Kristen Lawson has vast experience in reaching consumers and businesses online

(Johnson City, Tennessee) – A top online media strategist has joined Creative Energy as the full-service advertising agency’s Digital Media Manager. Kristen Lawson joined the firm after serving in similar positions for Warner Music Group, Sephora, and Lowe’s Home Improvement.

“The industry relies on online media that is driven by technology which is constantly evolving. Kristen’s experience in working with major consumer brands to develop winning online strategies will provide immense value to our clients,” explained Creative Energy’s President, Tony Treadway.

Lawson interned at the firm in 2005 while attending East Tennessee State University. Upon graduation, the Erwin native joined Lowe’s Home Improvement of Mooresville, NC, as a member of the company’s packaging department. She later was employed by Sephora, Warner Music Group and Guess clothing where she engaged in developing and executing online media campaigns, including social media, online advertising, content development, E-commerce management and event marketing.

Lawson most recently served as Email Marketing Manager for a collection of Kellwood fashion labels in Los Angeles.

I picked up on the new approach in content marketing via Joe Pulizzi’s blog about Jonathan Mildenhall’s Content 2020 marketing mission for Coca-Cola. Mildenhall is Coca-Cola’s VP of Global Advertising Strategy and Creative Excellence. To drill down on this topic you need to invest at least 20 minutes, but it is worth your time. In particular, watch two videos embedded in Palizzi’s blog from Coca-Cola.

The essence of the initiative is for Coca-Cola to make a commitment to make the world a better place while driving Coca-Cola’s business objectives via a fresh approach to content marketing. Mildenhall’s point is that his company can no longer count on being 30-second-TV-centric. Instead, Coca-Cola will move from creative excellence to content excellence. Content that is the world’s most compelling content that drives discussion, exploration and innovation. The resulting content will give the company “a disproportionate share of popular culture,” Mildenhall explains.

The move is proof that advertisers must reinvent their marketing from the Old World approach of telling target audiences that they should purchase their products or services to New World discussion driven by electronic communities. While other companies are giving lip service to content marketing, Coca-Cola’s bold marketing strategy will require a culture change inside this giant brand and will require some partners who can assist in getting this process started who understand the dynamic.

Mildenhall adds, “All advertisers need a lot more content so that they can keep the engagement with consumers fresh and relevant, because of the 24/7 connectivity. If you’re going to be successful around the world, you have to have fat and fertile ideas at the core.”

If your advertising agency partner is telling you that you should have a robust electronic marketing effort, then take a long, hard look at their own efforts. In 2010, Creative Energy made a commitment to delivering content on its own web site that would provide valuable information to its customers and target customers and we have lived up to the promise. What about your agency.

Let me give you some examples. In the foodservice advertising agency arena there are about a dozen agencies of which a half dozen have the lion’s share of the major advertisers. The agency to be considered the #1 ad agency for the past two decades has posted a total of 39 blog posts to their site since March 29, 2010. Most of the posts are without value to their clients or potential clients.

Another client posts blogs more frequently, with posts about their cats and calls for calling your mother on a more frequent basis. Nice, but better than the big boy. Another agency posts content that is of more value to the marketplace, but their most recent post was in October.

All are inconsistent in their approach and commitment to electronic marketing. Since May 10, 2010, Creative Energy has delivered 313 blog posts to its site and RSS feed customers and 95% of the content is tips that you can use in your business as valuable marketing information and tips.

Is your ad agency is truly interested in electronic marketing and content delivery?

If you are like every other business executive, you are part of multiple database marketing plans. As your In Box fills with everything from new ways to enhanced your sex life to obscure offers to whisk you away to an exotic vacation, I ask you how often you even click on the offer or simply add it to your daily chore of deletes?

Two things are important to any successful database e-marketing plan. Having a list that is likely to be interested in having what you have to offer and secondly offering a relevant message that offers the opportunity to relieve a pain the target customer may have.

We are launching a new, quarterly e-mail campaign for one client that positions them as the expert on flavor trends in the chain restaurant industry with fresh, insightful content that is relevant to their chain’s menu development.The HTML-based e-blast will have color, interaction with on-trend recipes and even video packages that demonstrate how other restaurants are effectively using our client’s products in their own restaurant. That’s the content. What about the database?

We are harvesting e-mails from various major menu trend-focused events from 2011 as well as our client’s own list of contacts. Then, we are adding targets from a proprietary list we subscribe to of chains with 5+ units as well as independent restaurants who have over the past three years redeemed a coupon for rebates on our client’s products. Add to the list the client’s distributors and brokers and we are at about 3,500 very sweet targets. Obviously, the best hope is to engage a major restaurant chain to contact our client for custom recipes or purchase the client’s product for their own exploration. Either way, I’m confident we will assemble the right database and the right content to make them engage with the client.

Remember content that is end-user focused is the secret to success along with a focused database. My old rule of thumb is that even if the content is 80% sugar and only 20% sales (medicine)…a spoonful will make the medicine go down. Try these tips and you will reap more from your database marketing efforts.

We know that delivering content online is where it’s at in 2012. The challenge is to invent fresh ways that will break through the clutter and compel your targets to pay attention. We have a solution that will do just that – an online newscast.

Let’s face it. Users are programmed to watch content, not just read it. In fact, some research shows that brand recall is up to 282% higher when online users watch content instead of read it. An online newscast does the reading for them with a short burst of key information with network-style graphics, delivered by a news anchor just like Fox News, ESPN or CNN. The challenge is to blend key trend information that is relevant to your target audience that offers your products or services as a solution.

A core competency of Creative Energy is broadcast news. Our director of public relations, Karen Jenkins, and myself come from broadcast television news. Our corporate office is a converted television station and our videography services are perfectly positioned to produce online newscasts. In fact, we already are in production of four online newscasts for clients.

