After taking a hit from the Tiger situation, the PGA is clearly on the rebound and is poised for a banner year in 2011.    Thanks to the “young guns” who have added a new dimension of talent, scrappiness, and fearlessness to the sport.  Dennis Johnson and Bubba Watson are booming drives 400+ yards, making golf seem more than ever like an action sport.   Then you have Rory McIlroy, an engaging 21 year old who exudes confidence like a 30 year veteran, and Rickie Fowler also 21 with his OSU “orange-wear” and aggressive shot making.

Add the new non-US talent –  Majors winners Martin Kaymer from Germany, and Louis Ooster-something from South Africa, Ryo Ishikawa from Japan who recently fired a 58 at age 18 (yes, that’s 18 years old…), and we have several exciting layers that draw viewership.   If Tiger regains form, and it looks like he will, the PGA will be buzzing in 2011.

Our take is…companies should be lining up for PGA sponsorship opportunities as a major component of their marketing mix.  With sponsorship costs “right sized”, this could be a great opportunity for a high return on investment.

For as long as I can remember, big sports have been associated with big advertising. Go to the World of Coke Museum and you’ll see an exhibit on Olympic pins and torches from the past 80 or so years. Sports stars dream of making it big and having endorsement deals that range from sports drinks to cars to clothing lines.

But in a tough economy, how can companies afford to keep up the spending? A recent Forbes blog talks about how many advertisers are cutting their dollars, not because they don’t result in increased sales, but because many companies can’t show that advertising dollars result in increased sales. As Patrick Rishe explains, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly how beneficial sports sponsorship is, particularly because it is hard to link those advertisements directly to sales. When sales go down, it can be challenging to understand whether that is from poor sponsorship choices or just a bad economy.

Luckily for the sports fans and consumer industries alike, there is a solution to protecting those highly lucrative sports sponsorships while still ensuring a high ROI. Riche discusses the fact that there are various ways of measuring the return on sports sponsorships, but unless they are highly accurate, they can show results that are far from the truth.

As long as marketers can spend smarter, assessing which sponsorships exactly are the most valuable to their image and which markets they truly want to target, there is no reason why sports sponsorships can’t result in an increase in sales. Riche’s advice? “Look for agencies and consulting firms that specialize in analyzing the returns to sponsorships to profit from this new era of conservatism among corporate America as it relates to activating sports sponsorships.”

If you’re looking to KICK up your sales, DRIVE for better results and get your sponsorship on TRACK, consider TopRight Sponsorship. We have the playbook to help you meet your goals.

Probable conversation at Comcast Headquarters:

“We have terrible customer service, our coverage stinks, and the only reason we are in business is because we have a monopoly in many areas. What should we do?”

“Let’s change the name, maybe people won’t notice the bad stuff anymore!”

“Genius.”

Nice try, Comcast. We’re not the only ones who caught on, either.

Now that the iPad is available and quite popular, business owners are increasingly feeling the pressure to make their website look its best on such new devices. The iPhone along with Firefox have been responsible for a big push towards making websites standards compliant, but the iPhone/iPad have really brought the issue to the forefront because neither platform supports Flash.

We at TopRight Creative have never encouraged using flash for a website or any kind of navigation and content elements, though slideshows are occasionally acceptable when using clean fallback methods.

With the growing use of iPads and tablets in general, there is even greater demand to make websites look and function their best on these new devices. To help with the transition, Apple published a tech note on the subject. It addresses some major items developers must factor into websites, such as adhering to W3C standards instead of plug-ins, thereby abandoning Flash and other such abominations.

The great news for our clients: We have always avoided non-standard practices and choose technologies carefully.

There are some additional things we are doing now that will take advantage of the new iPad and similar tablets to continue providing our clients with exceptional websites. Included is designing the site’s page to best fit within the iPad viewport. In general, designing for a device is a bad idea, but in this case it’s not really the device per se but the realization that the tablet’s viewport dimensions are in fact fixed. As a result, it’s not a bad idea to set up pages so the main content stays above the fold. This may be a minor technique to most, but attention to the details is what sets us apart from the rest.

