A Great Example of Helpful Marketing From an Unlikely Source

Marketing that helps is better than marketing that sells.
Have you seen the commercials for Lincoln, the Lincoln Motor Company, starring Matthew McConaughey where he’s all like, “Nobody paid me to drive it. Nobody asked me to drive it. I just liked it” or whatever?
(watch video to see the worst Matthew McConaughey impression ever)

I like Lincoln. My wife drives a Lincoln.
In fact, we got her car exactly a year ago, and today in the mail received this card, an anniversary card from the good people at Lincoln. But it’s not just a card. Obviously, it says thanks and happy anniversary. But the card includes a paper disk which can be removed, and planted. It’s full of delphinium flower seeds.
Why would the Lincoln people send you a card that plants delphiniums? That has nothing to do with vehicles. Ah, but it does.
Evidently Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ford had a legendary delphinium garden back in the day in Detroit. It’s always been sort of the official flower of Lincoln. So there is, in fact, a commercial tie-in to all of this.
This is a Youtility – marketing so useful, people would pay for it (delphinium seeds are for sale in every garden center in the USA). It’s marketing that helps, not sells. It’s marketing that tells a bigger story. It’s not just about cards, it’s about heritage, and ecology, and gratitude.
I’m going to plant these seeds in honor of the anniversary of my wife’s vehicle and in honor of this being a terrific piece of marketing that breaks through the clutter because it is helpful.
Bravo, Lincoln.

Sprout Social Shoutout

Today’s Sprout Social shoutout is for my friend Kelly McDonald. Kelly is a terrific author, thought leader, and speaker. I She has a great book called “How to Market to People Not Like You.” A perfect book for how to think about people who are older than you, younger than you, who are from a different part of the world than you, have different expectations. Really great on segmentations and personas and how to really understand other cultures and other audience types in your marketing. So check out Kelly McDonald. Follow her if you’re not already. You’ll be glad that you did.

About Jay Today

This video is from Jay Today is my near-daily 3-minute video where I talk about social media, content marketing, business and life. JayToday is available on Youtube, iTunes (as a video podcast, and now as an audio podcast too), and at JayToday.tv. The show is sponsored by Sprout Social (which I use for my social media), and Candidio (a great video editing service – check out their easy new video templates!).

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