From the home office in….

With David Letterman signing off, I thought a Top 10 list would be appropriate. Unfortunately, I don’t have Dave’s pull to get 10 celebrities to read these off for me…but here goes… drum roll please:

10) Don’t take yourself too seriously. One of the charming aspects of The Late Show (and Late Night before it) was Letterman’s self deprecating sense of humor. How can we incorporate that into the work we do?

9) Try new things. When Letterman came on the scene, especially in his early days, the bits he did were truly different, and forever changed the late-night landscape.

8) Have a great band. In the case of content marketing, I’m not talking about Paul and the CBS Orchestra. I’m talking about your writers or agencies that balance your content development and make it sing.

7) Know the news. Many of Dave’s monologue jokes tied into current events. You know I’m a believer in Newsjacking – Dave did it to get laughs, you can do it to get readers and build an audience.

6) Do lists… Dave’s Top 10s were a popular part of the show. And research shows lists get clicks.

5) Engage your audience. I had the rare and wonderful opportunity to see a taping of The Late Show (The Ed Sullivan Theatre is surprisingly small and cold, by the way). You need to wait in line a LONG time to get in, but during the wait, Dave has comedians and others “warm up” the crowd. He also engages his audience by having ordinary people and pets appear on the program. How can you engage your audience?

4) Don’t be safe, bland or boring. Particularly in his earlier work, Letterman did some wacky things. You, too can break the mold. Read this for more.
http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2015/05/b2b-break-content-mold/

3) Look for the human element. Part of Dave’s appeal as a host was getting stars to come out of their shells – even for a short while – and give us a glimpse of their real lives.

2) He could tell a story. Many of his monologue jokes were told from a personal perspective about experiences he had. These can work in our content, too.

And… the number one thing David Letterman can teach us about content:

1) Everybody needs to learn about welding. See this clip from his first show for context. http://www.ew.com/article/2015/05/19/david-letterman-first-late-night-late-show-farewell

5/22 update: Great minds think alike… check out this post from PR Daily about what Dave can teach us about email marketing.

During my time working with university recruitment pros and faculty, I would constantly come back to the idea of using real people in our communication. This article affirms my belief.

So, you might be saying, that’s great, Rob, but I’m in the B2B world and we don’t have smiling, happy undergraduates out there to write about us. Good point. But you do have customers… and you have your people that you are asking an organization to engage in a long professional relationship with. Why not put these elements of your organization front and center as opposed to rattling off the same features and benefits over and over?

Some recent (and not so recent) projects I’ve completed:

-I’ve worked on developing the new brand voice for the nation’s leading insurance companies, messaging and PR support for an industry-wide construction safety initiative,  and PR work for the region’s leading financial services firm.

-My work has been published in Tactics, a top industry PR publication offered by PRSA. Check out this article and this one.

-Several blog posts for my agency point out work we’ve done.

–News release and Web content for the McMicken College of Arts & Sciences helped grow the institution’s share of voice internally and externally.

-Content for LasikPlus helped educate potential patients about the procedure and generate interest in Lasik surgery.

-Copy for Swapalease.com not only helped drive traffic to their site, it helped generate completed applications – leading to business growth.

-Copy for Sunglass Hut’s corporate magazine connected associates with product offerings. See PDF and Word docs below.

fyi_pradaswing

Visual_merchandising

-Lux Today, Luxottica’s internal newsletter, won a PRSA award in 2011. See article examples in the Word doc below.

EyeExams

-I wrote and edited an association magazine distributed to 20,000 members. I managed a redesign of the publication, which helped grow alumni memberships.

-NKU’s Northern magazine helped grow alumni engagement and donations to the university. I served as editor from 2005-2010.

-An ADA_Brochure (PDF) for Luxottica helped communicate the importance of ADA access to Luxottica-affiliated doctors.

-LensCrafters’ Heritage book helped celebrate the brand’s history and energize associates. See PDF below. HeritageBook12.2B

-Content for Hobart Corporation helped establish this brand as a thought leader in the food retail and foodservice industries. See example (PDF) below.

hobart_case_study

-An article in PRSA’s Tactics magazine provided advice to public relations writers.

-And, a blast from the past, an article from Cincinnati Magazine on swing dancing…

Posters

As someone who leads a campus marketing department at a major university, I bristle whenever someone emails or pops in my office saying something along the lines of “we have this event/new program/conference and need a poster.” I had a colleague say the other day – ‘I know you hate posters, but…’

It’s not that I hate posters. On a college campus, sometimes they can be a very effective part of an overall communication program. But all too often, time and effort and re-designing happens for a poster that will be ignored by hundreds of students who might be very interested in the material, but are buried with their face in their mobile device. Why aren’t we hitting them where they live – on their mobile devices via Twitter, email (yes, email) and other social media?

Content marketing and David Carr

I’ll be presenting on content marketing again for Higher Ed Experts – details to come – watch my Twitter feed. I note that David Carr NYT media critic, who died last week, acknowledged the increasingly blurry lines between corporate journalism/content marketing/native advertising and “real” journalism. I was interested to learn he was teaching a journalism class and thought how lucky these students were to learn from a guy like him. I think his catch phrase, something we can all learn from, is something like “just keep typing until it turns into writing.”

RIP David Carr.

My job as marketing/communications director for the largest college at Ohio’s second-largest public institution gives me the chance to tell the story of our great faculty, students and alumni. But, since the college has 22 academic departments, we have a very broad audience to reach – from aspiring poets to lab-coat-and-goggles-wearing chemists. One subject that keeps coming up – and I don’t have a ready answer for, is how do we attract diverse populations? I’ll start by saying that attracting them and getting them in the door are two different things. I met high-school student this summer who was attracted to the school, but wanted to get out of her hometown and try something new. Totally understandable. But when I think of multi-cultural/diverse marketing, I believe many colleges merely do the traditional group photo of multi-cultural/ethnic/race students on the cover of the viewbook and leave it at that.

Isn’t there something else?

I can’t change that I’m a white kid who grew up in Cleveland. My mom spent years teaching in the public schools, but that pretty much was the extent of my exposure to people who had a different life experience than me. But what I observed then and through my college years and as a journalist is that communicating to people who might be different than we are has to go beyond the window dressing of who is in the photo. So, some recent blog posts on the topic piqued my interest. This post points out that universities collect race/ethnicity data in their applications, but never use that data to tailor messages based on that data. And this post shows the language gymnastics that we need to consider as we market on a global scale.

All good things to think about… no easy answer, but I believe that, like all communication, it starts with understanding your audiences.