imc strategy lab

imc strategies marketing advice has been reported in:

MacNewsWorld "What Color Is Apple?"

Apple seems to have carefully constructed a persona that aligns it with left-thinking, socially liberal types. Yet it's a major corporation that has to be as concerned as any with its bottom line. Is Apple an urban liberal or a suburban conservative? Is it trying to be everything to all people? Or just catering to those who can afford to buy its pricey wares?

San Francisco Chronicle "Work Your Network"

Facebook and LinkedIn can be valuable tools in landing your dream job. The key is getting your friends and business contacts actively engaged in both your job search and resume

Investor's Business Daily: "Google's Eric Schmidt Chosen as IBD's 2006 CEO of the Year"

When Eric Schmidt became Google's (GOOG) chief executive in 2001, he didn't make the mistake of trying to take over the company.Instead, Schmidt, a seasoned tech executive, manages Google with founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

Google is also getting into new areas such as wireless services, where the company has little experience. That's consistent with Schmidt's aggressive leadership, says Robb Hecht, a media and marketing consultant in New York. "He encourages risk taking and even encourages people to fail at the company," he said. "It's usually the opposite at other companies."

BrandWeek: Inside the Mind of the Marketer

• Another critical ingredient in the marketing mind was a requisite enjoyment of responsibility and with exercising authority. Simply put, some marketers so enjoy their power, it's as though they consider themselves sociological superheros of sales. Baruch College adjunct marketing professor Robb Hecht put it this way: "The power of brands is what attracts people to marketing. Most marketers want to work on the biggest brands, brands [with sales] the size of some countries' gross national products. Many marketers, once behind the dashboard of driving a brand, feel the power of the reach of a brand."

Microsoft Office Live: 5 Tips for Connecting With Customers Online

• Converse with your users on their terms. In earlier days of the Internet, most communication with customers went one way. There were ads, direct mailings, and e-mail newsletters that pushed content to a mass audience, mostly without an invitation for direct feedback. Now, with Web 2.0 applications such as blogs, wikis, and online forums, it is truly more of a dialogue. That’s an opportunity to connect with customers, and it’s one that your business shouldn’t pass up, experts say. "A two-way conversation isn’t one-dimensional," says Robb Hecht, a marketing consultant and adjunct marketing professor at City University of New York. "Online users today are feeling more engaged with brands, connected to and informed about new products and services based on the community-generating effect of these social networking tools."

MacNewsWorld: "An Alternative Guide to Election 2006"

Politicians and their operatives are no dummies. YouTube might have started out as a site for ordinary people to post their own videos, but it is now well seeded with videos produced by candidates -- both focusing on themselves and on their opponents.

• Consider YouTube, says Robb Hecht, an adjunct marketing professor at the City University of New York's Baruch College and social tech media strategist. "Its role in this year's elections cannot be underestimated," he tells the E-Commerce Times. "While people need to tune into CNN, they also need to check out YouTube's vault of political videos and sites like WhereIStand.com to find out where [the politicians] stand on issues."

LOWE: "Brand Your Business"

Your brand is your company’s identity. Build it effectively so clients and potential customers know who you are and what you do immediately.

• Steps to building a strong brand include pinpointing marketplace and industry needs with your company brand promise, then fulfilling those needs, says Robb Hecht, Fortune 500 marketing communications consultant. Next, develop a company “brand positioning” statement, Hecht says. Your brand marketing mission statement should be integrated into all marketing materials, including your brochure, Web site, corporate blog and business cards. “The key to successful branding is clearly differentiating yourself from competitors,” Hecht says. “While competitors can have a superior product, if their branding doesn’t capitalize enough on how their company benefits an industry’s needs, their product will ultimately fail.”

E-Commerce Times: "Wal-Mart Launches Online Movie Download Store"

With the support of each major Hollywood studio, Wal-Mart has launched a service to sell movies and television episodes online. The beta version of Wal-Mart's online download store will feature around 3,000 films and TV shows for sale. The company will go head-to-head with Apple's iTunes stores -- which offers content from only a few studios.

