5 Marketing Tips You Can Learn From Lady Gaga

Image by ama_lia via Flickr

You can learn a lot from Lady Gaga's marketing machine



If you had the chance to watch Mtv's Video Music Awards, you probably saw Lady Gaga's marketing machine in action. During the pre-show, she was the number one trending topic on Twitter and everyone was trying to guess what she would be wearing or how she was going to make her entrance. After keeping everyone in suspense, she started the show dressed in drag. As Gaga's supposed boyfriend, she gave a monologue talking about how Lady Gaga only cares about image, how she just wants the spotlight. This built up energy that fed her rousing performance. Throughout the night, she never dropped character and even after the show, everyone was talking about her.



Whether you love her or hate her, there's no denying that she is a marketing machine. She has taken personal branding and social networking to the next level. If you are looking for a job or just trying to excel at the one you have, then you know how important it is to build a personal brand and a reputation that lets people know exactly who you are and what you're all about.



So, let's take a look and see what we can learn from her media machine:

• Be memorable - There isn't anyone who hasn't at least heard about Lady Gaga. They might just remember her crazy outfits or the time that she came to an award show in an egg, but either way, they remember her. Of course, I don't recommend doing something outlandish, but still, it's important to not be someone who is easy to forget. Look at what you do that is special and find a way to incorporate that into your personal brand.

• Be great at what you do - If you set aside all of the crazy outfits and theatrical performances, Lady Gaga still makes great music. Her fans love her for it and her dance tracks are so catchy that even people who don't like her can't help but hum along. She has sold millions of records and no matter who you are, you don't reach that level of success based on hype alone. At the end of the day, you have to be really good at what you do.

• Know your audience - Lady Gaga knows who her audience is and when she performs, she is singing to them. Not only does she target her audience but she is willing to stand up for her views even if it causes her to lose money. For example, as a major gay rights advocate she recently had a battle with Target about their support for organizations that lobby against gay rights. She told the department store that if they didn't commit to end the practice, she wouldn't allow them to sell her products in their stores.

• Build brand loyalty by giving back - Lady Gaga's fans love her. They watch her every move and are the first to tweet about what she is doing, blog about her and spread the word. While it's great that she has such a loyal fan base, in her case, the love goes both ways. Anytime you see her making a public appearnce, she always mentions her "little monsters". She even has Little Monsters tattooed on her arm to honor her fans.

• Leverage social media - Lady Gaga interacts with her fans daily through social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. She has over 10 million Twitter followers and 35 million Facebook fans. It isn't enough to just have a Twitter or a Facebook, you have to engage and connect with your target demographic.

It doesn't matter if you are a "Little Monster" or not, there are still many things you can learn from Lady Gaga. If you're lucky and follow these tips, maybe you can manage to capture just a tiny bit of the success she has.

What do you think about Lady Gaga? Do you think she is a marketing genius or just hype? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer for PhillyJobsBlog, along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.

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It's Amazing What Soup Can Do- Campbell Soup's Struggle With a Decline In Soup Sales

With sales down, many companies across the nation have been looking for ways to cut corners and lower their expenses. Unfortunately, one of the first cuts are labor costs. Companies who are not making their numbers often end up laying off employees, cutting back working hours, benefits and compensation. But there are still companies that are thinking of other ways to increase the bottom line without sacrificing their employees.

Campbell Soup Co. has been dealing with a 5% soup sale decline in the past quarter. In spite of that, they are reporting that their adjusted net earnings for the quarter have increased by $113 million. According to a recent report, the way they were able to make up the difference was by changing the way that they made soup. Previously, Campbell Soup was made with 10 different sizes of carrot chunks and 11 different sizes of potato chunks. They have reduced the amount to 3 for the carrots and just 2 different sizes of potato chunks. Even though the amount of vegetable in the soup is the same, they were able to increase productivity and expenses by making this change. I doubt that consumers will really even notice, and it doesn't make a difference in overall soup quality.

The soup company is also planning to start a new $100 million marketing campaign, “It's Amazing What Soup Can Do”. The campaign is scheduled to start this week, and hopefully, for its employees, it will add an increase in sales.

So, while It's Amazing What Soup Can Do, for the employees of the Camden business, it's amazing what thinking outside of the box can do to raise profits in spite of the weak economy. Other companies could learn something from Campbell Soup, and look for ways to improve productivity without letting employees go.

By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer, along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.

You Don't Have to Work for a Jerk

Nobody should have to work for a jerk. At least that is the tagline of a website designed to help people find out if their potential new boss is a creep. EbossWatch.com is a website that was inspired by the National Sex Offenders Registry with the goal of making a database of bosses that have been charged with sexual harassment. The database is searchable, and there is even a place to rate your boss.

