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Learning From Accidental Porn In Your Marketing

 

 

Have you ever taken a Rorschach test?

You know, one of these:

 

Also called an inkblot test, you’ve probably seen one of these in your lifetime. They’re pretty common in pop culture. In short, the goal of the test is to show you a seemingly random splattering of ink on a page and to ask you what you see.

Your answer is supposed to suggest some form of inherent perspective that you have. Since the ink is not “supposed” to be anything, whatever you see is what your mind is “looking for,” in a certain way.

In short, they reveal how you look at things. Sometimes something that is ‘designed’ to look like nothing, or perhaps even something completely different, can be interpreted in an entirely different way. As we recently learned, it’s a concept marketing professionals should keep in mind.  

Our Happy Little Accident

Our internal discussion about perception came up after we ran into what Bob Ross would call a “happy accident” on a website we were working on. Here’s what happened…

Take a look at this stock image:

 

 

Harmless, right? We thought so too.

Our plan was to have text overlaid on this image on a website we were working on. So, to make the text pop more, we blurred it out, like this:

 

 

Still not seeing it? You shouldn’t really, it’s just a harmless blurry picture. Or so we thought.

The final step was to resize the image to fit within the page design. So we cropped it a bit, enlarge it to scale, add our text, bada bing bada boom, and voila:

 

 

Oh.

Oh no.

If you still aren’t seeing it, don’t worry, we didn’t at first either. But lean back in your chair, maybe take a step back from the desk and unfocus your eyes. Kind of like you would if you were, I don’t know, aimlessly scrolling through a web page. See it now?

The troubling visual — which was lost on us until a brave soul in a focus group was bold enough to share their thoughts  — is the general shape of a naked man on top of a shirtless woman.

It took us by surprise too. But once we saw it, we couldn’t unsee it. We’ve since swapped out the picture, and with the help of multiple focus groups, confirmed there is no more accidental porn on the website. All in a day’s work.

After we texted our friends about the mistake, we realized there were a few takeaways worth noting from this incident.

  1. QA test your products like they’re movies. If you want to make a G-rated website, put on your X-rated goggles and comb through the content carefully.
  2. Perspective is subjective. Don’t fight that, just remember it, adapt to it, and use it.

The second takeaway sounds obvious, but it’s not 100% clear what to actually do about it. It’s a t-shirt away from being merchandise at a networking event.

But marketers who actually use this advice are better for it. Here’s how.

Embrace The “Porn” Of It All

Here’s one of the best pieces of advice I ever received: just because your opinion is an educated one, doesn’t mean it’s a good opinion.

“What you suggest can be based on research, white papers, reports, and data, and it should be. But it isn’t a good marketing opinion until the market proves that it works.”

That is the bottom line with marketing: the only good suggestions are ones proven by the market. If it doesn’t end up leading to more profit, in the long run, it’s not a good suggestion.

Our “happy accident” is an example of what we thought was a good idea proven wrong by the market (in this case, users). In our case, we were actually lucky that the error was so glaringly inappropriate. The fact that it was pseudo-scandalous was actually a blessing: it was an error we could not justify, so we replaced it.

But that’s not always the case.

Too many marketing professionals rigidly adhere to their own plans even after the market tells them they don’t like what they’re seeing. They may try to explain away why their strategy isn’t working; it’s advertising’s fault, we aren’t spending enough money, they just don’t understand the messaging, yadda yadda yadda. But if the market’s perspective isn’t seeing the same thing you want them to see, you can’t change how they see it.

It’s not the market’s job to see it how the marketer sees it. It’s our job to show them. So in these instances, we need to do our jobs better.

When we say “embrace the porn of it all,” we simply mean that a different perspective is not your enemy. In fact, it’s a benefit. You get feedback on what you’re doing and can adjust accordingly to create what the target audience wants. Isn’t that what we’re trying to figure out in the first place?

Different preferences and perspectives are half the reason marketers do so many of the things that we do. A/B testing, focus groups, demographic data — all of it is because we have a desire to account for the things outside our assumptions.

Good marketers account for different perspectives, adjust, and use it to better their campaigns.

Bad marketers blame the market.

It All Comes Back To The Client

At the end of the day, marketing teams have one real goal. Make their clients more money, and keep them happy. If those aren’t being accomplished, then there’s no point in our work.

If the marketing team is too prideful to adapt to the market, then they simply aren’t going to be able to deliver on that promise for their client. This is not the industry to have an ego. Marketing success is 100% based around how well a marketer can embrace their missteps and turn them into better results down the line.

