Spamming not Branding
Image from studentbrand.com
For the second time this semester my wife’s has been tasked with the challenge of getting people to click on a link (ex: http://tinyurl.com/nyumarkconf) as part of a contest for her brand strategy class. Her professor, Scott Galloway, is a Clinical Associate Professor of Marketing for NYU. He founded Red Envelope and Firebrand Partners so he has proven himself to be very successful in creating brands and is obviously very knowledgeable about marketing. My wife even tells me he has a reputation for no nonsense (read his email to a student that became a viral sensation) and his lectures often draw visitors who aren’t enrolled in the MBA programs.
Still, I can’t help but wish my wife’s assignment would be more challenging than to get someone to click URLs about marketing and innovation conferences they probably could care less about. Sure, it takes some acumen and a bit of ingenuity to get a large number of people to click on a URL, but I’d argue that this is more akin to spamming not branding. If one were technically inclined he could even mask proxy requests to the URL, but this would likely be better reserved for a class in computer science. Now I confess I do not know much about branding myself, but I would have expected that a branding exercise would at the very least:
- Convey some sort of message
- Make some sort of connection (emotional, intellectual, spiritual, etc.)
- Create some loyal following
I fail to see how getting others to click on a tracking URL accomplishes this. Now perhaps I’m a bit biased because of my background in tech, but I wish these MBA students learned more technological skills and created some brand strategy utilizing a combination of social media, web services and open source software.
For example, why not teach the students how to implement a CRM strategy using something like SugarCRM? The students could be given the challenge to write about some particular subjects they are passionate about using something like blogger from Google. They could then setup an AdSense account to see if they may even monetize web traffic and generate a little income. They may even purchase keywords on AdWords to drive traffic to their blog. Using Twitter, they can cultivate a following and direct people to complete lead forms into SugarCRM. With these leads in hand, they can create targeted email campaigns to keep their users informed about their blog and even track activities with such followers. I believe that such a broad exercise utilizing various technologies will better equip the students with experience in branding and give them more technical skills.