One example is GSB News. Targeting large architectural firms, tract builders, multi-unit housing and student housing construction firms, General Shale Brick News delivers key trends affecting these segments who are targets of the brick manufacturer. The concept is to build an impactful relationship with these firms so that the company is considered and preferred as their source for brick, stone and outdoor living products for these developments. With this in mind, watch the online newscast and see how we weave sales and marketing messaging in with news and trend information.

We will push the newscasts out to target audiences via e-blasts that will ask users to subscribe to subsequent newscasts via RSS feeds. We will also create a YouTube channel for each client to archive newscasts and will tease subscribers via QR codes in print advertising. The newscasts work particularly well on smartphones and tablets – heavily utilized in the B2B market space.

If you are in search of something fresh for your marketing initiatives for 2012, consider delivering content via an online newscast. It’s a whole new way to deliver content online.

New stats from the recent Christmas buying season point to why companies should think mobile and tablets when they build e-commerce components to their web sites.

According to San Francisco-based RichRelevance, iPad and iPhone devices accounted for the bulk of online non-desktop sales during the Christmas shopping season. In fact, just over 92% of the items purchased on a mobile device originated from an iPad or iPhone in December 2011. Additionally, the report found that a typical online purchase made via an Apple device totaled $123, compared to purchased made from a desktop at $87.

While online purchases made from a mobile device is still only a fraction of  total online dollar sales, the difference in the average transaction and the fact that there are already 24 million tablet users in the U.S. alone (dominated by the iPad) means businesses must make the mobile and tablet experience a key priority to their online and e-commerce strategies.

Merry Christmas. I hope that you are enjoying a time with your family and friends that gives you rest and a few days to recharge for a busy 2012. I want to share a Christmas story to remember. In particular, if you are involved in advertising and marketing.

A few weeks ago my wife, Teresa, got an e-mail from a father of a 7 year-old autistic son that gave our employees a rare insight into the value of advertising that should warm your heart.

We operate an online store of wearable clothing that is branded for our client, Pal’s Sudden Service. Pal’s is a famous fast food chain in Tennessee and Virginia that was the first to earn the Baldrige National Quality Award. In 2011, we created a campaign to promote the chain’s Big Pal Bacon Burger and the hero of the campaign was a pig flying a WWI bi-plane. 

The father’s e-mail asked if we would add a new t-shirt to the store featuring the pig flying the bi-plane. I will let him take the story from here. “My 7 year old autistic son LOVES your commercial and is for the most part non verbal. He has been saying Pals piggy quite a bit and wants to eat at Pal’s every day! His first full sentence about a month ago was ” I am going to Pal’s piggy”. I pushed myself away from my dinner I was eating at the time and took him to Pal’s.”

Seldom do we in advertising or marketing know if our work ever makes a difference in someone’s life. His e-mail proved that once in a while it really does. I told the story to our employees this year during our Christmas party and many were in tears by the end of the tale. If you are in the ad business and have asked yourself if you really are making an impact on the world, the answer is yes once in a while you do.

Have a great holiday season and we look forward to sharing more insights with you in the coming year.

Merry Christmas. Now that you have your new tablet or laptop charged up let’s take it on a road test.

We attended the Culinary Institute of America’s (CIA) World of Flavors Conference in Napa, CA back in November and it was an extraordinary event. Chefs from around the world came to the cooking stage to share their secrets to their very best dishes. Now, the CIA has posted videos of those presentations online. From the Middle East to Mexico and more points in between, why not watch some fun stuff and bone up on classic flavors when you watch some of these videos.

Simply go to the CIA World of Flavors link and scroll down.

Bon Appetit,

Tony

I’m seeing the first ads appear in in foodservice publications for US Foodservice (now US Foods). I applaud their new focus on the end user – the operator.

Only a decade ago, many predicted the demise of the nation’s #2 broadline distributor. Today, they have a strong position in the marketplace and is noted by food manufacturers as truly focused on partnering with them to sell more products by focusing on smart solutions for the end-user – the chef or operator of a restaurant business.

I want to congratulate US Foods for a job well done and for “getting it” when it comes to understanding their role in the food chain that takes food from the plant to the tables of tens of thousands of restaurants nationwide.

Few are willing to create advertising co-ops because of the number of different companies involving in pulling something like this off is best described as herding cats. We are cat herders. For the fourth year we will bring food companies from the South into an ad co-op to launch the “Buy The South’s Best Foods” month in May.

The campaign in 2012 will include newspaper insert (Free Standing Inserts or FSI) coupons by participating members of the Southeastern Food Processors Association (SFPA). To join the association, a food manufacturer can join for $400. A participating member of the co-op will have their coupon appear in the FSI  in 10 southeastern states (VA, NC, SC, GA, FL, AL, MS, TN, KY and LA). The distribution via major newspapers will be on May 6 and May 13, 2012. Each week, a total of 16,340,000 newspapers will include participating member coupons. A participating member can secure placement of their coupon for only $14,500.00 that all costs for the program for SFPA members.

This distribution includes the footprint of key supermarket retailers, such as Food Lion, Publix, Kroger, Winn-Dixie, Food City, and Albertson’s. Thus, food companies can support their brand at cooperative pricing that would be cost prohibitive in a solo effort.

The campaign also includes a national recipe contest for participating members via notice in the newspaper insert, an ad in Taste of the South magazine and online at www.BuyTheSouthsBestFoods.com. Additionally, the investment includes an ad in the supermarket trade magazine, The Shelby Report, alerting retailers to stock up on participating member products for the promotion. The participation deadline for the 2012 campaign is February 1, 2012.

If your company would like to participate, contact Tony Treadway at (423) 926-9494, ext. 112 or via e-mail at ttreadway@cenergy.com