• "We often forget that the No. 1 music and movie retailer in the 'offline' world isn't Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) or Tower Records, it's Wal-Mart," Robb Hecht, adjunct professor of marketing at City University of New York, told the E-Commerce Times. "This move for Wal-Mart to thus become the first major retailer to offer the service of movie/music online downloads makes sense," he added. In short, Hollywood studios want and need the distribution channels Wal-Mart provides into Middle America, Hecht continued. "The current online distribution channels will change with the entry of Wal-Mart," he noted. "Currently, people flock to Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN), AOL, eMusic and iTunes to download music and movies online. Certainly a major retailer with [Wal-Mart's] name recognition and brand trust can skew online traffic its way for music and movie downloads. This distribution direction Wal-Mart is taking will influence other retailers in no time."

E-Commerce Times: "YouTube Presidential Debates - a Sea Change for US Politics?"

• "The impact of this partnership could be profound," Robb Hecht, adjunct marketing professor with the City University of New York (CUNY), told the E-Commerce Times. "In our new age of blogs, wikis, shared video via YouTube, and mashups, bringing Web 2.0 technologies to the political process gives potential constituents a larger role in the presidential candidate-selling process -- a much more direct role than MoveOn.org and Meetups did for the last presidential election."

Microsoft Small Business Center: 5 Ways to Create a 2.0 Media Kit

Desktop technology and electronic options offer so many high-quality and affordable ways to showcase your business that choices for building a contemporary media kit are downright dizzying.To help sort it out, here's step-by-step advice from veteran public relations and marketing gurus that will guide you in developing a relevant, up-to-speed media kit.

• "You also want all material to look consistent. "Build all your marketing outreach materials together," including marketing collateral, Web site, stationery and more, suggests Rob Hecht, a New York City new media publicist. The entire package should look and feel first-rate — not slick, mind you, but impressively put together, standout and solid."

MasterCard Small Business Center: Advertise Creatively and Successfully

Traditional advertising is losing its effectiveness in the world of small business marketing. Are you ready for the new age, or will you be left behind?

• Robb Hecht, brand blogger of Media 2.0, an IMC Strategies consulting blog, stresses the importance of including blogging and social networking into any paid media advertising buys your business makes. “Earning the endorsement of past and potential customers online via business blogging can drive a lot of credible traffic to your Web site,” he says.

Entrepreneur Magazine: The New CIO

Executives specializing in innovation. Today's two-way brand economy-where consumers can talk about your brand to anyone who will listen, via blogs, podcasts and more-has spurred the rise in CIOs, says Robb Hecht, chief innovations consultant for the imc strategies lab, a brand strategy consulting firm in New York City.

• "Marketing used to include one-way media," says Hecht, referring to TV, radio and billboards and the like. "The CIO arose when technology met marketing. A CIO [encourages] consumers to accept marketing messages and become part of the marketing process."
• "CIOs [develop] productive and innovative killer apps that attempt to maintain 'control' of brands in an atomozing economy," says Hecht. "A CIO anticipates where potential customer threats or concerns will arise and heads them off."

Entrepreneur Magazine: Avatars Let Customers Spread the Word About You
Imagine someone wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with your company name--all day, every day--then sharing the shirt with thousands of friends. It might sound like a marketer’s pipe dream, but with avatars--the little talking, animated characters representing users that are popping up all over the web--such dreams can come true.

Avatars let your customers spread the word about you. It’s a trend you can’t ignore, especially from a viral marketing standpoint. “Entrepreneurs are always looking for cost-effective ways to fit marketing into a new context,” says Robb Hecht, marketing consultant and adjunct marketing professor at Baruch College in New York City. “Avatars are the next big thing. They put a humanizing touch [on] the whole web-based experience.”

