Chris Anderson’s best selling “The Long Tail” has become a highly influential and widely referenced business essay that theorises about the future of modern commerce. At its core, The Long Tail is a dissertation about the economics of abundance.

The book provides a description of a business paradigm that has begun to show the power of seemingly unlimited selection of products and services across a broad spectrum of consumer markets. It provides a perspective about what Anderson claims are “the new truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it.“

“In short, though we still obsess over hits, “Anderson writes, ” they are not quite the economic force they once were. Where are those fickle consumers going instead? No single place. They are scattered to the winds as markets fragment into a thousand niches.”

The book explores a variety of contemporary business examples that include movies, books, and music. Technology and the Internet have made possible an empowered, new world of business marketing in which the combined value of modest sellers and obscure titles equals the sales of the top hits. His examples reveal intriguing possibilities that can be applied to other business models.

In fact, the book may mean more to small business marketers who are nimble and faster to market than slower moving big business. Speed is after all, the currency of business and success loves speed.

Acoustic Bookworm has just released an inexpensive audio version of The Long Tail that you can download right now. Once you download your copy, you can listen to it as an mp3 or go ahead and burn a CD or DVD and listen to it in your car. Very cool!

A high touch and consistent approach to sales management and training can significantly improve the selling skills and techniques needed by your organization’s sales professionals. A clear understanding of buyer/seller rapport, sales call planning, questioning and listening skills, presentation skills and closing strategies will drive the top line results for any business.

The goal is to achieve a solution driven sales approach to your customers most pressing needs. To find those pressing needs, go get some real marketing muscle.

To master the art of selling, the following three adverts are required viewing. They are brought to you by the very serious, big brand folks at IBM. Big Blue knows a thing or two about how to target the right customer. Watch each spot back to back - too funny. We all know a Bob Hooey or two in the real world of corporate sales. Did we mention that they’re too funny?

So, are you a farmer of a rancher? Now go sell something!

This may be a trend setting decision that becomes the immediate future for industry trade publications. InfoWorld has announced that they will discontinue their print component as of April 2, 2007.

“InfoWorld is not dead. We’re not going anywhere. We are merely embracing a more efficient delivery mechanism –the Web — at InfoWorld.com. You can still get all the news coverage, reviews, analysis, opinion, and commentary that InfoWorld is known for. You’ll just have to access it in a browser (or RSS reader) — something more than a million of you already do every month.”

Industry insiders are abuzz over the long rumoured news. Ultimately, it’s a strategic decision that is both practical and in sync with the realities of today’s contemporary world of information technology. It’s not unusual for IT information in a print magazine to be out of date simply because things can change by the nanosecond – and often do.

When you’re dealing with information that is actionable intelligence, there is a high probability that you’ll need to refer back to the source of that info. You may save it for future reference, categorize it within certain projects, email it to associates or colleagues and so on.

The new school of information sharing includes viral phenomenon such as social book-marking, tag and ping, and RSS. All of which are more progressive and effective in facilitating the use of new info compared to having a copy of that old, dogged eared magazine collecting dust on your office credenza.

Other trade publications and marketers can learn an interesting leadership lesson from this gutsy approach by InfoWorld. Delivery of information is the objective. Businesses need to be in touch with the medium that best delivers information in the most efficient and useful fashion for their target audience.

In case you were planning a test drive over the weekend, we thought we would post an excerpt direct from BMW promotional copy. Featured along side the copy, is a creative and interesting print advertisement.
The marketing copy and the print ad are both taken out of context but nonetheless, the brand messaging and the stated brand values are both part and parcel of BMW’s overall strategy for the positioning of their luxury brand identity.

Since its inception, the BMW brand has stood for one thing: sheer driving pleasure.

Sporting and dynamic performance combine with peerless design and exclusive quality, resulting in the unique appeal of BMW automobiles.

Experience the fascination of BMW.

What are BMW brand values?

The BMW brand is a blend of the company’s values, products, history, image and visions.
BMW brand values are:
• Joy
• Dynamic
• Cultured
• Challenging
They represent ’sheer driving pleasure’ in every model.
These are communicated to the customer through the end product.

With the print ad, we’re just wondering if BMW realizes that successful women like to own and drive upscale automobiles too. We doubt that this advert is the way win their business. A surprisingly bad taste ad!

