Bite-Size Content Marketing

This holiday season Dove chocolate is proving that content marketing can come in small packages—in bite-size packages even. 

The company teamed up with Martha Stewart to add a special edition to its Dove Promises line of chocolates. (The line typically includes inspirational messages—think along the lines of feel-good fortune cookies—imprinted inside each wrapper.)

With the holiday line, Dove is building brand awareness and playing off Stewart’s reputation as a creative entertainer, offering tips from Stewart inside each candy’s wrapper. Targeting its female customers, the wrappers offer tips in three categories—chocolate gourmet, holiday treats, and seasonal crafts.

The brand’s homepage reinforces the marketing efforts. A Flash piece shows examples of expanded tips with photos of the finished product. One wrapper suggests using a vegetable peeler to make a garnish of chocolate curls. Another says, “Cut marshmallows into seasonal shapes to serve in hot cocoa.”

If site visitors find the tips useful, they can e-mail them to friends with a quick, simple form. It’s a win-win situation—Dove gets its product in front of more people, and customers get helpful information.

If the company wanted to step this up a notch, it could allow people to share the brief tips through popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. On its site and on YouTube, Dove could also incorporate videos of Stewart demonstrating the tips. READ MORE

The Clash of the Titans: When Content and Design Collide

Have you ever ran across a marketing piece and been completely confused? The headline reads “Live Life in the Fast Lane,” but the piece is done in a feminine color scheme. You see splashes of pink and purple throughout the piece, and the corners are rounded. You can’t help but be perplexed by the feminine design elements.

You re-read the ad over and over, thinking this has to be some kind of joke. You’re left wondering how this piece could have missed the mark by so much.

This is what happens when content and design clash. When this contradiction happens, the outcome is disastrous. It makes the design become a never-ending maze, hiding the content behind an endless series of dead ends and pitfalls.
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Shakespeare’s Blogging Advice

We all know that William Shakespeare knew plays and sonnets. He knew tragedies, comedies, and even tragicomedies. He had iambic pentameter down pat. But did the celebrated bard know blogs?

Look beyond the facts that he was writing in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and blogs (or the Internet, for that matter) didn’t come around for nearly another 400 years. If you read his works, you can glean sage blogging advice from Shakespeare. Don’t believe me? Check out these six quotes from his characters.

“All that glisters is not gold”

As the Prince of Morocco learns in The Merchant of Venice, just because something has all the bells and whistles, a quality product doesn’t necessarily lie behind its exterior. “Gilded tombs do worms enfold,” and sometimes fancy blogs have nothing told.

In other words, don’t just worry about the appearance of your blog. Yes, you (and your readers) want your blog to look good, but you have to back it up with valuable content.

“How poor are they that have not patience”

Whatever goals you have for your blog (you have those, right?), you can’t expect to achieve them overnight. You must have patience and persistence. READ MORE