and enjoy good food. Working with local favorite Pandolfi’s Deli and Sporting Kansas City players Luke Sassano and Soony Saad, we got to coordinate a lunch for SKC fan Sydney Manning that she will never forget.. During a recent #SKCChat on Twitter, hosted by our own Kristi Colvin, Sydney answered a Sporting trivia question correctly and was told that her prize was Pandolfi’s crowd-pleasing sandwich “The Sassano”. Little did Sydney, a HUGE Soony Saad fan, know, Fresh ID had a surprise of our own up our sleeve. CHECK OUT THE PICS! Luke Sassano and Soony Saad were great players today, helping us with the big reveal, that included Sporting KC recording the lunch. Sydney arrived at Pandolfi’s for the sandwich but got much more than that. Luke and Soony not only delivered her food, but sat down and ate with her and her family! The day was captured by Sporting, and you can enjoy the highlights from their website in this video “Sassano Surprises Fan” We had a great time creating the event, and loved that it included two favorites of the Fresh ID’s office, Sporting KC and Pandolfi’s Deli!

The best PR is often incidental

Kristi — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 14:43:27 +0000

A lot of our site visitors know about my love and admiration for CJ Sapong, rookie forward for Sporting Kansas City. I call him my #lilrookie on Twitter and love to make threats against those who threaten to injure him or even give him a bad time during a game. He did something completely unique and unexpected yesterday – with the women’s national team in town to play a game at LIVESTRONG Sporting Park, he decided to serenade Hope Solo, goalkeeper with a rap-style poem he had penned the night before. Watch the video and then let’s discuss the outcome…

You will see folks with cameras and video recorders there – there are always photographers at training sessions at Swope Park, where the team trains, so when one of our guys comes onto the field with a mission, headed toward a member of the women’s team, it’s going to get the attention of the area photogs and reporters. Plus someone may have had to arrange for Hope to hang around and meet him. Some of the guys on the right, Kevin Ellis, Michael Harrington, Korede Aiyegbusi, and Jon Kempin, are teammates of CJ’s so they’re snapping phone pics while he sings of his love for Miss Solo. Now, CJ gets some press in his own right, for his soccer-playing skills. He was recently named #15 out of 24 players under the age of 24 in all of MLS. He is likely a candidate for MLS Rookie of the Year, which I am personally hoping he’ll have earned when the season is over. But yesterday’s serenade resulted in wide press coverage, within hours, for many reasons:

It was spontaneous
It was heartfelt (genuine)
It was quirky and imperfect (he started over when he messed up his lines)
It was humorous (and wasn’t Hope a great sport, despite the blushing)
It resulted in a WIN, a hug and kiss from the one he admired
It was gutsy (I mean, seriously… how many guys could pull this off?)
We saw the real personalities of both CJ & Hope
The reactions from others there were genuine
It was precious – who doesn’t relate to being smitten?
It was a bit of fun in an otherwise routine day!

You just can’t buy or manufacture this kind of PR. I mean, a lot of people try, but it comes off as staged or processed or inauthentic (like those wretched non-real “reality” tv shows.) What’s interesting is in the aftermath, it’s been covered by (to name a few):

Yahoo Sports
Washington Post
Huffington Post
Kansas City Star (some interesting backstory here)
… plus dozens of Soccer-specific blogs around the country

YouTube statistics as of this morning show over 100,500 views – since yesterday afternoon. It’s the #42 most discussed, #5 favorited and #23 top rated video in the sports category as of this writing. I teased his publicist last night, Ari Washington of Double Coverage PR, who knew he was thinking about doing something but didn’t know if he would actually go through with it, about all the awesome coverage this is getting. I would imagine this is a publicist’s dream, but still… if they had planned this together and it didn’t come from CJ’s brain, personality and genuine interest, I doubt it would have been as well-received or as interesting. So how do we take any lessons from this for our businesses? I’m not quite sure. One thing I have observed is that many people prefer a loosened up approach. I talk a lot about various client activities or things we are doing, but when I am genuinely enthusiastic about it people don’t seem to mind, but if I promoted our activities like a lot of companies do I think the messages would just fall flat and be ignored. I ignore most obvious marketing messages myself… they’re boring. I think a lot of promotions, especially in the social media space, are contrived and so they feel contrived. They aren’t as likely to be shared or talked about if they are so obvious. That is really hard to get around – marketing is about putting awareness on something so that people might consider it for themselves, so campaigns are part of the reach/awareness factor. But this is why I SO want businesses to fully embrace socializing their business so that all employees are welcome to use social media in and out of the course of doing business, talking about their daily activities naturally with indirect self/company promotion. What CJ did here (whether he knew or not beforehand) was indirectly market himself. A lot of people who don’t know who he is, might be curious after seeing this video and take a course of action to find out more. They might follow him on Twitter, look for him on Facebook, look him up at the Sporting Kansas City site, Google him to see who he is, and read and learn about him when they knew nothing about him previously. He is on their radar now, and they will recognize the name when they hear it. So the moral of this story I guess is, you’ve got to be out there doing something, if you need awareness and reach. Hopefully what you’re doing is interesting and unique or memorable. Because push, push, pushing your marketing is not going to win the day, though it may be semi-effective. Show your delightful personalities (for people and brands), with all the quirks and flaws. That has long been my motto and continues to be for both myself, and for Fresh ID. We are a small, but growing business and far from perfect. But if we tell you we’re interested in helping your business grow, and here are the problems we see, and here are some ideas, we mean what we’re saying, be it right or wrong. We try things and discard them if they fail, and try something else. When we say something about a client in public, we mean it, we don’t fake babble just to score points or try to get people to do something. We would lose interest, not gain it, if we did, and I think people would know we were being fake. Good luck with your own promotion and PR efforts – it’s a jungle out there! When something fascinating and different like “the rookie serenading the rockstar goalie” comes along, it grabs our attention. Here’s hoping we all are so lucky someday to borrow a few minutes of the public awareness (if needed.) Have a great weekend!

Fresh ID out and about…ONLINE

freshid — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 22:04:48 +0000

The Fresh ID team believes in practicing what we preach. And you all know (or should know) that we try to share our world with you, online. We believe in exploring, updating, engaging and embracing all different kinds of social networks and sharing our thoughts and opinions. So we wanted to share with you all WHERE exactly we are hanging out, and invite you to “Follow” us. Also, if you’d like help setting anything up (Like Tumblr, Blogging etc.) you know we’d be happy to help! So here we are, you can find us 24/7… Introducing, Fresh ID ONLINE Lisa Qualls, CEO: @LQualls4444 Facebook.com/lqualls4444 Linkedin Google Plus Tumblr About.Me Slideshare Visible. Me Kristi Colvin, CCO: @KrisColvin @EatWellWorkWell Facebook.com/kriscolvin LinkedIn KrisColvin (FourSquare) Blogging Tumblr Tom Jenkins, CTO: @TechGuyTom Facebook.com/Techguytom LinkedIn Google Plus Blogging Slideshare Sherry Liu, Art Director: @SherryLiu Facebook.com/AznLiu Sherry Liu (FourSquare) Google Plus LinkedIn Tumblr Ryan McElhaney: Sales and Marketing Director: @RyanLeighMac Facebook.com/RyanMcElhaney LinkedIn Google Plus Tumblr Blogging Flavors.Me Fresh ID: @Freshid Facebook.com/FreshID Blogging Slideshare YouTube