Entrepreneur Magazine: Brands Target Balckberry Addicts

Wall Street Journal: We Know What You Ought To Be Watching This Summer
New Software Used by Blockbuster.com Helps Web Sites Hone Their Recommendations; What Your Shoes Reveal, by SARAH MCBRIDE and VAUHINI VARA

• Robb Hecht rents mostly dramas and science-fiction flicks from Blockbuster.com. So he was surprised when the movie service served up a recommendation for "Rize," a documentary about an urban dance style in South Central Los Angeles -- and even more surprised when he liked it.....That makes Mr. Hecht, an adjunct professor of marketing at New York's Baruch College, a success story for Blockbuster Inc., which has revamped the software on its Web site to persuade customers to rent more movies.
• Mr. Hecht was steered to "Rize" by Blockbuster.com because he had at least one other musical in his queue ("Chicago") plus at least one other documentary ("March of the Penguins"), according to ChoiceStream.
  Combining that with the fact that, based on past rentals, Mr. Hecht enjoys edgy, urban movies, it recommended "Rize." The point is to come up with recommendations that "may be non-intuitive but surprisingly enjoyable nonetheless," says a spokesman. Since adding the software, Blockbuster says it has lost fewer customers, in percentage terms, to rival services, and the number of movies in the average customer's "to watch" list has grown by almost 50%.

Wall Street Journal: Can BlackBerry Hook Japan's Mobile Market?

The BlackBerry -- which started life as a simple-to-use, dedicated email device -- has caught on from the U.S. to Europe to India and China amid a proliferation of mobile-communication options. But there was one gaping void in the BlackBerry ...

• Indeed, unless Research In Motion comes out with cooler versions, Japanese consumers aren't likely to latch on, says Robb Hecht, a marketing professor at Baruch College in New York and a technology branding consultant. Compared with Japanese cellphones, he says, "BlackBerries are clunky and large."

In an age where women are once again wearing skinny, tapered jeans, it's not surprising that the cube has made a comeback as well — that's Rubik's Cube, of course.

• "And you can't discount the influence ”The Da Vinci Code” has had, according to New York-based marketing strategist Rob Hecht. “The cryptex puzzle became an underlying theme of the entire best-selling novel,” he said. “The closest consumer culture can get to a low-cost and brain-teasing cryptex is the well-branded Rubik's Cube. What better way to practice to be a Robert Langdon?”

Med Ad News: Lost in the Blog

• "There are steps companies could take to vet comments, according to Robb Hecht, business brand blogger, Media 2.0 (prmachine.blogspot.com). A site moderator could enforce a set of guidelines for commenting. Such guidelines are not unusual, particularly in corporate blogs. According to Mr. Hecht, guidelines can prevent intellectual copyrights from being infringed upon by a comment from a consumer. The guidelines could state that all comments would have to be on topic, must be inoffensive, and may not promote any particular drug or product."
• Despite the growing interest in interactive technology, the static Website is not dead, according to Mr. Hecht. "Especially in the health-care industry, because of the apprehension and the fear of doing something wrong, a lot of people that use the Internet for health-care information are sticking with Web 1.0 properties still," Mr. Hecht says.

Tech Web (InformationWeek): The Rise And Fall (And Rise?) Of AOL

AOL which recently abandoned its 'pay to play' model, is now trying to succeed as a free service in a very crowded marketplace. Can it succeed? We look at AOL's past and future

• "Just imagine the power of the AOL brand once it gets every employee focused on the one big goal of building the world's biggest and most engaged audience based on brand utilitarianism," says Robb Hecht, adjunct marketing professor at Baruch College and owner of the blog Media 2.0, where he analyzes business branding issues. "AOL owns and operates [instant messaging service] ICQ. It owns and operates Mapquest, Netscape, Moviefone, Weblogs, Cityguide, and AOLmusic.com. And, now it has other non-AOL branded media properties such as In2TV, TMZ, and Engadget that are all hits. If AOL gets its brand right, AOL could re-establish itself as the 'go-to' social online media property it was originally destined to be."
• "Ironically, although you'd think AOL should dump its family mentality in light of its competitors like Yahoo, the key to AOL future branding success vs. Yahoo could be to actually capitalize on its family friendliness alongside targeting the tech-savvy community currently owned by Apple," says Hecht. "AOL's core message should remain true to being family-friendly as perhaps 'the old standby' online service and the originator of online social networking, but the company messaging should certainly refocus the tech-savvy [user on the idea that] that AOL is not a 'walled-garden' or a 'gated community,' but is, rather, a gateway to the new utilitarian Internet."
• "AOL is, in fact, re-focusing on community via its new AIM Pages and blogging platforms," Hecht explains. "In this way, AOL will truly re-enter the social networking business, a category the company actually invented."

