Lip-Sticking

Stop The Makeover Madness!

There are so many wardrobe styling and fashion experts on TV telling you, complete strangers, what to wear that you don’t really need my advice anymore. Or, do you?

Do you know that when the wardrobe styling personalities on TV make their recommendations as to what the must haves are for the season, they typically are representing the stores that carry the merchandise they are plugging? Their job is to stimulate sales and not to make sure that you are wearing clothes which show off your best features, and hide the ones you like the least.

Just think back to whenever you might have seen the Ambush Makeover segment on the fourth hour of The Today Show with Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb. Women anxiously wait outside for hours, hoping to be chosen for a clothes, hair and makeup makeover. They show up in sweat pants or mom jeans, and walk out with a great hair style and makeup, wobbling in high heels often wearing a cocktail dress.

Many times they cannot see how they look in the mirror until they put their eye-glasses back on, while struggling to walk in shoes that throw them off balance or possibly cause them nose bleeds due to their footwear imposed high altitudes.

Now I love the new makeup and hairstyles the Ambush Makeover candidates receive, but I am not impressed with their wardrobe makeovers. Why not style these makeover winners in clothes that they can use for their real world lives? Perhaps pants that can be dressed up or down along with shoes that are comfortable yet good looking? By the way, those type of shoes do exist and I always get a thrill out of the reaction of women when they try them on for the first time.

Recently I was watching a fashion segment on the CBS show, The Talk. I was so aghast at how most of the hosts were styled, that my daughter sneakily took a photo of me. The look of horror on my face was hysterical and gave us a great laugh, but ake a look at the video and see if you agree with me.

These  before and afters makeovers are of a few of my clients, and notice how not only do they look younger, thinner and taller but also confident, successful and professional.

 

 

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Are you ready for Super Bowl XVLII? The marketing hype has begun.

By Guest Blogger, Donna DeClemente, Donna's Promo Talk

It's January and that means were now in the playoffs of the NFL season and looking forward to Super Bowl XVLII which is scheduled to be played on February 3rd at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, home of the Saints. The game will be broadcast by CBS which has been charging a record high of $3.7-$3.8 million for each 30-second ad. Some of the big brands have already started rolling out their marketing campaigns. To help get the most for their money they again are including sweepstakes and contest promotions. Here's a look a couple of them.

Pepsi has teamed up with Beyoncé who has been chosen as the top performer for the Super Bowl halftime show. The Pepsi Super Bowl XLVII Halftime Show Promotion launched on December 29th and invites participants to enter by uploading images of themselves in a series of specific poses that may be used in the on-air intro video as Beyonce takes to the field. Each day, up until January 19, participants can upload up to 50 photos that follow the "Assignment of the Day"to this mobile-optimized website. The Pepsi Photo Gallery is already full of photos of people jumping in the air, tapping their feet, shouting, bopping their head, and more! Here's the promo video:

Dipping Your Toe in the Tank with the Sharks

by Yvonne DiVita

Anyone out there watch Shark Tank? Tom and I love it! If you're an entrepreneur, every show is a learning experience. Of course, it's a tiny smidgeon of education - you won't learn much about preparing a pitch for investors by watching Shark Tank. But, you will learn how NOT to prepare a pitch.

One thing that always surprises me is how many of the 'contestants' - yes, I think of it as a game show - aren't prepared with the most basic information about their company or their industry. They're desperate, they're eager, they're excited, I could go on and on, but... too often they're not prepared. I've cringed while some folks stumbled over the, "How many have you sold?" question, trying to think of a way of inflating their numbers. You don't want to say, "We sold 200 in the last year," cause you know 200 isn't going to cut it. But, if that's all you sold... you have to say it, don't you?

Chobani Yogurt is Naturally Powering Team USA

By Guest Blogger Donna DeClemente, Donna's Promo Talk

So have you been following the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London? How can you not! There are the live streams of all the events, numerous articles and stories, athlete interviews, tweets, Facebook posts, YouTube videos, mobile apps and of course the prime time tapped broadcasts of the events on NBC. This year's Olympics have had their share of controversy already for sure. The biggest being the fact that NBC showed a tapped delay of the Opening Ceremonies and we had to wait till midnight Eastern time to see Sir Paul close the show.

