USC Selling Hope at a Whole New Level
To follow up my last post, it appears as though USC is selling hope for the 2016 season with the verbal commitment of a 13-year-old, David Sills from Delaware.
I wonder if Lane Kiffin still be a USC in 2016? The Orlando Sentinel reported Kiffin recruited a 13-year-old while at Tennessee. I wonder what that kid is thinking now? I hope the NCAA steps up with the regulation here.
Watch Videos of USC Commit David Sills:
What do you think?
College Football National Signing Day and Selling Hope
Today was national signing day for NCAA college football teams. For some reason, it seemed like the hype was higher than years past.
ESPN.com dedicated their entire home page to signing day announcements and the subject was searched for more on Google more than the massive Toyota recall that affected 3.8 million cars.
ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption debated whether national signing day was receiving too much attention.
As a marketer, I would say no. National signing day is all about selling hope for the future. Tickets are sold and sponsorship deals based on the hope that we as fans all feel.
As a former Division-I football player though, I would use some caution. Fans need to remember that a lot of development can take place between the ages of 17 and 22. Rankings and grades tend to be fairly useless. We just don’t know how injuries and unforeseen circumstances will play themselves out.
For more on the where the nation’s best three-star, four-star and five-star recruits landed, check out espn.com.
What do you think? Does national signing day get too much attention?
Managing Email Overload and Gen-Y
It’s unpleasant for most marketing or any professionals for that matter to think about how many hours they are spending reading and sifting through emails.
In 2010, one of my (many) points of focused personal improvement is on my overall work efficiency. Not that I don’t enjoy getting my mind going a little later in the evening, but at some point, being married and a home owner must rule the day.
I asked my wife, a public relations professional, how she manages her email and she enlightened me about the four D’s of managing email overload.
- Delete it
- Do it
- Delegate it
- Defer it
I should mention that neither of us can take credit for this clever wordplay. Upon further review I found it actually came from a Microsoft blog of all places.
To look at the four D’s a little bit closer: If it’s unimportant delete it. If you can do it in less than 2 minutes, do it. If you can delegate it to someone else, forward it and if it is a little bit bigger than that, defer it to a folder in your email reader.
And finally a word to all my Gen-Y friends on the bottom of the totem pole feeling overwhelmed. When starting out at a new job, you will most likely be delegated some unglamorous time consuming tasks. My simple word of advice is to handle it and learn from it as best you can. If you work hard enough one day, you too will be able to delegate more freely.
Going Green & Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Going Green – Corporate Social Responsibility – Sustainability – Whatever you want to call it – Prior to the current economic climate, companies big and small were all buying into the concept that going green could improve their bottom line.
The general thought behind this belief was that a large enough segment of consumers cared enough to not only purchase, but also promote products to their friends that they deemed as better for the environment.
For a time this worked, but as more and more companies transitioned it became less and less of a competitive advantage, which combined with an increased overhead caused many companies to discontinue any green initiative.
It’s a shame that the only reason many companies choose to go green was to make more green, but moving forward if we ever want this movement to continue – it has to come from consumers.
This post was inspired by this nice viral video by the AARP:
Jay Leno, Habitual Behaviors and Niche Marketing
NBC confirmed today that they are pulling the plug on the Jay Leno Show prime time experiment.
The experiment started when NBC had to figure out what it could do to keep Leno in their line-up while still promoting the up-and-coming late night show host Conan O’Brien.
Moving Leno to prime time seemed logical. NBC could produce the show at a fraction of the cost to produce a full-hour drama. So despite a drop in ratings, the network figured they could keep profit margins steady.
The lower ratings trickled down to the local news affiliates, who struggled to keep good ratings themselves. The affiliates were the group who ultimately called for the end to the experiment.
It’s sad it had to end this way for the affiliates who had to let a few more good reporters go. Count me as one person who is looking forward to order being restored. For what it is worth, I always preferred Leno to Letterman and never really got into Conan. And as much as I liked Leno, during prime time, there were other shows I preferred.
What does this have to do with Marketing?
Consumers are creatures of habit. If you change something major about a product, like at what time it can be consumed, you run the risk of losing even the most loyal consumers. Which is what happened to me. The show didn’t fit into my schedule anymore, so I quit watching.
And aside from habits, Leno was up against better competition. Prime time television viewers weren’t interested in viewing late night television. It was like trying to sell a KIA at a Cadillac dealership.
Lessons learned from this experiment are that we must carefully consider the consequences of changing a major component of an established product with an established customer. Habits are a tough thing to change.