Now that we live in the world of DVRs, people are fast-forwarding through commercials more then ever. I am unfortunately one of those people that does not have a DVR, so I am forced to watch every single commercial.

One commercial that has especially caught my eye, but not in a good way, is Wendy’s Frosty Posse commercial.

When I see this ad, it reminds me of the “boy band” era in the 90s. The white “outfits” they are wearing especially remind me of the Backstreet Boys. I’m not going to lie, I was a huge Backstreet Boys fan, but the boys in this commercial are not cutting it for me. I especially think of the MTV spoof “boy band”, 2gether, when I see this. You know, the group that sings about: I know my calculus, it means you + me = us (yes, sad that I still know the words).

I just feel that this was a commercial that should have been done back then, while people were into that kind of thing.

I also question, who is their target audience? Are they trying to reach my generation and have us remember our teenage years with the “boy bands” or are they trying to reach today’s teenagers who are obsessed with Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift? One thing for sure is, they won’t be reaching men with this one.

Overall, I really just feel their marketing agency missed the ball on this one.

What do you think?

When I first saw this video, shared by Todd Defren (@TDefren) on twitter, I laughed out loud for a good 5 minutes.  And then I cried — because it’s so true.  I’ve been in a number of the roles played here on both sides.

What’s your favorite part? (Mine is the line comparing a $12 taco dinner and filets in a fancy restaurant.  Well, I guess they are both beef…)

This past Saturday night, the hubby and I headed over to Laurel for a final dinner. Laurel, once a culinary leader in San Diego, is now closed for a month and a new Italian concept is being created in its place. Laurel was one of Bailey Gardiner’s first restaurant clients (back in the day). And more personally, it’s where Paul (now hubby) and I had our first date and he later proposed (I know, cue Streisand singing Memories).

Proprietor Tracy Borkum told us about the new concept, her gigantic new oven and her inability to find the right name for the restaurant. So she is holding a contest to see if anyone can hit the right note, and if they do, they will receive a dinner each month at the restaurant for a year. Quite a deal in these times.

Since Tracy doesn’t have a blog (I’ve tried to convince her believe me) I told her we’d post the details here (FYI, she’s not a client). And since this really is turning into a community affair, and the wine was flowing, Paul agreed to take photos of the demo and remodel so we can all see what’s going on (go to changinglaurel.com to see his personal photo/story project).

Here are some particulars to get the ideas flowing, directly from Tracy:

Changes are Underway

We’ve already scraped the floor, demoed the banquettes and purchased the mother of all pizza ovens!

Think of a modern Italian kitchen combined with the history and comfort of an old rustic country barn.

A bit of bohemia, a touch of home and many stories created with found objects new and old. A focus on raw, sustainable material is evident, with much product coming  from recycled/reclaimed local sources.

Cuisine
The culinary focus of our yet to be named “Italian American’ neighborhood restaurant and wine shop will highlight the cuisines of various Italian regions with a distinct California ‘farm to table’ flair for which the Urban Kitchen Group (Kensington Grill, Chive, Laurel, Urban Kitchen Catering) has become known.

Chef Joe Magnanelli (who previously oversaw Laurel’s kitchen) is excited to preview his Italian roots and create a menu that is fresh, simple and seasonal.  Highlights include artisan pizza, pasta, antipasti and other delights.

Menu prices are designed to allow guests to enjoy a more comfortable, wallet-friendly, dining experience with nothing over $20!

Wine Program
Our new list will follow a more aggressive retail pricing program, offering approximately 100 diverse selections all under $50 per bottle. California, Washington, Oregon, Argentina, Chile and of course Italy are among the major wine-producing regions that will be showcased in our program: the wines of the Americas and Italy.

Along with a diverse selection of wines by the glass, guests will be invited to visit our retail area to select a bottle for dinner (nominal corkage fee will apply) or purchase wine to go.

