How to make a quick million using PR and creating pixel marketing in the process

All of us (with the exception of the well-heeled among us) could do with $1 Million, correct?
Many of us come up with concepts and ideas that unfortunately need (serious) funding.
All those great ideas are often shelved – it would just take too long, require too much time and money.
Once in a while, there is a bright person who comes up with a quick, low cost way of making a cool million - legally.
One of those persons is the enterprising British student Alex Tew.
He came up with the idea to create a homepage (www.milliondollarhomepage.com) and turn it into a billboard, made up of a million pixels.
He then divided the screen into 10,000 small squares of 100 pixels each, and sold them for $ 1 a pixel to anyone who wanted to put up their logo.
He was able to sell a few to family and friends for a total of $ 1,000, but not to anyone outside of his circle of acquaintances.

So how did your reach his target audience?
Since word of mouth would not generate more business, Tew sent a press release to national newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, and The Sun.

Due to the unique angle (the most expensive website in the world) it was quickly picked up by the news media (Reuters, ABC, CNN) around the world.
It also spread around the Internet; many a blog mentioned the website as well.

As a result, advertisers for everything from dating sites, to casinos, to real estate agents, to The Times of London were putting up real cash for pixels, with links to their own sites.
Advertisers discovered that they were receiving actual valuable Web hits for a fraction of the cost of traditional Internet advertising.

One example is engineseeker.com, an Arizona-based company that helps clients’ websites to appear at the top of worldwide search engines.
They bought 6,400 pixels as soon as they heard about the Million Dollar Homepage.
As they put it:
“It was ingenious.
It’s easy to make money on the Internet, but it is very difficult to have a unique idea, and this one was.
We immediately knew that this website was going to attract huge numbers of visitors so we bought pixels there and then.
The results for us were amazing.
We used to get 40,000 visitors a day to our site — that’s now up to 60,000.”

By the end of 2005, Tew had sold 999,000 pixels and demand outstripped supply for the last thousand.
Giddy prospective buyers pushed him to open a second page, but Tew had pledged to close the page when his goal of one million dollars was reached in order to protect its originality.
Tew auctioned off the last 1,000 pixels on eBay for a whopping $160,109.09.
He donated part of it to The Prince's Trust, a U.K. charity for youth that once helped him.

What are the key success factors?

• Originality
• Clever marketing
• PR

Tew also started a new trend: pixel marketing.
There are now charity sites; sites devoted to erotica; straightforward financial sites - all using pixels to raise funds.
While none of these seem to have replicated Tew's success -but the sheer volume of attempts and creativity behind it, takes pixel marketing seriously indeed.
Time will tell how it will catch on and we will know what works, and what doesn't.

Ironically enough, Tew did raise enough funds to finance his study (the reason he started the website in the first place) but since he has been bombarded with job offers and has been caught up in managing his site, he decided to drop out for now.

A classic example of victim of his own success?

Marketing Birkenstock - from hippie to hipster

In 1971, Margot Fraser became the founder, CEO, and sole distributor of Birkenstock in the US.
Fraser used non-traditional marketing to sell Birkenstocks - she introduced the sandals to Berkeley CA, in 1966, where they were directed at the new generation, that perceived the sandals as “not affected by traditional thought.”
As a result, Birkenstocks have been associated with Woodstock participants, save-the-whale activists and tree huggers.

Over the years, Birkenstock relied on the general trend and demand for craftsmanship and renewable products to help promote their footwear.
For promotion, the company didn’t have any formal national advertisement and only also used unknown models.
Brandwise, Birkenstock was seen as “family-friendly, natural.”
As a result, their highest appeal was with the non-traditional consumers again.
This image was enforced by the “Birkenstock Green Team,” a US Birkenstock institution established in the sixties and consisting of a “small group of employees who meet voluntarily to monitor, research, and resolve environmental issues in (our) workplace, and to educate fellow employees about sound environmental practices.”

