Our post yesterday about the embarrassingly bad GoDaddy Super Bowl campaign using Danica Patrick created quite a stir. You’ll recall that GoDaddy has generated monumental amounts of awareness for their brand by using sexually-gratuitous commercials for years and years.

Despite the terrible missteps Danica Patrick has made by over-promoting her sexual appeal, there is still hope to refurbish her brand.

Interestingly enough, the customer service at GoDaddy is top-notch and best-of-class. We should know — we use them for our hosting service! Every time we call them, they’re extremely well-trained and excellent with follow-through.

Which is why it’s even more important that they abandon their current approach to marketing. Hey, GoDaddy — There’s this thing called a BRAND. And when you tarnish your brand by creating horrible commercials, you do long-term damage to the value of your company and the self-esteem of your staff.

Which brings us full-circle — what should Danica Patrick do once she comes to her senses about being affiliated with these terrible GoDaddy commercials?

Here’s what:

1. Fire your agent. If they’re any good, they would have said, “Danica, for the long-term growth of your brand, you shouldn’t be affiliated with the kind of commercials that GoDaddy runs.”
2. Reposition yourself. Get a good PR agent. Get affiliated with a charity. And write a tell-all book on how you were misguided in your youth and how you went over-the-top with the whole sex thing.
3. Get in touch with middle America. Oh, sure. Middle America is filled with aging men who find you beautiful. (Hell, I’m one of them.) But that doesn’t mean you should focus your appeal on the lowest common denominator. Be a leader — show us that you have brains AND beauty.
4. Connect with a charity. You’ll make more money in the long-run if your brand is affiliated with the more positive side of human nature than the negative side. Find a charity you love. Spend 20% of your time working with that charity. And do some good for humanity.

Full disclosure. In the interest of not coming across as a holier-than-though nut job, I would like to disclose the following:

1. I have looked at a Playboy magazine.
2. Strike that — I’ve looked at lots of Playboy magazines.
3. I drank beer before the legal drinking age.
4. I had pre-marital sex.

So I’m not coming at this from a blindly-conservative point-of-view. I’m coming at it from the point-of-view of someone who has seen a few things in his life and is hoping that those experiences can benefit Ms. Patrick and the good employees at GoDaddy.

Here are the key points I’d like you to remember:

• GoDaddy is doing long-term damage to their brand. Their customer service and employee spirit are too important to continue running commercials that appeal to 13 year-old boys and over-the-hill men. We hope they see the light.
• Danica Patrick is doing long-term damage to her brand. Hey, Danica. Want to be around past the age of 30? Then start positioning yourself as a smart, talented sports figure who also happens to be beautiful. You’ll make even more money that way.
• Some things are bigger than the almighty dollar. Sure, it’s good to make tons of money. But at the end of the day, wouldn’t you rather be known for making a positive impact on society rather than a negative one? Hopefully, GoDaddy and Danica Patrick will snap out of it and start being a positive force instead of a negative force.

See you again soon. Assuming GoDaddy doesn’t cancel our hosting account.

Once again, GoDaddy embarrasses itself with an awful commercial on this year’s Super Bowl. What’s up with these guys? Every year, they foist a horrible commercial onto America and this year was no exception. C’mon GoDaddy. Don’t you have anything better to do with your money?

Once again, GoDaddy embarrasses itself with commercials that are not only off-target, but in poor taste.

If you want to take chances, then do what Doritos did. Or what Coca-Cola did. Or what The Who did. But to create embarrassing commercial after embarrassing commercial year after year is just … sad, really.

The days of a slew of incredibly wonderful commercials throughout the Super Bowl may be over, but do you really have to push your middle-school-mentality commercials on the adults watching the game? There’s no excuse for spots that bad — and that poorly targeted.

Sure, if you were selling video games to 13 year-old boys, it might be understandable. But you’re selling hosting space to America. And America is over your poor taste.

