Last Thursday, DocuStar and the Cincinnati American Marketing Association teamed up to host a panel
discussion featuring executives from the Cincinnati region. Participating in the event were Jerry Kathman, President and CEO of LPK; Chris McNamee, Vice President Marketing, Hobsons; Ed Burghard, CEO & Manager at The Burghard Group; and Heather Adkins, Vice President, Chief Strategy and Mission Officer, The Christ Hospital Health Network; and moderating was Dan Knowles, President of Brand Ubiquity.

Tags: branding, ROI, executive leadership, buy-in, MOL, brand advocacy, Cincinnati AMA, employee engagement, marketing, c-level, human resources, Marketing Organizational Leadership

Whether you are in the financial services, insurance or manufacturing (e.g. building products) verticals, planning joint campaigns with your distributed sales channels is a great way to generate new up-sell and cross-sell business. Because they already know and likely trust your business, existing customers are a prime audience for additional sales, but they may not be properly informed about the full scope of products or services in your portfolio. You may expect that your distributors are taking initiative to nurture up-sell and cross-sell business from their current customers, but they may need a little push. However, if you provide direction and make it easy for distributors to participate, you can both profit. Here’s how:

Tags: Marketing Programs, insurance, marketing campaign, Distributed Sales Model, Building Products, MRM, marketing resource management, local marketing automation, financial services marketing, sales and marketing alignment

June brings with it plenty of hot weather…along with plenty of summer marketing opportunities. Check out these multi-channel campaigns to boost your bottom line.

Theme: National Doughnut Day (June 7)

Tags: marketing ideas, QR code, summer, ecommerce, health care, creative marketing, multichannel marketing, June, insurance, marketing campaign, email marketing, direct mail marketing, social media, financial services marketing

Stay better informed as a marketing professional with this monthly series highlighting the latest developments in all things marketing, get caught up with the April Marketing News Snapshot.

Tags: digital marketing, mobile marketing, marketing news, tablets, google, online advertising, mobile wallets, digital optimization, B2B, b-to-b, marketing trends

In keeping with our innovation theme this week, let’s take a more in-depth look at the driving force behind innovation: creativity.

We live in a world saturated with messaging. It’s this saturation, argues Jez Frampton, CEO of Interbrand, that makes creativity more important than ever before. The market is not necessarily a meritocracy (as much as we like to think it is sometimes); it’s often the case that the product presented most creatively is the one that is heard above the noise. This makes creativity, not product features, one of the most powerful differentiators your company can showcase.

Tags: risk, marketing leadership, creative psychology, corporate culture, creativity, diversity, marketing innovation

The proliferation of information has empowered consumers like never before. There are all kinds of third-party resources at their fingertips for them to get the skinny on brands, products and services, and more ways than ever before for them to share their own experiences and opinions about those same brands, products and services as well. The scary thing about this for marketers and CEOs isn’t that so much information as out there, it’s that this information is unregulated and unfiltered. They feel they’ve lost control of their message, and to a point, they have. But the real issue managers and leaders should be concerned with isn’t control- it’s communication.

Consumers no longer have to go on your word as a business, but that doesn’t render your word meaningless. According to the Edelman 2013 Trust Barometer, the way businesses need to communicate their message has changed greatly. Influence no longer takes place as a fixed monologue dictated by the few with goal of control. Instead, it’s flexible dialogue co-created by many that is all about empowerment.

Tags: branding, trust, messaging, brand advocacy, employee engagement, MRM, marketing technology, marketing resource management

Think like a human, not like a company

Tags: branding, silos, messaging, organizational leadership, brand image, marketing, communication, customer relations, MRM, marketing technology, marketing resource management

Depending on the size and age of your company and the market it competes in, it can be difficult to build and establish a strong, meaningful corporate brand. It’s hard to create perception, and almost twice as hard to change it, but one group is attempting to do just that, and they’re doing it on a very macro level.

Denyse Ferguson and Nicole Ball are Director and Marketing Director, respectively, of BrandHUB, a branding initiative geared toward changing the image not of a company, but of a whole city – Cincinnati, Ohio, to be specific. The effort is driven by the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber, which champions economic development in the area, and aims to promote the city as a bastion of branding expertise.
“The term ‘BrandHUB’ is quite literal for us,” Ferguson says. “Cincinnati is home to 60,000 brand development professionals, and 40 percent of the top 100 most valuable global brands are tapping into that talent. Until now, the city has never been able to successfully pull these resources together to benefit local business and spur economic development of the region.

Tags: branding, Cincinnati, rebranding, brand experts, marketing, young professionals, The Brandery, social media

As the weather continues to warm and spring swings into full gear, here are some ideas to help fill out your May marketing calendar.

Tags: marketing ideas, QR code, creative marketing, multichannel marketing, May, insurance, marketing campaign, email marketing, direct mail marketing, social media, financial services marketing

Whether it’s trust in the product, trust in the brand, trust in the content or trust in the person making the pitch, trust is the vital element upon which nearly all deals are made. But as statistics show, trust is hard to come by these days. So where do consumer attitudes toward businesses stand, and what can businesses do to change those attitudes?

Trust issues

Tags: branding, internet marketing, risk, trust, rapport, messaging, credibility, marketing campaign, financial services marketing