Grateful Despite It All
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It always has been. I like how inclusive and inviting it is because it does not ‘belong’ to any one religion. Thanksgiving often brings out the best in people, it celebrates positivity, its traditions are uplifting, and it is so very American!
This year feels a bit different, however – To all sentient beings. There were so many things going wrong and being weird… no need to repeat them here. Personally, I also suffered a devastating loss when my father passed away recently. I know many others endured personal setbacks, too.
So, should we give thanks in a year like this? Should we celebrate the goodness in this world and show gratitude, or should we focus on what has gone wrong and try to survive? Under current circumstances, it is very tempting to just hide in the corner and lick our wounds.
But we actually do have a lot to be thankful for. Being thankful is not the opposite of being mindful of things that have gone badly. Being thankful is the ability to appreciate the goodness around us despite the circumstances, which – let’s face it – are never perfect. Even in a year marked by a pandemic, economic difficulties, civil unrest, riots and other appalling conduct, election fraud, and personal challenges; we should notice, acknowledge, and give thanks.
In business, too – Look around you and count your blessings. This was a challenging year for everyone around you, including people who work with you, your customers, and those who perhaps wanted to be your customers and just have not done so yet. Let them know you appreciate what they have done for you. Thank them for hanging in there and being part of your life. It will make them feel good – and amazingly, it will make you feel good too!
I’ll go first 😊: Many thanks to all our amazing clients – We love you. Thank you to the many people and organizations that help us run our business and support our clients with services and products. Last, and certainly not least, special thanks to the incredible Fractional CMO & Marketing team for the amazing work you do each and every single day – I am blessed to have you by my side.
Duke Merhavy, MBA, Ph.D.
President & Chief Marketing Officer
What Is Fractional CMO & Marketing?
Fractional CMO & Marketing is ‘Your Outsourced Marketing Department’ when you need expert marketing leadership and marketing services to accelerate growth and improve profitability, but you’re not quite ready to hire a full-time Chief Marketing Officer or your own marketing department.
Our unique arrangement is the most efficient, innovative, and cost-effective formula for you. Click on the image to the left to watch a short video.
We Help When You Need To:
- Generate more of the right kind of leads
- Close more sales faster
- Get repeat sales
- Formulate a more effective message
- Produce powerful sales tools
- Establish brand awareness, recognition, and preference
- Differentiate your brand from the competition
- Improve customer satisfaction and loyalty
- Develop lasting relationships with customers
- Introduce new products
The Holy Grail and OG of video streaming services, YouTube, went down on November 11th, 2020. Considering the way the year has gone, it’s doubtful anyone was surprised by this unexpected event, but certainly, tens of thousands of creators and businesses were inconvenienced. Videos were frozen in a frustration-inducing loading loop, reminiscent of buffering in the days when Internet speeds couldn’t always keep up with video playback. Adding to the anxiety and annoyance, YouTube’s TV and music services were affected as well. The issue seemed to have become only intermittent after about an hour and was fully rectified within two hours of when the outage was first noted.
For bigger creators, the outage meant lost revenue from ads, and decreased interaction and engagement statistics, which could result in less interest from sponsors. For smaller creators trying to make a name and some income for themselves via YouTube, it was a stark reminder that their success in the endeavor is at least somewhat at the mercy of technical issues which are completely out of their hands and control. Your business needs to make sure there is a partner in place – like Fractional CMO & Marketing – to assist with this kind of unexpected occurrence that can have an effect on your marketing efforts. Contact us today to learn more about our free, no obligation marketing needs assessment.
When you think of the word “meme”, you may not associate it with marketing— and that’s okay. When we hear the word meme, we think of a photo or video that might be Not Safe For Work (NSFW) and is something funny that your family or friends are sharing on social media, but this might not always be accurate. Where did memes originate? And what do they have to do with marketing? To answer this, we first need to travel back to 1976.
The Origins of The Meme
In the 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, author Richard Dawkins coined and defined meme because a word did not exist at the time that clearly defined the message he wanted to convey; ideas replicate, mutate, and evolve— just like genes. However, Dawkins did not anticipate the influence memes would have on communication.
Rise of the Meme
As the Internet grew in popularity in the 90’s, so did meme creation. The phenomena of the meme were not reliant upon long verbiage, were easily created by the average Internet user, and were shared primarily via email and chat boards facilitating access. The memes’ popularity rapidly grew around the world in a short period of time. These unique traits are the memes’ primary appeal to communication professionals.
With modern technology and the rise of video content as the primary sources of engagement on the Internet, marketing and advertising professionals are now embracing memetic marketing. Memetic marketing can be still-frame or video, be user-generated and be quickly produced with little or no budget as a way to convey ideas, introduce new products, etc. in place of and to augment more traditional marketing methods.
There are tons of meme generators on the Internet now making its creation simple. If you haven’t tried them yet, give memes a try – they are a great way to communicated messages in a short, concise, and entertaining way. If you have questions or need help creating memes for your business, we are happy to discuss them with you.
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