The Ultimate Attraction

For an interesting analasis of another successful interactive marketing campaign from BMW marketing, check out Viral Marketing - Case Study - BMW Films

Our own informal marketing study has revealed that nine out of ten consumers surveyed, who are likely to own or lease a BMW are also likely to consume Lavazza Coffee

Google has announced that it is rolling out a new beta test that it has labelled as “pay-per-action” advertising. Under the new program, businesses using Adwords advertising, will define specific actions that they are willing to pay for such as, a visitor opt-in, a certain page view or an actual sale. They also define the amount that they are willing to pay based on the type of action.

When the advertisers’ ad is clicked by a visitor, Google will in turn, only bill the advertiser if the predetermined action is completed. An advertiser needs to establish a conversion tracking system and then, create the adverts. Ads are then displayed on the so called publisher websites that comprise the Google content network. Publishers will also be introduced to new ad units under this new pay-per-action model that can be featured on their sites.

In a nut shell, with this new Google proposition, advertisers only pay for desired results. And content publishers determine whether to run a specific type of ad or group of ads on their websites. Initially, this pay-per-action beta test is only available to advertisers in the United States.

From a publisher’s perspective, there is some risk reversal in featuring the new cost-per-click ads. There is no guarantee that the publisher will receive any payment for a given ad that gets clicked by a visitor from their site. From the advertiser point of view, they will no longer be charged for ads that are ineffective and the annoying risk of click fraud is going to be significantly reduced.

Along side this pay-per-action news, Google has also revealed that it will be adding click-to-play video ads to their line-up of text, Flash and image ad formats all being supported currently by it’s content network. At launch, video ads will be available to AdWords advertisers in the US, Canada and Japan and progressing to other global regions eventually.

According to Googles’ “Inside Adwords”, users will have total control of the ad viewing experience;

“Finally, unlike some intrusive advertising, users will have complete control. When a page loads, only a static image will be visible; the video will not start playing until the user initiates it. He or she will be able to advance the video, pause it, adjust the volume or click through to the advertiser’s site,…

But, you may say, video is only for big branding oriented advertisers. We beg to differ. This feature makes video ads much more accessible to all advertisers. Now, an owner of a small bed & breakfast in Lake Tahoe can put a video tour of his beautiful chalet right next to an article that talks about skiing the epic slopes of Squaw Valley.”

We’re not sure what part of the world C. Brand lives in but they were nice enough to send us an email responding to one of our recent posts “Ask And Ye Shall Receive”. We responded to their email and then asked for permission to post it here. They agreed and here it is in full:

I just had a few thoughts about your March/ 13 news article that I was wondering about. First it’s a good article but do you consider it ethical for businesses and marketers to take advantage of a persons problems when you wrote; “Tapping into the level of frustration and difficulty that your customers and prospects are experiencing in a given market is their problem and your opportunity.”? To me, this sounds predatory and cold.

I was also wondering about Dr. Livingston’s market research example and why would he use such an obscure example such as guinea pigs (that has to be such a small niche market), compared to what people really search for on the internet such as business information, travel information, automobile news or even anything like fitness and health related news.

I would also like to read more information about Point Of Difference Benefits vs. Price of Entry Benefits. Can you email me some more information about theses concepts?
Thanks
C. Brand

Our response went something like this:

Good marketers – the best marketers – understand their markets intimately. They collect great data and they understand how to correctly interpret that data. Success comes from knowing that a penetrating insight into your market is prerequisite to an academic understanding about the tactics of marketing. But it’s more than a complex analysis of all available metrics.

Understanding the frustrations and the depth of frustration that your potential customers are experiencing in a given area is imperative. Listen to your customer, understand what their most pressing needs are, create a quality solution to those needs and bundle your solution in an irresistible offer. This is an ethical pursuit of a win/win relationship.

Without an adequate understanding of your customer, your approach is myopic – even blind - because you’re going to your market based on your business’s agenda and not your target customer’s. This approach relies on sales gimmicks, marketing hype, publicity stunts and various tactics that are geared at pushing product – and not necessarily solving problems.

Marketing a product without really knowing if it solves your customer’s problems can turn out to be a costly mistake for your business. Even if you know that you have a great product, your customer just may not want to buy – or worse, they buy and return for a refund. A great marketing strategy will always prevail over great marketing tactics and the best strategies begin with an intimate understanding of your target market.

So what about the guinea pig example?
Best to read our post: The Story of The Guinea Piggy Bank!