Let me start by saying it’s very, very easy to sit on the sidelines and critique Toyota for their bungling of their accelerator and brake problems. I’m sure they’re working around the clock to solve the problem, both from a technical point-of-view and a branding/PR point-of-view. But they seem to be stumbling badly on the branding/PR side of the equation.

So far, in all the news reports I’ve seen, I’ve never seen anyone from corporate headquarters who directly addressed the problem with a news anchor or other journalist. Zero. Zip. Nada. (I’m not saying they haven’t had someone from headquarters on the news, I’m saying that I haven’t seen a face-to-face interview with someone from corporate — and I’m a 24-hour-a-day news junkie. Not good.)

The one gentleman I did see was a Toyota dealer from outside of Boston who did his best to answer questions on CNN. But someone who is untrained in PR crisis management shouldn’t be on national TV trying to put out the fire.

Here are several lessons that can be learned from Toyota’s mishandling of the situation:

1. Get out ahead of the story: If you wait until the news networks are reporting on the story around the clock, you’re too late. Get out ahead of the story — address issues before they make headlines so you’re being proactive instead of reactive.
2. Put a face on the corporation: Don’t hide behind press releases and statements from headquarters. Get a well-trained, well-spoken representative to address the issues.
3. Put your crisis management team into action: My friends in PR tell me that the most valuable (and expensive) team members in their arsenal are the crisis management people. Why? Because they’re good. And they’re worth every penny.
4. Practice as much transparency as possible: I know it’s hard to be 100% transparent when you don’t even know the full extent of the problem, but if you come across as stonewalling, you’re in trouble. If you don’t know the answer, tell people that. And then get started trying to find the answer.
5. Turn on your social media after-burners: If I were Toyota, I’d have 150 to 250 people working around the clock visiting blogs, forums, chat rooms, YouTube channels and other venues with explanations on how to deal with the problem. Identify yourself and let people know you’re from corporate. Then give them the information that they’re looking for. It’s a new world and it’s time to jump into the fray.

Those are just a few ideas off the top of my head. What are some other ideas? What would you do if you were in Toyota’s shoes? Do you agree with what I’ve written above?

In one of the most entertaining reads so far this year, BNet has published its top 77 Worst Business Blunders of the Year. Looking back over 2009, they picked out some doozies. I spent darned-near an hour, lost in capitalistic craziness. Here are some of our favorite marketing strategies gone awry. There are so many good ones, I’m having to publish some this week, and some next (so you’ll have something to look forward to).

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Don’t worry, it’ll be fine: Nobody listens to Oprah anyway.

KFC promotes its new Kentucky Grilled Chicken by having Oprah Winfrey tout a coupon for a free meal on her show. The promotion goes the way you’d expect anything mentioned on Oprah to go: Viewers run to their computers, download more than 10 million coupons, and head to KFC in droves. Mobbed stores run out of chicken and turn customers away empty-handed, leading Advertising Age to call the promotion “one of the all-time blunders” and company president Roger Eaton to post a mea culpa video on YouTube.

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Buy the bloody car, you git, or I’ll smash your sodding skull!

In September, Toyota and its ad agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, are sued for $10 million by a Los Angeles woman who says she was terrorized by a Web campaign for the Toyota Matrix. A video promoting the campaign features a group of “maniacs” and offers people the chance to “prank” a friend: “It’s easy. Tell us a little about them, then pick one of our maniacs to mess with their heads — through personalized texts, email, calls, video — for 5 straight days.” The woman, Amber Duick, says she received a series of e-mails from “Sebastian,” a British soccer hooligan on the run from police who planned to “hide out” at her house with his pit bull. Duick claims the “terror marketing campaign” left her “constantly in tears and shaking and sobbing in emotional distress,” unable to eat, work, or sleep.

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World peace. Cure for cancer. Left-handed underpants.

“Switching the opening from vertical to horizontal may sound like a small step, but it’s the major breakthrough that many have been waiting for.” — Rob Faucherand, spokesman for British department-store chain Debenhams, on the debut of a new line of tighty-whiteys designed to make life at the urinal easier for southpaws. Faucherand goes on to call the briefs “a vital step toward equality,” given that, heretofore, “left-handed men have to reach much further into their pants.”