I am in agreement that in today's social media global world, especially with Twitter, that we shouldn't be expected to wait patiently for NBC to show us taped coverage just so they can get the bigger advertising bucks! I realize that they pay an enormous fee to broadcast the games, but why not provide us both? At least they could have started showing the Opening Ceremonies during the Nightly News broadcast at 6:30 ET, instead of waiting till 8 pm! Oh well, it's history now. The excitement of seeing the athletes win their medals after a lifetime of their hard work is worth it all.

I've been writing about some of the major Olympic Sponsors in my past posts (here, here and here), but besides the Official Sponsors of the Olympic Games, there are numerous sponsors of Team USA. One of them is Chobani, the now number #1 selling Greek Yogurt in the U.S. and Canada. Their recent success has enabled them to be a first-time sponsor, the Official Yogurt of Team USA. They are a Greek yogurt brand founded by a Turkish immigrant, Hamdi Ulukaya, who turned out to be an American entrepreneurial success story. But most importantly to us in Western New York State, they opened their U.S. headquarters not far from Rochester in a town called New Berlin and now have 1,200 plus employees.

Chobani's Olympic marketing campaign, “Proudly With You” created by Leo Burnett New York, tells the story of how the cooperative efforts of employees, farmers and the local community enabled Chobani’s rapid success. A main component of the campaign is the TV spot which shows the Chobani community coming together to build a giant outdoor LED screen to watch the Olympics at a farm in central New York near their headquarters, interspersed with action shots of the six Olympic and Paralympic athletes being sponsored by the brand. Watch it here.

The spot first aired during the Olympic Opening Ceremony and Chobani hosted a viewing party for their employees, farmers and local residents.

Chobani's Facebook page serves as a hub featuring the #chobanipowered app that features numerous videos including behind the scene shots of creating the TV spot as well as interviews with the sponsored athletes. The page also includes an interactive mosaic showcasing Chobani fans’ own Facebook, Twitter and Instagram submissions, using the hashtag #chobanipowered. Chobani invites fans to "Share how YOU'RE #chobanipowered and win an official Team Chobani pin!". The Facebook page also currently features a Sweepstakes for a chance to win one of 20 cases of their blended flavors yogurt.

Today is Day 5 of the games. It will be hard to top yesterday's gold medal win by the USA girls gymnastics team. Congrats to the "Fabulous Five".

It’s now been sixteen years since the “Magnificent Seven” made history by becoming America’s first women’s team to win the Gold back in the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. I was working with Kodak at the time who was a major Olympic Sponsor and who also sponsored the individual teams that year. We developed account specific promotions for much of Kodak's customers. The drug chain known as Revco at the time was given the Women's Gymnastics Team. We created a special poster that featured Shannon Miller, Dominique Dawes and Dominique Moceanu that was given as a free premium with purchase of specially marked Kodak film packages. I still have a copy stored in my attic someplace.

Oh, now I got myself started about Kodak. How much as changed! Wonder who will be sponsoring the Games and the teams 16 years from now in the year 2028? These games will feature unknown athletes that are just little kids today. And who will be the host country? Anyone want to take a guess? Go Team USA!

Countdown to London 2012 - There's an app for that!

By Guest Blogger Donna DeClemente, Donna's Promo Talk

The Opening Ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London is now only 8 days, 15 hours and 25 minutes away. I know this exact time as of 8:35 EDT today because there's an app for that! In fact, there are many apps for the this year's Summer Olympic games which some are calling the "Socialympics".

I am getting excited and there will be many opportunities to view the events and get engaged with a two-screen viewing method. So I thought the Olympics were a good enough reason to finally go out and purchase an iPad, which I did this past weekend. I've been talking about it for months, so now I am fully ready to experience the games as socially as possible. Still working on downloading all the apps though!