Concerning “Point Of Difference Benefits vs. Price of Entry Benefits,” the best thing to do is to learn about these concepts direct from the man who has provided approximately FOURTEEN MILLION DOLLARS in consulting services to a who’s who list of Fortune 500 companies that include:

A T & T, American Express, Astra Zeneca, Bausch & Lomb, Burger King, Chase, Citibank, Colgate-Palmolive, Grey Advtg, Hallmark, Hunt Wesson, J & J, JJill, Exxon, Flagship Banks, Ford Motor Company, General Mills, Gore, J Walter Thompson, Kodak, Kraft, Lipton, M & M/Mars, Master Card, Merck, Nextel, Novartis/Ciba, Ortho McNeil P & G, Pfizer, Pharmacia, Pillsbury, Roche, Sara Lee Unilever, Warner Lambert,

Just visit Real Marketing Muscle to get informed. It’s free to opt in and the information could be priceless to your business enterprise. Good Luck!

This is the true story by marketing psychologist, Dr. Glenn Livingston, about making money starting out with an information product on Guinea Pigs.

How I Fired All My Corporate Clients And Went From $ZERO To $28,462 per-month in PASSIVE INCOME - Starting With a $9.99 E-Book On Guinea Pigs!

Here’s the story!

The decision to move out of the corporate consulting sector was a radical career change for me. I fired all of my Fortune 500 clients with the intention of creating new businesses that would provide totally passive income … with no headaches, no client “emergencies”, no ridiculous work hours and no time away from my family.

But There Was One Major Problem!

I had a relatively crazy idea to re-engineer my market research methods (systems for which I’d already been paid millions by clients in the corporate sector) - to work in any area of business, including both established small businesses, and simple niche marketing on the internet. I had targeted the online media as a kind of latecomer to the e-book craze, … but I knew almost nothing about Internet marketing.

Now honestly, I was pretty scared, and I wasn’t sure if it was doable. After all, there’s a big difference in the advertising & distribution methods available to companies like American Express, Whirlpool, Nextel, Lipton and G.E., and those available to ‘the little guy’, - but I had to make this workable for EVERY business.

Well, what happened next was - quite frankly - stunning.

Here’s how it all went down. Much to my parent’s dismay (they had been SO happy to tell all their friends about “my son the doctor”), the first product that I selected for my new “online empire” was a $10 e-book about guinea pigs. No kidding! Don’t ask why – it’s a long story that goes back to my childhood. But it’s also the perfect example of just how powerful this system is.

You see, using just my research system and nothing else - no purchased opt-in lists, no backend products, no SEO, no affiliates and no JV deals - simply buying my own traffic, I was able to start banking $2,000 a month with my guinea pig book.

I quickly tested and duplicated this success in other markets, and within six months after launching my ‘piggy project’ – I had worked up to $6,300 a month in passive income.

It Gets Better

I went back and made some tweaks to this system, and was able to DOUBLE my business in approximately 6 months.

Six months later I DOUBLED IT AGAIN.

And what’s really interesting is that during this time, my web sites attracted a boatload of competitors – yet my numbers kept going up and up (I discovered that when you fully apply the system and make sure you’re really delivering what the market wants, you can make MORE money when you have more competition!)

And … something even more interesting … I’ve used this virtually fool-proof formula to launch site after site after site. Now to be honest, some of these sites are more successful than others. But to date, I’ve not lost ANY money when I followed the formula in full.

Not bad for a crazy idea, huh?

Well, that’s the story of how I first applied my system outside the ‘big brand’ world, and how I started refining it to get it to do what it does today. (I’ve become kind of obsessed with making it better every month!)

From script to screen, Connecticut based XVIVO is an award-winning animation studio that creates spectacular, custom visual productions for advertising agencies, broadcast companies, educational institutions and a variety of science, medical and technology companies.

Harvard University selected XVIVO to create an original animation that would illuminate the mechanisms that allow a white blood cell to sense its surroundings and respond to an external stimulus. The objective for the project was to introduce a medium that could take undergrad students beyond the more limited perspective of their textbooks.

The end result was a masterful feature that explores and illustrates the different cellular environments and the inherent communications within this micro universe. “The Inner Life of the Cell” is a hypnotic, three-dimensional journey through the microscopic world of a cell. It’s an eight and half minute feature that took 14 months to produce.

Since it’s release, “The Inner Life of the Cell” has been well received – to say the least. This is an excerpt from a recent Wired News interview with David Bolinsky of XVIVO:

Wired News: What was the reaction to it there?