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What ‘This Is Us’ Crock-Pot Fiasco Teaches About Damage Control

Dear fans of the NBC’s drama ‘This Is Us’: this article contains the lightest touch of spoilers that we could sprinkle in.

We will be discussing (as vaguely as we can) events that occur near the end of Season 2, and how a real-world company has handled some surprising fan reactions. These events relate to an ongoing plot that has been at play for most of the show’s run. We won’t say which plot, or which characters, but we will have to say a little about the company at the center of it all.

So if you aren’t caught up and have a zero-tolerance policy for information about how the Pearsons are doing, just go watch the show.

Seriously.

Go watch it.

DISCUSSION BEGINS HERE

When this week’s episode ended, fans were hot with emotion. In typical ‘This Is Us’ fashion, the episode’s cliffhanger left many fans flustered, sad, angry, and confused about what to do next. For many fans, they took it out on the scapegoat in their kitchen: the Crock-Pot.

The brand saw itself on the receiving end of social media’s fury last week for the small part their slow-cooker product played in the episode. Fans seeking some form of catharsis unleashed their emotions onto their own slow cookers, as the trending tab of Twitter turned into an abusive slideshow of Crock-Pot insults.

Not used to being the center of anything besides a potluck, Crock-Pot quickly took to social media to try and defend their brand. A new Twitter account was created, and the company’s social media team began making amends.

‘This Is Us’ writer Dan Fogelman took to Twitter to defend the company as well.

Their Facebook also has a lengthy response for fans of the show (WARNING: that post contains spoilers). We won’t post it here, but check it out if you’re feeling distraught.

The situation brings up an interesting conundrum. How do businesses react to uncontrollable brand damage? There was no way of Crock-Pot knowing how bad the backlash would be, and no real way for NBC to expect — and subsequently warn Crock-Pot of — that kind of a response. So what is the right approach?

Be Prepared For Anything

The most important distinction to be made in Crock-Pot’s reaction is that it is aggressively reactionary. The company created a new Twitter account to interact with fans tweeting how angry they are with the device, but the Crock-Pot brand didn’t have a Twitter account before this incident. You may not think a company like Crock-Pot needs a Twitter, but for modern companies, it is nothing less than a liability to not be in touch with your audience.

If we had asked at the beginning of the week what your opinion of the “Crock-Pot” brand was, what would you say?

For most people, the only words that would come to mind would be some variation of “good,” “useful,” and “reliable.” Now here comes a primetime, Emmy-award winning show to indirectly tarnish the company’s reputation — the primary thing still getting people to buy Crock-Pots.

Seriously, what other product out there has a more stable brand identity? Elmer’s glue? Morton’s salt?

While this situation obviously can’t be anticipated, it’s important for businesses to at least have the tools and internal architecture needed to respond to something like this.

This case is a testament that every company, no matter the product, market, or brand strength, should have a dedicated social media, PR, and digital marketing team on standby.  You never know when you’ll be blindsided by the wrath of Twitter.

Pick The Right Angle

On top of having the right kind of hose to put out the PR fire, companies need to be savvy about how they put out the fire. The Crock-Pot strategy? Direct responses.

As noted above, Crock-Pot decided the best course of action was to reply directly to people who were showing unwarranted frustration with their product. They created a new account, pinned a post on Facebook, and have been effectively shouting from the rooftops that their product does not deserve the hate it is receiving.

This strategy may, in fact, be the right one for Crock-Pot; most people associate the brand’s with warm, home-cooked meals and a sense of familial togetherness. So it’s on-brand to respond with sincerity, compassion, and personalized assurances. Crock-Pot may not be the kind of brand that wants to utilize this buzz to their advantage with a spin tactic. They’ve stayed fairly vanilla in how they’ve handled things, and maybe that’s a good thing.

This isn’t the only way to go about it though. Social media has proven that any brand can have a unique voice and use it to their advantage, regardless of the situation. Take the notorious Moon Pie Twitter account. The company sells packaged pastry snacks, but their Twitter account has expanded their audience by having a fun personality.

Furthermore, Crock-Pot is in desperate need of new business guidance. Reports coming out just before the episode showed the parent company, Newell, had already seen stock prices drop 49% since their record mark last June. Since the episode aired, the Crock-Pot product’s stock prices have also plummetted, dropping 24%. While the attention from the episode has been negative, the one benefit has been the Crock-Pot brand is now in the forefront of pop culture for a brief period of time. For a company in desperate need of some magic, it doesn’t appear as though they are utilizing their moment in the spotlight as the opportunity it is.

