The holidays are the perfect reason to act like a kid again, and reruns of your favorite childhood holiday classics make it easy. For marketers, we bring you additional excuses to gather up the kids and watch Rudolph, Frosty, The Peanuts gang and the Grinch this season. Watch for the underlying subliminal messages in each, and we guarantee that you’ll see the cornerstones of marketing in between the singing and dancing. Here’s what your favorite characters taught us about keeping it merry and marketing well for the New Year.
Light the Sky
In the same way that the misfit reindeer and his shining nose saved Christmas, your message should be as steady and bright as the light that led Santa through the fog – only, you know, your fog for a marketer is the clutter from information overload on the Internet.
Just like that sleigh of toys, your campaign won’t get off the ground unless your message is steady, bright and accurate when comes to supporting your main objective. As Inc. explained, a good checklist is to be frequent and relevant on all channels in order to ensure consistent branding. In addition, be persistent in nailing down a niche for your brand to further support your attempt at standing out.
Ask the Right Questions
Quora really is a diamond in the rough for marketers (as only few have truly tapped into its powers) which is exactly how Lucy feels about her piano-playing crush Schroeder in “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” She uses questions to engage him in conversation, but he barely ever looks up from the keys. Why? Because she’s not asking the right questions.
The same goes for marketers when working to release the power of Quora as a way to position their clients as thought-leaders. While it’s important to answer questions on Quora, it’s also crucial to ask the right questions on Quora to generate good responses and to gain respect on the network.
As the founder Hod Fleishman of the driver technology company GreenRoad put it, “For a business or a business leader, having the knowledge of which are the key questions driving his/her business provides a great advantage.”
In other words, ask and you shall receive a large following.
Maintain a Good Figure
If you’re a fan of Frosty the Snowman, you remember how important it was that the dancing ball of snow and the evil magician kept their image. Frosty was worried about melting the whole time and that skinny magic man just couldn’t go through life without that damn top hat. What’s the point to this, you wonder? Visual assets. Follow me for a second.
In the Digital Age, most people want to sit in front of their computers, mouth-open and drooling g scrolling through pictures or surfing videos. That’s why image, literally, is everything.
Investing your time in platforms that focus on visual content like Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube will allow you to share richer content that is more likely to be shared, furthering your messaging.
If You Can’t Beat ‘em, Join ‘em
The Grinch couldn’t stop the holiday spirit of Whoville and marketers shouldn’t stop try and stop the power of breaking news. Especially when it comes to social media content, even though you may have an editorial calendar in place, it’s important to use it as a guideline only, avoid scheduling too many messages and leave some placeholders for messages on the fly so that you can give your messaging longer legs to travel by riding the wave of trending topics. Look for popular chatter that day using tools like Topsy, and take advantage of the opportunity to join a larger conversation and gain new followers.
It’s crazy to think that the technology we discussed wasn’t even around when these shows first aired. It’s a good thing since these movies probably wouldn’t exist. Think about it. If Rudolph ordered a normal nose on eBay, Frosty had a GPS to get to the North Pole faster, Charlie Brown got the funds for a better tree via Kickstarter and the Grinch had Facebook to make friends with Whoville as a child, our favorite holiday shows wouldn’t exist. It just goes to show though that while the tools and tactics change, marketing still plays the same important role with the same marketing mission: make the message consistent and make it stand out.
Images: bikehappening.org
