Oil closed over $91/bbl today? Bring on 2011!

Oil is such a volatile issue in America and the world. Oil and gas markets are complex, sources are controversial and opinions of how we produce natural gas or petroleum products are never ever moderate.

By mid-summer (June 29), CommodityOnline.com reported: According to Market Strategies’ E2 (Energy + Environment) Index, which measures consumer perceptions of the energy industry’s economic contribution to the US economy, environmental performance and credibility on environmental issues, the oil industry’s image has plummeted from a score of 40 in December 2009 to 30 in June 2010 – a 25 percent decline in six months.

The energy industry itself can be…deprecatory. Remember the ’84-’85 bumper sticker? “Lord, send us another oil boom – we promise not to screw it up next time.”

I have created marketing and advertising programs for the energy industry for quite a while now. I’ve branded in it, direct-mailed about it and built websites for its participating companies and corporations. Why, I’ve even written blog posts about it, like the crisis communications piece here. So I know that the need to market in the energy industry today has never been stronger...even during challenging times.

The amount of information about new opportunities, products and services in “energy” continues to grow overwhelmingly – that calls for marketing programs to focus attention efficiently, to find qualified prospects and long-term customers for everything from seismic interpretation software to the lubes for drill collars and tool joints operating under extreme conditions.

Marketing to the ‘patch means creating compelling arguments in favor of new technologies, or innovative ways to improve old ones, in old fields and new fields, from the wellhead to the refinery and way beyond. It means advocating for drilling permits when the Feds have a serious case of the slows, just like ATP Oil & Gas is doing now.

The energy industry powers the creation of American jobs, upstream and downstream. Whether it’s in recruitment or safety training or healthcare benefits, every one of these people demands and deserves effective communications, with social media leading the list of new-tech methods.

Here at year-end, Signalwriter is cheerleading. Thanks to my energy industry clients for the work this past year. Today oil closed at $91+ a barrel. I’m looking forward to what’s coming next.

PS: If you feel like you need a new bumper sticker, let me know and I’ll see what I can do...RLB.

On Friday, AMAHouston Seminar Shows Intangibles Strategies.

When it comes to marketing and advertising intangibles there are several flavors. Services is one - banking services or accounting services. There are intangible products too; employee healthcare insurance, for example. Your written policy is a form of physical proof that you are insured; you can’t buy insurance by the pound.

Marketers have spent years, decades, transforming intangibles into various forms of reality so that a wide variety of stakeholders can grasp them. In these cases, it’s not about the purchase but the buy: Stakeholders buy into these intangibles in a number of ways, accepting them into their businesses and their lives. There is a requirement for mental acceptance which is, or should be, brand-driven.

“Selling the Intangible: B2B Service Marketing Strategies” is quite tangible: Three hands-on experts are going to make everything real for you at Friday’s B2B Special Interest Group seminar, from our chapter of the American Marketing Association. Just click here to register if you haven’t already.

Join us at the House of Blues and get fresh insights about bank marketing from William Trout, BBVACompass Director of Internal Communications. Hear about thought leadership as a marketing tool for employee health benefits from Katrina Drake Hudson, Regional Marketing Leader at Humana. And see a first-hand how-to on rebranding accounting services from Christa Gerlovich, Practice Growth Manager for Weaver, LLP.

Oh - you can market insurance by the pound, sort of, with commodity futures contracts*. One particularly successful example (if I say so myself) is this three-dimensional direct mail program sent to hundreds of US ingredients buyers. The campaign promoted commodity contracts on the Chicago Board of Trade. Of course, a futures contract is only mostly intangible. If you screw up the “virtual” becomes intensely physical and you could enjoy 5,000 bushels of soybeans delivered to your driveway.

There’ll be no soybeans at the House of Blues’ Bronze Peacock Room this Friday morning. Just successful strategies from Trout, Hudson and Stranhoner. Since I will be the moderator, I hereby offer you tangible benefits (including a light breakfast) and say “Come on down!”

*Commodity futures are agreements of contracts that are used to purchase or sell a specified amount of a given commodity – in the case of this campaign, corn, rice, soybeans and soybean oil which are used as ingredients in various food products. The Chicago Board of Trade – CBOT – is now part of CME Group. Direct mail campaign created and produced “back in the day” by The Quest Business Agency, Houston, TX. Creative Director/copywriter: Yours truly. Art Director: Jim Prejean. Production Manager: Beth Palmer.

We're Booking!

It’s really coincidence. Yesterday’s AMA-Houston luncheon (speaker: Karen Hooper, Director, Marketing Communications and Strategy, KBR) was so well attended, it felt like the Houston Rodeo. But I still had time for a short chat with Colin Hageney. His company, Bullpen Marketing, uses advertising specialties to create high-impact marcomm programs for clients.

He asked me if I’d read his latest blog post; I hadn’t. So I went there this morning and discovered he’d put a fresh face on a classic idea: Using books to help send your marketing messages. He calls it, “Something New Is Old Again.”

I can affirm that this kind of program is very effective and said so in a comment to his blog. Then I went to our library shelves and collected the books I used for Sperry Univac Defense Systems (old, old company name) as part of a book-based direct mail series.

Aimed right at the System Project Officers (SPOs) who were managing US defense and weaponry programs in those days, we chose books because we could send them to the officers but position them as donations to their units’ libraries. As I commented in Colin’s blog, we sent a series of books. One was a terrific coffee table tome about antique scientific instruments. There was a detailed historical examination of fast torpedo boats published by the US Naval Institute. And one I am surprised to find still in print: A biography of Elmer Sperry by Thomas Parke Hughes from Johns Hopkins University Press. (My original copy has a green rather than this blue cover.)

Sperry was one of the great turn-of-the-century US inventors, that tranche of original American tinkers that included Thomas Alva Edison, Henry Ford and Hiram Maxim…you probably don’t recall more than a couple of these names. I grew up with their stories.

A quarter of a century back, we could send books about these geniuses to people who still remembered who they were and what they contributed to America’s growth.

I’m guessing here – but Colin’s examples are, perhaps, a bit more timeless. Thanks for the reminder, Hageney. Ta for Thursday.