According to the site's founder, Asher Adelman, it can be difficult during the interview process to determine a workplace's culture and atmosphere. His site, which was launched in 2007, was designed to help job seekers avoid working in a hostile workplace. The site allows users to anonymously complete an objective survey to rate their boss, allowing new job seekers to better evaluate potential employers.

This could be the start of a new trend in employer accountability. With the high degree of media attention Adleman has received, more and more job hunters are flocking to the site to screen employers and to get a better idea of the workplace they are considering. Although I think that the idea behind the site is wonderful, I can't help but wonder if there is any recourse for bosses that have gotten bad reviews from former employees. With the National Sex Offender Registry, at least the people on the list are people who have been convicted of sex crimes. Anonymously submitted ratings can lend themselves to retaliatory reviews. That being said, I check the reviews on almost every item I purchase, each hotel I stay in and even the books that I chose to read. Shouldn't a new employer be at least as important? My regret over having wasted my time reading a boring book or having purchased a less than spectacular product would certainly be less than having accepted employment at a hostile workplace.

As with anything else, making an informed decision is the key, and using tools like eBossWatch can be a useful way to screen potential employers and help you make a better choice about where you want spend the next part of your career. And at the least, it could be fun to look up some old bosses that were really jerks and find out if others have felt that way as well.

By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a freelance writer and regular contributor to several websites and other publications, a volunteer, a full time mom and an active job seeker.

The Laid-Off Life: Painting the Lawn Green

"The advocacy of what we believe is education, the advocacy of what we don't believe is propaganda." – PR pioneer Edward Bernays

"In this summer, this is very tough, in this summer I'm going to take my talents to South Philly and join the Heat Corporation."

Must be nice to be LeBron James. Unemployed for only eight days. He was so lucky to find a new job so quick. But in all fairness, he had to relocate for it. I hope he can find someone to buy his 35,440-square-foot house in Ohio. I’d hate to see him have to get a second job.

But what, you may ask, do LeBron James: Überwealthy American and You: Unemployed American have in common? Whether you’re trying to impress Pat Riley or Pat the HR Manager, you need to know how to market yourself. How to present the best "you" you can be. It doesn’t have to be a primetime television special to discuss your future arranged by a small corporation’s worth of PR agents. You self-promote every day with everything you do from how you style your hair to what shirt you wear to how often you wash your car. You market yourself by what you Tweet and what you choose for your Facebook profile picture. You market yourself by what team you cheer for in the sports bar, and by what sports bar you choose to go to. You market yourself with the font you use on your résumé, and how you shake hands with an interviewer. Everything you do markets yourself, intentionally or habitually, to the intended or to imperfect strangers.

Few of us study marketing or PR, but we all know it when we see it. And we all know how to do it on the small levels. In much the same way we see someone on TV give CPR and feel we could do it too if our neighbor collapsed in front of us, or how we’re sure if that were us at the plate that we could had nailed that down-and-away slider that Victorino swung through, years and decades of watching marketing-in-motion on television, online, and in our every day lives has made us both keenly aware of the self-promotion going on around us and ingrained in us the ability to adapt it intrinsically.

I’ve mentioned before that full-time job hunting is itself a full-time job. But it’s a job (unless you’re affluent enough to have a staff and assistant) which requires you to wear many hats to make your 'office' run, from CEO and receptionist to accounts payable and research. But if you wish to find a new home in the workplace, you better be sure your marketing department is top-flight. And by marketing department, I mean you.

You may or may not be an expert in such things, but you will need to learn on-the-fly to market yourself. First, schedule an hour on ESPN to announce your intentions. But seriously folks. When you’re looking for work, you’re not only showcasing your work history, experience, and ability to fill exactly the position they’re looking for, you’re also showing the world "you". "You" are a commodity, "you" are a product, "you" are a media event.

Your résumé, your career site profile, and especially your cover letters are like one-sheets for the business of you, they’re marketing materials and brochures that represent who you are. And you want the companies to which you’re applying to want to be in the "you" business. I am Michael Hochman, indie movie, candy bar, dry cleaner, liquid detergent, SUV, and I want your company to buy what I’m selling. I’m a vendor you want do business with.