• Robb Hecht, a New York-based marketing communications strategist and director of the oft-cited business blog, MEDIA 2.0, suggests that it's simply a matter of rock stars staying relevant during a time when Bush's approval ratings seem to tank by the hour. "Rockers need to sell music, but many also need to stand for something," Hecht says. "So while in the past we had underground protest rock, we're starting to see many more mainstream rockers taking on political issues in order to gain more of a voice and presence in people's day-to-day lives. Hence, when rockers gain more traction in cultural topics, they inevitably gain more relevance, and they inevitably generate more sales of their music products."

Baltimore Sun: Blogs Put New Spin On Musician-Fan Relationship

Years before the boom of the Internet and reality TV, major pop stars maintained a certain mystique. If your love for them ran deep, you joined a fan club. Fan clubs still exist, of course. But blogging has revolutionized the way fans connect with their favorite performers.

• “Blogging ultimately drives a pop star’s brand and leads to more sales via iTunes,” says Robb Hecht, a New York-based branding expert and marketing strategist. “It is very important for a pop star to keep a blog in our new age where music is incredibly accessible via the Internet, cell phones and various other technological advances.”

MSNBC-Minneapolis StarTribune: The Marketing of 666

Is 666 the mark of the devil or a once in a century opportunity for clever marketing ploys?

• Marketing adjunct Robb Hecht weighed in. "As many marketers and publicists know, feeding into people's fears is a great way to build interest in a brand," said Robb Hecht, an adjunct professor at New York City's Baruch College who lectures on the social psychology of branding and pop culture trends."
  "Tuesday is 6-6-06: A once-a-century date or a sign?" Star Tribune (6/4/06)

St. Paul Pioneer Press: The Bluetooth Wireless Revolution

• Robb Hecht, a native of Afton, Minn., was strolling in his Manhattan neighborhood when he saw a man "having a fit." He assumed it was a headset hound, given the all-too-familiar loud talking and wild gesturing, but "it turned out the man was having a fit." Welcome to the Bluetooth revolution.

American Executive Magazine: Human Networks

Appealing to the public at large can pay dividends in the marketing and advertising arenas through video competitions and other user contests, said Robb Hecht, an adjunct marketing professor and consultant. With the overwhelming success of YouTube.com and similar video Web sites, people are becoming more accustomed to interacting with companies in a symbiotic relationship that helps create a positive buzz around the company and may result in a little fame for the person. It’s no wonder companies such as Converse, American Express, Yahoo, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Mazda, and others have sponsored photo or video contests, offering everything from serious money to nothing much beyond a few seconds of fame for winning entries, Hecht said.

“There is little danger or drawback from a brand getting involved with viral video,” Hecht said. “Any company in any industry can participate in this. It could put a company at a competitive advantage to roll out such a contest, giving consumers the perception that the company values their input.” Strengthening the relationship between a company and its customers can pay bottom-line dividends through higher sales, higher satisfaction rates, and increased education about the products or services a company offers, Hecht said. The consultant believes the marketing community will have to devise new metrics to measure the success of programs linked to media-generating consumers.

The Sacramento Bee: Cyber Peeking & Online Social Networking

Cyber peeking: Nowadays, it's harder than ever to escape from your past relationships

So why are we compelled to look up people we used to know? "Because it's [reviewing online social networking profiles] like reading a novel," said Robb Hecht, a business blogger for PR Machine. "A nonfiction story folds out right before your eyes online."

The Sacramento Bee: Reeling In Shoppers

Although fewer Americans are outdoor enthusiasts these days, Bass Pro, based in Springfield, Mo., is on an expansion binge with a mix of scale, showmanship and unrivaled stock that shoppers drive hundreds of miles to buy.

"It's the Starbucking of outdoor recreation retailing," said City University of New York marketing professor Robb Hecht. Chains like Bass Pro and competitors such as Cabela's Inc., based in Sidney, Neb., are responding with the sprawling megastore approach because the stores' sheer spectacle can create new enthusiasts and steal customers from other retailers, Hecht said. "The local stores lose," he said, "and the megastores win."

