Media Brats Marketing Ready To Aid Birmingham Economy

Out of the destruction of every troubled economy emerges innovation. Hardship requires ingenuity and ingenuity creates opportunity. Opportunity is currently available in excess, although often masked by unaffordable credit card payments, unavailable loans and unobtainable employment. Opportunity however, remains.

Small business in Birmingham has been particularly affected and marketing budgets have been slashed. Thus, glossy video ads and engaging media promotion disappear from the realm of possibility. Media Brats Marketing has changed the game.

“People need market share right now,” said Mark Baldwin, Media Brats’ co-founder. “They need to strengthen current relationships and reach out to welcome new ones. Small business’ hands are tied. Media Brats utilizes emerging connection strategies and technological platforms to greatly enhance small business outreach. Most importantly, the work we do is very affordable.”

Media Brats Marketing offers a variety of media options to strengthen brands and increase visibility, with an emphasis in video marketing.

“We have talented people on the team,” Media Brats co-founder, Zak Jasinski added. “This talent has expanded our capabilities, but the whole idea for Media Brats began with our interest in sharing video advertising possibilities with local business.”

In a short period of time, Media Brats has amassed impressive productions including web and video work in the medical community, auto restoration industry and local music scene.

“For us it’s about two things: create returns for customers and enjoy doing it,” Baldwin continues. “We exist to help local businesses reach their goals.”

The Media Brats tagline reads: “Interactive Creation Inspiring Returns.”

“Each word of the tagline is important, but it’s more than a reflection of who we are. It’s the equation for successful marketing,” Baldwin said. “With people being bombarded by ads all day, they’ve built up immunities.”

The Brats believe it’s their job to engage consumers.

“If you engage people by offering them something real to make their lives better, you’ve done more than capture their attention,” Jasinski concluded. “They will return the favor.”

For more information on how Media Brats Marketing can help your business succeed:

www.mediabrats.com

thebrats@mediabrats.com

Consumers and Businesses are benefiting alike from the same strategy. The current marketing paradigm shift represented by social networks and viral video has created business with consumer exchange. Viral video is a main power source fueling this era.

Advertisers have added digital video to their marketing strategies using many channels: You tube and other online video distributors, video blogs, social networks, content sponsorships and webisodes. A new marketing report from eMarketer discusses low-involvement consumer products (grocery store items for instance) are the newest sector benefiting from online video. Store bought products requiring no sales people lack the conversational connection many products and services have introduced through personal interaction and social networking. Video and social network interaction give a non-interactive product the chance to go viral, spurring discussion and consumer connection.

“Digital video content, whether delivered through a computer, mobile phone, handheld device or TV monitor, has the potential to ignite two-way conversations between consumers and brands,” said Tobi Elkin, author of the new eMarketer report titled “Consumer Packaged Goods Sector Taps into Online Video.”

Hidden Valley distributed a handful of these webisodes to promote their dressings. They target the health food aficionado, parents looking out for the health of their children and aspiring chefs. In doing so, the webisodes offer insights into improving consumers’ lives by making them more knowledgeable cooks, parents and nutritionists.

Products through video interaction can enrich consumer lives. In another eMarketer study, they asked consumers: “what would you like product interaction to do for you?” The response receiving the most votes was “solve my problems, provide product and service information.”

By providing viral video interaction, products can offer not only problem solutions, but life enrichment, meaning less problems for consumers. The second part of the response receiving the most votes “…provide product and service information,” helps us understand consumers’ belief in the value of exchange; “solve my problems, make my life better and tell me who you are so I can help you.”

This top consumer response is realized with a sound ethical commitment strategy from businesses: interact by enriching consumer lives.  Solve consumer problems and they will return the favor.

HD for faster connections

standard definition for slower connections

Brilliant marketing relies on similar frameworks and different intentions. You want your efforts to have a dramatic impact and create positive emotional connections with customers. We call this building DPC (dramatic positive connection).

For start-ups and small business however, building DPC using one marketing medium and a grand advertisement is not possible. How many Superbowl commercials do you see for these types of companies? Big TV ads on major networks is to marketing what the far eastern torturer removing limbs with the swift swing of a sharp sword, is to torture.

What do both the elaborate water-drop torture method and highly effective, low-budget, small business marketing have in common? –Both require undying consistency for greatest impact.

Building DPC requires your dynamic, specific and superlative message delivered and delivered and then delivered again. When that strategically crafted message is repeatedly delivered, you begin to see the exposure paying off. If you change the message and repeat exposure, it is akin to the water drops falling all over the torture victim’s body, never striking the same place twice and always falling individually; the desired effect is lost. Undying consistency of the same specific message is the key to maximizing DPC.

Brand Performance must live up to, if not exceed, brand hype.

If your claims greatly exceed customers’ experience with a product, expect your brand will be erased, eliminated and soon, extinct.

