Day-Old News

Promotional news worth reading yesterday

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Native Advertising (for portfolio)

Native advertising is one way to advertise your product or business. Following is an example of a native ad listicle I wrote for Blue Moon...

10 Reasons to Celebrate Springtime

1. The snow has finally melted! 

Woah, there’s actually something under all that snow other than ice?

2. The world has stopped looking like a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

The flowers are blooming, the birds are singing...we’re going to live!

3. For the first time in months, there’s a reason to stop binging Netflix and leave the house.

You almost forgot there was an outside.

4. Easter is here!

Candy! Candy! Candy! 

5. Your shoe choices have moved beyond snow boots.

Um, maybe it’s really just one choice, but you have flip flops in every color there is and your feet are free!

6. Two words: Spring Break!

Cancun, Jamaica, Key West, or just a week away from school -- best week of the year!

7. You can go for a bike ride.

Whether a romantic bike ride in the park with a cute date or not, it’s a chance to work off all that Netflilx and snack time.

8. You can open the window and catch a cool breeze.

So refreshing! Say hello to the sun!

9. Warmer nights mean outdoor parties.

Lawn chairs, bonfires, and relaxation with great friends

10. Best of all, ‘tis the season for a nice, refreshing Blue Moon™

This article was sponsored by Blue Moon™ Brewing Company. You must be 21 or older to drink. Please enjoy Blue Moon™ responsibly.

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Visit Original Link

Check out my new podcast, The Girl in Charge -- a young woman, with little experience and a shy demeanor, succeeds as a manager in a male-dominated business world, in spite of horrible bosses, angry employees, and a ton of hard-learned lessons along the way.

Episode 1: Managing Up

The phrase “managing up” is not something I had ever heard until later in my career, but it was something that I was already doing many years ago, because it was necessary for me to survive as a woman in business.

In this episode, I talk about what it means to “manage up” and give some examples from my own experience.

It can be scary to tackle, but managing up is an important tool for your personal growth – when you use your own observations to guide your management, you also develop confidence and build strong business relationships. When your employees see you managing up, it gives them the agency to do the same towards you, which helps you learn about yourself. It can also help people realize habits that make working with them difficult and improve the work environment for yourself and others.

In a bad situation, managing up helps you force your boss to acknowledge your value or give you more freedom. Or, it can help you share your ideas and improve your work environment. In the end, it can also help your boss become a better communicator for others that they work with.

In short, managing up helps you:

Take control of your environment

Bring about changes that improve business processes

Give your employees the agency to provide you with more feedback

Grow your confidence, value, and mutual respect

Make your ideas heard and acknowledged

Help your manager manage you better

Topics in this episode:

What is “managing up”?

Managing up with a non-receptive boss

Managing up to make process improvements

Improving communication and building relationships

Developing confidence and value

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Indiegogo campaign kicks off today.

Wait, what? Is it opposite day? Are we on the dark side of the moon? What’s going on here? A magazine that went digital-only is reverting back to print media? Is it a revolution? Is it a retro trend? Is it a costly mistake?

It’s both exciting and unnerving to watch a magazine pop back up instead of folding down. Are there some markets really still clamoring for print? Paste Magzine’s Indiegogo campaign might have you believe so. I’m interested to see how long this lasts! Imagine what that might mean for other print media companies that have folded or changed format in the past decade.

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Publicis New York plays a game of "Would You Rather?"

Here’s an interesting concept: take a child actress from a wildly popular (but still kind of cultish) Netflix show, pop her into your commercials, and completely fail at making a point. I assume that this commercial series is meant to encourage people to talk about money and/or seek financial advice from their peers. Instead, Millie Brown asks questions that really aren’t that uncomfortable, and the people respond in the stupidest way possible? Sure, it’s meant to be funny, but for me, these ads don’t connect on any level. Important lesson: a celebrity appearance isn’t worth much if your content sucks.

If you walk away for two minutes, can you remember the brand this was a commercial for? I’ve already forgotten.

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These special events are scheduled to take place on December 9th.

This is such a great idea! Although book sales are up for the first time in a long time, it’s always a great idea to introduce innovative promotional tools. The Harry Potter series is one of the things that really gave a boost the the book market, and continues to do so. So, catering directly to that massively huge audience is a great way to bring people into B&N stores. When you create advertising and marketing schemes for your business, keeping an ear and and eye on trends can really help form unique ideas that bring people to you. 

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A generous helping of useless content.

And we wonder why print is dying?! I beg for staple publications like People to at least try a little harder. Pardon my French, but my first reaction to reading this was, “are you f*!#ing kidding me?!”

If you struggle to come up with content that your readers find interesting, your choices are pretty straightforward: reconsider your writers, or reconsider your audience. Or, perhaps in this case, reconsider your writers and your editors. Yikes. This is what passes for an article in People these days? No wonder circulation rates have seen a steady decline year after year!

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What do you think about this selection?

Bold move, dictionary.com. You know that we live in a time of social and political unrest when something benign, like the “word of the year,” sparks a conversation about race. Does it make sense for your brand to speak out? It is a good idea to align your brand with a particular political mindset? 

While I appreciate dictionary.com’s message, it’s important to keep in mind that about half of Americans who voted did so in support of a xenophobic person. Is this choice alienating to some site users? Does it matter? Before making political statements, it’s important for your brand that you think long and hard about potential repercussions. How might these types of statements affect you going forward?