As you probably know NBC (NBCOlympics.com) is the official broadcast partner of the Olympic Committee and has committed to be up to 2020. NBC announced recently that they were partnering up with Facebook. Starting on July 27 the plan is that NBC will feature data from Facebook and Facebook will feature exclusive content on NBC’s Olympic pages. Supposedly their was no money exchanged in this, but since NBC has to pay an enormous about to cover the games, sounds like Facebook got the better deal here.

So I started out on Facebook which they have their own Olympic Games Page with 2.9 million Likes. I then found the Countdown to London app on the NBC Olympics Facebook Page. This photo is featured there today which provides a link to NBC's Olympics Tumbler page which invites people to upload their own photos that "show your Olympic pride". The Facebook page promoted a sweepstakes back in June that was sponsored by BMWUSA, to win a trip to the Closing Ceremonies. There are many great photos of athletes here as well as trivia games and interesting stories about them. I saw this photo and just couldn't resist sharing it.

There are over 1,000 athletes participating in the Olympic Athletes’ Hub this year where you can connect with them in real-time chats, get updates about them and participate in the Hub community to earn points and badges. Users can sign-in using their Facebook or Twitter log-ins to make it easy.

I wrote this post earlier about Visa, one of the Games worldwide sponsors, and their Global Cheer Olympic promotion. One of the other Worldwide sponsors, Coca-Cola, has also launched a major promotion to tie-in with the Games. Coca-Cola has combined its music and Olympics history and created the Move to the Beat App is which invites fans to create their own ‘Olympic beat’. It is accessible from the Coca-Cola Facebook page and analyses a person's social activity to create the ‘sound of you.’ It analyzed mine which is shown in the graph below which ended up creating "My Beat" which I invite you to check out.

Some of the other sponsors are doing some pretty cool campaigns this year as well. So check in next week as I continue my coverage of this year's Socialympics. As of the end of my post we now have 8 days, 13 hours, 33 minutes and counting!

And the Winners are.... Super Bowl XLVI Wrap-Up

By Guest Blogger, Donna DeClemente, Donna's Promo Talk

Who came out winners from Super Bowl XLVI? Obviously as we all know now, the New York Giants beat the New England Patriots in what was a come-from-behind, great game. The Giants got to parade down Broadway in New York City yesterday to celebrate with their fans. Yes, the fans and New York are all winners here as well. Plus of course we have Eli Manning, the MVP of the game, who now has two Super Bowl rings, one more than his brother Payton as the media was sure to bring up several times.

In the 6th annual Doritos Crash the Super Bowl Contest the two ads that were chosen from the 5 finalists to broadcast during the game were both winners. However, the Sling Baby ad has now been picked as the winner in the USA TODAY/Facebook Super Bowl Ad Meter. Online voting, began after each ad aired during Sunday night's broadcast and ended at 6 pm on Tuesday. Viewers picked from 55 commercials on which advertisers spent up to a record $3.5 million for each 30-second slot. Kevin Willson submitted the ad of the grandmother and baby who snatched a bag of Doritos and he will now receive a million dollars and a consulting contract with The Lonely Island. The other Doritos ad that was broadcast during the game, Man's Best Friend, came in #6.

Who, other than the Giants or Patriots, will come out winners from Super Bowl XLVI?

 By Guest Blogger, Donna DeClemente, Donna's Promo Talk

This Sunday I will be one of the millions watching Super Bowl XLV1 and hoping for a good game, which it should be. As I've stated in my posts over the past couple of weeks, I'm behind the New York Giants all the way and would love to see Eli Manning get another super bowl win, especially while in his brother Peyton's home stadium. I'm sure Peyton will be there also, just not on the field this year.

I'm also hoping to see some real social media integration with the advertising campaigns that we see. If the advertisers are paying an average of $3.5 million for a spot, you would think they would try and get the most bang for their bucks. Last year I called it the "Social Super Bowl" and was disappointed with the overall advertising experience. Other than posting ads on social media, the brands did very little to really engage people and integrate social media into their strategies.

Other than the Giants beating the Patriots, who else is going to come out a winner? Last year the Volkswagen Darth Vader ad scored the highest in the USA Ad Meter for best liked ad. (What was not to like?) Volkswagen utilized social media to post the ad on their blog, on YouTube and their Facebook page five days before the game and it had 13 million views before kickoff. Sine then the ad as gotten numerous awards and nearly 50 million views on YouTube.

