Welcome to Donna's Promo Talk

Welcome to Donna's Promo Talk where we will blog about current promotions and trends within the promotional marketing arena. I will focus on interactive and mobile phone promotions, such as sweepstakes, games, contests and especially those that include consumer-generated content, as well as other social media programs, but I won't limit our talk just to these areas.

It was over five years ago that I started an online newsletter at the promotional agency that I was heading up that had a similar focus to this blog. I called it Promo Talk back then and thought I'd now continue the tradition and call this Donna's Promo Talk just to make it more personal.

Back when I started that first Promo Talk it was a big effort to get the enewsletter out on a quarterly basis. Now with blogs, you're expected to post something new on a daily basis! Well, I will strive to achieve that goal, but there may be days that it won't happen. Whether it's daily or every other day, I promise to keep the conversation going for our industry.

In such a small amount of time we've gone from thinking quarterly enewsletters were the cutting edge, to having the capability to post new information online by any of us at any time. And we're not just limited to text, but images, videos, music... whatever we create.

It really is an exciting time right now as far as all the communication tools and new technologies we have to work with today. However, those of us involved in marketing have to keep in mind that the time-proven basic principals that we were initially taught still remain the same.

• First, start with a solid strategic platform
• Always utilize effective brand management and positioning
• Develop outstanding creative that speaks directly to the target audience
• Incorporate the right incentive or call for action for the target audience in order to motivate their behavior 

Staying focused and integrating these principals with all the new communication tools and technologies available today is our challenge. I hope we have some great examples of promotions this year that follow these basis rules that we can talk about.

Comments

[Clayton]

Hi Donna

Thanks for linking to our blog. I will add your blog to our list also. It was nice to hear from you and I'm glad you got to meet Bryan Stapp and the others from the summit. We'll be in touch.