Branding. People remember me when they need my help-- even years after they meet me. And here's how I make myself unforgettable:
Every single person you reply to automatically gets stored in your contacts. So think about it. Every single person who replies to you gets to keep your email address in their contacts rollodex. But BFD! At the end of 10 years, you've got 10,000 contacts you can't put a name or a face too... the contacts sound like basementlove85@hotmail.com or greensparkle1@yahoo.com ... what good is that?
So what I do is make sure that all the thousands of people who reply to me every year can easily find me again.
My email FROM name is:
"Marketing Web Social Media Twitter Facebook Youtube NYC LA SF starbucks Bob Wan Kim Asian Korean Genius" <bob.wan.kim@gmail.com>
Yep. I build in tags into my email address so everyone remembers where they met me and who I am.
PS. not only that, but since google has an autocomplete feature, the more letter combos I put in my email name, they see my name whenever they are trying to email anyone whose email address has any number of matching combinations.
For example, if they are trying to email "Mark(us) Phillips," google automatically makes my name pop up. Even if they are trying to email "Soc(cer Coach)," my email comes up because it matches the words "Soc(ial Media)."
With its “Just Do It” campaign, Nike increased its share of the domestic sport-shoe business from 18% to 43% (239%), and from $877 million in worldwide sales to $9.2 billion in the ten years between 1988 and 1998.
I'm on a horse.
Quick. What comes to mind when I say, "energy drink?" How about, "bra?" "Hamburger?"
If your marketing did it's job, for every category or demand vertical, you should be the immediately associated brand. If your marketing is focused on the #1 most important mission: to associate your brand with a demand vertical, you'll sell.
Despite reports to the contrary, Nielsen data shows that sales of the Old Spice Body Wash range as a whole rose by 55% over the last three months, and by 107% in the last month alone.
To make things simple, there's only one way to accomplish this mental association - demonstration.
for every category or demand vertical, you should be the immediately associated brand
Weiden + Kennedy's ad campaign failed for one reason. There was no demonstration. When I think of shoes, I think: Nike. Computer:Apple. Chinese:PF Chang. But when I think of Old Spice:Horses.
Sure, you may think 107% reported by Nielsen is not a failure. We do. Doubling your money by selling Apple in 2005 was also a failure. If you leave money on the table, You didn't win.
If you're in the middle of an ad or marketing campaign, call us at 310 598 1606. Let's talk about how to make every ounce of your message sell. Anything less than maximized ROI is a #FAIL.
It's amazing to watch a master pitcher. I've been lucky. I've worked with three of them. If you got them in front of a prospect, it was already over. The prospect was starstruck - helpless. It's pretty darn close to a religious experience.
I am going to do the reverse of telling you their secrets.
Instead of creating a long list of things they did instinctively, like a Robin Williams improv, one by one, I'm only going to talk about the most glaring things you omit from your sales and marketing pitches. I figure it would make the discussion go faster and immediately tie down the biggest gushing arteries.
You don't demonstrate with emotional metaphors. Whether you sell a beauty product, a consumer product, a software solution, a business service, are trying to generate website registrations, adwords clicks, or whatever, you can't pick up a couch from just one end.
You've tried it. You've tried to move a couch from one place to another alone. It doesn't work nearly as well as if someone just picked up the other end. If you have two point of leverage, it would mathematically seem like you'd experience a 50% increase in leverage but not-at-all. You experience a 1000% better "conversion rate."
When you talk about your product or service, you're trying to change the position of your client's mind by lifting from one point of leverage. I always use two. three is unnecessary and often makes moving the mind harder (just like moving a couch with three people). You might talk about the extra benefits of your product vs your competitor. You might talk about the price difference; the shorter "pay for itself" cycle; the more intuitive ergonomics - whatever. You're only talking about your product at one point.
Create an unbreakable emotional anchor Use an emotional metaphor. By using an emotional metaphor, you're psychologically creating an association with your prospect or market's preexisting neurology. In essence, you're creating an anchor in the mind of your audience.
While not a exactly metaphor, the Blendtec people do it. Instead of talking about product specific features like you do, they create an emotional metaphor that directly anchors in the minds of their audience. Instead of talking about the tensile strength of their steel, the sharpness of their blades, the extra horsepower of their engines, or anything related to the product, they take an object that is already in your emotional desire center and pulverize it. They take that iPad you've been waiting for and saving for and destroy it before your very eyes.
