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Mark Mathis: All right. Thank you for joining me for my first One Minute Marketer Podcast. This podcast is based after my blog, the One Minute Marketer, that I've been writing for more than 10 years. The blog is written, so you can read it in less than one minute, but didn't want to change the name.

And I still want it to be the One Minute Podcast, but that's probably more trouble than it's really worth. So, we'll make it a little longer. I've stitched in a few ideas together and to make this podcast more informational. It's still called the One Minute Marketer, and just like the Dollar Store, has things that are more than a dollar; I've crammed, a few more minutes and ideas into this podcast to give you more for your money.

Today's podcast is brought to you by the word Sponsorship. So, let's go to page one. You know event sponsorships can be tasty marketing tools. As vaccines have us all excited for getting back to normal, sponsorships will be again, seeking funders for all kinds of events. Most have been canceled this past year, but soon the event season will be in full swing. For most, an event sponsorship means you will get lost in a sea of logos and a laundry list of names. Having your name slapped on a poster or banner or brochure cover is really not worth the full investment.

Today, event sponsorships need to be strategized just like media buys. Sure, some sponsorships are considered contributions. But it's time to optimize your investment. At a minimum, you need to negotiate how you will be presented as a sponsor of the organization. I attended a Go Red for Women event. And I saw an event sponsor that got all the best flavors for this new era of sponsorship and return on investment.

A retirement community called Meth-Wick, had a prominent position on the table. They sponsored the dessert, which was preset at each setting and it featured Meth-Wick's logo printed on a chocolate medallion that rested on the dessert and was stood up by some really thick whipped cream. And even though some people ate the sponsorship logo, it was really positive engagement with nearly every person who attended.

Best of all, you could clearly read the logo and name. There was no confusion. It wasn't lost in a sea of other logos and names. An event sponsorship as an investment, not just a contribution. So, make sure you optimize your sponsorship investment for full impact. Treat your sponsorship a valued marketing media buy, because that's exactly what it is.

So, page two. Podcasting for Internal Audiences. So, this is my first podcast, but it has me thinking about podcasting and how it could be the perfect medium for internal audiences, not just external marketing. We've all been distanced for nearly a year. The common employee complaint is that the video screen time and the incessant emails are weighing on us all.

I'm sure you've heard in other marketing arenas, that podcasting is a great way to reach audiences, but have you thought of how podcasting could help you reach, educate, and inform your internal audiences as well? Employees are facing real Zoom, fatigue and podcasting offers a more personal way to communicate directly with each employee. Reagan.com quoted a Mindshare Neuro Lab research paper saying, scientists discovered that information consumed in a podcast, achieves a high emotional resonance and better memory encoding than visual only mediums.

So, if you have something you want remembered, audio is one of the most effective ways to do it. Podcasting is an easy and effective way to disseminate important information to remote audiences. It also guarantees that the information is transmitted consistently and is available to all at the same time.

Podcasting can ensure that you are speaking directly to each employee who is many times listening with headphones. It's a very personal experience. Because of the ease of use for employees, it's a great way to impact messages such as success stories, mission statement illumination, orientation, CEO updates, training, encouragement, recognition.

Ease of consumption is the key for the employees who are feeling disassociated and disconnected. It's a way for a familiar voice to offer guidance, reassurance, and inspiration anytime of day or night.

And now page three. Verbose Billboards. While traveling down interstate 80 through Iowa cornfields, I was struck with a question. How many words can you cram on a billboard? That's what marketers do with a lot of windshield time. We think of things like that. Within a mile, I counted more than 30 words on a billboard for an Iowa insurance company. And I didn't drive off the road, but I may have hit a rumble strip or two. I would need an insurance company if I tried to read that billboard on a regular basis, cause I'd likely crash. The ideal number of words is somewhere between none and nine. In no other medium do you need to scrub the language more. You need to scrub right down to its core. And that is very hard work. This scrubbing also includes evaluating long complicated URLs.

If they're too complicated, don't put them on there. No one can remember them. The creativity is in the brevity. If you can't be brief, don't use billboards. It's as simple as that. Use some other medium. Try a different medium if your marketing concept is just so complex that you can't simplify it. But if you can distill your message down, you're probably are not trying really hard enough.

Wordy billboards is a symptom of flabby marketing. You need to slim down your selling proposition. One billboard that did strike me as genius on the same I-80 trip, was one that said, shield your field. RainHail.com. The tight writing and rhyming provided for a highly memorable message. The simple URL that was also loud and literal, is selling genius. The redundant www was dropped and the real words were capitalized.

The font was clearly visible from the interstate, no matter your speed. They did not overwrite. And they didn't over-design the message. The board and message were made with the driver in mind. I'm going to repeat that. The board and the message were made with the driver in mind. Not the designer in mind, not the marketing director in mind, not the creative director in mind, not the president in mind, the driver. It was made to effectively communicate, and most importantly it was made to sell.

So, what do you think should be on a billboard? A logo, your product, your website, your phone number, your tagline, your catchy headline. Maybe you've insisted on all those things being on one billboard. Think about what if you could just put a person in a visually engaging pose, a pose that looks like the person is stretching out.

How about without a logo or the product? Apple breaks marketing ground all the time. And then not only do it in their regular advertising, they do it with their advertising outdoors. And they also get earned media for a lot of the things they do. Apple wanted to make sure that on one day the AirPods Pro would be introduced to the world. That easily can be accomplished in a digital format.

But not in a tangible world or printed billboards. So, Apple designed a two-stage rollout. The first stage were gigantic, dramatic, highly noticeable people, two stories high, two billboards wide that really could break through the clutter. The second stage, added Apple AirPods in the people's ears and a small Apple logo on the day they wanted them announced.