Lessons From Dr. K

Are there other social media/marketing strategies which could have been implemented to turn this into a win for Crock-Pot and Newell? Could this have been spun to their advantage? Possibly, but it’s difficult to expect anything better from the company when they didn’t prepare themselves beforehand.

Pop culture blows such as this are often short-lived. People, businesses, brands, they’ve all come back from worse blows — blows that they themselves might have caused — and turned out fine on the other side. But it’s still disappointing to see such an opportunity being handled in the most bare-bones fashion.

For all the negativity this episode brought, what was provided was attention, something that is as critical to harness as it is difficult to obtain. When businesses get a shot like this, it’s in their best interest to do more than damage control.

Crock-Pot, so far, has been doing an OK job, all things considered. And for a company that didn’t have a Twitter account before this week, that could be considered a win. But how many executives are ever satisfied with an OK job?

There’s always a way out for a company’s PR nightmares. But if you aren’t prepared, you limit your options.

In the words of Dr. K:

“Find a way to take the sourest lemons that life has to offer, and turn it into something resembling lemonade.”

Looking For Marketing Solutions?

Contact us today to see how we can help.

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Learning I Can Still Learn: My First Month At A Digital Marketing Agency

I’ve been here a month, and it’s already apparent no one here wears a suit as well as Don Draper does.

Before I became Content Director at Orpical Group, I was nervous about entering the consulting agency world.

Consulting was not my specific background, so I wasn’t sure if I could easily integrate into the culture. But I knew how to do the job, and the work looked fulfilling, so what was there to lose?

I remember the first call between myself and a company representative. A woman named Michele had called me during a brief reprieve from my constricting schedule of unemployment to hold my first interview. I was overcome with the nauseating combination of anxiety and eagerness only felt during job interviews and middle school dances.

Was I familiar with WordPress? Yes, I was. Did I have proper transportation? My legs were functioning. Was I a fan of routine? To this, I answered “no” with an expectation of friction, but apparently, mine was the perfect answer. “Good,” she said. “Neither are we.”

She was not lying. No hour since I’ve entered this industry has been identical to another. Each objective, project, and client requires nuance; a different shade of creativity colors each solution.

The abstract issues alone are enough to fill a calendar’s worth of work. Devising content philosophies, crafting brand identities, assessing respect in a market, and finding a client’s voice require immense work simply to find the best angle of approach to a problem. On my second day at work, we scratched our heads for hours trying to find a way to make “securing your web domain” sexy. That’s par for the course here.

Agency work is an exercise in capitalist artistry, and it can be equally exciting as it is daunting. To actually harvest these abstractions, agencies need to perform an innumerable amount of minute, technical tasks, requiring knowledge of software and programs across nearly every aspect of the business field. I soon learned the best work experience I had was my education itself, as every day involves being introduced to new clients in various fields and industries, all with their own histories, nuances, and aspirations.

My days became a process of turning vague wishes into billable deliverables. What tangible labor produces a brand that people remember as trustworthy?

To best accomplish these goals, I needed to grow my skill set and my mindset. Thankfully, my environment encouraged this growth. Each day after work I would spend a chunk of my free time looking up skills, practices, and behaviors I could absorb to further benefit our product. By taking the time to invest in my self-improvement, I was making every aspect of my work stronger. By sharpening my copywriting, design, or marketing skills in the evenings, I was seeing improvements in aspects of my work where I would never have considered them applicable.

Coming out of school, my biggest reservation was the notion of losing my education. With no plans to pursue a masters degree, I had considered my undergraduate experience to be the last time in my life where my sole purpose, day in and day out, was to learn. I thought once people entered the “real world,” they had to shelve their dreams of mastering new skills in lieu of producing positive margins for their bosses. In my mind — no matter what field I ended up in — my time to grow had passed.

I was afraid of becoming a drone. Some mindless, water cooler small-talker with a khaki-colored soul. But instead of wading into adulthood, I’ve been thrust into a deep end where it’s not just hard to tread water, but damn near impossible to not learn the butterfly before breakfast.

In consulting agency life, I found a culture where constant learning is more than a motivational poster — it is a necessity, for you and the company, to be valuable. Everything from keyword analysis and meta descriptions to case studies and logo design requires me to be a smarter, faster, and overall stronger student than I’ve ever had to be.

The consequences of my education are even greater now than they once were. The more I learn, the better I can personally help our clients; we never forget that they’re real people, with real visions, values, families, and dreams. When we do good work, their lives are better. They benefit from me advancing myself. Before this job, all my education had always been solely for my own benefit. Now, I can see a positive impact of my growth on the lives and success of others around me — most notably, our clients.

