Ideas, insights and inspirations.

ChatGPT, the latest AI tool, has taken the world by storm. Should under-staffed and under-resourced marketing teams use it? And can it make marketing teams more productive? Before I answer that, let’s just review how this artificial intelligence (AI) tool works. How ChatGPT Works ChatGPT does not have a mind of its own, nor does it have its own thoughts. Instead, its responses are based on the collective memory of humanity, embedded in billions of web documents – imbued with the entire spectrum of humanity’s truthful, partially true, baseless, misinformed, racist and sexist points of views. Based on existing written sentence and document structure patterns, it completes or predicts word and sentence combinations weaving them together into authoritative-sounding, smooth, somewhat verbose and human-like answers.  Next, an army of human reviewers — with their unique personal biases — manually fine-tune the responses by ranking for quality. Using ChatGPT For Marketing Let’s examine how chatGPT fares in various components of marketing: S T … Continue reading

Posted in: ,

As an agency that has served more than 250 corporate, higher education and non-profit brands, here is what we have concluded: successful brands invest in cultivating and nurturing these seven powerful habits with fierce intentionality: 1. Keyword Habit: The SEO Keyword Lexicon includes a variety of keywords that prospective buyers will use on Google to search for your products and services. It includes groups of keywords related to your brand, decisioning, reputation, thought leadership and products and services. Great brands develop an Institutional SEO Keyword Lexicon which informs creation of new content based on keywords of strategic importance. Successful colleges and universities include keywords for brand positioning, signature academic programs, areas of thought leadership, college search by prospects and institutional reputation. After all, what’s the use of creating new content if it’s going to become a lotus flower in the Himalayans, which only a few people can enjoy? 2. Data Habit: Great brands develop an institutional data framework that includes sales funnel and metrics that measure … Continue reading

Posted in: ,

Communicating before, during and after a capital campaign requires the kind of symphonic thinking that author Daniel Pink explores in A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. Strategic visions and campaign priorities can quickly deconstruct into campaign inventory and itemization — losing all connection to a larger and more compelling story about why a college matters and to the invitation for how donors might connect their singular sense of purpose to something larger. It’s not a matter of longer versus shorter content, but a question of what Pink calls the “relationship between relationships.” Pink talks of the three types of people that thrive when asked to overlay little and big pictures. Boundary Crossers: comfortable with abstraction, they understand how a concept like regulation can inspire donors to support the training of future financial accountants who will police insider trading and osteopathic doctors equipped to ease an epidemic of diabetes. Inventors: able to project new … Continue reading

Posted in: , , , , , , , ,

A familiar Chinese proverb instructs: “To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.” The current situation in higher education defies that enduring wisdom. Change arrived suddenly, with little regard for institutional history or might. In this respect, all colleges stand on relatively common ground. All college presidents, to a degree, have become new college presidents. It might be tempting in this moment of great uncertainty to think that successful colleges/presidents will be those that summon deeper reserves of managerial will or command with greater “corporate turnaround” intensity. More likely, how you and your college navigates this public health crisis and its aftermath will come down to something as fundamental — albeit elusive — as how effectively and artfully you communicate. Every college has crisis communications plans in place, and these plans have served everyone — especially students — well through the initial weeks and months of this crisis. We know that eventually, the urgency of this moment will give way … Continue reading

Posted in: , , , , ,

Great marketing campaigns are powered by a brand-inspired strategy followed by the creation of high-fidelity content. The attention-grabbing content is presented to right-fit prospects using micro-targeting by placing it in the right channels at the right time. Campaign teams measure the performance, and adjust the campaign based on the insights gleaned from analytics data. 1. Brand Inspired: Campaigns are infused with brand essence. 2. Strategy Directed: They are informed by research insights that steer the campaign in a direction most likely to succeed. They don’t meander. 3. High-Fidelity Content Powered: In the age of “show, don’t tell”, they are comprised of authentic high-fidelity content to win hearts, minds and bots. 4. Micro-Targeting Aimed: They are personalized, then adjusted based on A/B testing of the creative. They lean on algorithms to augment human judgment. They result in little “ad waste”. 5. Multi-Channel Deployed: In an era of rapid media channel growth, the campaigns are released in the fewest – but best … Continue reading