The Sacramento Bee: The Cube Is Back
The popularity of the '80s-era Rubik's Cube shows it's not just for squares

Robb Hecht, an adjunct marketing professor at New York's City's Baruch College, attributes the Rubik's Cube resurgence in part to the movies. Hecht thinks "The DaVinci Code," while not featuring a Rubik's Cube, inspired people to solve cryptic puzzles.

And it's not just the movies. Hecht thinks people are turning back to the cube because it is cheap (usually about $10 per cube) and it is portable. Plus, with the popularity of iPods and cell phones, people may have a desire to bring along something to keep their hands occupied.

Not to mention, it's like announcing your IQ test scores to the world. "The street smarts to solve the everyday toy are almost like getting a degree from a smart school," Hecht says. "People are impressed with the intellectual capability to solve that pattern."

Los Angeles Business Journal: Public Relations Executive May Have Fumbled Own Campaign

“The public relations industry doesn’t want to hear from Doug Dowie that he is guilty,” said Robb Hecht, a marketing consultant and adjunct professor with the City University of New York. “Perhaps in private Doug Dowie admits guilt; but in public and for the record, he is forever not guilty. … In this sense, to hold to one’s word and not flip-flop can be a very powerful technique.”

The Washington Times: Web Reaches New Inflection Point

• "Web 2.0 is not about hype like the 'Bubble 1.0,''' said Robb Hecht, a new media marketing strategist for IMC Strategies. "But, rather, a true growth in the utilitarian value of the Internet."
• "Advertisers are reaching out to younger demographics on the Internet via social networking sites, like MySpace.com, because MySpace has 70 million users now," said Hecht, who has worked with major brands like E*Trade. "Another example (driving revenue) is mashups, which are low-tech content aggregators, from disparate publishers."
• All of this marketing and technology activity on the second generation of the Web has not been matched, as of yet, by new share offerings for new Internet firms on Wall Street. "For the Web 2.0, there has not been a lot of IPO activity," said Hecht. Most of the new investments are for WiFi and wireless projects these days. But maybe that is good, experts speculate. "It is the consumers who are benefiting from the Web 2.0 movement," said Hecht.
  
  

What's worse than an unsatisfied customer? How about an unsatisfied customer who is one of the most popular bloggers on the Web?

• The PR Machine blog, run by IMC Strategies, warns: "Don't for a minute think that this `Jeff Jarvis' thing is a one-time deal for the blogosphere. Jeff Jarvis set the standard. Jeff Jarvis made the mother of all online brand threats. The snowball effect for all industries and products hereafter online is yet to come."

Never mind that marketers have produced barely a tenth of a percent of the material posted on the site. They see YouTube as the model for their marketing programs moving forward, with the smartest (and boldest) companies allowing consumers to pick and choose the brand-affiliated content they want to view.

• Males online are elusive? Hardly. They’re busy watching TV — online. Another type of 18-to-24-friendly content ripe for advertising: anything involving fantasy sports. “Why not put your [brand] name on some of the extra-step [online engagement] league and statistical tools?” suggests Robb Hecht, a member of the adjunct faculty at New York City’s Baruch College School of Continuing and Professional Studies.

ClickZ News: Will Recent Online Flubs Hurt Wal-Mart's Brand?

A PR blog fiasco. A defunct community site. And now a holiday site that's incited a child advocacy backlash. Can Wal-Mart do no right online?

• "Certainly this online strategy to, in effect, annoy parents is going to close the wallets of the parents who were supposed to open them," noted Robb Hecht, marketing consultant at the imc strategy lab and adjunct professor of marketing at Baruch College. This is especially the case, he added, "if the reinforcement to nag is not coming from a kid down the block, but from a Wal-Mart branded Web site any parent could visit, and discover the culprit."
• Hecht told ClickZ News, "Wal-Mart trying to engage the consumer in a humane way through social media is a good idea." However, he questions the approach they took, which struck many as inauthentic. Some reports mentioned the use of paid actors posting to the site. "Wal-Mart may have had better luck capitalizing on their MySpace page," said Hecht.
  

