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Team DIGO | 08/09/2016 | in
Written by James Nieman, Integrated Marketing Manager
The lifespan of a CMO can be short. Some barely last six months. Most don’t make it to see year three.
You don’t have to be most. And you won’t be.
Not if you have the right solutions. Not if you’re surrounded by the right people. Not if you hire the right agency.
And the right agency – the agency that employed CMOs have built fortunes with – is a brand response agency.
That’s because these CMOs – the type of clients that we work for – know that you don’t have to choose between brand building and brand selling. In fact, the idea that the two are mutually exclusive activities is a total myth.
That doesn’t stop most CMOs from believing it. That’s fine. You’re not going to be “most” CMOs… you’re going to be great.
Instead, the marketing campaigns that reap the most profit contain a combination of the two. All activity builds the brand. All activity drives response. We know this because it’s what we’ve been doing for the past 20 years. We know this because we’re the world’s leading brand response agency.
That synergy is hard to achieve. But, when the right people are working to achieve it, it works wonders.
When Warby Parker set out to sell eyeglasses directly to the consumer, they knew they needed to be inventive. The home try-on program immediately increased sales, but it also created a unique buying experience that made them distinct. It was iconic. It drove brand value up while lowering the cost of acquisition.
You don’t work for Warby Parker – we know that. But you could work for the next Warby Parker. The next Dollar Shave Club. The next Casper.
So what can a brand response agency do for you?
A brand response agency gets you the short-term results you need:
– Increased sales
– Increased leads
– Lower cost of acquisition
So that you can impress your shareholders and bosses. You’ve already surpassed the CMO you were brought into replace.
But a brand response agency also works to:
– Increase brand value
– Reach and acquire totally new sectors of customers
– Develop brand devotees
– Achieve price elasticity for your products
A brand response agency helps you build a brand that you know will prosper in the future.
A brand response agency gets you to year four.
A brand response agency separates you from “most CMOs.”
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Team DIGO | 08/05/2016 | in
When we talk about marketing, we talk about “the target” or “the consumer.”
But, when we approach design in a human-centered way, we think about “the user.”
The person we’re designing this for.
I have a radical belief about marketing. I believe that there’s so much of it that, if it is to effective as promotion, it must first be chosen.
I believe that we have to change our thinking.
FROM: Marketing is something that companies do to promote
TO: Marketing is something people use to inspire themselves to change
I find that when we change our thinking in this way, we change our results. Dramatically.
If you’ve read this far, it’s because you’ve chosen to.
Because you feel this post may be helping you make a change you want to make or take an action you want to take.
HERE’S AN INSPIRING ACTION: When we talk about marketing, let’s stop talking about “the target” and start talking about “the user.”
Let’s apply human-centered design thinking to marketing.
– Mark DiMassimo, Chief
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Team DIGO | 07/13/2016 | in
The following post is an excerpt from Digital@Speed, authored by digital marketing guru Mark DiMassimo. Visit the official website here to download your free copy today.
If you need to understand and connect with people quickly, think tribally.
Everyone comes from somewhere, and often from multiple somewheres. Those places – schools, industries, departments, companies, clubs, states, countries – have cultures and languages all their own. So knowing the tribe can be the key to truly understanding the individual.
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Team DIGO | 07/07/2016 | in
This year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity brought some 15,000 creative minds from the advertising world to the South of France for a week of self-indulgent celebration and free Rosé, in honor of the past year’s creative work.
Here at DiMassimo Goldstein, however, we view creativity in a different light. We measure our creative ideas not by the number of Lions we bring home, but by our capacity to inspire action. To produce creative work that goes beyond commercial intent, by helping people develop more empowering habits and lead better lives. Creativity, we believe, should be used to make actions rather than award-winning ads. The latter is simply the means to an end.
So while the rest of the industry was toasting to ‘creativity’ on the beaches of Cannes, we held our 2nd Annual Festival de Cans on our very own DiGo beach last Thursday. Just like the other Cannes, but with less emphasis on navel-gazing, and more on helping others less fortunate than us.
Friends, family and acquaintances in New York were invited to bring a can of food to our office, in exchange for a can of beer, wine or soda on us. Not only did we make lasting memories with friends old and new, but we did so for a good cause: 83 cans were donated at the end of the night to St. Francis Food Pantries & Shelters, a local organization that provides food, clothing and shelter to those in need. We even built our own Cannes Lion last year using our collected cans, before donating them to a local food bank.