As a result, the general public saw Birkenstocks as ugly shoes for hippies, granola munchers, and environment activists.
In the late 1980s, Birkenstock got a boost from Generation X-ers and baby boomers that embraced casual wear.
In 2001 however, Birkenstock USA posted its second profitless year due to over $1 million in lost inventory and projected sales and costs for new computer equipment.
Birkenstock realized that it was time to reposition and rebrand.

It started its repositioning with producing and marketing more than 400 styles of clogs, dress shoes and other “closed-toe” footwear for men and women in colors and patent leather more suitable for fashion runways.
As Birkenstock USA CEO Matt Endriss phrased it:
“The challenge is getting beyond the hippie image. There's a huge opportunity to increase our position in the marketplace.”

Birkenstock needed to rebrand itself, and be perceived as a manufacturer of glove-leather, designer footwear.
The company’s strategy was to broaden its image to edgy and fashionable footwear that shoe-obsessed, ultra-cool Carrie Bradshaw might wear strolling down Madison Avenue in HBO's Sex and the City.
Birkenstock marketing strategy also included expanding its fledgling children’s market and its “professional” shoes aimed at surgeons, chefs and others who stand for long hours.
However, sales are driven largely by hype, celebrity endorsements and big marketing campaigns.
Companies such as Nike spend five times more on marketing and PR alone than Birkenstock sells in a year.

The repositioning of Birkenstock worldwide paid off.
In 2004, Birkenstock got a sudden boost worldwide with the fashion trend for colorful sandals.
European girls were gusting over glossy colorful sandalsand even French Vogue showed a pair of shimmering silver Birkenstocks in one of its issues.
The Japanese market closely followed – in the summer of 2005, Birkenstock successfully launched its footwear to the Japanese hipster crowd.
As a result, Birkenstock also acqured soem rich and famous American fans, including Gulf War general Norman Schwarzkopf and Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow.

For celebrity endorsement, Birkenstock invited several celebrities, including Cindy Crawford, Robin Williams and Whoopie Goldberg, to mark the 30th anniversary of its bestselling Arizona sandal to design their very own version of it.
The company also signed actress/model Heidi Klum to both model Birkenstock sandals and to develop a limited-edition Birkenstock line.

It resulted in excellent media exposure, and branded Birkenstocks as hip and trendy.
To reach the profitable exercise and fitness market, Birkenstock engaged Tony Little, America’s exercise guru and informercial pioneer, to promote its exercise sandals.

Birkenstock also changed its advertising, including full page ads at the back of NY Times magazine.
In December 2005, Birkenstock selected Duncan/Shannon as its PR agency.

Where will small, privately-owned Birkenstock succeed in the long term?
One thing is for sure: Birkenstock made a promising start.

1. It extended its brand into athletic shoes, hiking shoes and apparel, taking on companies such as Nike (which offsets sluggish sales of athletic shoes with casual crossovers and hybrid styles), bootmaker Merrell (which pioneered sport footwear such as moccasins), Timberland (which turned to sandals), competitor Teva, and designers such as Perry Ellis (who has his own footwear line).
   
2. It expanded its distribution channels, adding ecommerce to its traditional stores.
   Birkenstock are now also available online.
   
3. It repositioned itself and is now perceived as fashionable, not in the least due to its rebranding.
   
4. Its extended its promotion to include celebrity endorsements that branded the company as fashionable and trendy. It also used celebrity endorsements to profile itself in the different target markets, including fitness. It also got favorable coverage in blogs and testimonials.
   
5. It put emphases on marketing, resulting in a clear picture of who their customers are and why some of its markets are stronger than others.
   
6. It identified fashion trends, which enabled it to enter new markets, such as Japan and children's wear.
   
7. It was able to maintain its image as a quality product manufacturer and is endorsed by testimonials on websites and blogs.
   

The full case study is available in pdf format at www.debradejong.com/trends

Ford Motor is finding its marketing way

The Ford Company has always been more sales-driven than marketing-driven.
Ford’s legacy (the invention of the auto assembly line) has been overshadowed by its “creative marketing.”
If we look at its branding, Ford went through the following slogans: “No Boundaries” which lasted less than 2 years; “If You Haven't Driven a Ford Lately, Look Again” which lasted 2 years and the current “Built for the Road Ahead.”
Ford changes or tinkers with its ad slogan and brand strategy every 18 months or so, as executives change jobs in and out of finance, operations, sales, and marketing.
But that is not the only reason – to quote the newly appointed President Mark Fields: “advertising and even brand strategy at Ford has been viewed as somewhat disposable.”

