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Click the link above for our Google+ page and join our circle for important industry and company news.
Follow us on Instagram @marketingkeys to keep up with what exciting things are happening around our office and the city of Chicago.
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Madness plays here!
Chicagoland Hooters - now with (11) Chicagoland locations- will be sponsoring Comcast's coverage of the March Madness NCAA Basketball coverage. Make Hooters your official watch party for all the madness! Here is the schedule:
Selection Sunday
March 16
First Round:
March 18-19
Second & Third Rounds:
March 20, 21, 22 & 23
Regional Championships:
March 27, 28, 29, 30
Final 4:
April 5
Championship Game:
April 7
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| THE HOME SHOWS: MARCH Home & Landscape Expos |  |
March 15 & 16 St. Charles, IL @ Kane County Fair
March 29 & 30 Glen Ellyn, IL @ Glenbard South High
In any of the Chicago Home Shows, you'll find good advice from experienced, local firms who can help you with your remodeling, renovation, and repair projects.
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Home Front's final hurrah!
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Hurry while you can! The Newberry Library's "Home Front" exhibition will be ending on March 24th, 2014 - making it one of the longest running exhibits in the acclaimed establishment's 126-year history.
Highlights of the exhibition include stunning paintings by Winslow Homer, Frederic E. Church, and other American artists of the period; first editions by Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Louisa May Alcott; sheet music from Chicago-based music publishers Root and Cady; and magazine illustrations that depict the changing roles of women and children who supported the war effort. "Home Front" also features a companion digital exhibition.
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Do You "Loom"?!
Need a great idea
to keep kids busy while having fun over spring break? Do you loom? Head to Allstate Arena on Sunday, March 23, at noon for the inaugural Rainbow Loom Expo hosted by the Chicago Wolves and Learning Express Toys!
Admission to Expo is FREE with the purchase of a March 23rd Wolves game ticket.
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Visit more than 25 interactive Rainbow Loom Booths!
12 to 2 p.m.
-Meet the inventor of Rainbow
Loom - Choon Ng
- New Rainbow Loom Merchandise
-Latest Loom news
-Ask an Expert
-Show off your best bracelet
-New techniques
-Video tutorials on the jumbotron
-Learn how to attach a charm
-Evolution of the Loom
-Trading Station
-First 2,500 kids 15 & under receive a FREE "Skates" Charm
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KEY REFERRAL!
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Do you know a Business Owner or Marketing Director that would be open to new strategies and ideas to reach your customers through an everchanging media landscape? If so, please forward our newsletter to them. Many of our clients have come to us through your kind introductions to your friends and business associates. In return, please let us know how we can help in terms of referring business back to you! roger@marketingkeys.com. |
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Greetings!
Welcome to the March issue of Key Notes - Marketing Keys' monthly newsletter. It may be March, but our weather in Chicago still feels like January. If you are in Chicago or another cold section of the country, we hope our newsletter helps warm your heart. Our goal is for you to be informed and entertained with the latest media and marketing happenings quickly and efficiently.
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And the Oscar goes to "Twitter"!
 Host Ellen DeGeneres went to great lengths to fill the frame of a cellphone self-portrait with a veritable who's who of Hollywood stars -- including Jennifer Lawrence, Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt -- and the resulting photograph was a hit: Within minutes of DeGeneres posting the photo on Twitter, the photo racked up more than half a million re-tweets and 300,000 favorites.
Stepping into the audience, DeGeneres recruited Meryl Streep, Lawrence, Pitt, Roberts, Bradley Cooper, Kevin Spacey, Lupita Nyong'o and her brother, among others, to take the selfie with her.
Jared Leto, fresh off his win for supporting actor for "Dallas Buyers Club," joined the fun as well with a last-minute photo-bomb.
On Twitter, DeGeneres lamented that Cooper, who ended up snapping the photo, couldn't fit more famous faces in the photo. "If only Bradley's arm was longer," she wrote.
In the wake of what DeGeneres labeled the "best photo ever," Twitter itself appeared to struggle with the demand: The service was unavailable for several minutes after the photo was posted.
While we can't guarantee that we would cause the same kind of impact for your social media sites...please consider Marketing Keys for all of your social media needs. Megan Hardie, our on-staff certified Social Media expert, is ready to set up, strategize, monitor, upload content and manage your sites. Programs start from as low as $500/month.
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The new McMarketing Strategy: Snapchat
First, there was Facebook. Then, Twitter came along. Many other social media sites then followed. Now, the latest social network marketing strategy to reach millennials is Snapchat. Agencies and brands have been jumping aboard since late summer 2013, and this week, McDonald's took a seat next to Taco Bell in the space. Meanwhile, Audi, Acura, GrubHub, Karmaloop and other firms are fellow snapchatters.
Snapchat, which recently turned down a $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook, reportedly had 30 million users as of December. And it's becoming a big millennial marketing focus. Hey marketers, did you know that 73 percent of college students would open a Snapchat message from a brand they knew? And 45 percent would open a "Snap" from a brand they didn't know?
Snapchat isn't just for millennials anymore. It's also for brands trying to reach them.
McDonald's has joined the parade of marketers experimenting with the ephemeral messaging service -- photos and videos disappear after 10 seconds -- and it has enlisted basketball star Lebron James to promote its new account.
