Living with a Cause

Good day to everybody keeping up with the WIN Firm's marketing projects. As always, I welcome your feedback to this post and want you to know our doors are open and we believe in sharing our marketing knowledge to all interested parties. Did you like that disclaimer? Seriously, we at the WIN Firm are really pleased with the progress we are making on various projects and are excited to share our discoveries in this ever-changing marketing world with you. Are you ready to hear how our Brazil project is progressing?

I apologize for not posting on Friday, and will not offer up any excuses for my missed post. I just ask for your understanding and forgiveness.

Let's get started on telling you how our strategies are being formed for the Keep Brazil Beautiful campaign. First, after several years of researching the concept of social causes and non-profit marketing, we have found that people really do care about helping others, their community, the environment, etc... Therefore, we have developed a concept to sell shoes. Yes, we are selling shoes that touch your emotional neurons and make you believe in what you are buying. We have a firm understanding of why you support various non-profits, and have developed this campaign based on the non-profit model of caring.

After we first posted this blog and told people that we were opening up our core, people thought we were really making a mistake. I disagree. You and I and everyone in the world knows how to market something. Ever been asked how you were? Were you actually lousy but responded that you were alright? Well, this response is what we call perception management. Therefore, you manage your perception everyday with the way you comb (or don't) your hair, the way keep your house, etc...

How does all of this perception management tie into our project of selling Brazilian shoes? The answer is that when you wear these shoes you are managing a perception that lets others know you care. Yes, IT IS THE SHOES! You will be telling everyone who sees your shoes how much you are aware of the decisions you make, especially when it comes to the things you buy. What better way to communicate you care than to walk in the shoes of caring?

Our advertising and promotional strategies will all convey the message of our shoe being the BRAND that cares. As we have stated before, we are willing to do whatever it takes to build confidence in our brand and show you where your money is actually going. Our web-sites are going to be designed for you to follow the shoes journey to replenishing the Rain Forest in Brazil and Keeping Brazil Beautiful. Don't we need a company that truly is a steward of goodwill?

Until next time, be blessed in all you do!

Blessings,
Chris Teague
V.P. Marketing
WIN Firm

Campaign Concept

Good day to all following WIN's work! I hope each of you have been blessed with a wonderful day. Again, thank you for following our work; we hope it is benefitting your marketing approaches as well. As always, I want everyone to know that our doors are open and we at WIN believe marketing should be shared instead of kept as some secret art form. We want to turn marketing into more of a science than a guessing game, so our blog is designed to be collaborative effort with all of you to ensure we are taking the proper steps that benefit our clients. Okay, here we go!

Keep Brazil Beautiful

Since our shoe company is based in Brazil, we want to give back to this beautiful country. The shoes we are marketing are the tool to be used to help raise awareness for our cause to replenish the Rain Forest. As David Pennington commented on our blog last week, wearing your shoes shows everyone you care. Therefore, we are going to take the shoe's brand to a new level of social awareness. The company and brand will be known for its social consciousness and be seen as a brand that represents YOU as caring. 

There are several causes that companies have used to promote their products and we have studied or discovered several amazing campaigns thanks to those of you who have been following us and others. We are currently posting questions all over the web and have received SUPER responses! If you responded, "THANK YOU!" 

We are taking these responses and comparing them to similar campaigns based on social causes so that we can fully understand what works. We believe marketing is a science of discovery and want to go away from the art of guessing. Our clients do not pay us to guess, so we make sure we focus on the processes needed to ensure we are not guessing; thus, this campaign is all about using what works and will work. 

We have designed the Keep Brazil Beautiful concept as an offering for other companies and you to see our brand as one that helps to replenish what it uses. How do we do this? We will operate as many non-profits do, raising money for a cause, but giving you something COOL in return; a comfortable, urban and professional looking shoe that shows YOU care. 

We are even going a step further than most companies by establishing a non-profit foundation that uses the shoes as on of its fundraising efforts for earth preservation. Our brand will connect with all those who have a heart for change and progress, but will also connect with those who want to feel good about the products they buy. These shoes are designed to be marketed around this concept of: Doing equals Caring. Keep Brazil Beautiful is about Being Beautiful. 

Come back Friday for more! 

