Spotlight on Marketing

I just spotted a horrible, cringe-inducing phrase on the website of a professional service provider.

Social for me is all about connecting, interacting, and being real and authentic. Being social is where, as a small business owner, you have a huge advantage over other, larger and more traditional organisations. By being authentic, by responding, by helping and by adding value, we can build our personal brand into one that builds trust.

An award-winning advertising campaign in Australia and New Zealand in the late 1990s, for the Toyota HiLux truck, showed the comical disasters that befall a farmer, his dog and his wife, who underestimate the truck’s power - hence their dry reaction: “Bugger.” One of Toyota’s competitors could turn that campaign around, against Toyota, by running an ad saying simply: “I bought a Toyota. Bugger.”

One of my favourite quotes about marketing comes from Sergio Zyman, the former global marketing boss of The Coca-Cola Company and the author of “The End of Marketing As We Know It” and “The End of Advertising As We Know It”. He wrote: “The purpose of marketing is to sell more stuff.”

Here’s info about three upcoming business/marketing-related events in Hong Kong at which I’ll be a speaker/trainer. (There’s also a bonus comedy event for light-hearted relief.) You’re invited.

When someone follows me on twitter, I don’t automatically follow them back. Before I decide whether or not to follow someone, I read their profile page, in particular their bio. Here are some tips about how to write a good one.

I’ve created a recording and a transcript of a live, one-hour global teleseminar I presented, titled “34 High-Integrity, Low-Cost Marketing and Branding Strategies for Soul-Inspired Entrepreneurs”.