When writing marketing and ad copy about a client's herbal pain reliever, Bioprin, I'll rapidly just glaze over it's features. I spend most of my time writing about it's emotional metaphor. Since it works on fungus levels in your body, I'll quickly mention how fungus like Candida and other yeast infections makes you irritable, fatigued, and destroys your ability to digest food and fight off viruses. But since all of this is invisible and highly theoretical until they try it, I talk about a moldy orange.
Make your product an emotionally ecstatic experience "You would bite into a moldy orange, would you?" I ask. Then tell them that that moldy fungus is already in their body (which it is). Then I challenge them to Get two moldy oranges. Sprinkle Bioprin on one and spray some anti-fungal athlete's foot or rub anti-fungal creme on the other.
"They both kill the fungus," my ad copy lets them visualize.
"But Bioprin is 100% Herbal and has Zero Side Effects," I continue.
Then for one final emotional string pull, I say, "So Bioprin is as safe as an herbal tea. As for the anti-fungal creme, we don't recommend that you eat it."
Make your readers' adrenaline rush Whether you visually demonstrate the emotional metaphor or just let your audience / prospect imagine all of it, explain the value of your product or service directly and with an emotional metaphor. It will enable your listener to both rationally and emotionally grasp your product. And it will give you two points by which you can move that bulky customer's mind.
Basically, just make your reader or prospect's adrenaline rush.
Let's be friends on Facebook. There is a big change coming up in the marketing media world that will disrupt the way you reach your customers. I'm only telling my facebook friends about it. Join me at http://www.facebook.com/bob.wan.kim
Several summers ago, about 20 of my closest friends started a road trip from San Diego to Zion National Park. We were headed for Angels' Landing. Angels' landing is one of the most breathtaking places on earth. After a 5 hour near 40% incline hike, you climb beyond where eagles fly to reach Angel's Landing. When you get there, the peak features straight vertical faces and small plaques that say, "In memory of our loving son Matthew."
But it wasn't here that I first saw my clearest case study on how to raise my website sales by 400%. It was on the way there.
Half a day's drive away from Angels' Landing, our caravan met up with Jerome, another close friend of ours. He took us on 30 minute detour up a gorgeous mountain road. At the end of the road was a hole in the ground. We walked up to this hole. About 8 stories down was a glowing blue-green pool. Jerome took off his shirt and jumped in like it was just another bathtub. All 20 of us were more scared than excited.
"Jump in! It's amazing down here!"
"Jump in! It's amazing down h..."
"Jump in! It's amazing d..."
Jerome's voice echoed more times than he prodded at us to join him. Finally, he swam away then climbed back up at another point to meet us.
The only people within our clients' industries are their competitors
From the top level, Jerome started to urge and prod again. Nobody budged. The more he urged, the more scared we got. Eventually, he physically tried to push a couple of us over the edge into the dark hole. None of us liked that. Most of us climbed back down to a landing we had passed along the way to eat lunch. A few of us remained. I left.
After we had finished lunch we apprehensively ascended back up to the big hole in the earth. We nervously joked about seeing our friends smeared along the sides of the hole. Arriving at the hole, our fears transmuted into pure panic. None of the few friends we had left behind were there.
We looked over at each other. Kelly, a guy Kelly, slowly shuffled his feet toward the edge of the hole. We stood behind monitoring his facial expressions. He started laughing from relief. Somehow, Jerome successfully pursuaded the stay-behinds into taking that leap.
Now, instead of just one distant friend, it was several close friends taunting the dry-landers into jumping. Still we didn't budge. Nothing they said could get us to take off our shirts and take that leap. We couldn't understand how Jerome got our friends to jump as much as our wet friends could figure out how to get us to follow suit.
Then, we did it. All of us jumped down the black hole. But it wasn't from jeering, cajoling, prodding, tempting, or pushing. One of the guys down in the blue-green pool was Kelly's best friend. He swam away and reemerged from a far corner of the hole. He walked up to us, smiled, and just jumped. Kelly took his shirt off and immediately followed. I did too. I was afraid I was going to land on Kelly.
Everyone then jumped in like Lemmings - Even Kelley, the girl Kelley, got topless and jumped in.
They featured regular looking actors (in the beginning) who were easy to relate to actually taking the dive and eating their burgers
It wasn't until last night that I realized that this moment in time was all I needed to understand the mechanics of how to increase website sales by 400% in 72 hours.
If you've ever launched a marketing initiative that didn't make a single person "jump in," you've probably wondered, "what's the missing Tabasco in my marketing Bloody Mary?