Revenue Magazine: eBay: What's in Store
The auction giant is expanding its reach and creating more opportunities for online marketers

• "The next level [for eBay promotions] will be social commerce," says Robb Hecht, a business blogger who publishes the Media 2.0 site. He says getting the blogosphere to build a community around the company and its products will be an important factor in maintaining eBay's growth

Advertising Speciality Institute/Successful Promotions: "Constructive Brand Criticism"

• Don’t want your next promotional campaign to get lost in the clutter of marketing messages? Take a cue from the big guys. Read on for three high-profile campaigns and what top marketing experts had to say about them..
• Robb Hecht, author of MEDIA 2.0 – The PR Machine Brand Trends Business Blog Project, agrees. Hecht is the newmedia marketing communications strategist with New York-based IMC Strategies Consulting and his past clients include E*TRADE financial. “TD Banknorth’s strategy to get its reps out on the streets to establish one-on-one relationships with potential customers is a strategy dealt by a company that realizes that consumers are now in control,” says Hecht. The bottom line is that the bank is reaching its customers successfully by changing along with them and their needs, no doubt making the campaign a huge success.

Healthcare Vox: Patient-Generated Content-PGC & Social Media

• "Blogging is a verb and a process. Blogs are living, breathing beings which are fed content, grow in size, and morph and propagate like viruses online."
• "Web 2.0’s utilitarian principles have started to apply to healthcare in many ways. First, and most importantly, patients are creating content and starting a “do-it-yourself” mentality in the healthcare industry. So, along the “Consumer-Generated Media” line or CGM, we can start labeling the process now and call it “Patient-Generated Content” or PGC for short."

• Says Hecht: "Blog interaction helps bulid credibility for the plastic surgeon and the practice, Hecht says. By allowing people to question the physician the practice displays an air of openness. Blog posts can also help patients get to know physicians on a more personal level, which could improve the patient/client relationship and lead to more patient visits."

China Business News: Country/City International Business Promotion Strategies

• IMC strategy laboratory founder Robb Hecht also noted that the first thing a city or country should figure out is its unique advantages that can distinguish it from other countries or cities. Singapore was seen as a model of premeditated branding. Ireland and India are also examples of his focusing technique....where he cited the English local labor advantage in attracting call centers and other support services. Russia and Israel are noteworthy in attracting highly skilled workers, then Switzerland and its financial services acumen. However, Hecht reminded city workers in licensing competitions, not only to emphasize the high level of local education levels of workers, which might focus investors on having to pay only high wages. He said sometimes its key to not to sell a high-income demographic in order to draw jobs to your city.

The In-Store Marketing Institute: P-O-P Times (Point Of Purchase Times): "Virals in the Aisles?"

As viral video continues to captivate consumers online, markets and experts consider the medium's in-store potential

• "It certainly breeds a sense of corporate inclusiveness to consumers" says Robb Hecht, marketing consultant with IMC Strategies, New York. "An image is projected to consumers by corporations [via videos and create-your-own-video contests] that they should 'be a part of us,' vs. 'be marketed at by us.'...The effects of an open-door policy perception in the marketplace often result in excellent PR for the company and increased credibility in the marketplace.

ILO Institute's "Web 2.0 and Brand Communications Report"
2. Communications experts tell ILO that social media and UGC already have a significant impact on brand communications and will have an increasing effect in the future

• Marketing strategist Robb Hecht of the IMC Strategy Lab believes that brand communications in this new environment will be characterized by “two-way branding,” meaning that, while “company brand communications efforts going forward will continue to be generated by the core of the company and [its] positioning efforts,” the consumer will be “taking a direct role in brand communications via the talk-back capability of blogs, wikis, and online social-networking sites.”
• Hecht tells ILO that media is “atomiz[ing] into bite-size pieces,” requiring that brand communications begin to be “repackaged in more intimate and targeted manners. . . . Branders must now engage and include consumers in their marketing. Consumers must not be marketed ‘at’ but instead ‘with.’”
• IMC’s Robb Hecht warns that in the social-networking milieu “branders can lose control of their intended brand communications messaging goals.” It’s become much harder to get away with bad behavior, Hecht tells ILO: “If someone is interested in the reputation of your brand, they now go to Google, type the brand name in and the results are oftentimes social networking sites where users have reinforced or scolded the brand.” But the possible flip side is that often “consumers have given the brand first-person testimonials.”