Blessings,

Chris Teague

V.P. Marketing-WIN Firm

Product Integration Updates

Good day to everyone following us at WIN! If you are a first time reader of our blog, you will find that we are sharing all of our marketing strategies on various projects throughout the year. For all of you who have posted comments and given us insight into our current Brazil project, I would like to say, "Thank YOU!" Remember, anyone is welcome to share some advice you may have or comment (respectfully) about our project. Okay, it is off to the updates!

Phase I continued: Rewarding the consumer
I posted two questions today on one of my LinkedIn Groups and will pose those two questions to you as well, but want to briefly explain what we seek to accomplish by asking these questions. We are trying to evaluate the best methods of rewarding our consumers for purchasing the shoes we are marketing. For now, $15 of your purchase goes to our Keep Brazil Beautiful fund, which is part of our marketing campaign: Keep Brazil Beautiful. Therefore, we are focused on making sure that consumers are fully confident in the shoe's brand and its efforts to support the Rain Forest.

By understanding the most effective ways of demonstrating where actual dollars (the $15 donated) are going, we can build trust among consumers. Too many companies have fallen into the "Green" trend only to fall flat on their face by not practicing what they market. We are not a firm that believes in these tactics; therefore, we are studying the easiest way to demonstrate and build a brand of trust among our customers.

Here are the two questions we would like to have answered, so please comment:

1. What can the company do to provide you with proof of your donation after purchase?

2. What recognition would you like to receive for your purchase and donation?

That's it for me today everyone! Please answer these questions and throw in a few comments of your own. Again, we are open and WELCOME you to follow our marketing journies. Have a great day!

Blessings,
Chris

Chris Teague
V.P. Marketing- WIN Firm

Product Integration Part 2

Good Friday everyone! I wish all of those following WIN's work a wonderful Easter. Today has been an incredible day for us at WIN. We are all taking time to be with family, but we do have one brief conference call today before all work is finished for the weekend. Since our call is in about 10 minutes, this blog update will be brief, but complete. 

Let me start off by thanking our local business community, especially the World Trade Center and Regional Alliance of northeast Tennessee. For those of you new to our firm, our main office of operation is in Johnson City, TN, but we have production offices in Philadelphia, San Diego, Atlanta, Nashville and Chattanooga. Our strategy team actually transplanted here in northeast Tennessee from all over the country and world and are proud to live here! Okay, enough said about where we live; you came to see what we have been up to since Wednesday. 

Phase I continued:

We have received a lot of feedback for boxing/package designs for the shoes and will be exploring some of those in more detail than we have presently. We would like to thank Andrew Darlington from Heritage Insurance Group, Javier Soriano (independent) and J.R. Augustene (independent) for their input. 

We currently are working on developing the Keep Brazil Beautiful Campaign that consists of creating a way for consumers of our shoes to actually see where their money is going. People no longer trust a company being "green" merely because the company says they are. Therefore, we are developing a relationship with folks in Brazil to create a fund that supports the Rain Forest. 

To show you where your money is going, we are going to have funds sent every month from the shoe sales directly to the Keep Brazil Beautiful fund. As stated before, we are donating $15 from every sale to preserve the Rain Forest, but we want you to know where the money is going. We are developing a page on our site that posts all the names of people who purchased the shoes during a month and updates them on the campaign's growth. 

We will tally up all of the funds at the month's end and send the money over to Brazil. Each person who bought the shoes will receive a certificate of purchase and donation to the fund. We will authenticate the purchase even further by a check donation covered by U.S. and Brazilian media, so you will see your money going where we say it is going. 

This is all I have for you today due to my time constraints. Please check us out on Wednesday for more updates. As always, please comment if you have any suggestions. 

Happy Easter and Bless You! 

Chris Teague

V.P. Marketing

WIN Firm 

Product Integration in the U.S.

What a great week! WIN has been busy developing and learning how to integrate an international product into our lovely U.S. market. Let me be the first to say that this is an absolutely AWESOME project! Okay, that is enough of my chatter; let's move on to the work I talked about sharing with everyone who follows our blog. 

Phase 1 Marketing:

We have been working on developing customs relationships with ports in Charleston, SC to eventually bring the product over to the states. However, we are not physically importing the product in bulk until we have proven there is enough interest in our market to take on this task. Therefore, our initial phase of marketing will be to introduce the shoes using viral and guerilla marketing strategies. 

