Marketing | No Limit

Bravo Heinz. Whoever engineered the design of your new Dip & Squeeze, give them a pat on the back and perhaps a giant raise. That’s called simple innovation.

In fact, your ability to simply innovate will lead to brand successes all over the country. Chick-Fil-A obviously loved the idea – so much that they are marketing the hell out of it. Other brands are following as well.

Yesterday, we launched our new “What We Would Do” series. Fortunately for you, Heinz Ketchup, you would be nowhere to be found (well, except for responding and interacting more, but don’t worry – every brand has that issue). You are using Social Media correctly, with intriguing, powerful content found on your YouTube enriched App page. You, Heinz Ketchup, are doing a great job.

Innovation in a packet should be a great tool for brands to market, but most don’t. You, the consumer and business reader, always see new product/menu launches in the press – but rarely do you see a brand tout its supplier’s genius. Chick-Fil-A knows better, as do a few select others. Marketers, don’t overlook the opportunity to promote the brains of those who support your brand. Whether played with in the Social world or advertising or PR, there are great opportunities behind great ideas like this.

Stay thirsty my friends.

A blog post by:

Nick Powills
Nick is the CEO of No Limit and will be teaming up with Jessi Ford to crush the competition in No Limit’s dart league.

The highly anticipated movie, The Social Network, opened to rave reviews a couple weeks ago. This is the movie about the founders of Facebook and a behind-the-scenes look at how Facebook got its start. It’s tagline is “You Don’t Get to 500 Million Friends Without Making a Few Enemies.”

I eagerly went to the 7:35 showing last night to experience the hype for myself. I can be somewhat critical of supposed “rave reviews” but to my delight, this one really lived up to its publicity. I would go so far as to say it is one of the best, if not the best movie of the year.

The subplot of the movie depicts just how influential social networking is. In a matter of just minutes, Mark Zuckerberg, the creator, sent out an email to an exclusive list of less than 50 people. Only hours after he sent his email, thousands were already plugged in. The “friends” became the influencers and connectors to add more people to the network. This exact point is why social networking is perhaps the best marketing tool available today. Anyone on Facebook is a connector because it is so easy and immediate to spread the message.

An interesting question was raised during the movie: had Facebook gotten advertisers too early on, would it have been as successful as it is today? Would it have lost its “cool factor” if advertisers had infiltrated the site too early? The movie suggests yes and I would agree. These social networking sites are created as a way to create, and maintain personal relationships. With the addition of advertisers, the sites become less personal and lose that “x” factor. Facebook got its financial support from angel investors and only later did they use advertisers to help raise revenue when it had already gone viral and people became addicted to the site. But, advertising is a bit different on Facebook. It’s not your just typical pop up ad. It’s company-sponsored applications to allow their users to do something; it’s an ad that generates support for itself by having people “like it”. Mostly it’s interactive and engaging.

The bottom line here is that Facebook and social networking have changed the way that people communicate and like to be communicated to, and its connected the world. More than 70 translations are available on Facebook and 70% of Facebook users are outside of the US.

If you haven’t seen The Social Network, I highly recommend seeing it. It will show you just how influential Facebook is and rise some questions to keep you wondering for days.

A Blog Post By: Kristen Healey (@kristenhealey)

Kristen is an Account Manager at No Limit. She enjoys traveling and aspires to be a salsa dancer.