Two of the best ad campaign in my opinion are the AT&T LD Reach Out and Touch Someone ads from 1980s and the Coke I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing ads also from the 80s. Both were feel good ads. It was emotive.

Both Coke and AT&T left the audience with a feeling that became associated with their brand. There is no better branding than that. None.

Today, we have a lot of creative stuff, but very few that leave you with an emotion. One exception is the VW The Force ad by Deutsch that debuted at the Super Bowl.

A couple that come close: TalkTalk is trying with this commercial. Google Chrome did a good job of explaining WHAT you can do with Chrome and the Google Cloud without every mentioning it – which is a huge point! – in this ad. Your prospects and Customers do NOT care about the technology. They only care about what they can do with the tech.

Back to Coke for a minute. Coke did a social experiment in Portugal this year – read about it here. It had nothing to so with selling Coke. It was a human interest story. It was about emotion. I think that’s the key to branding. Feel good, Grab a Coke.

Connect with People, pick up the phone. Voice is better than text because text has no emotion.

Today is the episode 2 of Cranky Bastards Show with Antony Francis from Head of Lettuce Media; Joel Lopez of 2Z Consulting; and Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO INC.  In this episode, we discuss Social Media Monitoring.  Listening is more important than Talking. (Sales Lessons # 1: that’s why we have 2 ears and 1 mouth.)  The thing to remember about social media is that it is supposed to be SOCIAL! Engagement does not mean puking, poking and publicizing. Would you do that face-to-face? It’s a lost art, conversation. We discuss ways to monitor your reputation including Google Alerts, Tweetdeck, search, Radian6 and People Browser.

Cranky Bastards 2011 podcast episode # 3 [ 15:30 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

When designing a website for an event, there are 3 simple tips for improvements.

One: Answer the basics:  who, what, where, when, why. These are simple things, but many sites forget them. People only give you 8 seconds or so before they bounce off your website, the information they want – the basics – need to be easily seen or scanned.

Two:  Buy a ticket now. On every page. On the front page. Above the fold. Below the fold. (Call to Action).

Three:  Share this. In today’s social networking frenzy, allow people to share your event easily with a share this button.

People forget the basics as they work on  aesthetics and making it pretty. It’s more important that the website answer the simple questions: who, what, where, when and how do I buy a ticket.