Ayn Rand has said that, “A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.” Rather than using our creativity to win awards, we’ll continue to build brands that inspire action and influence positive change in ourselves and others. If you’d like to do the same, we’ll see you at next year’s 3rd Annual Festival de Cans. Who needs bottled Rosé, anyway.
-Chloe Evans, Integrated Marketing Intern
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Team DIGO | 06/30/2016 | in
The following post is an excerpt from Digital@Speed, authored by digital marketing guru Mark DiMassimo. Visit the official website here to download your free copy today.
I don’t shoot the messenger. Ever.
When someone brings up bad news, raises a controversial subject, or just tells the ugly truth in a meeting, I go out of my way to praise the messenger right there and then.
I want to make an example of them for everyone else. THIS is what I’m looking for. Honesty. Openness. Realness. Challenge.
If you don’t do this, you will hear less and less of the truth. And then where will you be?
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Team DIGO | 06/09/2016 | in
The following post is an excerpt from Digital@Speed, authored by digital marketing guru Mark DiMassimo. Visit the official website here to download your free copy today.
It’s not hard to find the smartest person in the room. Just listen for the best questions.
Take time and care to develop your questions. Think about what’s most important. You’ll get better answers. And more importantly, you’ll get answers you can use.
Ant think about using questions to create engagement in social and digital media. Questions are a great way to engage, and the answers can be surprising and valuable as well.
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Team DIGO | 06/07/2016 | in
Our Chief, Mark DiMasismo, takes to the DiGo Beach to shed some light on the controversy surrounding the recent Association of National Advertisers (ANA) report on media kickbacks. To see the full transcript, scroll down below.
Mark DiMassimo On Media Kickbacks from DiMassimo Goldstein on Vimeo.
Transcript:
“So a lot of folks want to know what’s all this fuss about kickbacks – media kickbacks – that the ANA (the Association of National Advertisers) and the 4A’s (the American Association of Advertising Agencies) are squabbling about in public. In fact, the ANA, which represents the nation’s largest advertisers, is about to release a report that is predicted to say that most holding companies and agencies are taking kickbacks. Now I don’t know that that’s the fact, and I don’t know that that’s in the report, but that’s what’s being said in the press. And the 4A’s, which represents all the large agencies and holding companies, is coming back and saying ‘before you release your report, ANA, make sure that you have the facts’.
So what is this? What do they mean by kickbacks? I wanted to talk to you about this. I care a lot about it because I run an independent agency. And Independent agencies aren’t necessarily represented by either of those groups.
So we’re on the DiMassimo Goldstein beach here. Let’s look at these bowls of sand. Advertiser: let’s say that this is your media budget (holding bowl 1). And here it is again (holding bowl 2). And this is the independent agency bowl (bowl 1); as you can see, it’s transparent and nearly full. And that’s all your sand right there. In this other bowl, the holding company bowl (bowl 2), they’re probably going to tell you there’s more in this bowl than there is in the other bowl (bowl 1). But if you were to get really close, you would see that there is actually less – maybe 15% – 20% less – sand in this bowl (bowl 2). Why is there less sand in this bowl? I’ll tell you why. Because what is predicted to be finally reported by the ANA is that the holding companies are taking a little bit of the sand from each of those bowls and filling up their big, hidden crystal bowl that they keep in the back room, and are now challenging the 4A’s to prove that they have. But let me tell you, as an independent agency competing against the holding companies for years, I have long suspected and heard from many people on the inside that this bowl does, in fact, exist. And that while holding companies will promise clients ridiculously low commissions in order to get business, in fact, clients are paying bigtime in ways that they can’t track or see. Because the big bowls of media money are hidden, and the only things they see are the small bowls on their report.
So in short, since we don’t know all the facts and can’t know all the facts until this report comes out, and the lawsuits ensue, the fighting between the big advertisers and the big media companies works its way through the court, and there are decisions, etc. Since we can’t know, I would offer you this: in the meantime, there are many good independent agencies. DiMassimo Goldstein and our media arm, Proove, are completely transparent. Clients do not have to wait for a court to tell them where their money is, because it’s 100% evident and transparent, because there only is 1 bowl. There’s only 1 business here – only 1 bowl – and all of the sand that’s in it is your money, the client money. It’s all in there, 100% accounted for. So all of your money goes to helping you build your brand and sell in media. I hope that solved it.”
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Team DIGO | 05/26/2016 | in
We proactively work on relationship building. What are you doing this week to strengthen a client relationship?
At DiMassimo Goldstein, we put our values in a document we call “The DIGO Standard.” It doesn’t just hang on the walls and sit on our desks and desktops. We use it every day. People who visit often ask for a copy. Here’s yours, and you didn’t even have to ask.
