I mustered up all of the patience I could find and placed my order, and then had to wait for nearly 45 minutes until my food finally made it to the table.

While I stewed in my frustration, trying to be gracious, I couldn’t resist the overwhelming urge to blast them on Facebook. As I waited for the waiter to bring  our food, I composed a Facebook post about my experience and of course mentioned my location.

After lunch, I checked my post and told my friends about the overall service. The experience didn’t improve all that much with the food. We all felt it was a bit overpriced. 2 hours after posting, I was e-mailed by the owner of the restaurant with an apology and a discount offer for my next visit.

­­­­­­ Social Media is a growing force, and with Facebook now allowing users to check-in, and tag their location; it is easy for almost anyone to see the information. In the case of businesses such as this restaurant, it is important to maintain your company image, and be sure your workers portray that image. You never know who might come through the door, and you never know what influence they might have.

Social Media has the power to grow brands, and it also has the power to make a brand lose its influence. A good example of a social media “fail” is McDonald’s #hashtag campaign. The fast-food powerhouse started a twitter campaign with the hashtag #McDStories, soon after the campaign started an immense amount of unsatisfied customers bashed McDonalds service and food.

One successful social media campaign from the past year was internship.com. The website took a risk by taking on a Hollywood star, Charlie Sheen, in the middle of his career meltdown. The ‘site looked to hire a #TigerBloodIntern to work a social media strategy for Charlie Sheen. Intenships.com saw an opportunity which most would have simply ignored and instead turned it into a #winning campaign.

Social media advisory; know the voice of your brand and have digital brand guardian tools ready. A bad customer experience can be turned into a positive with a courteous and timely response.

They use social media and get their news online among other modern day trappings traditionally eschewed by this demographic. They are the “hippest” maw-maws and paw-paws to date!

So, what are some of the hottest categories for 2012, in terms of products and services that this large segment of the population will need? Health care marketing and health insurance marketing most assuredly top the list.  Respected institutions like The University of Texas Health Science Center are publishing quality online articles, chock full of useful information, all the while showcasing their physicians and what makes them excellent.  They are strategically guiding readers into what they want them to read. (The only thing missing is video) Using video images improves search and offers a quicker way for potential patients or donors to connect their brand. Remember, the “Boomers” are also the first TV generation.

So, in short, content is king when it comes to the web and your brand’s presence popping up in search engines among the competition.  The challenge is; just where do we get all this content? How do we sell it into a marketing budget spreadsheet as a justified line item? How can we build an ROI  (Return On Investment) model on content marketing?

In addition to traditional media buying, a Pandora’s box of content marketing has been opened by big brands and small business alike.  We keep hearing; we must engage them with helpful or interesting information.  Sounds great, and relatively simple, as long as you can professionally and articulately create such content on a regular basis or procure it at a reasonable cost. The pot of gold for really good content marketers may just be found in the webinar arena; where people pay for the information you’ve got online.

Content, content and more content that is owned by your company can lead to increased efficiency of your traditional advertising spend. Just be sure that what you have to say is worth hearing, helpful and comes from your strength.

There are endless examples on how to build long-term engagements with your target market and denote brand equity, but what’s the point of doing so if at the end of the day, you’re not driving sales? At the risk of raising the ire of Madison Avenue brand elitist, driving sales should be the focus of every dollar spent. That does not mean, we should abandon good creativity on how we communicate our client’s message or relegate high TV production values to branding only.

However, the message should always generate a response, and the brand equity can be built with frequency of well-purchased media space consistently and cost efficiently over time.

It’s all about the business.  Successful companies exist on a few basic principles. First and foremost, they must have happy and loyal customers. Every month, they can pay their bills and have enough left over to keep their employees and the people at the top well fed.  Though it seems pedestrian to most of us that sales are what matter to everyone in a company; it’s a fundamental principle of sound marketing that seems elusively absent in all of the “guru speak” about social media, and the next new frontier in advertising. We cannot underestimate the effect “being in the conversation” can have on conversions of sales. It is a safe assumption for any campaign to be deemed successful it must deliver the intended results.

