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.

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.

I like this new commercial from Subaru.

Subaru Baby Girl Driver

It reminds me of the long distance commercials from the mid-1980′s. Emotive.

Ma Bell’s Reach Out and Touch Someone

Or the Coca-Cola commercials from the 70′s

Coca-Cola Like to Teach the World to Sing
Coca-Cola Christmas ad from the 70′s

It is political ad time – now until November – and the ads all suck. Even the YouTube videos. It’s all about what the opponent did wrong. If only the People-in-Glass-Houses rule applied. Voters are scared to death. A couple of smart ads would be good to see. It likely would be one of the Differentiators.

If you are blogging, you have to do it regularly. So set a schedule and hit that 300-350 word quota.

Here’s what’s happening: the old forms of media are being displaced in our mobile, ADD, sound-byte world.

People can’t sit still to watch news on TV and reading a book, a magazine or a newspaper is for old timers.

What does this mean? That marketing is changing. FAST! It means that companies have to become a media company. I know. Relax. Breathe.

Social networks are a platform to do 2 things: communicate with your marketplace and tell your story.

Communication with the marketplace means that you get to listen in as people talk about your company, employees, services and your competitors! Social networks become a tool for Reputation Management. These applications also are a way to sell and respond. For example, Comcast uses twitter to fix problems one and a time.

The other side of the coin is that it’s easy to tell your story. What you don’t have a story?

Seth Godin asks What’s your Super Power?

Many ISP’s tell me that it’s about their employees, that they are local, that they answer the phone. Well, tell that story. Talk about your employees. Discuss customers and cases. People do business with people not companies. Social media let’s you make that connection to your marketplace.

Need help?

Social Media Strategy for Service Providers on Friday, June 04, 2010 from 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM (ET) – Register here.

Linkshare is presenting What Not to Do on Facebook for Business on Thursday May 27 at 2 PM. Register here.

What does that mean?

The idea of job security is ended. The responsibility for job security, income, benefits and retirement will be solely in the hands of the workers from now on.

Whether you intended to be a Freelancer or not, you will need to make decisions and embrace the path of a freelancer to find some success.

Register for the Lunch 2.0 talk on March 10 here.

Why blog?

A bunch of reasons including to demonstrate your subject matter expertise; for publicity (PR); to become a Trusted Advisor; for reputation; or to just be heard.

In general, you blog for marketing.

A side effect of blogging (and other social networking) is SEO (search engine optimization) – or at the very least, search engine results. If you create enough organic, genuine content around your subject or topic (or keyword), the search engines will ikely find it (eventually). The more content and the more frequent you create content, the better your search results. So blog often.

That idea can be a service, product, a goal or an actual idea.

It only spreads if it is worth talking about. To spread it, you have to tell a story. You only get to tell the story to people who are listening to you.

Who is actually listening to you? Why are they listening? What story are you telling them?

Seth Godin talks about ideas that spread at TED Talks.