This year Volkswagen has already launched The Bark Side, a teaser video featuring a chorus of dogs barking The Imperial March. If you haven't seen it yet, here it is. I love it and think it's brilliant (especially since I'm a sucker for doggies!). It currently has over 10 million views on YouTube. If you click through to YouTube you will also be given the opportunity to view their new game time ad called "The Dog Strikes Back".

Chevy's got a Super Bowl App and a big Game Time Sweepstakes

By Guest Blogger, Donna DeClemente, Donna's Promo Talk

For anyone that is a true football fan, last Sunday was by far one of the most exciting NFL conference championship game days you can have. Yes, it will take a while for Raven fans to get over the missed chip-shot field goal and the 49er's to wonder what if they didn't turn over the ball in overtime. We're now moving on to Super Bowl XLVI with a big rematch between the Patriots and the Giants. As I said in my last post, I'm betting on Eli Manning and the New York Giants to be this year's champions.

The Super Bowl has now become the most active topic of the millions of us who write blogs posts and updates on Facebook, Twitter and now, Google+. In 2011, the only Facebook status update topic in the world, amongst 800 million users at the time that beat out the Packers winning Super Bowl 45 was the death of Osama bin Laden. Since many of these tweets and Facebook updates come via a mobile phone, this year General Motors and Chevrolet is adding mobile to their mix to capitalize off this.

Getting Ready for Super Bowl XLVI and those silly Doritos Contest Ads

By Guest Blogger, Donna DeClemente, Donna's Promo Talk

It's that time of year again to be writing about one of the biggest marketing events of the year. Super Bowl XLVI will be played on February 5 in Indianapolis at Lucas Oil Stadium. Now that the Green Bay Packers and the New Orleans Saints have been eliminated, what teams do you think will win? I'm going with Eli Manning and the Giants. Here's a great article I read yesterday from the WSJ titled "Why Giants Really Could Win It All".

So the next question will be what marketing and advertising campaign will come out a winner? The team at Doritos is at it again with their sixth "Crash The Super Bowl" contest. This contest has become the grandfather of all user-generated contests. The contest finalists have now been posted and last week their submissions surged to the top of the viral video chart after generating over 1.7 million views. This year's contest received more than 6,100 entries from people hoping their video will become one of two Super Bowl ads to be televised during the game, with a possible $1 million prize if viewers rate their ad highly enough.

High Stake Sweepers, new reality TV show, coming to TLC

By Guest Blogger, Donna DeClemente, Donna's Promo Talk

Some of you may be familiar with the TLC network's show, Extreme Couponing, which they say has become very popular. It features everyday people who save hundreds of dollars in a single trip to the store. While I'm sure we've all clipped some coupons in our days, these people are the ultimate bargain shoppers who have mastered the art of saving!

TLC hopes they have found the next similar fun show and will be introducing viewers to the most passionate sweepstakes participants on the planet. HIGH STAKES SWEEPERS, their new one-hour pilot, will be premiering August 14th at 10 pm.

My friend, Carolyn Wilman, aka the "Contest Queen", is one of the five "sweepers" who is featured in the pilot. I met Carolyn several years ago, a fellow blogger who writes the blog "From the Contest Queen", who contacted me after reading my blog. She sent me a copy of her recently published book, You Can't Win if You Don't Enter, which focuses on teaching people on how they can win and also guides companies on how to create and manage better sweepstakes. Carolyn featured me as her first guest speaker on her Blog Talk Radio show The Contest Queen...all things sweepstaking, contesting, lucky and fun, back in April of 2008.

Since I am on the marketing side of assisting brands and companies with launching sweepstakes and contests, I never liked these "Sweepers" as they call them. These are the people that enter hundreds of thousands of promotions and don't appear to have any loyalty or interest in the brand. They use software programs that automatically fill in their personal info online and they set up separate email addresses just for entering sweepstakes. I can spot a sweeper many times when looking at the entries  just from their email address.