Try These Tips for Clearing your Budgets:

• Targetable National & Regional Cable Rotator Packages

These packages are available for TV media buying in the periods of politically engulfed air time, and can be quite easy to place.

• Analyze, Analyze, Analyze

If you scrutinize the networks and times you have aired on before, and find which part of the day offers you the best response and lowest cost per lead, then you can hone down that sweet spot. You can research what your target audience may be watching when they saw the ad, and see if you can find it elsewhere i.e. Desperate Housewives on ABC or The Kardashian’s on cable- there is a lot of audience duplication and you get better value on cable.

• Book Air Time in Advance

If it is a show like “Jeopardy,” that you know will air at the same time, it would benefit you or your client to book the TV air time for that time slot in advance for the upcoming quarters.  If you get most of your responses from seasonal shows you can buy program specific, the rate may be a tad higher than a broad day-part rotator, but you will get the response you are looking for, and that little bit extra that was paid, will pay for itself in responses.

These above tips can help media minds survive the rigors of buying TV air time when there is not much to buy, because of the political season.  These tips could keep media professionals sane and clients satisfied with the results, rather than croaking over paying for high dollar spot times.  Political season is hard on all of us, consumers and media professionals alike, even though we place quite a bit of political media here at Cohn Moscarelli; we still suffer the same TV buying time, jigsaw puzzle every two years.

In this, my maiden voyage into a weekly blog citing those people who’ve made an impact on the world around them (Game Changers), I begin with the story of Sister Helem Gay, (a non-denominational Christian modern day missionary) founder of The Mission of Yahweh, shelter for homeless women and children. It begins on the mean streets around Lyons Avenue in Northeast Houston, also known as Houston’s 5^th Ward.  Sister Helem, loaded up her pick up truck with clothes and food, grabbed her faithful prayer partner, and began to reach out to prostitutes, drug dealers and anyone else they could touch. In 1961 her courage, faith and personal strength led her to found, with her husband, The Mission of Yahweh, shelter for homeless women and children, and later adopt some twenty-six children. The Missions is still located in the heart of Carverdale, once deemed Houston’s toughest neighborhood.

To get her community’s help, Sister Gay would drive her truck through the upscale areas seeking donations. Soon, many churches and families lent their support to Sister Gay and her vision. In 1971, a group of churches met and organized a Board of Directors and the corporate structure to support her work. Today, the Mission Campus consists of 11 buildings and houses, and up to 85 women and children. Sister Gay’s vision continues to drive The Mission’s mandate to enrich the lives of homeless women and children.

Although Sister Gay passed away in 2008, The Mission of Yahweh and the legacy she left behind continues to make an impact. The selflessness of one beautiful soul has made a huge impact on me personally as the writer and producer of her story. Thank you Sister Gay, for in my heart the game will forever be changed by your love.

Sister Gay – Mission of Yahweh

They are cropping up everywhere! Those little codes, you’re supposed to scan with your smart phone (after you’ve downloaded the app) that leads you to a website or a coupon or the next step of a treasure hunt.  Let’s face it; most consumers in the higher income earning brackets don’t give a hoot about taking the time to scan one of those cryptic looking bar codes in the corner of the advertisement, and most recently appearing on your favorite news reports.

These codes have become obnoxiously present on advertising, in the corner of print ads, billboards (now that’s a driving hazard), buses and pieces of direct mail, and who knows what next.  These code make advertisements look disjointed with an ugly scan code.  There is really no way to make it work with a piece of persuasion art.  However, the technology for QR Codes wasn’t developed for advertising. Can you say, “novelty over function”?