You may have created the most technologically advanced and exciting picture frame in the world. Your picture frame may also be an mp3 player, a web cam and have telephone capability. It actually may grab people’s attention, but outside of being a one-time holiday gift novelty, nobody wants a two hundred-dollar picture frame that has the same ability as a cell phone but twice the cost and half the portability.

The point is, only market something people really need or has great desirability. Otherwise, all will be wasted. Once you have a product that is wanted and needed, make sure you do more walking than talking.

What if a cherry-red Ferrari is on a joy ride where the driver dropped their cell phone while texting and speeding. Simultaneously, a child is crossing the street ahead dropped their favorite doll in the middle of the same road. Our characters both reach down to retrieve their dropped item. If the car didn’t offer a hook, the situation did. The viewer is very relieved and thankful when they find out the Ferrari owner just installed new, “stop on a dime” brake pads. In addition to remembering your brake pads, the viewer may think twice before text driving.

We are not suggesting putting children or animals in harm’s way every time you want to forge a connection to your audience.  They do however, effectively hook an audience by giving viewers a stake in the scenario, making your products memorable.

Emotional connections are what Allstate Insurance relies on: “you’re in good hands.” They present you with a bad car crash and a distraught victim whose nightmare situation is exceptionally handled by an Allstate agent, making the victim feel more secure. Drivers see these scenarios everyday on the side of the road during rush hour. But every driver knows, with a slight miscalculation, “that could be me.” If you’re in good hands however, you are protected.

Emotion is the reason you remember exactly what you were doing during 9/11 or when Kennedy was shot, the first date with the love of your life, or when you made the winning shot at the buzzer during your high-school state championship. Emotion is power and minor events can have equal emotional significance because they can effect how happy people are, how successful, how secure, how intelligent, how wealthy, how stressed, etc.

Add an emotional hook to your original content and be remembered.

This is exciting news for small business.

In a world where Susan Boyle’s performance on “Britain Got Talent” can attract 85 million views and watching little drugged-up David after a dental visit, can nab 45 million, a clever message with a unique delivery can reach an infinite number of people.

The trick is creating something clever and unique that aids your message and sticks in people’s minds. Too many companies focus on the bells and whistles of wildly outlandish video content that does not connect to the brand. When users finish watching one such commercial, they may remember the 58 seconds of baby’s rollerblading around black top, hopping fences and skating on handrails, but it does not connect to the 2 seconds of brand identification. You’ve succeeded in turning some entertainment-seeking heads, but failed the efficiency test of associating your name with your service. The bells and whistles of original content are important, but they must compliment who you are and what your product does to make customers smarter, healthier, happier, richer, safer and more successful.

This is the challenge of concept design. While potentially daunting, those who conquer shall unlock a prosperous new world that may actually lead to the something rarely discussed in assessing business success…fun.

The sweetest sound in the world is your company name.

Names evoke experiences; the belief systems we’ve created around certain words. Words can conjure strong feelings making them powerful marketing tools.

When our company name is heard, we want potential customers to swell with happy feelings. We want our name to brighten customers’ day providing them a boost of energy. If a name can give potential customers an idea of who you are and what you sell upon its utterance, it serves as a mini-advertisement in itself. That is taking a lemon and making refreshing lemonade with a side of delicious lemon meringue pie.

If your company name is rhythmic, easily pronounced, memorable and describes what you sell, it passes the efficiency test. You have created an mini-advertisement that will serve the company well.

So, what’s in a name?…lots of sales.

Of course, some companies come up with obscure, nebulous names and manage to find great success. In the next post, we will discuss why and how.

People think in pictures and the most memorable examples in any given specialty are stored and readily available for use. “The Most Memorable” example in the proper specialty, is #1. People can remember the second most memorable and maybe the third, but they hold a unique appreciation for #1. #1 is the victor and in business, to the victor go the spoils.

#1 is transcendent. It is divine.

In the bestseller Good to Great, Jim Collins and his team of researchers describe how every great company in the history of the world clearly identified one specific area that they could be The Best at. Companies such as Abbott, Circuit City, Gillette, Kroger, Walgreens and Wells Fargo realistically evaluated the competitive market and gradually concentrated their efforts on a concept that emerged from a collision of ideas: what they could be the best in the world at, what drove their economic engines and what they were most passionate about.

In the world of small business and start-ups, “the best in the world” may seem to lack relevance. Here lies our concept: your “world” and “the best” is whatever you define it as.

Your world could consist of a regional competitive market in a given area. Strive to be the best in that region. Your world may expand from there.

“The best” is a creative, pliable concept as well. Being the best in a general specialty as a small business is overly daunting. If you are an entrepreneur with a great tasting soda consisting of natural ingredients and produced using recycled materials, trying to compete with Coke and Pepsi in the “Soft Drink” specialty is a death sentence. You have to change the rules of the game and redefine a specialty. Recreate a specialty for your product by creating subheadings to add to the specialty category. Be the leader in “Green Organic Energy Beverages.”

In the next post, we will discuss more about defining your specialty.