Bolinsky: We started receiving tens of thousands of e-mails and phone calls, the hits on our website went from 200 a week to 650,000 a week and it was picked up by ABC News. We were getting e-mails from major universities all over the world asking if they could use this for their students (and) calls from high school teachers wanting it for advanced biology classes … and museums that want us to work on museum exhibits because they want to modernize how they teach science.
This is what I hoped when I started this company — that it could change how people saw things. We (thought) this great academic animation would be shown at Harvard and would disappear forever under the Ivy dome of silence - We didn’t really anticipate that it would go anywhere and when it did it took us all by surprise.

The complete Bolinsky interview is at Wired.com -
“The Inner Life of the Cell”

While this video excerpt is set to music - the full eight and a half minute version includes narration that explains the dynamic processes that you’re watching.

So what does this have to do with marketing news? Well there’s the viral concept in play here – good creative takes on a life of its own. The publicity has surprised even Bolinsky who expected that his creative feature “would disappear forever under the Ivy dome of silence”. But the story has legs.

The following advert is the creation of Brazilian ad agency; Dez Brasil for the Asics athletic brand. The ad copy featured with the print ad reads:

Left is rational. Right is emotional. Left, right, left, right, left, right is balance.
Running is in our DNA.
Asics. Sound mind, sound body.

We wonder if the creative elements behind the print advertisement were in any way inspired by “The Inner Life of the Cell”. Strong symmetry between the two projects! Both thought provoking and both well done. Click the image for a good look!

The observant among you will notice the muscle of the “sound minded” Asics runner. The progressive marketers among you who want to thrive in your own business universe realize that you need your own Real Marketing Muscle.

Now this is an advertising print campaign that caught our eye! The adverts are brought to the marketplace by the popular Lavazza Coffee brand of Italy. Interesting imagery but we’re not really sure about the correlation between naked bodies and coffee beans. Coffee is a stimulant and the images are stimulating too - OK maybe we’re reaching. The ad copy reads; “Italy’s Favourite Coffee”

The art direction and creative photography of the graphics were produced by renowned advertising photographer Eryk Fitkau. He is best recognised for his specialized methods of post-production which include unique techniques for double exposing images and hand colouring.

Too bad Lavazza beat us to it though because naked bodies and Caffeine Marketing – well that’s another story. Even if it is narcissistic, we think that these graphics are just the type of promotion that would better suit our own brand identity goals.

Nuf said, study the ads, critique the ads, debate the ads – we just hope you enjoy them over another cup of your daily marketing news.

Luck is not chance – It’s toil – Fortunes’ expensive smile is earned.

– Emily Dickinson

What to earn fortune’s expensive smile? Smart marketers are using Real Marketing Muscle to unfair advantage !

Tapping into the level of frustration and difficulty that your customers and prospects are experiencing in a given market is their problem and your opportunity. They have a thorn in their paw and your business proposition is just the solution that will effectively relieve their angst.

When you can discover issues that are your target audiences’ most pressing problems – issues that are not being satisfied anywhere else - you can position your business offering as the go to solution. Your customers will shout “Hey, they’ve got exactly what I’ve been looking for - and I couldn’t find it anywhere else!”

The best approach to unearthing pressing customer concerns is to survey them. And to discover the potential nuggets of gold from within your survey data, you’ll want to focus on the distinction between Point Of Difference Benefits vs. Price of Entry Benefits.

“Most people that take the time to survey their market really haven’t a clue how to use the information they gather and in fact, they allow their surveys to throw them way off the mark.” So says marketing research expert, Dr. Glenn Livingston.

Dr. Livingston is a certified psychologist who earns a nice living as a quantitative marketing research expert. He has completed highly successful studies for an impressive list of corporate brand names such as Bausch & Lomb, Whirlpool, and Nabisco. His cutting edge information is now available to small business marketers as well.

Too often, the data results of a survey can mislead a marketer because they interpret the frequency of a given response to be essentially the same thing as the importance of response. But these concepts are not created equally.

“For example” says Dr. Livingston, “if you do a survey of guinea pig searchers online, you’ll find people very frequently ask about how long a guinea pig lives. In fact, this will probably be the most common question you’ll get.

Now if you go out and design a product all about how long guinea pigs live, you’re gonna be out of luck pretty quickly because what you’ve discovered is not a purchase motivating benefit – it’s a ‘price of entry’ benefit.”

A price of entry benefit is a benefit that all products in a given market must have in order to even be considered by a purchaser. A point of difference benefit is something that “consumers perceive as hard to find answers to their pressing problems - these are where the real market gaps are - where you’ll find the best opportunities to shine” according to Livingston.