Unless, we in the advertising world can come up with a creative way to use these things for conversions or persuasion, then they may just go the way of the Pterodactyl. A recent blog by Sean X. Cummings, a longtime digital marketing guru, for such major brands as Nike and American Airlines, cited an informal experiment he conducted on the tech savvy streets of San Francisco. He basically held up a sign with a QR Code on it that said; “ free gift if you can tell me what this says.”  After 300 people passed him, only 11% bothered to scan the code with their smart phone QR Reader application and collect their gift.

The moral of the story is; should advertising really be cryptic? Should we make our target market work so darned hard to get our message? Can we really expect out target consumers to take that kind of time to retrieve advertisers messages? I doubt it.

In today’s world of TV overload, Americans now get their “boob tube” fix in a variety of ways while at home. This changes the TV advertiser landscape as consumers increasingly view shows through time-shifted recordings, mobile apps, online players and internet-connected TVs.

Interestingly enough, recent Nielsen reports revealed the majority of TV viewership is still done in the home. That daily American addiction is still gobbling up, on average four to five hours, each day from our households. It is our rite of relaxation, when viewers worldwide can worship at the altar of pop culture, news, and infomercials and more and just numb out. Viewers now have more options and can watch their favorite shows whenever they feel like it. This is keeping overall at home viewership numbers up. What has changed dramatically, is that viewers are more engaged with their programs. Nielsen recently reported, “42 percent of tablet and smartphone users visit sites like Facebook and Twitter while sitting in front of the telly.”

Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live,”  exemplifies this new trend of direct digital audience interaction for non-teenage demos. Andy Cohen, father of the Real Housewives shows, and host  of “Watch What Happens Live”, where the networks reality shows are re-capped for the week by their stars or B-list celebrities , now takes 75% of the in-show audience questions from tweets. Viewers  who want more, can get more of the inside scoops, and have more to gossip about. This engages the audience, and makes them feel like they’re part of the action. Recurring guest Jay Mohr, a comedian, blogs about each episode, and engages on-line ,the very same viewers who watch “Real Housewives of OC/NYC/ATL.” Crazy reality TV stars like Teresa Giudice, from Real Housewives of New Jersey, duke it out with Caroline Manzo.

It is all irrelevant, mind numbing drivel, which we women and our gay male friends, can’t wait to talk about over the water cooler, tweet or post online just what we think about it. This is the new frontier for direct response television, by which social media integrates viewers into the conversation in real time on live national television. Owners of smart phones and tablets are known for sitting in front of the tube and surfing the web, either interacting with the cast of their favorite show or checking their email during commercials. The real question now for advertisers is how to convert those viewers who’ve been recycled into followers and friends into paying customers. Just how we harness all of that interaction into sales is continually evolving.

HBJ 2011 Houston Fast 100 company finalists unveiled

Houston Business Journal
Date: Friday, August 26, 2011, 6:32am CDT – Last Modified: Tuesday, September 13, 2011, 2:55pm CDT

The Houston Business Journal has unveiled the finalists for the 2011 Houston Fast 100 awards to be handed out on Sept. 23. Despite the economic downturn, many Houston-area companies were able to survive, even thrive, in the past few years.

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The Houston Business Journal has compiled its annual list of the fastest-growing private companies based in the region, and ranked them by percentage of revenue growth from 2007 to 2009.

Click here to visit the microsite dedicated to the Fast 100 companies.

To be eligible for the award, companies must be for-profit, nonfranchise operations headquartered in the 10-county Houston metropolitan area and at least five years old.

Companies earning a spot on the list also were eligible to enter a second award process to be named a 2011 Enterprise Champion.

Those companies wishing to be considered for the Enterprise Champion award were required to provide additional information detailing how the company stands out in the areas of community service, innovation, corporate culture and overcoming challenges.

A judging panel last week interviewed leaders of 10 finalist companies to select five champions.

The Houston Fast 100 ranking, as well as the 2011 Enterprise Champions, will be revealed in a special HBJ publication Sept. 23 and at an awards luncheon the same day at the Hilton Americas–Houston Hotel.

For more information and to register for the awards luncheon, follow this link.