BMA 2009 Bell Award for Finn Digital Hot Sheet

BMA 2009 Bell Award for Finn Digital Hot Sheet
Originally uploaded by Finn Digital

BMA Milwaukee President Karen Conrad is pictured here with Finn Digital's Bill Finn and Jill Schmidt as they accept the Bell Award in Division 28: Newsletters for our Finn Digital Hot Sheet.

Read all about our awards here.

Check out all of the winners at this year's Bell Awards.

-Tiff P.
Media Project Manager

BMA Bell & Excellence Awards 2009

BMA Bell & Excellence Awards 2009
Originally uploaded by Finn Digital

Finn Digital was honored with 2 awards at last night's Bell Awards 2.0, sponsored by the Business Marketing Association, Milwaukee Chapter.

We were awarded a Bell Award in Division 28: Newsletters for our weekly email newsletter called the "Finn Digital Hot Sheet" as well as an Excellence Award in Division 23: Online Communications Programs for the Johnson Bank "Holiday Game".

It's always an honor to be recognized for our hard work, so kudos to the entire team on both projects!

If you want to know why our newsletter is so "hot", sign up for our newsletter!

-Tiff P.
Media Project Manager

Lessons Learned from Hard Rock

Everyone month, the staff at Finn Digital attends the BMA Milwaukee's meeting and networking.

Today, the featured speaker was Sean Dee, VP and Chief Marketing Officer at Hard Rock. He was able to detail for us not only the history of Hard Rock but also the "rebranding" after his arrival at the company in 2004.

Some key takeaways from his presentation:

Be curious about your brand and your consumers. Companies need to be aware of how your brand is being perceived by both your competitors and your consumers. Sometimes our perceptions don't fall into line with the desired marketing message.

Have an authentic story to tell. Yes, we all have a corporate "branding statement" for our organization, but does it come from the board room? Consumers need to know that the company's message and mission are not just some generated catch-phrase but a values statement that reflects the core of the company's philosophy.

Innovate relentlessly... keep the story fresh. Companies and brand may not want to "evolve" over time, but our consumers' needs do. By constantly being aware of the brand's presence and stretching the boundaries, it gives the consumers a reason to keep coming back for more. More importantly, having your core consumers be a part of the conversation keeps the brand relevant.

Enlist brand ambassadors--your employees. Sure, you can pay for advertising and corporate mascots and celebrity endorsements, but if your core investors--your employees--don't buy into the company, brand, and products/services, it's like building a house of cards on sand. If your staff believes in the brand, they will provide the best word-of-mouth for your clients and customers.

Give back and contribute to the culture. No matter how much name recognition you have, how much money the company generates, or how much publicity your advertising gets for you, your best intentions don't mean much if you can't be a positive force in your community. While it may be hard in economic times to give back, at the end of the day, actions speak louder than any ad.

Remember that awareness leads to affinity, which leads to action. Isn't that we're all looking for when it comes to marketing?

-Tiff P.
Media Project Manager

Word of Mouth Marketing

At the October Business Marketing Association, Milwaukee Chapter meeting, we listened to a fantastic presentation about word of mouth marketing from Spike Jones from Brains on Fire.

Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing "encompasses dozens of marketing techniques that are geared toward encouraging and helping people to talk to each other about products and services", according to the Word of Mouth Marketing Association or WOMMA.

Here are just a few types of WOM from WOMMA:

1. Buzz Marketing: using high-profile entertainment or news to get people to talk about your brand.
   
2. Viral Marketing: creating entertaining or informative messages that are designed to be passed along in an exponential fashion, often electronically or by email. Example: YouTube videos.
   
3. Community Marketing: forming or supporting niche communities that are likely to share interests about the brand (such as user groups, fan clubs, and discussion forums) providing tools, content, and information to support those communities. Example: Adobe Users Group for programmers
   
4. Grassroots Marketing: organizing and motivating volunteers to engage in personal or local outreach. Example: political action groups
   
5. Evangelist Marketing: cultivating evangelists, advocates, or volunteers who are encouraged to take a leadership role in actively spreading the word on your behalf.
6. Product Seeding: placing the right product into the right hands at the right time, providing information or samples to influential individuals. Examples: Free samples at trade shows
   
7. Influencer Marketing: identifying key communities and opinion leaders who are likely to talk about products and have the ability to influence the opinion of others.
8. Cause Marketing: supporting social causes to earn respect and support from people who feel strongly about the cause. Example: "Truth" television ads about smoking
   
9. Conversation Creation: interesting or fun advertising, emails, catch phrases, entertainment, or promotions designed to start word of mouth activity. Example: "How many licks does it take to get to the center of the Tootsie Pop".
   
10. Brand Blogging: creating blogs and participating in the blogosphere in the spirit of open, transparent communications; sharing information of value that the blog community may talk about. Example: Microsoft and Apple
    
11. Referral Programs: creating tools that enable satisfied customer to refer their friends. Example: "Send to a Friend" links on websites and emails.

While WOM has been around in various forms for ages, the key take-away is that people buy from other people first. We may be inundated with advertising on television, radio, newspapers, emails, texts, billboards, bus signs, and pop-ups; but when we really want the facts, we get it from people we trust--family, friends, co-workers, etc. It's these people that talk about the products, services, and companies that can influnce our purchasing, whether we know it or not.

BMA-Milwaukee Website Launches!

Today, the Business Marketing Association of Milwaukee re-launched its website, bma-milwaukee.org!

Tim Grove, Chair of the BMA website committee and developer here in the Finn Digital offices, spearheaded the design, technical specifications and information management required to complete this significant achievement.

Congratulations Tim, on the hard work you and the committee have devoted to this initiative!

Needless to say, Finn Digital believes in the professional education opportunities BMA-Milwaukee offers, and we encourage all our colleagues to join as members! Our participation over the last 8 years has been extraordinarily valuable from several perspectives.