Members of the International Brotherhood of Mythical Creatures  are taking matters into their hands, hooves and paws.

The group released a statement from the North Pole on Monday afternoon officially declaring Kegasus, Lord of the InfieldFest at the Preakness, is missing.

Organizers of the event hinted at similar concerns earlier this month when they announced this year’s musical headliners, but skirted the question of the return of the centaur.

(As far as advertising campaigns go, this one seems to be on target with organizers’ desire to attract a younger, hipper crowd. It also avoids the fear of Jimmy Learned, president of Elevation Ltd., the advertising company that has been running the Preakness’ campaigns for the last two years: “doing vanilla work.”)

The Leprechaun and The Easter Bunny have launched campaigns to claim Kegasus’ title, much to the dismay of the council, which forbids members “from performing the duties of another member,” according to the statement.

“The IBOMC plans to convene an emergency board meeting to review its bylaws concerning the matter,” the brotherhood said.

No date for the meeting was announced.

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Say you had to tweet your cover letter and file your resume through a Facebook page. Does the idea make you panicky?

Under Armour is looking for two intern candidates to join its “Ultimate Intern Team.” The program is open to undergrad and graduate college students who want to learn more about sports and marketing.

But they have to make their pitch in 140 characters and use Under Armour’s Facebook fan page to submit their resume through May 12. The chosen interns will be working with the digital marketing team at the company, focusing on social media engagement.

The internship sounds like a pretty sweet gig. For five weeks, the interns will work with some of UA’s athlete sponsors, see the technology behind the brand’s innovation and spend some time getting to know CEO Kevin Plank to discuss leadership and entrepreneurship. The students will also work on Facebook posts, Twitter tweets and blog entries on their experiences with the company. Reminds me a bit of when Charlie Bucket gets to take the glass elevator trip with Willy Wonka. If only.

The selected interns will receive a $5,000 scholarship paid directly to his or her school. The final 100 candidates will be announced on May 16, then the top 10 will conduct a Skype interview on May 23 with UA officials. Airfare, travel and housing will all be covered as part of the internship, which lasts June 13 to July 15.

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A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the “art” of posting to Facebook and Twitter, from the perspective of an organization that is trying to reach out and share information with readers, users or consumers.

At The Daily Record, we blast out breaking news posts on Facebook and Twitter, as well as other news we hope readers will find interesting enough to click on and engage with.

But every once in a while, we also use our social media sites to send out a marketing message or two, such as:

“Purchase tickets for the 2011 Health Care Heroes Breakfast on March 23 at the Hyatt Regency Inner Harbor. More info: http://bit.ly/dEZ7ef”

This is necessary, because we have to promote our events and our paid subscription options through different media in order to reach as much of our audience as possible. But at the same time, we know that most of our Facebook “likes” and Twitter followers did not sign up for promotions. They signed up to receive semi-frequent news updates.

The downside to this double-edged sword is the ease with which a user can “unlike” or “unfollow” your page.

On Jay Baer’s “Convince & Convert” social media blog, he recently wrote a post called “Why You’re Pissing Off Half Your Facebook Fans.” He reports the findings of new research on why consumers “turn their backs on social and e-mail connections with brands.”

Read the rest of this entry »

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In this never-ending quest by phone companies to alleviate the pressures of thinking for ourselves, the Ocean City Department of Tourism is jumping on board and has announced the launch of its free iPhone application.

Ocean City Mobile is now available through the iTunes Application Store and provides information on restaurants, accommodations, entertainment, services, promotions, weather forecasts and more.

Ocean City is one of the first beach destinations to launch an official iPhone app, according to the news release, which also notes a version of Ocean City Mobile for Blackberry and Android will be available “in the near future.”

I am doing my best to avoid the iPhone/Blackberry/Android revolution so can’t comment on the potential awesomeness of the new app. But I can comment on the marketing benefits to Ocean City. With its biggest summer marketing budget ever, the beach town is staying relevant to its audience AND making itself more accessible.

Now the trick is once people get to Ocean City, how to pry the phone out of their hands so they actually enjoy the sights and sounds of the tourist town. Is there an app for that?

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This Friday 20 Baltimore high school students are hopping on a bus to New York to present their marketing plans to Bad Boy Entertainment, rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs’ recording label.

The trip is sponsored by the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship’s Baltimore affiliate and the students have collectively worked on three proposals: 1) the importance of micro-enterprise, 2) going green through business ventures and 3) developing a new product line for women 35 and older.

(I’m especially curious about what kind of perspective high school students would bring to that last topic.)

Upon their arrival the students will meet with an NYU business professor and two campus entrepreneurs over lunch. They’ll also get to visit Bad Boy Recording Studio and the 105 Radio Station.