Continuing with the guinea pig market example, a more important question for someone marketing a book on guinea pigs might be how to determine the gender of a guinea pig before its two weeks old.

This information may not be seen as often in your survey responses, but its marked as a lot harder to find. The objective is to put enough of these tidbits together and you wind up being THE source to solve your clients’ most difficult problems. Solutions that they can’t find anywhere else.

And getting some Real Marketing Muscle might just be the solution to your own businesses’ most pressing problems. Solutions that your competitors don’t know about yet!

Stand Upright, speak thy thoughts,
declare the truth thou hast,
that all may share; Be bold,
proclaim it everywhere:
They only live who dare.

Lewis Morris

And those who dare have real marketing muscle!

PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC’s) has recently released its’ tenth annual Global CEO Survey. The findings reveal that the majority of the 1,100 CEOs surveyed are bullish about the prospects for revenue growth concerning their respective companies.

The CEOs represent businesses from 50 different countries with more than 90 percent of them expressing an expectation of business expansion that will be fuelled by improved market penetration, increased geographic expansion and more merger and acquisition activity - often across borders.

Among concerns, 73 percent of the respondents’ site over-regulation as the primary threat to conducting business followed closely with 72 percent seeing a lack of skilled labour as a challenge. 66 percent see low-cost competition as a threat to earnings.

65 percent see active engagement in social issues as a key factor in the recruitment and retention of employees. Surprisingly, 59 percent of respondents fail to see a threat of global warming or climate change as a major concern for business prospects.

Roughly 75 percent of these world CEOs agree that continued and sustainable globalization is beneficial for both developed and emerging markets. To download the report, go to 10th Annual Global CEO Survey.

Learn how to double - even triple - your current business results!

Learn how to successfully enter new markets with virtually no risk using step by step, laser-precise, virtually fail-proof market research!”

Visit RealMarketingMuscle.com now to get your free MP3s with Perry
Marshall, Jonathan Mizel, Fred Gleeck, David Bullock, Russel Wright, & Dr.Glenn Livingston.

The FREE audios at RealMarketingMuscle.com will instantly begin showing you
a very solid and secure way to GET MORE CUSTOMERS at a LOWER COST, how
to SELL MORE to them, and how to MINIMIZE YOUR COMPETITION
so you can dominate your market.

Glenn Livingston has billed companies like Bausch & Lomb, Whirlpool, and Nabisco
$100,000 - $500,000 PER PROJECT for time-tested, proven marketing research
systems that virtually eliminate risk, guesswork and uncertainty …

And now YOU can learn how to use market research to dramatically
MULTIPLY EXISTING PROFITS — AND –how to save ridiculous amounts of
time & money ENTERING NEW MARKETS by finding out exactly where the
“bulls eye” is BEFORE you invest your marketing dollars, and even before you
ever develop a product!

Just go to RealMarketingMuscle.com and fill out the form to get started
right away! (Free audio offer subject to removal without notice)

Well, we don’t really know if Mr. Rogers ever spent time in the hood with Zig Ziglar or Tom Hopkins back in the day but the man could close. Now some folks might take exception to any connotation that Mr. Rogers was some kinda snake-oil salesman.

That’s not what we said – pay attention! This has more to do with the copy writing principle expressed in our last two Copy That posts. Hope you haven’t forgotten the foundation to a great marketing message already – but just in case, here it is again:

“A great offer with poor copy will always perform better than a poor offer with great copy.”

The following video clip is an excellent demonstration of the Reverend Fred Rogers delivering an irresistible offer with sublime eloquence and intelligence. We’re pretty certain that his address was not a methodical, structured sales presentation designed to lead his prospect to an automatic close but nonetheless, his presentation was persuasive and successful.

We think that Mr. Rogers was just keeping it real - delivering a sincere, principle centered message without any tactics or strategy in mind at all. He is effective because his value proposition is in essence, a great offer - “a neighbourhood expression of care everyday to each child”.

To quote Zig Ziglar from his Secrets of Closing the Sale: “You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”

Frederick McFeely Rogers was the host of Mister Rogers’ Neighbourhood which was in production for roughly 33 years. He was an iconic presence to millions of television viewers and was known as a tireless advocate for the education and welfare of children.

This is worth watching – even has a Hollywood ending!

See - if you viewed the Mr. Rogers parity video in our Who’s Calling post, we promised that we would be bringing you some excellent Mr. Rogers footage.

One can only imagine what Mr. Rogers could have done if he had known about Real Marketing Muscle! Stay tuned – Caffeine Marketing wants to help you get buff!