There you have it. Grab a glass of vino and start making your list. Come July, you might be the lucky monthly diner. Send your list to contact@sdurbankitchen.com

Photo Credit: ©2009paulmbowers

UPDATE: Deadline for submissions is this Sunday, May 31st.

These days, I feel like I am receiving more and more emails every day at work. Of course, I like them when they pertain to important information–emails from clients, vendors, media reps, etc. I’ve also signed-up for daily/weekly emails that I would like to receive from numerous companies that pertain to my clients’ industries, general industry news and areas of personal interest to my self.

I love how I received an email from my client at Seaport Village about an upcoming night out at Seaport Village event they are hosting. It lets me know about additional things they are doing to drive additional traffic and sales to the village.

I also like it when my co-workers at the San Diego marketing agency I work at, friends or clients forward me on emails or sign me up for emails they think will be of interest to me and my clients or pertain to something specific in my industry.

However, it is an entirely different thing when a rep I’ve never directly worked with (yet I have worked with the company) and I hardly know signs me up for an email list without asking me for permission or forwarding me on the email first to see if this is something of interest to me. The email doesn’t have anything to do with their specific company, yet, it has to do with a company they partner with that supplies people with green tips, iLuvTrees.

I don’t really think the rep really cares if I read or unsubscribe to the email list. I feel that this is just another way that the rep is trying to keep her company’s name fresh in my mind. A little sneaky, yet, I must commend the rep for her efforts on this.

But, if you really want someone to think of your company when they are needing a specific job done, don’t sign them up for some email list. Forward the email, directly from you, with a 1-2 sentence introduction telling them why you thought this would be of interest to them. That way you don’t just get your company’s name out there, you get your name out there as well.

Why should you do this instead? Because, quite frankly, I can tell you the name of the company, yet I can’t tell you the name of the rep.

Many of you know our Bailey Gardiner team is very pleased to be working on the creative brand management, advertising, public relations and online initiatives for the San Diego Museum of Art.  As we search for best practices and learn from what other museums and cultural institutions are doing across the country, our creative director came across this beautiful example:

All I can say is that it’s f*ing brilliant.

This and other marketing successes we have been studying are helping us shape our efforts for SDMA in ways both unexpected and nuanced — all with the intention to bring more people to the Museum to enjoy the amazing treasures we own right here in San Diego.

Thanks Museum of Modern Art New York.  You have set the bar high.

Moms are some of the most influential people in our lives and in the last decade or so, moms have taken their influence online to create what has become one of the most talked about online communities: Mom Bloggers.

It’s a demographic us PR pros long to find a way into….hard when you’re not a mom. Think of what power a group of moms…with blogs…can bring to a family-friendly event, a new baby product, or a cause affecting millions of kids?  They have outlets, they have connections, they trust each other, they talk and they listen.

But as with any blogger, pitching our clients to be featured isn’t easy. So webinar after webinar we discuss the proper way of reaching bloggers.

I was lucky enough to bypass the chatter and connect with a few San Diego mom bloggers last week.  @ADramaticMommy, @SanDiegoMomma and @VirtuelIMC coordinated this year’s Mom’s Nite Out, a national event taking place across the country with groups of moms gathering to bring their online communities face to face.  I put them in touch with our client Seaport Village to host their evening at Buster’s Beach House.  When I stopped in to say hello, they were accommodating enough to spend time with me providing insight into the world of mom blogging, why they do it and how to best reach them.  So here’s some sound advice straight from mom.

I walked away from Mom’s Nite Out with much insight into who these women are behind the sites.  In sum, you can find what I learned below.  To my mom bloggers, I hope you’ll comment with some additional insight; let’s clear the path between PR pro and blogger.

• Treat a mom blog as more than a publication, because it is.  It’s one woman’s insight into her life.  Hopefully the information you want to give her interests her.  If you’re not positive, read her blog to be sure.  Along the way you’ll get to know mom, so no need to hide that.  Relate to her, befriend her, share your information and keep an open dialogue.

• If you really like what she’s doing, consider advertising and remember that if she accepts your advertisement, that has added value, because it’s not all about the money for these women.  It’s about the endorsement.

