Don't underestimate the power of partnerships - Three priorities I live by.

Don’t underestimate the power of partnerships – Three priorities I live by.

Partnerships are a great way to grow your business, build authenticity for your brands, and speak to larger segments of your market in a more innovative way. By aligning your company with a well-known and reputable business - that complements your customer’s needs – a marketer is truly able to stretch its budget a long way. Building trust between the two parties is key and the number one priority in my mind when I begin a partnership relationship. I look for everything and anything in my power that can help my partner, and more often then not, I receive ample support in return. If you don’t ask, you will not receive. My second priority is understanding what motivates them and what they want to accomplish. Creating that perfect synergy is key to building a strong partnership. The third priority is ensuring that above all, the customer receives the extra value of this partnership. All the agreements made must in the end, provide more advantages for your customer – to connect with you, to learn from you and love your brand!

Your predicted top 3 trends for next year?

What are the top 3 things that you predict will happen in the Advertising / Marketing world or trends next year?

Post your comments here. It will be interesting to see your vision of the future.

Now here's a marketing joke

But, it isn't a joke actually. It is Burger King's extension of their Whopper campaign. Burger King has long been criticized for not understanding their brand and for taking on McDonald's head-to-head, rather than looking for their own market. Where McDonald's owns the "kids" market, and the idea of a "fun" meal, Burger King should have pursued the a more sophisticated and older customer.

They've gone all out, and introduced a Beef Scented Cologne! Burger King describes the spray as “the scent of seduction with a hint of flame-broiled meat.” (Yummy?) It's only available for a limited time, and it only costs $3.99. It looks like they have aimed this (tongue- in-cheek joke) promotion clearly at the right target market.

What's new,interesting or useful in digital marketing

I've been fortunate to have experienced both the old school marketing practices and new digital channels. Increasingly my time is spent in the latter area - finding new communication technologies, understanding their marketing applications and finding ways to integrate them.


Because of my eclectic interests, I tend to take a more broader perspective on the use and value of digital media beyond simply building a web presence. Digital technologies offer even more capabilities to enhance the customer experience, simplify communication or improve the performance of marketing efforts.


As I encounter new applications, better ways of using communication technologies, case studies or research, I will be post this on the Calgary Ad Club site. If there are specific questions or topics, I will attempt to comment or provide more information. And if you have examples of actual application, successful case studies or wish to share your failures, I think we can all learn from these.


If you want to know more about my background, check out my LinkedIn profile.

Advertising Jokes?

Okay - I'm looking for a few good, clean, non-offensive, fun and self depricating Advertising and Marketing Jokes. I'm thinking along the lines of "How many Advertising Executives does it take to screw in a light bulb?" (Anyone have a punch line for that?)

Holiday season is fast approaching ... and I need some good material!

Please post your jokes as a comment to this blog.

Looking for an, er, interesting career change?

A few weeks back when I was setting up my company's website, I wrote a blog about how I stumbled upon a job posting trend for GoGo dancers (with the link being that my company is Market GoGo). I compared that to VP of Marketing positions, and found that GoGo dancers may have better prospects. Well - just kidding a bit.

In any event, I went back to Simply Hired and ran a few more searches. An interesting one is to run a comparison of hiring for VP of Marketing, VP of Operations, and VP of Finance. From that you will see that the VP of Marketing jobs are hot from about February to October. In contrast, the VP of Operations jobs & VP of Finance jobs are relatively hot all year long.

Anyhow - here's the "live graph". It might be interesting to watch this over time.

Vice President Marketing, Vice President Finance, Vice President Operations trends

Vice President Marketing jobs | Vice President Finance jobs | Vice President Operations jobs

(Hey ... what's going on. That graph has shown VP of Marketing jobs as being hot from Feb to October for a couple of weeks now. I just looked at the graph after publishing it, and now it is a nice steady line. Bizarre. Anyway, ... that's data from a third party.)

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David Jones
www.MarketGoGo.com

The Calgary Ad Club Website is up and running

Believe it or not.

The Calgary Ad Club Website is up and running. There isn't much to it. The most interesting element is probably the list of businesses that have members from the Calgary Ad Club in each.