This week’s Bloomberg BusinessWeek has been dubbed “The Popularity Issue.” The issue describes a huge range of categories, from movies, to fish, to iPhone apps, identifying the most popular consumer choice in each category.

Unfortunately, the article fails to specifically identify what makes something popular. Why do choosy moms (and dads) choose Jif? Why are more cats kept as pets if more households have dogs? Why was Avatar the most popular movie of the year in every country listed? Why do the French prefer apples if Russians prefer bananas?

Charlie recently wrote about understanding and identifying relevant information. BusinessWeek must have missed the post. Do I care that Orbit is the most popular brand of gum, and that it “has differentiated itself with its crunchy coating, box packaging, and a higher-than-average price tag”? Yes. Do I care that labradors are the most popular dog breed? Not so much.

Some of these featured products are linked to great public marketing and advertising campaigns, but some most certainly are not. We all know that Orbit “gets dirty mouths clean“, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen a TV ad for the Atlanta airport. Despite the fact that the Marlboro man was introduced to the market 60 years ago, Marlboro is still dominating cigarette sales.

So why did BusinessWeek choose to fill the feature with lots of popularity contests, and not a lot of explanation? Maybe because consumer choices, much like high school popularity, are hard to explain. Actually, I’m pretty sure they made an entire science out of studying them… micro-something-something… What the article truly achieves is showing that there is always a story behind a story. Identifying your most popular competitor isn’t enough to show you how to win. A flashy ad campaign isn’t enough to make a product popular. And on top of all that, if you don’t have a product or service people want, you’re definitely never going to sell it. Like Charlie said, it is important to know when to take a fact and accept it for what it is. But don’t forget the value of digging deeper when you have information that could really take your marketing strategy and your company to the next level.

In case you were wondering, I’m giving Stephanie Meyer, the author of the best-selling Twilight novels, my vote for most popular girl in America… the favorite girl and boy names this year were Isabella and Jacob, respectively. Oh, and if anyone has the answer to the French apple/Russian banana conundrum, please leave a comment.

Yesterday I got my Daily Stat e-mail from HBR, and the headline was a grabber: “Men Are Better At Parking Cars”. Now, a headline like that can be instantly polarizing – most men might think, “Well, yeah, of course we are”, while most women might think, “That’s ridiculous! Next you’re going to tell me men are better at using the tv remote control, right?” But regardless of one’s instinctive reactions to the message, the source of this information – a study by mixed-gender university researchers and related by Harvard Business Review – leads me to assume that the research has a chance of being statistically, if not politically, correct.

So, even if there is some validity to the findings, the next question this raises (after, Who the heck would have funded this study?) is, what on earth is a business to do with a consumer insight like this? Marketers are constantly mining consumer data for insights into behaviors, needs and preferences that can help them with product design, messaging, positioning, and other strategies to help them reach their target customers. Often data reveals actionable insights that smart marketers can use to their advantage. And occasionally… data is just a fun-fact. I’ve wracked my brain to think of how a company could use the insight around women’s parking abilities to shape their marketing strategy. Could car manufacturers with self-parking capabilities position this feature specifically to women as a benefit? Could a shopping mall or condominium tout its “extra-wide parking spaces” as a point of preference? Doubtful, particularly if your target consumer probably is not aware or convinced of her supposedly inferior parking capabilities in the first place. So this insight probably just sits on a shelf, next to with insights like that consumers prefer the taste of New Coke.

Sometimes, consumer research leads to valuable and actionable insights, and sometimes, it just leads to a lively topic for an animated discussion over beers. Smart marketers know the difference.

The first step to a solution is admitting you have a problem.

I may be addicted to organization. Clues: I love the Container Store. A lot. I read organization blogs. I own Peter Walsh’s How to Organize Everything. The show I’m most afraid of is not “Fear Factor,” but “Hoarders”. That picture at the top of the blog? It is a screen shot of my computer desktop background. (I made it on paint, if any of you are interested, and use sidebar sticky notes to… I’ll just stop.)