As with any marketing campaign, you need to know who you are talking to and what to say to them. This product is geared towards an urbanized audience that is interested in music like emo, rock, punk, goth and bluegrass. Yes, bluegrass listeners fit the mold. You will see why later. 

Our audience is prone to be proactive for causes they believe in and have proven they act on emotion. Recent examples of our audience's drive to make decisions based on passionate beliefs are an increase in green energy efforts, increases in Prius sales, decreases in fast food use, increases in organic products and the recently elected President Obama whose platform of CHANGE encouraged an entire country to move into a new direction. 

Knowing this information, we have created a campaign based on charitable giving. The first shoes we will introduce to the U.S. market will be a special edition shoe that supports the Rain Forest. Each consumer who buys the shoes will have $15 go to protecting the Rain Forest and keeping Brazil BEAUTIFUL. 

These shoes will be as "green" as possible. The boxing will be made out of eco-friendly material. Does anyone have any recommendations for the most eco-friendly boxing we could use? There will be a big THANK YOU for supporting Brazil's BEAUTY on the box, so that consumers know what they are wearing is HELPING. 

We are in the box design phase right now, so I am uncertain exactly what the box will look like, but you I will be posting some samples to this blog once we have decided on a few to sample. 

We are also in the process of developing several micro-sites to attract the urbanized market and developing a strong viral/guerilla campaign to drive people to these sites. We will be sending street marketers to various concerts, events and locations where our audience lives. 

I will end our blog with the information that has been provided today, but please check in with us on Friday to see what we have been up to. Remember, our doors are open! Being open means that we WELCOME comments and constructive ideas. 

Have a blessed day! 

"By focusing on the processes of life, we allow God to handle the results."-WIN's motto 

Smell

Good day to everyone following my blog! I hope that you are well and that all continues to go well for you throughout the day. Today's blog is the final component of "Playing on the Senses." Today, I will address the sense of smell and how it is used to engage us as consumers.

After today's blog I will be doing something that all of us at The WIN Firm feel is the best way to educate anyone interested in the inner-workings of a marketing campaign. We are going to share our strategies for various projects as we work on them. This is an open invitation into our world of marketing.

Why would we share our "secrets?" The answer we have is that those in marketing already know and understand these concepts, so they really are not secrets. Secondly, everyone is a marketer by the following definition: Managing perception. Lastly, we hope you become engaged in our activities and that you discover ways our strategies might help you come up with something even better than we are doing.

Our work is to serve our partnering clients, and the best way to do that is being open to new and old ideas that work. Therefore, I invite you to comment freely (please be polite) as you follow along on various campaigns.

Now that I have informed you on what is to come, it is time to move back to our topic for today, learning how our sense of smell impacts us.

Smell
Have you ever been walking outside and suddenly began recalling a particular time in your life? This recollection of time was not anything you were event thinking about as your walk started, but for some reason you are now drawn into a moment in time that has you thinking and feeling. How did this happen? There are several various causes for this to happen, but the one I want to focus on is our sense of smell.

Walking outside, you might have passed by a honeysuckle bush and the aroma of that bush immediately triggered a moment in your life when you smelled that same aroma. What you were feeling at an earlier point in life comes back to you, and suddenly, you feel a sense of dejavu. What feelings do you have after smelling a honeysuckle bush? Can this smell of honeysuckle perhaps be used to capture that feeling and turn it into an opportunity for a company to engage you?

Most of us have probably heard stories about various restaurants turning their exhausts outwards so that you smell what they are cooking as you pass by. I will even bet that most of you know the reason behind this strategy; to make you hungry! Restaurants do not have to really put too much effort into making things smell good, but they do need to make sure their smell makes you hungry. So, what does make you hungry? A grilled burger or steak? French fries? Whatever you are thinking of right now is what restaurants are thinking too.

Have you ever opened a magazine that had perfume samples to smell? Did you read the rest of the magazine? Could you tell me what magazine it was that had the sample if I let you smell the sample again? Think about it for a moment, and even try it to see if you can recall a particular magazine. I even welcome your comments on this little test.

The point I am making by suggesting a smell test is that their are ways we as marketers can use smells to evoke certain feelings from people. If you are a skeptical, please pass by your local mall and tell me what you think. I will bet what you think is somewhat influenced by a smell that has triggered neurons in your brain and sent them flying. Try it and see! Once you do, you will discover how smell can be used as a marketing strategy.






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