The holidays are here! Not only does that mean ’tis the season to be jolly with family and friends, but in the workplace as well.

By peppering your business with a little holiday spirit, you can revamp your brand image and inspire some holiday cheer in your customers.

Take Starbucks.

Its holiday marketing campaign, which debuted in November, features seasonal beverages like the “Peppermint Mocha” and “Gingerbread Latte” served up in special edition holiday cups.  This year, Starbucks has gone one step further with the Starbucks Cup Magic App, which allows coffee-drinkers to animate the action on their coffee cups on their smartphone screens.  The object, says VP-Global Digital Marketing for Starbucks, Alexandra Wheeler, is to both “surprise and delight” customers during this holiday season.

So get in the spirit! Here are some things you can do to make the holiday season a catalyst for your business:

-Deck the halls with boughs of holly! But seriously, some easy, simple decorations can go a long way.  By creating a fun, holiday atmosphere, your employees and customers alike will relish in the spirit of the season.

-Learn the holiday news cycle. To avoid missing out on an opportunity for your product or service in a publication, make sure you’re up to date on the editorial calendars well in advance to see what specific topics the media outlets will focus on during this holiday cycle.

-Wish your social media following a happy holidays. A simple tweet or Facebook post spreading the spirit will bring you back into sight and into mind.  Keeping up a rapport with those in the digital world (and continuing to maintain your online presence) is extremely important, especially now!

So enjoy this holiday season, and take advantage of the opportunity to enact some timely marketing strategies. Fa la la la la, la la la la.

Much already has been written about Steve Jobs – his marketing genius, his control of public relations, his ability to skillfully meld the products he created with a pent-up consumer demand for those products (or so we thought once his products were released).

That was the brilliance of Jobs. To paraphrase something he once said, “It isn’t up to consumers to know what they want. It’s up to us to tell them.”

Steven Jobs was one of those transformative inventors who comes along once every few generations. Perhaps it is a testament to how much he touched so many that – as President Barack Obama commented – so many learned of Jobs’ passing on a device he had invented.

He was also a public relations and marketing mastermind. His retail success came from creating powerful products backed by the buzz that made people feel they must have those devices. Apple’s iMac, iPod, iPad and iPhone wowed audiences when revealed in grand on-stage debuts – with Jobs as the emcee. Journalists were awed, and their articles reflected their amazement.

And we consumers bit – hard.

Apple didn’t need “traditional” consumer electronics marketing. The company consistently avoids major announcement hubs like the Consumer Electronics Show, notes PRdaily. He launched the hype – and sustained it.

Most (dare we say All-But-Apple) cannot afford to sidestep the major events. We bend over backwards to please our patrons, and play the retail merchandising game the way the industry has created it. Yet Jobs’ prowess in product development showed us that the brand dictates the trend – and not vice versa.

By developing one-of-a-kind products with unique messages to match, marrying art and technology in a way we’ve never seen before, Jobs dominated the technology industry. As the article explains, many described Apple products as “funky” and “snazzy,” showing their appreciation for the visual appearance of the tech.

Steve Jobs was quoted once as having said, “The customer is not right, I am.” Masterfully brilliant, unabashed in his view of the world, in every essence of the word, Steve Jobs – in his jeans and black, mock-turtleneck – didn’t just sell us things. He sold us dreams.

And if you were listening, he sold us a new roadmap to successful marketing.

We are all aware of the power and popularity of YouTube, which is now the Internet’s second most popular search engine behind Google.

With its 18 million daily US visitors, it is fast becoming a great outlet for Florida advertisers, hobbyists, social media users and PR pros.  Some use it for simple how-to videos while others promote viral campaigns to attract, educate, entertain and hopefully make some new relationships.

The following Fast Company article provides us with the back story on how former Google executive and current YouTube chief executive Salar Kamangar helped mold the concept and the company into an important part of Google’s current and future growth plans.

Click here to view article:

How YouTube’s Global Platform Is Redefining the Entertainment Business

Below is a post from Verbatim written by Joyce K. Smiley of JKS & Company  that discusses the basics of what it takes for law firms and lawyers to build their books of business.

Basically, gaining market share is dependent on satisfying your existing clients.  In Florida, attorneys and firms are finding it more and more challenging to find new clients with the back-drop of one of the worst recessions in Florida’s history.  There is no question that Florida had a one-year head start on the rest of the country with the summer, 2007 residential real estate meltdown.

I was speaking with a Miami lawyer last week at the Florida Bar Convention and he concurred that he is now seeing more and more competitors at business and charitable events.  “What are we going to do, sell life insurance to one another,” he asked?

That’s the point, 80% of new client referrals will come from existing clients and contacts.  Therefore, wouldn’t it be advisable to get an accurate fix on how you and your law firm are perceived by current clients first?    

  What You Need to Know to Gain Market Share 

“When they want our work, we have their complete attention,” said Elliott Miller, director of legal affairs of Denver-based Pendum LLC (www.pendum.com). “Once they have our work, they tend to rest on their laurels. Don’t take advantage,” Miller said of law firms, when he was on a panel of in-house counsel speaking to the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Legal Marketing Association in May.Most marketing and business development professionals will spend time this summer exploring potential strategies to grow their firms’ market share next year, to prepare their 2011 budget requests. To grow market share, your clients must view your firm as the best value compared to your competitors, certainly not as one that has lost interest in them.  

Strategic Client Interviews are a cost-effective way to give your firm the advantage it needs to grasp onto more market share. These interviews reveal:  

• what clients want from your firm
• what problems you must address to strengthen and expand your client relationships
• how to enhance your relationships to keep clients loyal to your firm
• clients’ perceptions of your firm in the legal marketplace
• the opportunities that could increase your firm’s business with its clients  

In response to the question “What do general counsel want from outside counsel?” Miller summed up: “It’s very simple. Legal expertise is the bare minimum. We want outside counsel who also respect our budgets, deadlines and communication styles. We want outside counsel who know our businesses. We want outside counsel, in short, who define their success as our success.”

It seemed like a great marketing and public relations idea at the time.

Diageo, the importer of Captain Morgan Rum, would donate money to the National Football League’s retired player charity every time a player struck the Captain Morgan “Got a little Captain in you” pose after scoring a touchdown.

And they pulled it off, too. This month, Philadelphia Eagles tight end Brent Celek posed in the end zone after scoring a touchdown in the 20-16 loss to the Dallas Cowboys. (more…)