The ROI of Your Mother

22 Aug 2012 1 Comment

by John Amardeil in Strategies

As I mentioned before, the eBAM department recently attended Social Media Mix 2012, a social media conference that took place in downtown Toronto.

Organized by local company Jugnoo, the event featured renowned experts and speakers like Amber Mac, Matt Hixson, Danny Brown, and even a police officer, Tim Burrows, who has been doing a great job of building the Toronto police’s social media presence.

Sgt. Tim Burrows at #SoMix2012

Sgt. Tim Burrows has been doing such a great job on social media, many marketers could take a lesson or two from him.

The last speaker to go on stage was Gary Varneychuk. According to Wikipedia, Gary is “a video blogger, co-owner and director of operations of a wine retail store, and an author and public speaker on the subjects of social media, brand building and e-commerce.”

According to my team, Gary was awesome (as were many of the other speakers). He had a line my team loved — “What’s the ROI of your mother?” This line doesn’t mean to diminish the importance of tracking results and obtaining concrete benefits from social media (something I’m a big believer in).

Rather, it means that some benefits of social media cannot always be measured, such as creating a feeling of goodwill and transparency and helping create powerful word-of-mouth.

That’s why we sell so many of our clients on social media — because it helps provide their communities with a personality and a platform that no traditional means of advertising could hope to emulate.

What are your thoughts on social media? Are you — or your clients — still not sold?

A Visionary Passes Away

08 Aug 2012 Leave a comment

by John Amardeil in People

Flags were at half-staff at Mississauga City Hall after Bruce McLaughlin passed away two weeks ago. The Globe and Mail published an obituary. People expressed their condolences on social media.

Hardly a surprising outpour, given the man’s accomplishments.

airstrip square one

At the time of its opening in 1973, Square One was the third largest shopping mall in the world, and became a catalyst in building the Mississauga City Centre as it is known today.

Bruce was, after all, a visionary — the man who built Square One, the Father of the City of Mississauga, a philanthropist, a successful businessman. He was also a horse lover, an author, and an avid outdoorsman. He was many things, and he excelled at all of them. He was, in fact, nothing short of an icon, full of big ideas and plans.

We have been working for Double Oak, the company of Bruce’s son-in-law, for over 10 years. We have nothing but respect for what Bruce accomplished, and we attempt to follow in his steps.

My condolences go toward his family.

Why We Love Measurability

31 Jul 2012 Leave a comment

by John Amardeil in Strategies

Measuring time

Measuring tools may have changed, but they’re still of the utmost importance.

As legendary adman David Ogilvy once said, “The general advertisers and their agencies know almost nothing for sure, because they cannot measure the results of their advertising.”

When Mr. Ogilvy uttered these lines, he meant to draw a line between general advertisers and direct response advertisers. Social media didn’t exist. Print still ruled.

Yet, as we were just reminded when our eBAM department revamped our email marketing practices, measuring the effectiveness of our marketing efforts is now easier than ever.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure many in the industry always do their very best to measure the effectiveness of their results.

In the case of email marketing, we know how many people read your email. We know how many of them clicked on a link. We know how many of them completed the goals we set out.

Best of all, we know (at least we can infer) why they did what they did (or why they didn’t), thanks to cool techniques like A/B split testing. This means we know how to do an even better job next time, whether it involves modifying the subject line, tweaking the layout, or modifying the amount of copy.

So great is the importance we see in measurability, we do our best to measure things that are notoriously hard to measure — such as the ROI of social media. And if the results aren’t what we expect them to be, we’ll be the first to let our clients know.

If you’re not measuring, how can you possibly know whether it works or not? How can you possibly define success?

Do You Give Your Clients What They Don’t Know They Want?

20 Jul 2012 Leave a comment

by John Amardeil in In The Media

Henry Ford famously said, “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have said ‘a faster horse.’”

I was reminded of this quote when reading a recent New York Times article. Titled “Mom, Dad, This Playground’s for You,” it discusses the City of New York’s latest attempt at helping its citizens live a healthier, more active lifestyle. How? By installing — you guessed it — adult playgrounds.

The idea isn’t really new— adult playgrounds already exist in Europe and China, as well as in other U.S. states. However, the idea does make special sense in New York, where adults are banned from regular playgrounds unless accompanied by a child, which means they can’t very well use little Tony’s monkey bars to do a few pull-ups.

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Sceptics might argue most adults haven’t demanded the right to have access to a playground. Yet I trust many will find themselves using these facilities, especially when it’s nice out and when they’re conveniently located close to home. After all, these playgrounds do make the prospect of working out a lot more fun than running on a treadmill indoors like a lab rat.

Indeed, for all the press New York’s adult playgrounds are getting, some of us in the private sector have already conceived communities where adults and children alike will find pretty much any athletic activity just beyond their backyard. This is what we’re doing in our Treetops community, which will feature a full-sized athletic field, plenty of trails dotted with outdoors fitness stations, and an outdoor community park with beach volleyball and basketball courts.

When planning a new community, do you settle for providing homeowners (and clients) with preconceived notions of what they want? Or do you go beyond and offer them something they didn’t know they wanted?

Why our Client Empire Communities is a Pioneer

12 Jul 2012 Leave a comment

by John Amardeil in Case Studies, Strategies

What is buying a home about? Is it about square feet?

Or is about emotion?

If you chose the second option, chances are you share with us the passion of exciting people. Chances are you also know passion sells — far more than features and facts alone.

Obvious as this all seems to many of us in the marketing industry, many builders still don’t get it. Where they should be hard at work to excite people, they continue to highlight the same old figures and information.

And when sales fail to skyrocket, they wonder where it all went wrong.

There’s a better, more effective way — one that Apple stores and other retail leaders have long used to their advantage. To inspire today’s jaded consumer, who won’t respond unless he’s inspired, these smart companies rely on cool, unique finishes.

With this in mind, we at BAM are truly delighted that, for the first time ever, a client is willing to step up and revolutionize.

In fact, Empire Communities is putting on the market the most revolutionary kitchen to be offered on a volume basis.

I commend Empire and Paris Kitchens for truly delivering something this special.

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