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Just Do It?

Thanks to a late-night car wreck and subsequent revelations of marital infidelity, Tiger Woods brand manager Tiger Woods manages to irreparably tarnish the Tiger Woods brand. He is dropped as a pitchman by Accenture and AT&T, and a study by two economics professors at the University of California–Davis estimates that shareholders of companies that sponsor the golfer will lose as much as $12 billion as the result of his confessed “transgressions.”

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Well, hope you learned a thing or two. Come back next Friday for the scary continuation of what NOT to do in marketing.

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by Lisa Marsala, Group Communications Director, Interbrand

Given that Kraft’s takeover of Cadbury is progressing, I thought I’d share Interbrand’s view on the deal.

The $19 billion price tag attached to Kraft’s takeover of Cadbury has sparked both warnings from investors like Warren Buffett and accusations of an undervalued bid from Cadbury. How much Cadbury is worth isn’t really the question, but rather how much is it worth to Kraft?

With the approval of their takeover offer on January 19^th, 2010, Kraft is paying for the significant opportunity to create incremental profits for its shareholders. In this deal, Kraft will have several operational levers they can use to drive improvements: staff cuts, distributions synergies, marketing leverage, and procurement efficiencies to name but a few. These traditional approaches to profit enhancement are likely to breed many one time or short-term benefits. A well-run company like Kraft is likely to realize these benefits. Hence the $19 billion price tag.

Interbrand, however, takes the view that it’s unlikely that the deal will dramatically create value at the product level. Brand value creation occurs when demand is generated in unique ways. Most of the Cadbury brands that come with the acquisition are well established with broad sub-brands. The Cadbury portfolio’s preeminence in the market suggests that Kraft believes that buying brands is a better bet than developing what’s currently in their pipeline, an indicator that their internal innovation may not deliver their growth objectives.

If Kraft makes the common post-M&A mistake of putting innovation on hold to focus on creating marketing efficiencies, then it’s likely that the breakthrough, demand-generating ideas that will make the deal  “pay” won’t emerge. So Kraft will need to make the deal work on two fronts: efficiencies through combined operations, and effectiveness through Brand Portfolio management.

Key points on the deal to consider:

• The odds favor efficiency and may be why shrewd investors looked for the deal to have a higher commitment of cash. Paying with cash creates pressure for returns while protecting shareholder equity.
• The distinctiveness of Cadbury’s product is an opportunity for Kraft to bring new consumers to the brand through broader distribution. Portfolio management is critical in order to position brands to complement rather than compete.

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About Interbrand: Founded in 1974, Interbrand is recognized for being at the forefront of the dialogue on brands and practice of building brands as business assets. Today, Interbrand is among the largest brand consultancies and helps its clients to create and manage brand value in all market dynamics. It is widely respected for its annual study, The Best Global Brands, and for creating a broader platform for the discussion of brands on the Webby-award winning brandchannel.com. For more on Interbrand, visit www.interbrand.com.

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Not all programs are right for all brands, even if it happens to be the Super Bowl. The 8th annual Super Bowl Engagement Survey, conducted by Brand Keys, Inc. (www.BrandKeys.com), a New York- based brand and customer loyalty research consultancy, predicts the monetary return advertisers will get on their advertising investments in the Super Bowl.

“More and more, clients want to know more than ‘was their ad seen,’ and with 30-second spots selling for $2.5 million – $2.8 million, this is a whole new ballgame. Brands like Pepsi, which has advertised on the Super Bowl forever, have decided there are more effective media venues,” noted Passikoff, founder and president of Brand Keys.

Does the ad buy actually lift the brand?

A survey was conducted among a national sample of 1,350 men and women, 18 – 65 years of age. It measured respondents’ reactions to brands in that medium’s context, and is a reliable predictor of future brand purchase. “Think of it as identifying how the media reinforces, or in some cases degrades brand values,” said Passikoff, founder and president of Brand Keys.

