Marketing Maestro

The Girl Scout cookie sale is off and running. I was approached to buy some cookies when it occurred to me that the Girl Scouts are great marketers.

Just think about this for a minute.

• The brand is easily recognizable
• They have a sales force of thousands of willing and eager girls (and their families) running around the country selling
• This sales force creates product placement that can't be beat
• They sell huge quantities of their product with almost no overhead
• There is a sense of scarcity - only sold a few weeks a year
• The product selection and pricing model is simple to understand and communicate
• Almost everyone has a favorite flavor so the purchase decision is easy
• The product sells itself because of the machine they have built over the years
• Their product is nostalgic for many so people buy them for the memories
• No fancy promotions or offers are needed to generate sales

This is marketing at its finest...

What other school or organizational fund raisers have as much success as the Girl Scouts?

The big question for marketers is how can you turn your business into a Girl Scout sales and marketing machine?

So how many boxes did you buy this year?

Today I was named Brand Champion of the Day by Rex Whisman.  It is an honor to be recognized by a peer and I encourage you to read Rex's blog.  He covers branding with some interesting angles. 

While it is great to be the Brand Champion of the Day the job of brand champion is an ongoing role.   This is also not a job for just one person and I share the responsibility with everyone at TrumpU.  When you are building a brand make sure every employee in your company feels as if they are brand champions.

Do you think it is easier or more difficult to be a brand champion of an established brand or one that is still being developed?

Going once, going twice...

Yes.  If you have $2.7 million to spend on a 30 second ad you too can advertise on this year's Super Bowl. Well it is probably too late but you could have.

Do I recomend it for most businesses?  No.  Does it pay off?  Hard to tell.  Many of the advertisers on the big game do it to get their brand out to the millions of viewers.  It would be interesting to look at companies who advertised on the big game to see if the compaines are:

•  still in business (remember the sock puppet)
• they are still advertising year after year (do you even remember last year's ads)
• driving sales
• other then a spike in web traffic can they tie the spend to increased and sustained revenue

I doubt any of the big advertisers will share this info since the answers may not be popular but I am looking forward to some funny commercials and at $2.7MM I expect them to be entertaining.

There is no shortage of marketing comments about the super bowl.  Here are a few I came across recently:

Brand Week wrote about Moms and the Super Bowl.  Interesting perspective and a reminder that targeting is important no matter what the medium

Robert Rosenthal from Freaking Marketing discusses the Super Bowl advertisers and the lack of integrated marketing.

Rex Whisman from the Brand Champion's Blog discusses branding as it relates to this year's Super Bowl stadium.

If you come across other interesting resources send them my way. 

OK, I admit it.  I am not a branding specialist but in the world of marketing everyone gets involved with branding from time to time.   I am lucky to work for a business that carries the Trump brand which is well known around the world.  Even with our recognition we still pay close attention to our marketing look and feel. Everything we do needs to stand up to the Trump brand.  If you have a business you have a brand.  Do you know what your brand says about you and your company?

To help our students we created a free report to give you some useful information on how you can start branding your business with these 10 commandments of branding.

Enjoy the report and let us know what you think both about the report and our brand.  Consider this a little non scientific research.

Josef Katz

Michael Sexton, Cybelle and I were recently working on a new mission statement for TrumpU. We went back and forth a few times drafting the statement. When we thought we had a final product I sent it to a friend and marketing associate for some feedback. Jeff Simons pointed out that what we had created was plain vanilla and could have been used at any company. It didn't scream Trump. It feel flat and did not accomplish what we had hoped. Here is one of Jeff's comments everyone should think about when writing a mission statement:

"Like so many mission statements, this one could be your competition's, too."

The lesson from this exercise is that writing a mission statement is not impossible but it definitely is not easy. Plan to write and rewrite you mission statement. Then have some friends review it to make sure you capture the essence of what your company is all about. If done right, your team will be able to recite your mission statement by heart and believe in what they are doing.

Good luck on your mission.

A newly found blogger friend of mine, Jack Spirko posted a challenge on his blog to his top 25 bloggers.  He wants to see which bloggers were monitoring his posts and their name across the web.   I was/am honored to be included with some of the bloggers he has listed in his top 25.

This is an interesting challenge for me since this blog is still relatively new.  Jack's blog posting and my guest posting might help generate some buzz for this blog and Trump University.  I think there is a lesson in this challenge for any entrepreneur or marketer building a brand.

Do you monitor how the world is talking about you?   It is difficult to review every online mention but it is worth setting up some time  each day or week to monitor your brand (and while your at it your competitors).  It takes time, but it is time well spent.  You can use a few different tools to keep tabs on your brand online.  Here are my recommendations:

• Google Alerts
• Technorati
• 'Old School' search - type your name and see what comes back
• Read your competitors blogs/newsletters
• Keep an eye on all industry related material
• Ask your friends, coworkers, suppliers, and family to send you anything they see

Keep an eye out for my guest post to Jack's blog and tell your friends...

PS - Let's see if Jack pick's up this mention.