Last week I had the privilege of attending MarketingProfs’ Digital Mixer in Chicago. For two solid days I enjoyed sessions and keynotes from some of the brightest stars in the digital marketing universe. Just Google the conference and you can quickly see that there’s been no shortage of excellent summary posts. For mine, I’d like to add a take from our unique perspective. First, we are an advertising agency as opposed to an in-house marketer. Plus, while we work with businesses of all sizes, we counsel several small businesses that are very interested in how new media can grow their business. Thus my post will look at some of the best conference takeaways by area (social media, search, blogging, email marketing) through the prism of agency and small business. (more…)

I love snacks. Snacks are great because they’re … well, snacks. Small in size, sweet or salty. One of my favorite pieces of new media marketing vernacular is “info snacking.” For those un-indoctrinated, info snacking speaks to all of the little snack-sized bits of our story that we leave out as a sort of a bread-crumb trail leading back to our businesses in the hopes of creating stronger brand engagement. Photo albums on Flickr and Picassa, conversations begun on Facebook and MySpace, stories unraveled on blogs and YouTube — not to mention numerous Tweets. All of these are info snacks that we leave out for a culture that has gradually shifted toward an increasingly steady diet of bite-sized nuggets of content (e.g. Twitter use is up; newspaper subscriptions are down).

On my run this morning (working off more literal snacks), I thought of the work ahead of me when I returned to my desk — editing a video, writing a blog, uploading photos, tweeting across several client accounts. None of these projects resembled creating what we think of as traditional ads. And yet, I think the term ’snacks’ can be misleading. I think the preparation of quality info snacks demands as much craft, devotion, and time as creating traditional modes of commercial messaging. And, as alluded to in our last post, you need a recipe if you want it to come out right.

Your guests are hungry. Are you leaving out enough snacks?

About a month ago we talked about the benefits of marketing nostalgia but there are also specific times not to market nostalgia. These soda bottles can be found right now on the shelves of your neighborhood grocery store. They are Pepsi and Mountain Dew ‘Throwback’ bottles featuring classic logos from the early days of each brand.  When I first saw them I was dumbstruck with brand confusion. The problem? Pepsi just introduced a sprawling  modern revamp of their entire identity system that has been making a few headlines to say the least. Now is not the best time to be throwing it back when they are struggling to throw it forward.

I say struggling because you have the new logo on bottles, cans, boxes, displays, etc. on most shelves and now you also have an odd end-cap featuring these throwback logos. Note how I said ‘most shelves.’ That’s because I have a hunch that if I walk into my local store I can still find a Pepsi logo of the previous generation (on the less popular Wild Cherry Pepsi or an outdated display, perhaps). So add all of this up and there is a chance that a consumer could end up seeing three different versions of the same Pepsi logo in stores right now (1. New logo, 2. Logo immediately previous to the update,  3. Throwback logo). The logo immediately previous to the update can’t be helped as they are still very early in a large-scale branding transition. The impression they could have prevented was introducing this Throwback series.

This minor strategic blunder should help bolster all our collective branding confidence. As marketers, we often find ourselves looking to the big dogs (Pepsi, Apple, Starbucks) for inspiration but even they get it wrong sometimes — as evidenced by a campaign that needs to be thrown back for another year or so when there’s less confusion on store shelves and in consumers’ minds.

The red birds debuted the “Play Like a Cardinal” campaign a year or so ago and are wisely continuing it for the upcoming season. It’s pretty easy to be ubiquitous with sports marketing but this campaign really cuts through the clutter. The above video from the Jumbotron is a campaign centerpiece — combining the team’s rich history with powerful images and moving words. It also makes me wish I was at Busch stadium with a dog and a beer. Here’s a link to all of the new 2009 spots. My favorite by far is the discovery of Pujols’ secret identity.

(This is also a little experiment to see how long it will take Dean — Mr. Brewer himself — to demand the removal of this Cardinals-centric post.)

Last weekend I went to the store to buy Monopoly and it was damn hard. If you’ve ventured down the game aisle of late you’ve probably noticed that there are a few more versions of the Parker Brothers classic including but in no way limited to Bass Fishing Monopoly, Boston Red Sox Monopoly, Cat Lover’s Monopoly, US Coast Guard Monopoly, Chronicles of Narnia Monopoly, Elvis Monopoly Collector’s Edition, I Love Lucy Monopoly “California Here We Come” Edition, and my personal favorite, pictured above, Monopoly Electronic Banking featuring the pre-credit crisis back-of-the-box headline “Make Millions with a Swipe of Your Card!” I have walked by Monopoly for years thinking we should get it but these versions have intimidated me to date. I bought plain ‘ol Monopoly for $10.99.

The point? It was hard to do business with Monopoly. Not hard in a way that I couldn’t overcome but I would have bought earlier had the experience been a bit easier. Sometimes if you take a step back you can see that your business has a lot of sales barriers in place that you may not have seen. Did anyone at Parker Brothers question that perhaps with the development of I Love Lucy Monopoly “California Here We Come” Edition that they were on there way to overwhelming some customers? A minor concern? Yes. Worth discussion? Absolutely.

Here’s a tip: the next time you have a meeting or retreat with your team write the headline above — Is It Hard to Do Business with Us? — on your wipe board and discuss away. Make a list and start picking them off. Not overnight but over time you will streamline your customers’ experience and leave fewer people confused in your aisles …