Which advertisers will be most likely to get the highest return on their Super Bowl ad investments?

“What you want to see is a minimum of seven points added to your brand to ensure you’re getting a real return on a very expensive investment,”  said Passikoff.

Engagement assessments are separate from how many eyeballs were watching and are a reality check that lets advertisers know how super their media buys actually are, and it can be done before signing a check. “It has nothing to do with ‘being watched’ or of consumers ‘being aware,’ and has everything to do with being emotionally engaged with the brand,” noted Passikoff. “That’s vastly different from just being entertained. A laugh is not an acceptable return on an investment of this size.”

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Visit www.BrandKeys.com for company background

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By L. Drew Gerber

As we recover from the recent economic crisis, more than ever, entrepreneurs, authors and business owners are turning to the power of PR as a cost-effective way to boost business and profits.

I can tell you — you don’t have sign on with a full-service PR firm to achieve results. You can do it yourself.

As an owner of a full-service PR firm and creator of a successful PR training program, I’ve seen firsthand how PR can . There are an amazing amount of resources at your disposal, and with a little bit of time and effort you’ll see tremendous results.

Here are some tips and tools I recommend using to maximize your economic recovery in 2010.

Brand Yourself: Your interests, talents, skills, education, hobbies and perspectives are unique so use the Web to share your expertise. The ever-expanding reach of the Internet and social networking gives you new opportunities to reach new customers and clients.

Research what Resonates: Watch, listen to and read your favorite media sources to find out what’s in the news and what conversations are dominating the media. Ask yourself, “What unique perspective can I add to the story?” Prepare a pitch and offer it up to media outlets. You can get free tips online at sites like http://www.PublicityResults.com.

Connect with Media for Free: Free services such as http://www.PitchRate.com can help you to get valuable exposure in the media. Sign up and you will receive free daily opportunities via email to speak with the media about topics and trends in the news.

Make Time for PR each day: Schedule a time daily to look over and respond to media inquiries. Setting aside a little time each day to do this will help keep you focused on what the media wants and maximize your opportunities to respond. Set up a Google Alerts account so you’ll catch all the breaking news relevant to your business and expertise.

Make it Useful: Give journalists tips and insights from your expertise that will be useful for their audience. Some media outlets may use your tips and give you credit without having to conduct an interview.

Prepare Key Messages: Write up a sample Q&A based on questions you would want to be asked in an interview. This will make for a stronger interview and great sound bites, and keep you prepared for future publicity opportunities that come your way.

Create Seasonal Angles: Do you have a product that is perfect for holiday gift guides or seasonal safety tips? Create a calendar and identify short- and long-term opportunities, realizing that many glossy magazines work up to six months ahead on seasonal issues.

Make a Media Wish List: Research journalists and their work and prepare a list of journalists’ emails and contact information. Decide which publications or media outlets best fit your expertise. If at first they aren’t interested in what you have to offer, don’t give up. Build relationships and they will call you when the time comes.

Respond When the Media calls — Always & Immediately: When you are presented with an opportunity, take it. Declining interviews or worse, being a no show, will result in non-repairable relationships. Remember, you are the one asking for the media’s attention. Make it easy for them to contact you 24/7 and always return their calls and emails.

If you take time every day to focus on your PR goals, it won’t take long before you see results that you wouldn’t have dreamed. Take advantage of the New Year and the PR tactics mentioned above. Before you know it, you’ll have the media knocking on your door, and the exposure and sales to boot.

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About the Author: L. Drew Gerber is CEO of PublicityResults.com and creator of PitchRate.com, a free media tool that connects journalists and the highest rated experts. PR Week, Good Morning America and the Christian Science Monitor have revered Gerber’s business practices and staffing innovations. His companies handle international PR campaigns and his staff develops online press kits for authors, speakers and companies with Online PressKit 24/7, a technology he developed (PressKit247.com). Contact him at: AskDrew@PublicityResults.com or call him at 828-749-3182.

