marketing Archive

What’s a story without an outcome? What if Cinderella ended when she ran out at the stroke of midnight? Or Jack never climbed the beanstalk?

In today’s world of thought leadership and storytelling—where we focus on landing impactful narratives and building consistent brands—we are telling an incomplete story for our business if we don’t tie it to purposeful marketing metrics.

Yes, it’s amazing if we create and deliver a truly impactful brand campaign with a story that moves people to act. But if we can’t show this effort impacted the business in a meaningful way: did it even happen?

And how will you get leadership buy-in and budget for the next big idea if you’re unable to demonstrate business value now?

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Smale, B. (Photographer). (2019.) Steve Clayton [digital image]. Retrieved from Steve Clayton.

Have you ever witnessed a commercial that hit home with you so intensely, or made you resonate so deeply, that you cried? At the Ragan PR and Social Media Summit in Redmond, there were few dry eyes in the house when Steve Clayton, Microsoft’s chief storyteller, told us about the Super Bowl-shaking moment when Microsoft released its Xbox Adaptive Controller commercial.

A long-time fan of Microsoft advertising and their Accessibility/Enable channels, I was thrilled to hear how the world-renowned technology giant came to become one of the most recognizable global brands. I can promise it didn’t disappoint.

Steve Clayton has been with Microsoft for 21 years and was accidentally hired. Thought to be another Steve (don’t worry, he was obviously the right fit for the role), he’s been storytelling for Microsoft ever since. His presentation covered, “Creating a culture of storytelling and innovation.”

Clayton offered us an inside look into Microsoft then, and now: how it recognized that it’s advertising ship was sinking, and how it healed its rupturing reputation by identifying past issues and updating to a new style of branding.

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“It’s time for a change,” said Eric Gray, Universal Orlando Resort’s senior director of content engagement. The old Tell-Sell-Yell marketing techniques don’t work as well on today’s consumers.

We had the pleasure of attending Gray’s closing keynote speech “Elevating the Role of Social Media to Drive Emotional Brand Attachment” at Ragan’s Employee Communications, PR & Social Media Conference at Microsoft, where he stated that effective marketing messaging is moving from PUSHING content at audiences to PULLING engagement (and content!) from audiences.

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At the Ragan & PR Daily Conference our team attended in September, we were able to catch the presentation of Janet M. Stovall, executive communications director at UPS. Much to our surprise, Stovall is the only female, person-of-color speechwriter in the Fortune 500. (As she notes, there are usually more found in political speech writing, but still not in corporations.)

With yesterday marking Latina Equal Pay Day, Stovall’s keynote came back to mind as a valuable discussion to share. Especially as we enter the heavy, consumer-focused marketing of the holiday season. While it’s gotten better, many of these commercials only showcase a modern look at the same families featured decades ago.

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Fresh to the workforce, and grateful to have landed at Delightful – I’m Iqra and I’m Delightful Communications newest member. I am currently working as a Digital Marketing Coordinator; I’ve had an amazing time in this role. I truly enjoy the work that I do, and I’m looking forward to my future here.

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“Celebrate Uniqueness” is one of our Delightful principles. With a company culture that encourages inclusivity and diversity, I get the privilege of working with amazing colleagues and clients from different cultures to develop and execute global marketing campaigns.

As someone who grew up in China and now works in the U.S., I’ve been able to see how globalization is bringing different people together to find common ground, but also to realize how huge the difference can be from culture to culture, which is even more prominent in the marketing world.

In this article, I wanted to share with you my biggest takeaways regarding how to develop and keep a global mindset that will help you do cross-cultural and global marketing right.

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When Instagram launched the Instagram stories feature in 2016, a steady new stream of off-the-cuff, more everyday content began surfacing on the platform. A loose version of Snapchat, Stories allowed users to showcase more of their lives without it having to be permanently on their page. Hosted right at the top of the main feed, users can scroll to find a specific story to watch, or simply start with the first user visible and watch until the decide to swipe out of stories.

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Business Cards Are Not Dead

When it comes to business cards, I am reminded of a chapter in my book, Pioneers of Digital, where the fabulous Avinash Kaushik talks about how he tested his famous blog – Occam’s Razor – on his wife and fellow work colleagues to get their feedback before he went public with it.

Well, when I started Delightful Communications, I decided to canvas industry peers about many aspects of my start-up, including marketing. What I found was that many people singled out business cards as a no-no. They’d scoff and say, “I don’t need to carry business cards, they’re out-of-date in this digital age.”

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If there’s one thing we could all agree we need more of most as marketers, it would be time. More time to devote to the smaller details of campaigns that are important, more time to sift through data to find the best performing content, more time to design compelling and engaging blog posts.

Who doesn’t want more time?

Unfortunately, there will always be only 24 hours in a day and hopefully, not all those hours are being spent on your marketing campaigns. However, you can learn to maximize the time you have and save time where you can.

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Instagram is a platform here to stay. Yet, many people don’t know how to use Instagram Stories to it’s fullest potential.

According to CNBC, Instagram now has 800 million monthly users and 500 million daily users. Those numbers have jumped 160% over the past year since the launch of Instagram stories, the feature that allows users to post stories that last just 24 hours. This feature clearly benefits and entices daily use; don’t forget to check Instagram, that content only lasts 24 hours!

The social media FOMO clicks in and you open the app.

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