If you think I’m inflating my experience, I promise you I’ve considered the possibility. Maybe all my excitement over the drastically deep pool of opportunity before me is just a new hire’s overreaction to new job growing pains. Developing and executing a content strategy that reflects the identity of a national brand and advances it within a marketplace can’t be this dramatic, right?

I think facts prove otherwise. My coworkers, whether they are industry newcomers or veterans, all exhibit the same symptoms I do. They’re reading self-improvement books and gossiping over a well-designed website. They’ll burst into the room or blow up the Slack channel brimming with passion for a new project. They’re still finding ways to learn, to grow, and to be better people, and it’s the work that’s empowering them to do it.

I’ve learned opportunities for personal growth and development need to be seized in life, not expected. Working in an agency will push you, and frustrate you, and take you out of your comfort zone so often you won’t remember what’s under your resume’s “special skills” section anymore.

But despite all of that, I’m growing, and helping people, and making a difference, all the while improving myself.

With a month under my belt, I’ve begun to see where I can take my own career with a finer clarity. I can grow in this industry beyond what I thought possible in a professional setting. Most importantly, I have autonomy over the direction of my growth.

With growth come goals. While the skills I entered the company with have been honed, new directions of advancement are appearing constantly. Whether it’s boosting my proficiency in graphic design or expanding my coding languages, there’s always more for me to do, and more ways that I can make a positive difference in people’s lives.

That’s the best thing that I have discovered about the consulting agency life; there are no ultimate goals. Our personal growth, as well as our business, is a continuous process of improving. There are short-term goals, like completing case studies or improving a social media account’s ROI, but they come in tandem with the improvement process. Every day I work to better myself produces stronger content, which produces stronger results, which makes more successful businesses, happy clients, and a better version of myself.

It’s the kind of culture I worried I wouldn’t be apart of again. Lucky for me, I found it.

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It’s Always Sunny When You Work With A Philadelphia Web Design Firm

When you travel, you take mental notes on different cultures. Based on your perception, some cultural elements may seem positive. Some may seem negative. Either way, things like values and attitudes, languages, and social organization influence all aspects of life, including business.

Evaluating cultural influences should be high-priority, especially when developing partnerships to help your business grow. One of the first steps in early business growth often results in planning, designing, and developing your website. The contents of this article highlight why you should consider working with a Philadelphia web design firm.

Philadelphia takes art seriously

The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts is the country’s first museum and art school. There’s also more than 2,000 outdoor murals in Philadelphia, making it the Mural Capital of the U.S. We’re flat out surrounded by art and design. Philadelphia is the home to more Impressionist paintings than any other city besides Paris. Inspiration is everywhere. A good Philadelphia web design firm can channel the vast surroundings of the city, which drew over 39 million visitors in 2014, and incorporate various elements into your website, where they make sense.

Philadelphia is a city of firsts

Philadelphia hosted America’s first birthday, started the first daily newspaper, opened the first hospital, and the first medical school, and the first library, housed the first general purpose computer—starting to see a trend here? Philadelphia is the Capital of Firsts. We’re forward-thinkers and set the bar. Then, we help you hurdle over it.

Philadelphia is the “City of Brotherly Love”

Named by William Penn, Philadelphia means “brotherly love” from the Greek φιλεω (phileo) “to love” and αδελφος (adelphos) “brother”. Penn envisioned Philadelphia to be a place where anyone of any background could flourish. 300 years later and we still embrace Penn’s vision. We welcome new ideas from different walks of life with open arms.

Philadelphia is tough, resilient, and loyal

If you follow major sports, you may know Philadelphia teams have been in a bit of a “slump” lately. That’s being conservative, or as we call it here in Philly, being a homer. Here are some sad memes that were floating around in November 2015 for your enjoyment at our expense:

why-work-with-a-philadelphia-web-design

Now I know after seeing the above you may be thinking: “So—Philadelphia is a town of losers…” Hold on. Not so fast there!

The men that make up our Philadelphia sports teams are technically not Philadelphia men. They are transplants from all different walks of life. And while they may be losers today, providing little to no entertainment, our city continues to support them. They are our family. Remember—brotherly love.

Philadelphia won’t quit. We won’t turn our backs during times of adversity. We are passionate. We root for the underdogs. Haven’t you seen Rocky? Wouldn’t you want someone like that in your corner? What happens if your website gets hacked? Do you want your web designer to throw in the towel and leave you hanging out to dry? A Philadelphia web design firm will always do everything they can to help you knock down your Apollo Creed. Even when the odds seem like they’re stacked up against you.

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