Brick-and-mortar venues to sell your product(s) can’t go much beyond the traditional retail outlet or mall kiosk, right? Wrong! We can now buy clothes in airport malls, from trucks (think food trucks), and in our home via direct selling agents. Our options are growing. My new favorite is this… Victoria’s Secret is opening a store tonight inside the Dallas Cowboys’ new stadium alongside the other vendors. They are selling their typical under-wares, all themed out for Dallas Cowboy fans.

“Darlin, I am going to get two large beers and a medium bra, can I get you anything?” Brilliant. My guess is that this will be a huge success. What do you think?

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An open letter to DeMaurice Smith, Kevin Mawae and all National Football League Players Association Executive Committee Members:

Dear Sirs,

At a time when every one of your association’s members is unemployed, we applaud your intense efforts to get them back to work. Add to that trade negotiations, a new CBA and getting the ’11-’12 NFL season on track, and yours is an extraordinary situation indeed – particularly for trade association leadership.

As such, we understand completely if one of the primary reasons for the NFLPA’s certification as a trade association may not be receiving the attention it deserves: organizing conferences and conventions.

As one of the thousands of associations headquartered in Washington, DC, we’re sure the NFLPA understands the value of bringing like-minded individuals together, to share ideas, explore new products and innovations, and discuss industry trends.

But did you realize properly marketed conferences can generate a high percentage of an association’s operating budget? In fact, a large number of associations find between 50% and 75% of their annual operating budgets are derived from hosting conferences and conventions.

Profitable events put less pressure on raising revenue via member dues, and while your members are out of work, a break in their dues could help alleviate any of the financial hardships the lock out may be causing.

For nearly two decades, we’ve been experts in helping some of the country’s largest and most productive trade associations generate operating revenue through successfully marketed events. In fact, we’re the region’s only agency whose primary focus is the marketing of association conferences, events and conventions.

As Creative Director at Fixation, I’d like to offer our services to you. And in these tough times, with unemployment rates still hovering around record levels, I’d like to offer you our creative services free of charge until your members are gainfully employed once again.

Top trade associations and non-profits have relied on Fixation to achieve a diverse set of objectives that include: increasing tradeshow attendance, enhancing issue awareness, promoting special programs, boosting membership, raising funds and much more.

We can help the NFLPA, too. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if we can assist your trade association in any way possible.

Sincerely,

Mike Gallagher
Creative Director
Fixation Marketing
mike@fixation.com

As you may know Facebook is the world’s largest social network. Over 500 million users have joined and somehow they have all agreed to share information such as location, age, interest, and much more, without serious privacy concerns. Otherwise, they would have cancelled their accounts, right?

Facebook is taking advantage of all this data to make Facebook Ads a very powerful platform that allows for highly targeted advertising.

Facebook is often referred to as a personal network, a place where you communicate with friends and family. Many have questioned its business efficacy. However, more and more companies have joined Facebook and added Facebook Pages, Groups and Events. One can find all kinds of associations, organizations and groups. And many now are taking advantage of Facebook Ads.

The platform is very flexible, with the potential of being very powerful, and you can set your ads in a few minutes. A few things to keep in mind:

1. Creating an engaging ad is not that difficult. All you need is a graphic, title, body copy and URL
2. Choose your audience by targeting users based on their location, demographics, interest and other options. This is probably the most powerful part of Facebook Ads. You will be amazed at all the options you have to target a group of people that have joined Facebook pages and groups of competitors, media and associations that cater to your audience.
   
3. Create a schedule and budget for your campaign. You will be able to choose the time you want to run your ads and set a daily budget. You can also choose to pay per click (CPP) or pay per mille of views (CPM)
4. Facebook gives you access to analytics, make sure you analyze them and keep improving your ads to make them more effective

Give it a try by going to facebook.com/ads/create. Let us know if you need any help with the strategy, design or interactive efforts to add this to your marketing mix.

I am a sports guy. It’s just the way it is. In fact, in the marketing world, all too often I find myself in situations where it’s all I can do NOT to talk about sports – looking at logos all day, wondering about the latest and greatest sports team logos – but I guess not everybody is like me. However, there are those out there who do enjoy athletics as much as I do. Some even enjoy it more, but few of them enter my daily work routine. Which is why it was refreshing for me when the Washington Wizards recently revealed their new uniforms.

Really, I couldn’t care much less about the Wizards changing the way they look. If you ask me, I’d rather focus on how many wins the team gains throughout the season. However, to the credit of those involved, it did seem that the Capitals’ popularity grew after they changed their colors back to red and blue. Granted, a certain Alexander Ovechkin may have also had something to do with the popularity, but you can’t escape the fact that the Capitals were more pleasing to watch on a fundamental, eye-catching level, post color change.

So ultimately, when I saw the new Wizards uniforms, I was just glad that Ted Leonsis understood why this city would feel better about seeing their team in the right colors, but wasn’t super excited in any regard. What surprised me, was that I actually got to talk about it. Suddenly, sports commentators, casual fans, fashionistas, and marketing professionals alike all had something to say. For once, they entered my world (weird as it may be). Whether it was a comment on the multiple disorganized-but-still-intriguing small logos the Wizards have developed as a part of the new uniforms. Or if it was an overall statement from someone older than me on how they enjoy reminiscing about the days when Washington actually was a force to be reckoned with in the professional sports realm. Either way I was just excited to have the conversation.

In one quick turn of events, radio personalities became graphic designers. Graphic designers became sports talk-show hosts. Casual fans turned into… nope, they’re still bandwagoners. And I just sat in the middle, enjoying a special moment when I didn’t feel like a total nerd for spending my morning commute debating in my head whether or not I like the Redskins logo and colors.

When you stop and think about the amount of time and money this country invests in professional sports, it only makes sense that the marketing world would notice the change in style the Wizards have adopted. But at least I got to talk about it, meshing together my professional and casual life in a way that I always hoped could happen, but never really knew would.

Check out the Leonsis blog to hear from an owner who actually understands this city: www.tedstake.com.

I’ve been hearing a lot about QR Codes (the QR stands for Quick Response) and how to use them in event marketing. This is a definite trend for 2011 and there’s a slew of ways they can be used. Everywhere I go I feel like I see them now—on signs, in direct mail pieces, emails, print ads, consumer products, museum displays, etc. QR codes can be scanned by downloading a QR reader application to a smartphone. Once scanned, they automatically pull up text, photos, videos or URLs. I think there are a lot of ways that they can be applied for trade show marketing and promotions, depending on the audience. Most will need to be educated on what a QR code is, what application is needed for scanning them, and why you have them. That’s all relatively simple to explain.

QR codes can be added to an event marketing plan. I recommend using them to lead people to a landing page with a white paper, a promotion (e.g., discount), exclusive content, special video, biz card, chance to win an iPad, etc., so there’s a payoff for the person going through the trouble of scanning the QR code. Also, by making it an interactive experience, there are ways to measure the response. If you’re interested in learning about who’s scanning QR codes, what kinds of devices they’re using and what brands are running QR code campaigns, Mashable recently published a very cool infographic about QR codes. I’d love to hear about your experience with QR codes – good and bad. Scan the QR code to email your comments.