• Take this seriously.  Consider famous mom blog, Dooce, she makes an approximately $40,000 a month, supporting her entire family with just her blog!

Thanks to my mom blogger interviewees!

Deb Anderson – www.sandiegomomma.com
Melanie Sheridan – www.meladramaticmommy.com
Joan Hunt – www.dagoddess.com

One of the positives coming out of our recent economic challenges has been a proliferation of creative new advertising spaces.  Someone once said “Innovation comes from desperation”, and although I’m not sure desperate is how best to describe them, many marketers are seeking new and innovative media solutions.

So I wasn’t surprised to learn recently that agencies have turned to advertising in vacant store fronts in Manhattan and other areas of high pedestrian traffic.  Makes sense — it’s really prime real estate at street level, a space where advertisers compete for attention and eyeballs.  And historically, this has been a very hard place to purchase ad space. Not any more.

As retailers struggle to maintain position in a difficult economy, some have not succeeded.  Their empty storefronts provide ideal space for advertising messages, and several enterprising companies have stepped in to fill the void.

This is one of the reasons I love the agency business: there are always opportunities to make lemonade from lemons.  I don’t view it as preying on another’s misfortune.  It’s creativity and capitalism at their finest.

At Bailey Gardiner, we’ve recently had several opportunities to think differently for our clients by using unusual spaces to serve up our creative marketing messages.  For Seaport Village, we contracted with a pedicab company in downtown San Diego to create moving billboards, complete with matching tshirts for the drivers.  The Gaslamp Quarter welcomes more than 10 million people a year, and regardless of whether they actually get into the pedicab or not, that’s a LOT of eyeballs viewing our invitation to visit Seaport Village.

And for Hazard Center, we looked for ways to make their smaller budget work in bigger ways.  One solution – we wrapped coke machines at trolley stations, paying as little as $500 for a month at certain locations.  Trolley ridership in San Diego has never been higher, with recent figures as high as 100,000 per day, including commuters, visitors, event attendees, students and a couple of crazy people.  Wait times at stations varies from 5 minutes up to 20 minutes – time enough to stare at our ads for a few.

We’ve seen a lot of innovation coming from necessity. What have you witnessed?

Clients often ask me the difference between a Mission Statement and a Positioning Statement. Or a Positioning Statement and a Campaign. I thought it would be helpful to go on record with my explanations and how they apply to our work. It is also important to understand why and when you need to re-visit your strategies.

MISSION:

Your mission statement is the foundation of who you are as an organization. It answers the who, what, where, why, and how of your business. Who you serve. What you do. Where you do it. Why you do it. And how you do it. Simply put it is the purpose or reason for being.

Life of a mission statement: Long term. Unless there is a monumental shift in your business, your mission shouldn’t change.

POSITION:

Your position is a statement of how you want to be perceived in the market. This makes you relevant to your consumer and it should state the message that you are trying to send about yourself. A position (or in a consumers mind an “opinion”) about you is formed whether you are involved or not, so wouldn’t you rather influence that position/opinion?

The positioning statement should be applied to everything you do. Everything. Packaging, website, the way your employees treat and interact with customers, the atmosphere of your office, your blog, advertising. Everything.

 Life of a positioning statement: Mid term. 10 years. It is time to re-position your brand if you have new customers or competitors that make your current statement irrelevant. Or if your brand or image has lost meaning. You experience changes in the patterns of  your customers. Example: Kodak adapting to a digital world. 

CAMPAIGN:

A campaign is the way you show your position in the market.  Ways that you get people to think what you want them to think about you (what you defined in the positioning statement). A campaign spans every form of media that you employ.

Life of a campaign: Short term. 1-3 years. You use a campaign to make a consistent impression on your consumers.

Been thinking about Twitter and blogs and which I prefer and why. Perhaps because I’ve done little of either this past week; a rarity these days. I’ve been wondering which matters most.

