Internet Marketing in NYC, The Olympics and Fashion Week: What Your Business Can Learn From 97 Million TV Viewers, Doritos and Your Own Events
Posted by Salem Global on Feb 16, 2010
Its snowing in New York City and it is beautiful. As I write this week’s piece, there is a heavy downfall over Bryant Park outside my office window. And of course, it’s February. We shouldn’t be getting this much snow. But whether you believe in global warming or just the universe and weather, its here. And it leads me to talk about the Winter Olympics.
97 million US viewers tuned in to watch the first 2 days of the Olympics this year. That’s close to the 100 million that tuned in in 1994 when U.S. figure skater Tonya Harding’s ex-husband and bodyguard attacked Nancy Kerrigan. I also read that if every Chinese household watches the Olympics, that’s over 1 billion viewers right there.
But no matter how many people watch the Olympics on TV, it still will never compare to the amount of people who will tune in via the Internet on home and office computers. Sad thing is, according to Bloomberg (businessweek.com), Fairfield, Connecticut-based GE has said NBC will lose $250 million airing the Vancouver Winter Olympics (ok - not really THAT sad). Darn it. Why hasn’t NBC called me yet to help them with Internet strategy! HOPEFULLY they make that money back by airing things on YouTube and Hulu and on their own site. Interestingly enough, 183,000 views have been recorded just to the commercial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUlJahUtm04 for the Vancouver, BC, Canadian 2010 Winter Olympics. I predict that for actual content and clips of various events and happenings, the true number will far exceed a measly 100 million. I would say at least a billion for US and then billions more worldwide. And if the various media vehicles monetize correctly, it should spell out to gross much more than the $250million lost on the antiquated boob-tube.
And just to keep things in perspective, 2 weeks ago I reported on Super Bowl commercials. It appears that the winner in this race is the spot for Doritos named “House Rules” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0EVSP_6XZA). But wait, there’s more. Doritos didn’t even create the commercial. If you check out the site crashthesuperbowl.com, you will see that these commercials were created for free. All user-generated content. Doritos paid for it with a $25,000 contest for the 6 finalists. Then one of them gets an additional $1m, $600k and $400k. Basically, instead of paying an advertising agency millions of dollars, they are throwing it back to the work out of your house creative geniuses who don’t work for corporate America 9-5. (On the other hand, maybe they DO work in a corporate job and did this in their spare time and made a cool $25k - $1mm in their spare time.
My point is that the Internet keeps on winning out as the best way to market your product. Get fans of your product to sell your product for you. And reward the people who make it happen. There are plenty of terrible commercials (and websites) out there, created, written and produced by huge advertising agencies for millions of dollars. If advertisers want to get the biggest bang for their buck, they will listen to me and rely on the web to sell their product with smart Internet marketing managers (hopefully me and my company 
And as my new sales guru Jeffrey Gitomer says, “you need poll your own audience.” He suggests creating a seminar and inviting all of your customers. And whether they can come or not, ask your customers why they buy from you. You will be very happily surprised to get these answers. Then obviously use this information to get new customers and buyers of your products and services.
It’s also the 2010 Mercedes Benz Fashion Week here in New York, NY in Bryant Park. As I watch model after supermodel get in and out of taxis on my block, I realize that they have a pretty good thing going on. Each year, fashion designers from all over the world come to my house (ok, across the street from my office) and strut their stuff on the runway. Once again, if you think that it’s about the event, think again. When I searched for “2010 Mercedes Benz Fashion Week,” Marc Bouwer comes up with the #1 video with over 40,000 views. I guarantee you that Marc is having a great show this year!
So my message this week is to think about the short term with the long term marketing in mind. Photograph your events. Video them. Write about them. Blog about them. Oh. Did you say that you don’t have any events going on? Well then, CREATE them! Can’t think of an event to create, borrow one from the newspaper, current events, the sports section or the calendar. In addition to the Olympics and Fashion week, this week is the beginning of Baseball Spring Training. And it was also Valentine’s Day and President’s Day and the Daytona 500.
Need help figuring out a long term, short term or event driven NYC Internet Marketing strategy, give me a call at 212-993-5828, send me an email at raphis@salemglobal.com or visit www.SalemGlobal.com. I will guarantee we will come up with something in 5 minutes of having a conversation. Next week we will talk more about the Olympics, content and Internet strategy. Oh and my latest book, Slackonomics by Lisa Chamberlain.