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Are millennials not using enough salt? In this odd paring, Morton Salt, which has never advertised in their nearly 200 year existence, joins forces with Ok Go, the band. According to the corporate brand strategist at Morton, the company “really wanted to create an opportunity for millennials to understand the Morton brand. Our goal was to bring new meaning to the brand and create relevance, especially with millennials.”

In my opinion, as they say “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” People will likely never stop buying salt. This reminds me of the “got milk” campaign -- advertising for a product that’s such a staple, it doesn’t need advertising. 

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The roster of media mavens, moguls and boldface names spotted today at Michael's.

We can learn many things from the recent US election. Many of them make me nauseous, so I’ll stick to this one: never treat your audience as an “other.” Current political rhetoric can make it easy to forget the vast and beautiful diversity in this country, but the US has never stopped being a melting pot. Mr. Diaz-Bilart said it well: “The Latino community is part of the thread of the culture of the United States. They should not be seen as ‘foreign’. When we speak of the Latino community, the image in people’s mind should be Wall Street, City Hall, Capitol Hill, small businesses, restaurants and mergers and acquisitions firms, because that’s where the Latino community is.” The sentiment is the same for any minority group. Get to know your audience and know who you’re speaking to -- not just the majority, but the smaller groups, as well. They’ll truly appreciate the representation.

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Podcasts and You

I’ll be honest that I’ve been a bit of a curmudgeon when it comes to podcasts since they started popping up about ten years ago. However, their popularity hasn’t stopped growing -- some even consider podcasting the “future of storytelling.” I’ve slowly grown to understand and even enjoy podcasts, and it might be time for you (and your brand) to appreciate them, too. As print media slowly chokes, media companies are finding new ways to reach audiences, and podcasts are HUGE. The NY Times is doing it. Simon and Schuster and CBS are doing it. Even fashion magazines are doing it. If your brand isn’t doing a podcast, perhaps it should be. 

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The mag will only be published four times per year.

Instead of just calling it quits in print (like many magazines are and they probably should,) Teen Vogue is dropping down to quarterly from their previous monthly subscription. This is an interesting tact to take. Does absence make the heart grow fonder, or do longer periods of time between issues allow young folks more time to forget and move on to bigger and better things? Only time will tell, but I’ll place my bet on the latter.

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"Every Story Has A Face" arrives ahead of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Beware over-marketing. Since Disney’s acquisition of the Star Wars franchise, the marketing for this brand has become ubiquitous, which I mistakenly thought it already was. Already a household name since the 70s, Star Wars is one of those childhood memories for which a well-produced revival would require minimal marketing, if any. Many Star Wars fans, like me, are growing tired of the constant reminder of the brand. I’m no longer excited to see the new movies when they come out, and I’m not alone. Think long and hard about the audience you’re marketing to and what they’re looking for. Odds are, it’s not a waffle maker.

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How to get an internet lie to the masses, in a few easy steps.

A short lesson for today -- if you only read it in one place on the internet, it probably isn’t true. Good journalists check their facts twice. This might seem like a silly warning, but it happens more than you think. If you’re just starting to integrate your business with the web, don’t fall trap to crazy stories that are too juicy to be true -- if it were really that juicy, your business and thousands of others would already be all over it.

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A Slow and Painful Death

The internet is winning, it seems. The New York Times has shown a drop in print ad revenue while seeing an uptick in digital ad revenue. The Wall Street Journal is apparently also struggling, as they’ve cut down their page count to, as their editor said, “create a print edition that can stand on a sound financial footing for the foreseeable future while our digital horizons continue to expand.” Not even the big dogs are safe; what’s your strategy for standing out as a print media company? If it doesn’t include digital, you might want to re-strategize, as things are looking grim.

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The campaign for Canadian Down Syndrome Society answers common questions about Down syndrome.

I just adore this campaign. There’s something to be said for letting a group speak for themselves. Whether it is folks with Down Syndrome, Millennials, or Latinx folks from the LBGT community, someone from within a group will always be a better representative of that group than someone from outside. This is true both in advertising and in writing. A Baby Boomer writing an article about Millennials sounds like a stodgy old jerk, a journal article penned by a doctor about Down Syndrome folks sounds clinical and stuffy, and straight coverage of a Pride event can easily become unintentionally offensive. The idea is about hiring your audience to approach your audience. 

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"This election night, as other networks go low, The Weather Channel goes high... to the sky that is"

Ahhh. A relaxing take on what has been a harrowing election season. While I’ve griped about TWC in the past (their mobile site is absolutely atrocious with clutter and nonsense, but all I want is weather!) this move shows that perhaps they do understand their audience, after all. Or, at least, they’re growing tired of election coverage, too. Lesson? Overwhelming your audience with a single topic can get monotonous or boring. Unless you’re TWC; then, you should stick to your single topic.

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The ads, which appear mostly via the services Outbrain and Taboola, can lead to questionable websites. Now some publishers wonder about the effect on their readers.

I am kind of appalled at how long respectable news agencies took to realize that Taboola ads are trash. I was constantly shocked at the sites that chose to run them, and I could not be happier to hear that these websites are finally catching on. It can be difficult to turn down potential income for advertising on your site, but it’s important to think about what certain types of advertising are saying to your audience. This article summarizes the issue quite well. What does your advertising say about you? Is the image you’re creating reflective of the professionalism of your business? If it isn’t, it’s time to reevaluate your choices.