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I’m often asked to do speeches at trade shows, conventions, business meetings and other venues on the topic of social media. One of the questions I’m frequently asked is, “How do I get started in social media?”

A year ago the question was, “Should I even bother getting into social media?” The fact that the question has changed is a sign that social media is now generally accepted as a viable, useful tool for business.

What follows are several tips on getting started in social media. They’re designed for the individual, not a corporation. A corporate version of these tips would be much longer and more complex. But if you’re a consultant, between jobs, a salesperson or own a small business, these tips are for you.

Phase I: Wrap your mind around social media

In order to wrap your mind around social media, you’ll have to understand some of the key concepts behind it. Here are some things to keep in mind as you develop your program:

• You can’t understand social media until you use social media. Social media is a new world unlike most other things you’re used to. So get off your derrière and start using it.
• Social media is about having a dialogue, not a monologue. Don’t use social media as a megaphone, use it as a telephone. Talk, chat, discuss, challenge.
• Twitter is like instant messaging to large groups of people. It’s no more complex than that.
• Facebook is like a pub. It’s a great place to have a casual conversation with friends.
• LinkedIn is like a trade show. It’s more formal than Facebook and primarily used for business.
• MySpace is like Woodstock. It’s wild, crazy and mostly devoted to music or cause marketing.
• Social media is about much more than just Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace. It’s also about blogs, discussion boards, photosharing, podcasting, widgets and email marketing. (See Becoming a Social Media Superstar below.)

Phase II: The Basics

• Sign up for LinkedIn. Update your profile. Be professional.
• Create a Facebook profile. Still use it to promote your professional side, but be a little more friendly.
• Get a Twitter account. Follow other people by going to Search.Twitter.com and searching on a term that you’re interested in. Follow the people who say things you like. They’ll probably follow you back.

Phase III: Getting Started

• Join a professional group on LinkedIn. No, join several groups. Just type in the area you’re interested in the search box on the upper right hand side of your profile page.
• “Friend” your friends on Facebook. Just search them out and, once you see their profile, friend them. That’s like tapping them on the shoulder and saying hello. They’ll friend you back.
• Send out five Tweets. Contrary to the instructions on the Twitter home page, don’t tell people what you’re doing now. Sorry to break the news to you, but nobody cares if you’re going to Starbucks. What they do care about is the article you read on the New York Times website. Share that kind of stuff.
• Set up your RSS feed. An RSS feed is a way to get all the articles you’re interested in delivered to your home page on Google. Just go to Google and sign up for an account. Once you have an account, you can customize your Google Home Page so that it delivers your RSS feeds to your iGoogle page. (To activate an RSS feed, just go to your favorite blog, magazine or newspaper and click the little orange RSS button. Follow the steps and every time they update their website, you’ll get the title of the article delivered to your iGoogle page.)

Phase IV: Getting Engaged

• Leave a comment on a blog. It’s scary leaving your first comment so here are some tips: If you like the blog post, start by acknowledging that. Then write something that contributes to the conversation. Don’t self-promote or brag since that’s considered bad form. Your goal is to move the ball forward and provide another short tip or two on the topic of the blog.
• Start a discussion on LinkedIn. Go to one of the groups you joined and start a discussion. Just make sure it’s relevant to the group. Again, avoid self-promotion or bragging.
• Watch a YouTube video produced by someone in your industry. Just go to YouTube and do a search on your area of business. You’ll see plenty of videos on your topic. Don’t get distracted by the funny cat video. Save that for later. (Don’t forget to visit the 60 Second Marketer YouTube channel that has dozens of helpful videos on marketing topics.)
• Tweet about an interesting article. Remember when we set up your RSS feed a little while ago? There was a reason for that. Go to your RSS reader and click through on one of the articles. Read it and, if you like it, copy the link. Now go to your Twitter account and say something like, “Here’s an interesting article about future trends in our industry. Check it out here: http://www.YadaYadaYada.com.”