The fast feeder published a Snapchat "story" yesterday that it added to throughout the day with additional images and video clips that fleshed out the narrative. The 36-second story is filmed at a shoot, and a figure that appears to be Mr. James appears about eight seconds in, obscured by a bust of a man's head.
Mr. James appears toward the end of the story, saying, "Welcome to the club, baby." The scene then shifts to a picture of burgers and fries with the text "New bacon clubhouse!"
While snaps are private messages, stories are the closest thing to a broadcasting option that exists on Snapchat. There's the option of making them visible to just friends, a custom list, or "everyone" on Snapchat -- an option that creates the semblance of a public profile on what's been an extremely private service.
Stories can be stitched together from multiple images and videos clips, with the most recent one appearing at the end for the sake of narrative coherence. They appear beside account handles in a user's list of friends, can stay visible for 24 hours and can be replayed as often as someone likes in that window.
The potential to tell a longer-form story and the clearer privacy boundaries inherent in stories could give brands more of an incentive to have a presence on the Snapchat network.
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Dodger Fans may be pitched a "Shutout."
Los Angeles Dodgers fans who enjoyed watching a rejuvenated team on TV last season may find themselves shut out when the squad begins preseason play -- unless they subscribe to Time Warner Cable.
The cable company is going live with the new Dodgers network SportsNet LA, but it hasn't convinced pay-TV competitors such as DirecTV, Charter Communications, Cox Communications or AT&T to carry the channel.
At $4-plus a month, SportsNet LA would be the town's most costly regional channel, packaged on a basic tier that all subscribers must take.
Time Warner Cable's 2013 accord for 25 years of Dodgers games, pegged at $8.35 billion by the team and the league, is testing the value of sports programming after a run-up in costs. The company, which agreed this month to be bought by Comcast for $45.2 billion, needs competitors to sign up and charge their customers for the network to profit.
So far only Bright House Networks, affiliated with Time Warner Cable, has signed on.
"This is a record price for a one-team regional sports network," Chris Bevilacqua, a sports media consultant in New York, said in an interview. "These are not easy businesses. They cost a lot to start up and there is significant risk."
Then again, if the parties don't reach deals by March 22, when the Dodgers open the regular season in Australia, fans who could see every game last year will have to listen on radio, and Time Warner Cable could try to poach TV subscribers from rivals. Given the size of the market, it's possible Time Warner Cable could add 100,000 subscribers, Mr. Bevilacqua said.
Helping to stoke fans' interest, the Dodgers were 7-1 favorites as of yesterday to win the World Series in their third season under owners Guggenheim Baseball Management, according to Vegasinsider.com. The team made the playoffs for the first time since 2009 last year and is ranked as the second most valuable in baseball at $2.1 billion, behind the New York Yankees, in part because of the Time Warner Cable contract.
Time Warner Cable is distributing SportsNet LA under an accord with the team's owners, becoming the exclusive agent for advertising and affiliate sales. The company is also seeking digital rights from MLB Advanced Media, according to David Rone, Time Warner Cable Sports president.
The broadcast booth will be staffed by Vin Scully, the Dodgers' longtime announcer, along with Charley Steiner and former Dodgers ace pitcher Orel Hershiser. Ex-Dodgers infielder Nomar Garciaparra, among others, will work in the studio.
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Playing "tag" could be healthy!
 Facebook's greatest asset to marketers has always been its audience- more than one billion active users. It' a figure that carries some weight. Now, a new change to Facebook's News Feed algorithm means brands will have greater reach than ever.
Beginning today, when a Page tags a separate brand or celebrity Page in a post, that content may surface for followers of both Pages. For example, if Mashable posts a story to Facebook and tags Google's Page, the post could now appear in News Feed for both Mashable fans and Google fans.
In short, it's a simple way for brands or celebrities to greatly expand their audience.
This feature was already operational for updates from friends. If you tag someone in a photo, for example, their friends may see that photo in News Feed even if you are not connected to them.
The difference here is that while your photo could appear in front of hundreds of other people, a Page post that tags Google could appear in front of thousands, if not millions of additional users (Google has more than 15 million users who have Liked its Page).
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Honey Do lists now extending to Grocery Store
Men are putting family before career. They're taking care of the kids. They're doing housework. So it's no surprise that, as a new survey from Defy Media shows, they're taking more responsibility for the household shopping. More than (65%) of men 18-49 are in charge of buying products for the home across several categories, with (67%) disclosing they actually enjoy shopping for the home. 
1. Men are likely to use digital devices in the shopping process - especially younger men. (27%) use their mobiles to get product information in store, and as many as (41%) of men use online reviews in their research.
2. While advertising is a big factor behind a purchase, men care about products that appeal to their values. (60%) bought a product because it was made locally, (50%) bought a product because they liked the story behind it, and (57%) said they'd stop buying from a company that did something offensive or illegal.
3. They're open to trying new brands (63%). And while friends and family are the primary way men learn about new products, social media (28%) and YouTube (24%) are growing sources.
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Tweet of the Month
| MarketingKeys Roger Keys - March 3rd
Follow us on Twitter
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Until next month, may all of your marketing dreams and goals
come true! And - if they don't - we are here to help.
Sincerely,
ROGER KEYS
MARKETING KEYS
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