People love being involved with a brand’s campaign, especially if they’re highlighted (and featured on Instagram!) This makes Experiential Marketing an effective strategy but experiential marketing is not just giving out samples of your products. It’s designing a unique, memorable and inspirational experience. After all, a unique experience can fuel word of mouth on and offline, and change the perception of your brand.
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Marketing’s newest trend is honest marketing but is it enough just to be honest?

There’s a fantastic slideshare by Velocity out there that talks about the importance of honest marketing, which is essentially being transparent and vulnerable with your shortfalls. The idea is that by being honest about your product, you can win over customers because it seems more authentic and therefore, more trustworthy.

We can do better

Honest marketing is a great practice, but you have to go beyond just being transparent. You have to have integrity and your marketing should provide value. Integrity, in essence, is not being forced into honesty but offering it up first. Take for example the McDonald’s Our Food. Your Questions. Campaign. This campaign gained a lot of praise for its courage to answer the critical questions their trollers were using to defame their brand. Their goal was to take horrible claims, such as the McNuggets are made from pink slime, and show that their products weren’t as bad as these trollers made them out to be. While their effort to be transparent is appreciated, it came off as being more defensive and in that sense, dishonest about its intentions. The sole beneficiary of this campaign is McDonald’s not its customers.

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Marco Arment, an iOS and web developer threw a curveball earlier this week when he made the decision to pull his AdBlock app – despite the fact it made it to number one in app rankings. “Peace required that all ads be treated the same — all-or-nothing enforcement for decisions that aren’t black and white,” explained Arment, “If we’re going to effect positive change overall, a more nuanced, complex approach is required than what I can bring in a simple iOS app.”

Adblock has been all the buzz as of late, but it’s no n00b. While the conversations surrounding Adblock had been mostly segregated to the tech-savvy – that is quickly changing. With Tumblr co-founder, Arment, making the decision to pull his smash hit Adblock app, I wanted to explore both sides of the coin… the good, the bad, the debatable.

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How you can captivate the next generation without raising your voice.

Marketing is forever evolving along with our species, much like a thinking ape. As the Millennials are beginning to take over the market, you have to keep in mind the way that your audience is absorbing your message is changing.

Nowadays, people are forever in motion with their eyes directly on their smartphones, tablets and their thumbs are furiously flipping through the endless amount of instant content that is crashing in at all sides. You don’t have to sit through commercials anymore, we now have PVR – and even if a commercial is on, what is to stop us from turning our attention to our phones and checking out something else or playing another rousing round of Angry Birds?

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ISSUES WITH EXPLODING INTO THE STRATOSPHERE

Young, hip and fresh out the gates, a local media company was carefully thought into existence. Despite it’s small size and lack of reputation, it ventured outwards poised to compete with the biggest media moguls who claim a monopoly in print and online media. That’s no easy feat – really, it’s a classic case of David and Golliath.

And who doesn’t love that story?

Just as in legend, with heart and determination, the initially small website began to build it’s momentum. It gained a following, a reputation, and slowly it became a go-to source for local happenings in Vancouver. David.ca had arrived and with fortitude and stamina, over five short years, nearly all the locals know it, follow it, and associate it with their social media feeds and daily updates.

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Designing a professional website for your business can be expensive, and you may be wondering whether it’s worth the cost. The truth is that a well-done website can provide your business with a huge pay-off. A website helps you to improve your service to your customers and bring in more sales, and the cost is significantly lower than older methods of marketing and sales. This means that a well-designed website is always worth the investment.

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