Yep. Just a tiny little logo. Ad Week said that Apple took more than 30,000 photos to find the right look for the billboards. The campaign also used extensions. Extensions are artwork placed outside the live billboard area. Extensions provide another visual technique that attracts attention. The real power was the dramatic imagery. Photography is underrated for its pulling and selling power. It tells a memorable story that doesn't need all the words, numbers, and websites. It breaks the rules and it breaks through clutter. And it absolutely sells.

Now to page four. The Paradox of Power. Barack Obama had a sculpture in his office. It was a hand reaching upward, holding an egg. It's called the Paradox of Power and it symbolizes the fragility of authority. Power is like an egg, held too tightly, it breaks. Held too loosely, it slips away and breaks on the floor. The egg example also represents the fragility of a brand. So, how are you holding onto your brand? You can't brand people like you do animals.

Branding is fragile. It's certainly not permanent. You can brand yourself as the Friendly Skies, yet as soon as you meet an unfriendly flight attendant, the brand becomes scrambled like those eggs. Branding is everything you do and communicate to customers. It's more than an ad, more than a slogan, more than your company newsletter. More than a sign. It's the cumulative value of all you do, and all you say, and all your employees say.

So, what happens when your name doesn't match your brand? You can begin the difficult path of renaming and rebranding your company, or you can give yourself a nickname of sorts. Like FedEx is much better than Federal Express, but this kind of renaming is very difficult to accomplish successfully. Radio Shack tried to rebrand itself. I guess the radio part of Radio Shack, doesn't say high tech, and it's hard to give yourself a nickname that's going to stick. They tried The Shack. Most of the time, it's others who nickname you, and that's what you pick up on. But the problem with The Shack is it also competed with a top selling book and a basketball player who had a very high name recognition.

And now we all know how well Radio Shack rebranding did now that they're bankrupt. The next time you rebrand with your logo, take a moment to make sure the rest of your brand house is in order. Does the new look and feel to your brand really reflect the feel customers, donors, stakeholders, and patients receive each time they engage with you.

Page five. The $50 No Baseball is one of the most precisely counted games. There are stats for every situation. Horse racing is about the same. Many, many weekends ago, I attended both venues and was reminded about a valuable sales technique. I was talking with my brothers-in-law at a Cubs game about sales and selling. The baseball game was against the Mets and not very exciting.

We talked about how baseball is all stats. We ended the weekend at Arlington Park, watching the horses run. Again, the betting book was full of statistics on each horse. We talked about keeping the same stats on our own performance, not the typical human relations stuff, but strictly on performance in specific situations.

One of my brother-in-laws, who is a great salesperson, said that when he gets a sales no, it's worth $50. He knows that because he is one 10th of the way to yes. His closing ratio is 10% and the 10th is of a $500 payoff. So, each no is worth $50. Just so, you know, the numbers have been changed in this story to protect the innocent and my note-taking.

And remember we were at a Cubs game that serves beer in the stands. But every baseball player who stepped up to bat in Wrigley, had his batting average displayed for all to see. Could you operate that way? Why are we all quick to ask for ROI or any kind of information about return on investment for one advertising medium? But what about our own sales effort? In the book The Numbers Game, Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics, it states you can look up that Nolan Ryan had a 1.78 ground-ball-to-fly ball ratio in 1974. Do you even know your best days for sales? Are Mondays better for calls or Tuesdays? Do long proposals have a better closing ratio than short proposals?

How do you perform in the rain, at night or before a holiday? It would be hard to count and a bit mind numbing, but imagine knowing the best day, the best time and the best people to have on your sales lineup for the big sales game. And imagine the confidence building power of knowing that every no, has a real value.

And now page seven. Most Taglines Don't Work. It's true. Most taglines don't work. Research proves it. And why should taglines work? A quick search found that 20 companies are using the tagline, clearly the best. One company, even with so far to say, clearly the world's best. You can always see a real marketing amateur in the tagline, by how many times they say they are the best at something. One of the most popular college taglines is, a tradition of excellence.

It should be a tradition of arrogance. Taglines are catchy little phrases that puff you up. Branding lines are important parts of marketing your message, and should make your audience feel better by including a clear benefit. One of my favorites is Apple, the power to be your best. It has the word best, but they're not talking about them being the best. They're talking about me being the best. It has strong viewer benefit. So, come over from the dark side of marketing and stop using taglines and begin using true memorable branding lines. Get rid of the arrogance. I'm the best at this. We're the greatest. We're the biggest, we're the most excellent. Get rid of the cliche ridden dribble.

We care. We are passionate. We will be there. Get rid of the dates, a tradition of excellence since 1974, 1980 or 10 minutes ago, who cares? Do we care that Tick-Tock was just developed? Do we care that Door Dash was a recent startup. They don't need to put their date. They'd have to put a time down, if you were really looking at it. The subject of this podcast was prompted by a tagline I saw for a bank. The line is serving thousands of customers, one at a time. First, there are more than a thousand registered trademarks with one blank at a time, one lawn at a time, one child at a time, one home at a time, one person at a time, one mind at a time. Morgan Stanley investment bank also works with one client at a time.

It has no meaning. I hope you don't mean that if I walk into that particular bank, that I'm going to have to stand in line of a thousand people because you're serving them one at a time, or if I'm online, I can only get on one person at a time. We want to serve lots of people. And I know what you're trying to say.

We are personalized in our approach, but the line is empty and easily forgotten. Find the benefits of your business or organization to your stakeholders and put that in your tagline. And then that will be a branding line that will truly brand.

Well, that is the One Minute Marketer Podcast for today. I'm Mark Mathis. You can find me at my website at amperagemarketing.com or on WordPress under Iowa Ad Guy. Thank you for listening. Now, go do something important with the time you have today.