Branding Yourself: The Sea World Car

Never hurts to be creative. Never hurts to put your company on a product like a car. Try combining the two. Sea World has this down. The Sea World car has people staring at the company's name every day. What do you think of the Sea World car? What have you put your company name on?

The Importance of Customer Involvement

Much of journalism today is citizen-oriented, or citizen journalism, as it's often called. This means there are sites where regular people can posts stories, photos, and videos for the public to view. Often, news-sources won't be able to send out reported or photographers in time to capture an event, so they'll display user photos, instead. For example, the worst of the recent storm in NYC that many speculated to be a tornado lasted less than 30 minutes. The New York Times has a gallery of user photos for the storm and its results.

Think about how popular social media is today.  Blogs often succeed because of user interaction.  Allowing users to send in photos, comment on blog entries, and share stories on Facebook and Twitter has become essential to success.  So, think about it. What have you done to interact with your customers and keep them involved with your business?

Want more money? Write a book!

Have you ever noticed that when a movie becomes successful, a line of books come shortly after. Disney did this with Pirates of the Caribbean. They created a series of young adult books about Jack Sparrow. I remember reading book versions of The Mummy Returns and Hallmark's Arabian Nights. And today I came across a new series of books based on the hit TV show Glee. You can visit the site for the book, which FOX advertised on Facebook, here.

How successful are these knock-off books? What have you done similar to this?

Capitalizing on Your Product and Promoting it at the Same Time: Disney ElecTRONica

Disney California Adventure's summer Glow Fest didn't go over well with most Disney fans. Disney hired an outside contractor to create it. Personally I liked it, and it must have had some success because Disney is now bringing something new inspired by Glow Fest that capitalizes on its upcoming film "TRON: Legacy." You can view a preview of this light fest below, images taken from the Disney blog.

Looks like it'll be entertaining and promote TRON at the same time. Disney is very good at that. Last year, they had a Showboat Jubilee show to promote "The Princess and the Frog," which went over very well. Princess Tiana still performs near the Rivers of America every day near her conveniently placed merchandise. But, no worries, if you go to her show, you can get free Mardi Gras necklaces.

How can you take advantage of your product and give it legs through various campaigns? What have you done?

A New School Year Brings In Creative Marketing Techniques

How can your business take advantage of the new school year? Even Fuddruckers, a popular hamburger restaurant, has capitalized on the "back to school" mentality, sending out emails to subscribers reminding them that Fuddruckers should be on their supplies list.

I just started my final year of college, which makes these sort of campaigns fresh on my mind. I've always been the student who gets excited about buying things for school, and I'm sure I'm not the only one out there. So, take advantage of the young person's need for supplies.

The Container Store has Back to School and Dorm sections on its website, and the Dorm section includes a video featuring a college student's dorm room full of Container Store products. The student tells the viewer that it's parent's weekend and she has had to clean up to impress her parents, so she went to The Container Store. The store's site also includes a dorm catalogue.

My favorite example of a great marketing method taking advantage of students returning to school comes from Walmart. Walmart created a project called Project Dream Dorm. The project has its own Youtube channel with a plugin that plays videos and displays pictures of and links to products that appear in the videos. Walmart found five college students, assigned design experts to each of them, and gave them an unlimited shopping spree in their local Walmart. The entire experience for each student was recorded and put on YouTube. Once back on Walmart's dorm website, the viewer finds attractive photos of products and an easily navigated menu to help him find what he's looking for.

How can you make your products visually appealing? What have you done to cater to students going back to school?