A few weeks ago, Todd Defren asked his followers on Twitter – if we had to choose one social media tool which would it be? That was easy for me – writing blog posts. But, evidently I was in the minority. Twitter won by a long measure. Which kind of surprised me.

Rumors started last summer about the demise of blogs at the claw of the Twitter bird. I believe these rumors are unfounded. Primarily because human beings love a good story. Through history we have been taught as children through stories, fables, myths and legends. And storytelling continues as we age, whether through books, magazine articles, rumors, plays, movies or dance – we escape, learn and laugh through story. Over the past 20 years we have certainly seen television news become increasingly packaged as entertainment, rather than hard news. It’s what we are viscerally drawn to. Much as I love Twitter, you really can’t tell a good story with it.

Look at some of the most ‘followed’ people on Twitter, and you will notice that they are regularly posting tweets that point to blog posts. In fact, that’s pretty much all @guykawasaki (and his band of ghost tweeters), with nearly 120,000 followers, tweets about is blog posts. In fact, this blog saw its readership triple in a 3 month period and we attribute that primarily to Tweeting out our blog posts. So perhaps they are symbiotic.

Twitter is terrific for:

• Engaging with a community – whether it’s your local “tweeple” (try twitterlocal) or those who share a common interest (try wefollow or twellow)
• Researching what people think about a brand name or particular topic (Tweetdeck is great for search)
• Connecting with customers – it’s become an essential part of customer service for some smart brands
• Keeping a pulse on breaking news and what’s on people’s minds

But, blogs allow us to fully explain our thinking, to reference what’s influencing us, explain how to create an ad, showcase art and share our stories. Perhaps some have abandoned their blogs for Twitter and I would suggest that is a natural culling of those who either really didn’t have the writing bug, or who believe they need to continually find the “next thing” and be a “ground breaker”.

Blogging has gone mainstream and to some that means the edginess or newness is gone. That doesn’t mean the value is gone too. Blogs will continue and those who provide value or know how to tell a good story will continue to have readers. Even if they are found through a Twitter post.

A wonderful trend is happening nationwide as the world of marketing forever shifts to predominantly online resources. Specifically, team members with more years of experience are being taught new tricks by junior team members who might be fresh out of school.  In the area of social media, these younger employees are experts in social media — it has always been a part of their daily lives.

As a more experienced member of the advertising and PR agency business (yes, a few gray hairs make us Boomers the old guard now), I have had the privilege of being mentored by several of our younger team members.  And I am not alone.

Google “reverse mentoring in marketing” and you’ll get dozens of great books, blog entries and news articles about this subject tracing stories at companies as large as Time Warner and Proctor & Gamble and marketing agencies like Edelman and our own Bailey Gardiner.  These companies and many others are realizing the enormous talent base of their junior employees, tapping into their knowledge and placing it front and center.

Here’s a cool clip from  BBDO CEO Andrew Robertson on this topic:

Personally, I’ve had training sessions about Twitter, FaceBook and Search Engine Optimization from my junior employees who are far more knowledgeable and talented than I in these areas.  And you know what?  It is really refreshing to NOT KNOW EVERYTHING.  It is such a great feeling to say “please teach me” and to have a 22 year-old step up and show me how to do it.  It makes me feel like there is still more for me to learn about my field, and it helps my junior mentor feel valued and appreciated for what they bring to the table.

My online video production lessons from @jamieortiz (who is an old woman now at 30) helped me use video in social media programs for clients.  The things I have learned about setting up FaceBook pages from @callan_paola could fill a book – or at the least this blog.  And let’s not forget the knowledgeable insights on SEO from @lizzied, our resident expert on all things searchable.

And that is the beauty of social media — it is so, well, social.  The very nature of the media implies that we can all just drop our preconceived notions and accept some help.  And believe me, I’m a quick study.

This doesn’t at all weaken my position as a marketing leader.  I know my marketing strategy better than most. And when I don’t, I’m not afraid to ask for help – even if my teacher is young enough to be my kid.