Whatever, I like being organized. And to be fair, I really don’t have a problem with other people being disorganized. Even last year, sharing a tiny bedroom, I was happy to step over my roommate’s pile dirty laundry as long as said laundry didn’t encroach on my 3 square feet of personal space. What I really can’t seem to get over is a disorganized website.

Think about it: companies pay hundreds, even thousands of dollars for a website design. Why would they not make sure it’s functional and organized? If you want people to do business with you, make it easy for them to do business with you! Honestly, I’m often amazed at how disorganized even some organization blogs are!

A website is the face of a company. A strong website is like coming in every day, polished, clean and in a nice outfit. A bad website says, “I changed out of my pajamas into jeans and a t-shirt, and I haven’t brushed my teeth, but I did put on some lipstick, so it all comes out in the wash, right?” That’s not to say websites don’t have their kinks. Sometimes you just have a bad hair day, or a link doesn’t work, it happens. But on the whole, a website should say, “Here we are, ready to work.”

Not to toot TopRight’s horn too much (toot toot!), but I want to give you a little website challenge. In two seconds, look around this page and identify how you can a) grab an RSS feed, b) find all the posts from December, 2009, c) like us on Facebook, and d) get quick info about TopRight Creative. Was it hard? Could you do it in two seconds? Good. Because the reality of the web today is that two seconds is about how long people spend on your site. You simply cannot afford to make browsing hard on your consumers.

I’d have to say that some of the best websites I’ve used include Apple, Swirl by Daily Candy, and the South Carolina Honors College. All are clear in the important links, don’t have a lot flashing on the first page, and are systematically organized so there is a logical way to find information on the sites.

In your experience, which sites stand out as the best? The worst? What do you think makes a strong website?

In a recent CNN article, the difference between American and European cultures is demonstrated through the culture’s differing comfort levels with nude sun bathing. This article not only made me long for a beach vacation (preferably in Southern Spain), but also made me think about the dichotomy within the American culture and how it affects marketing efforts.

As consumers call for more transparency and authenticity in packaging, advertising and manufacturing, the media and corporations are going the other way. For example, plus sized women’s clothing retailer, Lane Bryant was recently chided by network television for a Victoria’s Secret-ish intimate apparel commercial.  They refused to air the ad without serious edits.

These days it seems that each step we take as a culture towards more openness is met by a step in the opposite direction. Seen by some as crude, books by comedienne Chelsea Handler (my personal fav) & author Tucker Max are basically stream of consciousness entertaining memoirs of boozy one-night stands and bodily functions gone awry. As these types of books ascend to the New York Times bestseller list other types of expression such as the Lane Bryant intimate apparel commercial are censored for being too racy.

What does this dichotomy mean for marketers?  First and foremost, knowing your audience is critical. Consumer segmentation is more valuable than ever, especially with the increased ability to reach specific segments through different channels. Additionally, nimbleness is vital.  Your company/brand/department must be quick on its feet should problems arise with your marketing activities and campaigns.

Out of this also comes opportunity. There are some smart marketers out there who will choose to exploit either the conservatives or more open-minded people in our culture.  These marketers walk a thin line. We look forward to further examining their work in our upcoming book on marketing excellence, in which a chapter is dedicated to exploring marketers who rely on exploiting cultural chasms.

Sometimes a fail just keeps on failing. A few months ago, we highlighted how consumers are really the ones who own your brand. And it this case, rings true for United Airlines, in a big way. United failed to provide good customer service and own up to damaging a customer’s property. Thanks to YouTube, about 8.8 million people now know about it. It’s been said that no press is bad press, but in this case, I think the folks at United might be kicking themselves.

Last week, Old Spice launched a truly awesome social media campaign aimed at getting users engaged with their social content. Over the course of 24 hours, the team accepted questions via Facebook, Twitter, and even searched Yahoo! Questions for fodder.

The results? The videos went instantly viral, and demonstrated serious consumer buy-in, with almost 6 million YouTube views and over 22,000 comments. I even tweeted the Old Spice guy: “@OldSpice What is the nature of the universe?” Sadly, he declined to answer.

These videos were simply hilarious, and I highly suggest you check out Mashable’s favorites. What do you think? What are your Marketing FAVES?