And then there’s how you present yourself in the 'public eye'. If your résumé, your cover letter, etc., is your marketing division, the rest of the "you" is responsibility of your PR department. First step, and I am not going to hound on it because it’s been done to death, is getting your online life in order and presentable. Imagine you were the administrator of the Twitter feed or Facebook page of Binford Tools or the Hanso Foundation or Massive Dynamic or Vandelay Industries. You wouldn’t update about your binge drinkathon from over the weekend or how the CEO smells funny. Not convinced of the giant corporation metaphor? Same goes for individuals in the public eye (and not Kanye West or Mel Gibson), like a spokesperson or college professor or state senator. Everything they type, write, update, tweet, send out through the Internette tubes is up for scrutiny and sharing. Louis CK can tweet "Ricky Gervais, the biggest #$!& I ever even heard of, and Nick Dipaolo, worthless $*#&%^@", but you can’t.

That being said, by no means am I saying don’t be yourself. Be yourself, because that’s good marketing right there. Who are the most respected politicians and celebrities? The ones we feel are the most honest, the most 'real'. The ones we feel are themselves, the same publicly and privately. There’s a middle ground, and within that middle ground is 'privacy settings'. It amazes me when I hear stories of people that were fired from their jobs because of something they posted online. Just a few weeks ago, CNN editor Octavia Nasr was fired for Tweeting support for a Hezbollah terrorist, and we all remember the story of Dan Leone who was fired by the Eagles for a Facebook update criticizing the team over letting Brian Dawkins go. Why don’t people have their settings set to private? Why should the world beyond your friends know/see/care what you have to say? Unless you're Facebook friends with your boss or supervisors (and I have no idea why you would do that), no one should be able to see that stuff if you must post it.

Try this: when someone, a normal everyday schmoe, gets in the news for doing something stupid like pretending to be abducted and instead going to DisneyWorld or puking on a cop at a Phillies game, put their name in to the Facebook search. And unless their name is Joe Smith, nine-times-out-of-ten you will be able to find and see their wall and/or personal info. Why would you do that?? Go to Facebook settings, and set everything to 'friends only' (except the innocuous stuff, I suggest friends-of-friends for that). Pay special attention to what people can see on your public directory listing (including your profile picture because you can’t hide it) and how they can or can’t find you using a search engine. And don’t – DO NOT – forget that people you are not friends with can see what you post on a mutual friend’s wall or comment on their update. Additionally, utilize the settings for individual friends. If you must friend someone that you think can get you in trouble, set them to not be able to post on your wall or tag you in photos. For all those who don’t understand how the naked photos of you got around to everyone in your office, remember: nothing on the Internet is private.

I think at this point I need to circle back to my original point. Everything you do (or don’t do) markets yourself. The color scheme of your résumé, the email address you use, how you answer the phone when a recruiter calls you, the recommendations on your LinkedIn page, what you’re doing in your Facebook profile picture, your Twitter handle, how you treat a receptionist at an interview, how you shake hands with a potential employer, what color tie you wear to meet him, what you say in your PhillyJobs.com column. It’s all marketing or PR. And if you’re not good at that sort of thing, I know a marketing guy (me) that you can hire very cheaply. But you don’t have to find an expert (even though I will work cheap). You have been exposed to millions of marketing tactics and PR astroturf in your life; look in your heart because you know what to do. It’s not hard. You know what the public "you" looks like, and if you don’t like it, time for a marketing overhaul.

I am not going to slam you with a bevy of how-to’s about creating a nice résumé or what not to post on Facebook, there are a plethora of websites out there at which to find that information. But I will say: Be Smart. You’re an adult, you know good from bad. And there are 16 million or so of us out there looking for work, and each of us is wearing the accountant hat, the gofer hat, the HR hat, the acquisitions hat, the receptionist hat, and the marketing hat and the public relations hat. And if an interview asks you if you’ve ever run your own business, you can slyly say "Yes, I am CEO of the Michael Hochman Job Search Organization." But I suggest you use your name instead of mine.

So, be smart but live your off-the-clock life. If you like your résumé, chances are others will too. If you’re a good conversationalist, people will notice. And enjoy being on Facebook and Twitter and all the wonderful things they can do. Be smart but don’t miss out on life either. Even my cat – Quinn The Receptionist Cat – is on Twitter. Please follow her, she’s got a very fragile ego. And even though she has zero marketing aptitude, she knows how to get what she wants.


Michael Hochman
LaidOffLife@yahoo.com ◙ Laid-Off Life on Twitter ◙ Laid-Off Life on Facebook

Michael is a Copywriter, Creative Marketer, and Broadcasting Professional still in search of full-time employment after 12 months of full-time job hunting, thanks to an "involuntary career sabbatical". A Philly native and Syracuse graduate, Michael will gladly accept any job offer you may have for him. Any. Really. Please give me a job??

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"Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called everybody, and they meet at the bar." - Drew Carey