HotHouse makes brands work for people online

By Simon van Wyk

Following on from my last post on marketing case studies that are available online, there are a number of books you can buy if you want more detailed information and need to feel the heft of a book (or a Kindle) in your hand. Here’s a selection of the best-rated marketing case study tomes available on Amazon:

• Marketing Mistakes & Successes: A classic of marketing by Robert Hartley from Cleveland State University that is now in its 11th edition. Contains detailed analyses of the decisions and practices that led to major marketing wars, comebacks, mistakes, and successes.
  
  
  
  
• Strategic Marketing Problems: Cases and Comments: A numbers-focused look at marketing issues facing a wide range of companies.
  
  
  
  
• Digital Marketing Strategy: Text and Cases: Glen Urban highlights the main differences between forms of digital marketing, such as building trust relationships by giving the customer plenty of information, innovation, and choice, as compared to the standard low-price relationship of push marketing.
  
  
  
  
• The Marketing Gurus: Lessons from the Best Marketing Books of All Time: A summary of 17 of the top marketing books written in the past 15 years, The Marketing Gurus distils thousands of pages into fewer than three hundred, making it ideal for busy professionals, students, and anyone curious about how marketing has evolved.
  
  
  
  

Do you have suggestions to add to the list? Leave a reply below.

By Simon van Wyk

I have a background in marketing, but my understanding of branding seems at odds with the 2010 opinions I see from social media commentators, marketing and advertising agencies.

I read LoveMarks, but I don’t love brands. I read the definition which says: “Lovemarks reach your heart as well as your mind, creating an intimate, emotional connection that you just can’t live without. Ever.” I don’t actually feel this way about any brand. My life is busy and I reserve that level of investment for the important people in my life, not the stuff I buy. I assumed other people felt the same.

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By Simon van Wyk

Following on with this month’s theme of the legends of marketing, let’s focus on case studies in all types of marketing, not just digital marketing. Here are some websites where you can find some really useful examples to apply to your own business:

Marketing Magazine case studies: This Australian publication has dozens of case studies to choose from. My favourites include Cabana Boys, a creative agency born during the depths of the GFC, the ANZ Bank’s sponsorship of the Broadway musical Wicked, Australia’s quintessential sandshoe, Dunlop Volleys, and the Transport Action Commission of Victoria’s “Pictures of You” campaign.

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HotHouse founder Simon van Wyk talks to Bob Miller, one of Australia’s leading authorities on sales and marketing. Former general manager of marketing for Toyota Australia, Bob won many marketing awards on his way to establishing Toyota as Australia’s top car company. Author of several books and magazine columns on marketing, he now works as a speaker and consultant on marketing and Internet business development, as well as serving as a professor of business at Macquarie University. Bob talks with Simon about the biggest changes in marketing in the past 30 years and the place of digital marketing in today’s marketing mix.

Listen to the podcast below.

 

 Bob Miller Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

By Simon Van Wyk

The term “legend” doesn’t apply to many people in marketing in Australia, but one man who clearly qualifies is Bob Miller.

Long-time general manager of marketing for Toyota Australia, Bob is best known as the man behind the classic “Oh, What a feeling” campaign that placed Toyota at the top of the Australian car market.
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By Simon van Wyk

Search engine optimisation can make a huge difference to the way your site ranks on search engine result pages – and therefore will directly affect your traffic. And most experts engaged to develop a search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy for any website will follow a similar process.

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In this month’s HotHouse podcast, Yooster founder Justin Kirby talks about how the company helped Australian natural healthcare company Blackmores create word of mouth for one of its supplements aimed at arthritis sufferers.

Yooster recruited 1,000 people to try samples of the product, and by the end of the campaign 85% were converted to the product – and all of those converts had told their friends and family and had convinced at least one person to use the product. This niche product, which was not suitable for traditional advertising, had a noticeable lift in sales as a result of the campaign.

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By Simon van Wyk

Following on from last week’s post about blogger engagement, here are summaries and/or links to some case studies of successful blogger engagement programs and campaigns. We’ll also post House Party’s case studies over the coming months.

HP: (Case study summarised from the book “Digital Strategies for Powerful Corporate Communications”) The computer behemoth enjoyed a 10% increase in PC sales in one month simply by leveraging the blogging community to promote its HDX Dragon computer system in 2008. HP sent a new computer system to 31 bloggers it had identified as influential to their business, offering to let them give the computers away in competitions among their readers.

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By Simon van Wyk

Bob Garfield may be the most high-profile advertising sceptic at the moment, but he’s by no means the only one.

Guess who said this? “The advertising business is going down the drain. It’s being pulled down by the people who create it, who don’t know how to sell anything, who have never sold anything in their lives …. who despise selling, whose mission in life is to be clever show-offs and con clients into giving them money to display originality and genius.” read more

By Simon van Wyk

Following on from this month’s podcast, I decided to look at the arguments for and against the death of advertising. This week’s post looks at the evidence that advertising is not in its death throes.

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