For My Single Female Friends - With Love from HARO!

Started by Peter Shankman, Help A Reporter Out, HARO, is an online service that hooks journalists up with resources. You can join HARO too, it's free. You'll receive topics that journalists are working on and you have the opportunity to help them out with your contacts. So if you're in marketing and PR, as I am, it's another way to get your clients in front of the appropriate source. Less often there are casting calls like this one for an ABC reality show. Read on....

Summary: Casting Single, Successful, Beautiful Women for TV Show
Name: Alexis Diamond
Category: General
Email: adiamond@me.com
Title: Casting Director
Media Outlet: Television
Specific Geographic Region: N
Region:
Deadline: 01:06am PACIFIC - 20 June
Query: ABC MEDIA PRODUCTIONS is NOW CASTING SINGLE WOMEN who are LOOKING FOR LOVE anywhere but here!!! Casting real women ages 25 to 40 who are successful in every aspect of life except one…finding love. You're climbing your way up the corporate ladder, just put a down payment on your own condo... you have everything except the right guy to share it with.

"Holidate" is similar to the movie "The Holiday" with Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet; single women seeking true love in another city. We provide the new city, the new digs, the new guys… even the plane ticket. The girls just have to believe in love…and get on board!

This is NOT A COMPETITION SHOW, no eliminations, catches or surprises… just a genuine search for love! The time commitment is about 5 days this summer.

If you are interested or would like to nominate someone, email the info below to adiamond@me.com: 1. Recent photo (face and full body) 2. Full name, age, occupation, city of residence 3. Phone number(s) 4. Tell us a little about yourself.

Direct Vs. Online Marketing, Closer than You Think!

Since my frame of reference is direct marketing I’ve been thinking about what similarities exist between direct marketing and marketing in a Web 2.0 world. Here's what I've come up with so far.

Search engine optimization to my direct response eyes looks like the list business. People who respond to snippet copy in search results are similar to responders on a rented list of names that share an affinity. Maybe it’s cooking. Maybe it’s national parks. When people express their interests by subscribing to a certain group or magazine, those list procurers are harvesting that information and putting those individuals on certain lists. It’s similar to when people search online using “key words” (like national parks or cooking utensils). They are looking for information, or items or services of interest to them and that interest defines them as desirable or undesirable customers.

The Johnson Box, that's the copy block and offer at the top of a sales letter - Direct Mail’s “Johnson Box” lives in email snuggled up against many people’s preview panes. Some research shows more people are using preview panes, and some even read their entire email within the preview pane and never open the email to full screen. Long live the Johnson Box.

Measurement is another similarity. Thanks to analytics, we can measure a customer’s activities like click-throughs and time spent on the site and where they drop off in the shopping process. All this is comparable to direct mail or DRTV where we’re measuring responses, eligibility and actual products purchased.

Testing is also on the list. Real direct marketers never stop testing. So it isn’t a surprise that when confronted with an online campaign we seek ways to test one approach over another. Especially with email, we test subject headers, different offers and the same offer but with different copy. Online, we test one video against another like we do off line or one landing page against another. And even when we launch the best of all the testing, we’re probably running some type of small test inside that launch. It’s obsessive, but we’re direct marketers after all.

The challenge for me right now is getting my head around, when and how to effectively utilize these new technology channels like Twitter and YouTube, for example. But again I am reminded that in direct we’re always charting the customer’s activity, from the time and place they become interested in our offer through the sale. So the solution lies in focusing on the customer’s activities and their level of online sophistication. 

We need to first know our customers and look for ways that they want to be engaged by us … online.  The answer is in the customer experience and part of that in today’s world means building a conversation that turns into a trusted relationship.  Anyway, that’s my two cents. Have you thought of other similarities? Let me know!

Television Viewing Redefined?

As television starts to morph with your computer, could it be that the familiar call to action, "Stay Tuned" is now becoming "Stay Connected"?

P.S. - check out this post too - More People Are Using PCs to Time-Shift TV, Skip Ads by
Mike Vorhaus on Digital Communications, May 04, 2009, http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=136391