Last night, I attended the Seattle Creative Tweetup at the Hard Rock. @CoolGuyGreg hosted. I'm going to attend every single Seattle Creative Tweetup from now on. Everyone who was important showed up. What I learned from picking @CoolGuyGreg's brain for 30 minutes was a gold mine. We talked about the biggest yet simplest mistakes that cripple your sales volume.
I was a creative director for several ad agencies with an art school and communications background. In my mind, advertising was always about branding a product. And branding was always about branding a company or product. None of it was designed to actually sell a product.
If I did a stellar job branding a product or a company, everyone would have fond emotional associations to that product. That way, when the salesman knocked at your door, you'd be more likely to try it out. My job at my ad agency was not ever designed to sell a product. If anything, it was designed to win awards making our agency look good and it was designed to draw attention to our clients from within their industries.
Talking with Greg, in retrospect, I realize that was stupid. The only people within our clients' industries are their competitors. So again, none of it was designed to actually sell a product.
Some of it was designed to help their sales force break the ice, but really, how many companies even have a gum-shoe sales force anymore?
Greg, being the marketing strategy consultant that he is, explained the single biggest fatal advertising failure this way, "Not too long ago, Burger King launched a glamour shot campaign. They did food porn. The got the most beautiful upclose and panning shots of their burgers anyone had ever seen. It was beautiful. But it was Carl's Jr. that increased their sales by 400% by making one tiny tweak in their "messy" campaign. Carl's Jr. actually showed people eating their burgers.
'If it doesn't get all over the place, it doesn't belong in your face,' Greg chanted.
He continued to explain the behind the scenes mechanics, "to do a glamour shot of food, you can't eat it. It's fake. So if you want to show someone eating your burger, it's gotta be a real burger without all the laquer and autobody paint. No self-respecting creative director at some ad agency is going to want to film that kind of ugliness.
(If we were all hermetically sealed aluminum bottles, close ups of other aluminum bottles would be exciting)
But that kind of ugliness is what sells. Carl's Jr. sales jumped 400% since taking that leap of faith. Now, their ads are graphic, innovative and international. Most importantly, their ads sell product. They featured regular looking actors (in the beginning) who were easy to relate to actually taking the dive and eating their burgers.
The missing Tabasco in the Old Spice Viral Ads was that nobody was shown actually using the product. AXE, on the other hand, is all about showing users using AXE.
Looking back, it's amazing how effective it was to see Kelly's best friend physically strip down, smile, and jump than just hearing him tell us how badly we were missing out.
If You want to speak with Bob Wan Kim about Your Marketing and Moving Your Work to the Next Level, He's ten digits away. Just call 310 598 1606
I've never understood "the pitch." Sure, I've been CD for several ad agencies and PR firms. But I've never understood "the pitch."
You show up, you state why you should get "the account" and the prospect tries to blow holes (not in a good way) in your "pitch."
I've always been the kind of guy who'd rather have a 100% closure rate. Let me rephrase that. I prefer 100% consumation rates.
I'm the same way at a bar. I never approach women. Sure, it's a numbers game. But it's a losing numbers game. I'd rather invest the time it takes to get rejected 80% of the time and perfect my reputation so that it precedes me. When I walk into my favorite dives and a woman approaches me, I have a 100% (ehem) closure rate.
Instead of showing up and jousting with your prospect and then shadow boxing with several other competitors, I prefer to spend the same amount of time just perfecting my craft. I focus on perfecting my craft to a point where I have no competitors. Prospects suddenly disappear. If they show up on my door step, they are not prospects. They are client-hopefuls. They can't imagine anyone else providing what they need.
@Mike_FTW is my favorite example of this on Twitter.
He's the opposite of the guy who shows up and tells you that your dad is a thief (because he stole the sparkle from a star and put it in your eyes). Mike has no agenda. Make has no pitch. He will never have to take the defensive because he is never offensive (ummm...).
His Tweets look like:
Because Mike never tries to sell you anything, you've actually gotta go snooping around to figure out what he does for a living, why he has 5,000+ Followers, and why all the post SF dot com execs tweet @Mike_FTW .
If you simply focus on delivering value (humor, knowledge, insight, news, etc...) without being commercial, eventually, you'll have developed a deep rapport with your follower base. When they need what you sell, you'd better believe they will come to you first. That gives you first right of refusal - and a 100% closure rate (without buying a single Redwood Room $14 Cosmo).
@gapingvoid is of the same methodology. How did a simple illustrator and cynic build an Amazon best seller?
How to Get Into the News Media and Pull Big Bloggers Like Guy Kawasaki With 
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