jones huyett Partners is proud to work with Meals on Wheels for one of their largest fundraisers, “Sumptuous Settings.” This year’s theme is “Windows to the Soul.”
The jhP team has produced creative elements for the event, including photographs, cards, and posters.
Everyone at jhP is honored to help Meals on Wheels with their efforts to feed elderly and homebound in Shawnee and Jefferson Counties. Please join us this weekend for Sumptuous Settings 2009!
When I was sixteen I was lucky enough to spend a month in Copenhagen, Denmark. While this was many years before I began my internship here at jhP, or even considered a career in advertising, one billboard there altered my perspective forever. It was a billboard for Tuborg beer. The ad had a picture of a Tuborg beer bottle with a slogan that translated to “Tuborg: Probably the Best Beer in Town.”
You read that right: “Probably the Best Beer in Town.” A friend and I found it hilarious and made up our own alternate ad: a bottle of Tuborg on an empty table with the logo “Tuborg: Probably the Best Beer on this Table.” We thought the ad was ludicrous because we were used to American ads that asserted they were the best in the world. My friend’s mother, who was Danish, tried to explain to us that Danes accepted that people have different tastes in beer and therefore found “We’re the Best” ads offensive.
The Tuborg ad offered more than a lesson in Danish advertising. It taught me that understanding your audience as precisely as possible and appealing to how they think is of ultimate importance in any marketing effort. Sixteen-year-old American girls visiting Copenhagen were obviously not Tuborg’s target market. Danish beer drinkers, however, loved it. So remember the importance of knowing – and appealing specifically to – your target market!
Last week was horrifically challenging for public relations executives at Amazon.com, Dominos and PepsiCo. Each company failed to respond in a timely manner to social media outcry to crises regarding company conduct or employee relations.
The week started with authors blaming Amazon.com for dropping their sales ratings from their popular website. Strangely, all sales rankings that disappeared were for books that discussed gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or erotic works. Accusations soared on the popular social networking website, Twitter, using the hashtag #AmazonFail so followers could track other comments on the situation. Amazon.com failed to respond until several days after the uproar began when they stated that this occurred due to a “computer glitch.” Offended parties were unimpressed with the excuse.
Following suit, Dominos takes the award for hardest fix when two employees released a YouTube video of themselves making a sandwich featuring crude, “secret” ingredients. The video later implies that the sandwich was served to a customer. Had Dominos been monitoring their brand more closely they could have had the video down in hours as opposed to a day. The two individuals who created the video have since been fired and are looking at a potentially hefty lawsuit. Below is an NBC Today Show segment featuring parts of the video. The original video is unavailable due to a copyright claim by Kristy Hammond, the woman featured in the video.
The week ended with another public relations crisis, this time at PepsiCo. As part of unveiling the new Yankee Stadium, PepsiCo, a stadium sponsor, held a promotional event that gave away free tickets to a Yankees game. Yankees fans joined in large numbers for a chance at the tickets and when fewer tickets were given out than promised, fans were mad! They demonstrated their anger by chanting “Pepsi Sucks!” while pouring cans of Pepsi into the gutter. In an attempt to redeem themselves, PepsiCo has set up another ticket giveaway with a local radio station – but not before the negativism had spread across social media networks.
With the rise in popularity of social media communities, the public can now comment instantly on brands, services and products. The lesson arising from these situations is that consumers demand immediate responses to their concerns. This makes it essential for companies to be familiar with various social media networks. If companies aren’t comfortable being involved in these communities yet, they should at least monitor their brands in these communities. By staying aware of what’s being said, companies can be positioned to prevent similar situations and – when they arise – to confront them directly, immediately and effectively.
Keeping up with the critical changes in today’s digital media landscape can be overwhelming. But the jhP philosophy is: With a few good friends and a cold brew we can do anything.
Friday, April 10, jhP launched a new educational forum for clients and friends, tied to our famous Beer-30 festivities. Starting at 4:00pm, an enthusiastic flock joined us for our inaugural “Twitter Tips Beer-30.” The education session covered the basics of Twitter, a rapidly growing social networking phenomenon.
In an informal hour, we discussed what it means to follow, tweet, retweet, reply and repeat – highlighting the importance of Twitter in today’s business world. The fellowship was fun, the beer was tasty, and everyone took away a better understanding of Twitter and social media planning.
Such valuable good times must be repeated. We’ll soon host more Beer-30 educational forums about Twitter and other hot digital media topics. Check back soon for dates and times. Better yet, sign up for our email blasts so you’ll know immediately!
Mindy Armstrong, jhP associate photographer, was recently awarded First Place for the Regional non–master group and First Place for the Kansas non–master group at the annual conference for the Heart of America Professional Photographers Association. At the conference, Mindy’s piece was compared against work by photographers from Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska. Her winning image was titled “United We Stand,” and she took the photo in the summer of 2008 for the United Way of Greater Topeka’s 2008 campaign materials.
Mindy was also awarded a Gold ADDY from the American Advertising Federation of Topeka for the same image in February 2009. Mindy joined the jhP team in the fall of 2007. She has been a member of the Heart of America Professional Photographers Association since 2005.