Posted in:

Former Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight famously said to an audience of newspaper reporters, “All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things.” Part joke, part poisoned-tipped joust, the heralded Knight voiced an ambivalence about writing and writers that lingers within many college marketing departments and their creative agencies. Entire blog columns and books have advanced the notion that “content is king.” That idea  traces to an 1996 essay by Microsoft founder Bill Gates who envisioned an Internet buoyed by fresh, enlivening content. Google Ngram shows that phrase rocketing straight into conventional wisdom. One could argue the theory, but the eye test says otherwise — the vast seas of web content carry mostly ephemera. My first digital assignment — a 155-character meta description — began my re-education in a new hyper language, one that promised greater speed and potency. As newspaper writers, we learned a seven-second rule — the average … Continue reading

Posted in: , , , , ,

Well-capitalized, community banks often grow new customer relationships by acquiring other banks. However, as their geographic footprints expand, many find it challenging to also grow new customer relationships organically. As their DMAs widen, their marketing budgets are spread thinner and thinner. The idea of spending money on television, radio and outdoor grows more untenable, and digital becomes more important than ever. If this is where you find yourself, your digital marketing strategy should take the following realities into consideration. Focus on Fundamentals 1. Relationships are everything. The lifetime value of a customer whose financial needs evolve through many stages of life is worth far more to your bank than the interest earned on a one-time transaction. It’s interesting when you ask people “Who is your bank?” Invariably, their bank is where they keep their checking and savings accounts. The same is true with business customers. This is where long-term banking relationships begin. 2. You sell more loans to existing customers … Continue reading

Posted in:

While all .edu websites send important signals and establish vital threads of connection to stakeholders — corporate recruiters, research partners and regional funders/allies — a business school website does so with greater urgency and a far more explicit mandate. We held that truth close as we set about redesigning a new website for the Boler School of Business at John Carroll University, a longstanding pillar of a Cleveland and Northeast Ohio economy that has seen more than its share of challenge and has responded with its distinct brand of resiliency. Through economic cycles of growth and decline, and a steady re-mixing of Cleveland’s regional economy from traditional manufacturing to financial services and, increasingly, medical technology, Boler graduates have provided a steady and reliable source of corporate leadership and entrepreneurial grit. But as is the case with many small and mid-sized colleges, the Boler School of Business struggled to articulate a strategy for strengthening the ties that bind a region’s economy … Continue reading

Posted in: , , ,

You want to see the world’s most well-practiced and ridiculous eye roll? Play me a sappy country music song. I see right through that charade – disingenuous, insipid and frankly offensive. Cue. That. Eye. Roll. To me, there are two kinds of emotional appeals in advertising and media. First, the kind I’ve just mentioned — intended to make you cry. I imagine the room of country music executives in sharkskin suits and cowboy hats (stay true to those roots!) in some Nashville high rise, sitting around a rich mahogany table coming up with the next sappy ballad. It’s sole purpose is tears. And the reason they do it? It works. It works really well. It’s why Christmas Shoes became a made-for-tv movie. But to me, I feel exploited. Toyed with. I lose trust in brands who take advantage of my tender heart. (Think Sarah McLachlan Arms of the Angel ASPCA ad.) The second is a different kind of emotional appeal. … Continue reading

As I waited in the supermarket checkout lane the other day and took in the tabloid headlines, it occurred to me that fake news isn’t new at all. We’ve been inundated with it for decades. However, given our recent election, it appears that what’s new is that more and more of us are beginning to believe it. I grew up in the 60s and 70s. Many called it the age of skepticism, and given the era we had every right to not accept at face value everything we read, heard and were told. In high school “Skeptic” magazine supplemented my History classes and Social Studies discussions. We were taught how to read between the lines, look for bias, and understand how context and events shape points of view. Somewhere along the way our skepticism has devolved into a willingness to believe. How in the world did this happen? Things began to change in the 80s. Waiting nervously in the lobby … Continue reading