If you are a member of the Calgary Ad Club, send me a message through LinkedIn to have your company added (good for SEO). If you aren't have a look at the Calgary Ad Club site and sign-up to the "club" through LinkedIn. I'll make you visit the site to get the link :^)

Bumping the Calgary Ad Club

I've reposted this blog, as the original post from a week ago is starting to vanish off the bottom of the week's blogs.

The reason for starting up the Calgary Ad Club is to create a group similar to the Advertising Club of Toronto. If there is enough interest, then the Calgary Ad Club will organize events that will allow members to meet several times a year to:

• learn about and discuss ideas and developments in all types of marketing and advertising,
• provide an interesting forum in which members can network, and
• have some fun!

The smaller picture is to simply get to know some of the other people in the Calgary advertising community. To help withi this, you can now sign-up with LinkedIn & look for the group called the Calgary Ad Club. Join up!

Also - please feel free to point your friends and colleagues involved in the Marketing and Advertising community in Calgary to the Calgary Ad Club blog and LinkedIn group.

Other Ad Clubs in Canada?

So - I know of a couple. Can you add to this list:

• The Advertising Club of Edmonton: Edmonton's advertising club is one of the longest running advertising and ad-related groups in the whole country. Formed by a small and feisty group of advertising professionals in 1977, the club welcomed graphic designers, media planners, photographers, printers, production houses, various media and students.
• The Advertising Club of Toronto: The Advertising Club of Toronto serves the advertising industry and all its related services including media, creative, production, advertising management, and marketing. The Ad Club's mandate is to organize events that will present the newest ideas and developments in the advertising industry and to create social and business networking events for ad industry colleagues.

Know of any others? Please post them and their links in a comment.

A few of my favourite things!

So, here are a few of my favourite email newsletters for the advertising / marketing world:

• Online Media Daily (daily) - Must-read daily news for online media, marketing and advertising professionals.


• Around the Net In Online Marketing (daily) - Must-read daily news for online media, marketing and advertising professionals.


• Behavioral Insider (F) - Get more from your online advertising with behavioral magic.
  Out to Launch (W) - Weekly review of the latest advertising campaigns and web site lauches on the Internet.


• Performance Insider (Th) - The inside line on Performance Marketing.
  Marketing Daily (daily) - Must-read daily news for marketing professionals.


• eMarketer Daily


• Creativity Online


• MarketingProfs Today

Don't be shy ... reply.

What is your favourite marketing newsletter?

Well - I KNOW that at some point in the near future, SOMEONE is going to post a response to this blog. You wait, it WILL happen. Maybe it will even be YOU who makes it so!

So - the question of the day is ... what is your favourite marketing e-mail newsletter?

Seen any good movies lately?

How to get ahead in Advertising? What's your favourite movie featuring "advertising", either with advertising as the 'background', with the plot focused around advertising, with the main characters being involved in the industry, or so on?

Someone out there must have something to say about this. I need a good movie to watch this weekend!

Read any good books lately?

On the right hand side of this blog is a list of marketing and advertising books. Do you have any that you've read and loved? What sits on your bookshelf at work with dog-eared pages? If you had to recommend one book to a person new in the advertising field, what would it be?

Please add a comment to this blog with the name of the book that you'd recommend, and watch the list grow!

What is the Calgary Ad Club?

Why does the Calgary Ad Club exist?

The big picture is to create a group similar to the Advertising Club of Toronto. If there is enough interest, then the Calgary Ad Club will organize events that will allow members to meet several times a year to:

• learn about and discuss ideas and developments in all types of marketing and advertising,
• provide an interesting forum in which members can network, and
• have some fun!

The smaller picture is to simply get to know some of the other people in the Calgary advertising community. To help withi this, you can now sign-up with LinkedIn & look for the group called the Calgary Ad Club. Join up!

Also - please feel free to point your friends and colleagues involved in the Marketing and Advertising community in Calgary to the Calgary Ad Club blog and LinkedIn group.

Introducing ... the Calgary Ad Club

Welcome to the Calgary Ad Club's new blog.
What is the Calgary Ad Club? Quite simply it is a place where people involved in all sorts of advertising media (newspaper, tv, radio, out of home, online, etc., etc., etc.) and all sorts of companies (agencies, advertisers, publishers, etc., etc., etc.) can get together and get to know one another.

In Calgary's highly oil and gas driven economy those of us involved in advertising make up a small but vibrant community.

We look forward to meeting you all through this forum.