Internet Marketing, Football and Poker: What We Can Learn from 2 Minute Warnings, Sudden Death, Flops, Turns and Rivers
Posted by Salem Global on Dec 28, 2009
Did anyone see the NY Giants football game yesterday? I didn’t. But between Facebook and my poker game last night it was hard to avoid hearing how terribly the Giants fell. This week is your last chance to make things happen in 2009. This is your 2 minute warning, your sudden death and your RIVER card all in one. Huh? What am I talking about? Read on marching soldier…
A 2 minute warning is footballs way of saying there are 2 minutes left in the game so you better move faster, stronger and get your head in the game because at this point you don’t have any more time to strategize. It is now time to act. It’s now or never.
Sudden death takes place in overtime and means that the next point wins. If the 2 minute warning didn’t get your head in the game, sudden death should.
In poker you get a chance to see community cards three times. First comes the FLOP where you get to see the first 3 community cards. Then comes the TURN that can make or break you. The RIVER decides who wins and what will be the best hand on the board.
Internet marketing can be compared to football and poker amongst many other things. Basically you need to set up a short term and long term strategy. You will not get results overnight. You have to be patient, budget your money and time accordingly and then strike when the iron is hot. Many companies lose faith in their marketing. This can be compared to the football players that give up in the second half when they are down in the first. They still have a chance during the 2 minute warning but psychologically they might be finished. Similarly, people lose when they fold pre-flop, after the FLOP or TURN even though they might have the best hand at the RIVER. They lose faith in their cards, themselves and get bullied out of winning the pot. These people need to learn the odds. They need to learn that long term thinking wins.
So my message to you for this last post of 2009 is not to ever give up hope. Keep on truckin’ as we used to say. Next year in 2010 we will all be doing a little bit better. One of the first poker lessons I ever learned was that poker winners do not win every hand. Warriors do not win every battle, but they DO win the war. Superbowl champions don’t go 16-0 during the season (ok ok there is 1 exception to this statement).
Instead of going out in a blaze of glory, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0UzG-Gc7II
or Thelma and Louise
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z88U915uq8
…be more like Jackie Chan in “Young Master”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiyJkIn1Nn0
And remember, not to lose faith in yourself, your family, your friends, your company, the economy… you get the picture.
Want to know more about Internet marketing, football, poker or martial arts movies? Give me a call at 212-993-5828, send me an email at raphis@salemglobal.com or visit www.SalemGlobal.com. Next week we get back to the 21 basics of Internet marketing. Evaluating your website for improvement.
Happy New Year Everyone!
Raphi Salem
Getting ready for the 2010 New Year: Planting the Seeds for Your Long Term Online Marketing Strategy
Posted by Salem Global on Dec 8, 2009
Before anything, if you are looking for an excellent charity to support during this season of giving, please consider http://www.EvasVillage.org. They do amazing anti-poverty work with the homeless.
Now on to the Tip of the Week…
This week I am incredibly proud of myself. I actually used the Amazon.com gift certificate that my colleague gave to me for finding him a sub-letter for his office last year (through networking of course!). As I was writing last week about Black Friday and Cyber Monday and gifts for my kids for the holidays, I was all ready to break out my credit card to pay for the “good deals” I found online. But then I realized in the back of my mind that I had this gift certificate just sitting there in cyberspace. So instead of going to BlackFriday.com or CyberMonday.com, I went to Amazon.com and shopped there.
So let’s review exactly how and where I spent my money.
First I thought about the season and gift giving.
Second I thought about the gifts I wanted to get.
Third I thought about the currency resource I was going to use.
On a related note, I was not concerned with the locale of where I was going to purchase from, though I was interested and motivated by some free shipping offers.
Last I was motivated by price.
As you can see, I am a real live online shopper. Tis the season for me to be spending and all of the above factors influenced me to make my purchases. And you know what? None of those factors included SEO or search engine optimization.
Online and in the real world, you need to think about your INTEGRATED marketing strategy. “Integrated” means pulling together all of your resources to try and get to the customer and then trying to sell to the customer. In my example, it did not matter whether the companies I purchased from were at the top of Google. It mattered that a) there was a gift card, b) that the merchants were associated with amazon.com and c) they had the best price.
For 2010 I want you all to think out of the box of SEO. My company is involved with website and Internet marketing. We don’t just do one thing, we do it all. (And by all, I mean literally 21 things. Huh? You didn’t know about the 21 things you should consider when thinking about an online strategy? We should talk But where we REALLY differ from our competition is in our strategy. We think in the box, out of the box and then pull it all together. We have over 12 years of experience with online marketing. Before that we were involved in TV and traditional media and advertising. Some things have changed but the basics are still here. We survived the first online crash of 2001 and have survived through the past two year recession. In the year 2010 we will double in size, revenue and profit. If you would like to know more about what we do, how we do it and what we can do for you, give us a call or send us an email. Next week we will tell you what the 21 website marketing things are. Happy Holidays Everyone!