"Baseball, Hot Dogs and --- Pistachios"

Marketing is all about meeting an unmet consumer need, want or desire. A true Rainmaker capitalizes on meeting those needs, often times by just leveraging an existing target "hungry" for change. Sports fans fill stadiums every day in America enjoying their favorite teams with friends and family, and of course, satisfying their palette for great tasting snacks. But for a growing number of fans, eating at the ballpark means caving to consumption of unhealthy snacks. That's when the savvy Rainmakers at Wonderful Pistachios discovered their product was a perfect complement to stadium menus. For years, baseball fans have crushed shells to pop salty peanuts so why wouldn't they do the same for a tasty and healthy green pistachio? They have and it's changed the game! Following last week’s news that it will air a Super Bowl ad for the first time, Wonderful Pistachios is now available in baseball and football stadiums in many major markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Atlanta. And they've just announced a three-year, seven-figure partnership with the Harlem Globetrotters. In addition to its presence at the Globetrotters’ North American games through signage, program advertising and sampling, the nut brand’s "Get Crackin" logo will appear on the team’s jerseys. The North American segment of the Globetrotters’ 2013 World Tour will stop in more than 240 cities. A Wonderful Pistachios spot featuring the Globetrotters will launch on national television and the brand’s Get Crackin’ site starting Jan. 21. While this partnership sounds like a natural fit, capitalizing on the healthy snacking trend in America will no doubt score big for this brand.

 

Anchor Your Social Marketing

Many brands and organizations rush to set up social networking sites simply to broadcast press releases or other important company announcements. While awareness is one of the ways to use social media, it's certainly not the end all. Your social updates should be part of a larger strategy that's anchored to simplify your decision making when you need to choose between conflicting options.

You should be using your social media assets to:

• Generate awareness
• Engage your existing and potential customers
• Respond to product or service inquiries or feedback (complimentary or not)

You should do a lot of experimenting to find out what really works well in order to determine your best engagement tactics. Repeat successful tactics and adjust others to learn as much as you can about your followers, viewers, etc. When you use repeatable tactics,