This resulted in one of Ford’s main problems: customers don’t seem to get what Ford passenger cars are all about anymore.
Especially the Ford Five Hundred sedan and Freestyle crossover SUV/wagon should have substantially replaced the Taurus.
These cars should have successfully competed with the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry, which have been the best selling four-door sedans in the U.S. for several years.
The failure of the Five Hundred and the Freestyle was not only due to poor branding, but also due to poor product quality.

As independant marketing consultant Dennis Keene, who works with consumer-product companies, phrased it: “These cars were exercises in packaging rather than design, and precisely reflect why Ford's designers need sustained brand strategies to guide them”.

Ford paid a hefty price for its poor marketing and branding – it affected the bottom line.
Year-over-year sales declined 9% in December 2005 - its fourth consecutive monthly drop. For the first time in 19 years, Chevrolet outsold Ford in 2005.
Ford saw its domestic market share fall to 15.6%, down almost five percentage points since 2001.
As a result, Ford stock closed at $8.01 a share on Jan. 4, almost half what it was when Bill Ford took over four years ago.

Ford realized that it had to shape up and get back on track.
The company had lost touch with its customers, more specifically its car customers.
Marketing cannot provide the proverbial silver bullet, but can formulate and implement a strategy to revitalize Ford's main brands of Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury, and a stronger emphasis on development of new products.

On January 23, Ford will announce a detailed plan for growth, dubbed “The Way Forward”, which will include positioning and branding the Ford Company as “American and innovative”. The company wants to capture American “values, culture, and optimism” in its designs.
On the product level, Ford is planning to launch new models in segments where the automaker has been largely absent.

Sales-driven Ford is smart to realize that marketing is the answer.
By analyzing its customers’ needs, adjusting existing products and developing new ones in accordance with the customers’ demands, Ford will (re)position and brand both the company and its products.
If Ford will be able to execute its new positioning, and put emphasize on marketing and branding, it will see its sales increase and (ceteris paribus) its stock go up.

How to start a great PR year

Now that we entered a new year, it’s time to look back and evaluate.
Since corporate communications and PR is highly dynamic, a clever New Year resolution is to have a critical look at all the corporate materials and see what still passes the test of time and what should be renewed or replaced.
Following are the 15 key questions to be answered .

1. Has your market broadened or differentiated over the past year?
   Does the company’s product or service still fits the market?
   
2. Has your target audience changed?
   Are they still the same demographics with the same wants and needs?
   
3. Has the corporate message changed?
   Are you still communicating the correct massage using the correct terminology?
   
4. Is your corporate collateral still up to date?
   Does the corporate description still reflect the company as it is today?
   Are references and case studies updated?
   
5. Does the product material still describe the latest version and applications of the company’s products?
   
6. Are all the corporate messages in sync? (Website, newsletters, brochures etc.)
   
7. Does the company know how its customers, market, investors, and general public perceive the company, its mission, its product offerings, and its reputation?
   
8. Do the company’s customers recognize the company’s brand?
   (thorugh PR, advertising, packaging, and sales presentations)
   
9. How do the company’s employees perceive the company, its mission, products, markets, and PR?
   
10. Is the perception that the media, industry analysts, and bloggers have of your company the company the desired one?
    
11. Does the exisiting promotion mix still works?
    Does advertising still works for the company?
    Would launching a corporate blog be a good idea?
    
12. Do the suppliers live up to the expectations?
    Does the performance of the PR and/or IR company meet the expectations?
    
13. Did the company get the media exposure it wanted?
    
14. Did corporate communications and PR support sales to the extend as expected?
    
15. Is the corporate communications and PR plan and budget for 2006 ready and approved?

In short, it is the perfect time to start with examining if the company still send the correct message and image to the market.
It’s the task of corporate communications to ensure and protect the core values and purpose of the company.