Phase V: Becoming an Active Social Media User

• Start your own group on LinkedIn. If you’re going to do this, you’ll have to update it regularly with interesting articles and/or discussions. You’ll also have to drive people to your group by letting people know you have your own group.
• Answer questions on LinkedIn. Go to the search box on your LinkedIn page and drag down to “Answers.” Type in your area of expertise and connect with others. It’s a great way to engage with other people on LinkedIn.
• Upload photos of you and your business on Flickr. Tag the photos so that people conducting searches for photos will find yours and engage with you. (Note: Tagging a photo is simply writing a one, two or three-word description of the photo you’re uploading in the appropriate field on Flickr.)
• Sign up for TweetDeck or HootSuite. They’re Twitter tools that supercharge your Twitter usage and link everything you do to Facebook and other social media tools. It’s a great time-saver.

Phase VI: Becoming a Social Media Superstar

• Start your own blog. There are plenty of tools to do this. Some of the better-known include Wordpress, Drupal and Typepad. Google has one, too, called Blogger which is great for beginners, but not so great if you plan on getting serious. If you’re going to start your own blog, you’ll need to write at least 3 posts a week in order for the search engines to see your blog. (You want the search engines to see your site so that people interested in what you’re writing about will find it on Yahoo, Google or Bing.)
• Link your Twitter account to Facebook and other social media tools. You can do this using TweetDeck and/or HootSuite.
• Post 13 Tweets a day. Unscientific research indicates that 13 Tweets it the optimal amount for an engaged Tweeter. Don’t do it all at once, do it during the course of the day. Remember to write something that’s interesting and relevant to your followers.
• Record a YouTube video and link it to your blog. That’s what I did with this post. It’s actually easier than you’d think — just record the video on your webcam, upload it to YouTube, then copy and paste the “embed video” button.

I could go on and on about how to get started using Social Media, but these tips will help you with the fundamentals. I’d be curious for feedback on the tips I missed — surely you have a thought or two on tips you’ve used, don’t you? Let us know about them in the comment box below.

What does a company do after watching its sales fall for a year?

Anheuser-Busch shows naked people.

The new Bud Light Clothing Drive commercial is hilarious. Check out the ad:

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It doesn’t fit in the new campaign reported by The New York Times, though. According to them, Anheuser-Busch intends to run nine commercials that will take up five minutes of air time on the Super Bowl, abandoning the “drinkability” promotion they ran last year. Of the nine spots, five are scheduled to be devoted to unveiling a new theme for Bud Light, “Here we go.”

I like the naked people spot, whether it fits in the new campaign or not. It’s funny, it’s not very tasteful, and it’s clever.

Makes me wonder whether we ought to have a clothing drive here at The 60 Second Marketer.

On second thought, scratch that.

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By James Snider

Have you ever tried to contact someone but were not sure if you had the email address right?  You guessed “First Name dot  Last Name at Company Name dot com”.  You sent the email…it did not bounce back but you got no response.  There are ways to find email addresses sometimes but other times, you just have to guess.  At Texas Instruments, the norm is “First Initial Last Name at TI dot com”.  At Sabre it is “First Name dot Last Name at Sabre dot com”.  But that is only correct most of the time…not 100%.

LinkedIn can help you out.

Try this.

1. If the person is on LinkedIn, go to the “add connections” option on your LinkedIn account. LinkedIn will give you an option to “See who  you already know on LinkedIn” and will have your email address entered in an “Email” field.

2. You need to enter the password for your email account in the “Password” field and let LinkedIn search through your email account for everyone you have sent an email to.

3.If the email address you used for the person you are trying to reach is the same email address as LinkedIn has for that person, he or she will show up in the results returned from LinkedIn.

You have just verified that you have the same email address for that person as LinkedIn does.  LinkedIn will not normally give you this information unless you are already connected to the person, but you can get it by going through this backdoor to LinkedIn.

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James Snider is a specialist in global marketing and social media marketing. He writes a blog on Using Social Media in the Job Search.

Reprinted with permission.

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