We’ll keep our fingers crossed for the students, who won’t know until they get to New York whether Diddy will be able to join Bad Boy’s executive team members for their marketing presentation. He was able to meet with students two years ago for NFTE’s last trip there.

NFTE was founded in New York in 1987 and provides entrepreneurship education programs to young people from low-income communities. The nonprofit’s regional business plan competition was held last weekend and Reginald F. Lewis High School 11th grader Shawn Curtis won first place for Dante’s Cleaning Service, a business that caters to the elderly and to working professionals. He received $1,000 to grow his business.

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Capitals owner Ted Leonsis

The 15th annual National Sports Forum wrapped up in Baltimore yesterday, and boy did they have an all star cast this year.

Here are just a few of the speakers and panelists that have been imparting their wisdom upon the sports business world: Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti, Oriole Hall-of-Famer Cal Ripken Jr., Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis, Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank, Feld Entertainment CEO Kenneth Feld and Orioles President of Baseball Operations Andy MacPhail.

Topics covered include social media, the economy, best practices and the blend of sports and entertainment. The Baltimore Ravens, Orioles and concessionaire Aramark are hosting the event.

If you’re wondering why you haven’t read anything about what the speakers said — sorry, folks. The sessions and panels are all off the record so that the panelists can speak freely.

I attended Tuesday’s super panel, “Leadership in the Economy” featuring Plank, Feld, Leonsis, Ripken and moderated by local lawyer and sports agent Ron Shapiro. The room was packed and the audience of about 500 people were hanging on the panelists’ every word.

But here’s something else I noticed — most of the attendees were men. As were most of the speakers. Chris Plonsky, women’s athletic director at the University of Texas at Austin, was a featured panelist this week, as was sports marketing consultant Dockery Clark. But the women participants were few and far between.

I’m not knocking the sports forum organizers — they worked with what they’ve got and who’s available. But looking across the sea of attendees and seeing so many suits and ties made me think that ratio isn’t changing any time soon.

Does anyone care about this? Should this be changed…and how do you do that? What is it about sports that makes it so lopsided toward men? When I think about my girlfriends, I can only think of one or two who will genuinely talk sports with me — most of the people I talk sports with are my guy friends.

So does that mean sports business forever destined to be a man’s profession?

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So if the Ravens make the big game (I won’t say the official title for fear of jinxing it), will we be adding purple to the Maryland state flag? At this rate, that seems like a possibility.

Last week, Ravens grounds crew members painted City Hall and Federal Hill with the large Ravens logos. Now, with the blessing of the area’s county and city governments, late last night and early into this morning, the Ravens staff continued painting the town purple with spray chalk and smaller stencils.

From a Ravens press release: “As Baltimoreans wake up this morning, they will find the Ravens’ logo and team mantra ‘Play Like A Raven’ at over 100 locations throughout Baltimore City, Baltimore County and Howard County. These locations consist of high-trafficked areas, marquee destinations, hospitals, libraries and other key spots such as the Inner Harbor, Cross Street Market, the Hippodrome and the Hunt Valley Town Center.”

Kidding aside, stuff like this is one of the reasons Baltimore is such a great sports town. But it takes two to tango — the Ravens are clearly marking their territory and making a big effort to keep the team in the forefront of people’s minds.

As Ravens President Dick Cass told me in a recent interview, the Ravens have a smaller market area than most NFL teams. And, being surrounded by teams in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Washington, they do not have a strong secondary market. So, the team has to put a lot of effort into the areas that are solidly pro-Ravens to keep its fan base energized.

“Trying to generate more out of Baltimore is important for our future,” Cass said.

This weekend the Ravens face a tough opponent on Saturday in the Indianapolis Colts, who started off the season 14-0 before slipping to 14-2 at the finish.

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It’s kind of funny that sometimes the fancier the product, the more old school effective marketing can be.

Case in point: according to a Retail Advertising and Marketing Association survey conducted by BIGresearch, 43.7 percent of shoppers say word-of-mouth is the biggest influence in their electronics purchases.

“Hearing what other people have to say about a product gives shoppers the satisfaction of knowing what they purchased is peer-reviewed and worth their money,” said Mike Gatti, executive director of RAMA. “Whether it is based on a conversation with a friend or a customer review on a website, people put a lot of weight in other shoppers’ opinions.”

Fear not, retailers — advertising inserts, articles and in-store promotions also sway buying decisions. It’s just that for you, those methods cost money and they won’t be as effective as a free endorsement from a real live human being.

When I think about my shopping — which is mostly online — I love it when an unfamiliar product has a couple reviews for me to peruse. Another case in point: I was searching for a winter coat from Overstock.com last year and found one by Coffee Shop for a steal at $80 (including shipping). I read the customer reviews before I bought it and all of them raved so I figured I was safe.

Last winter I lost track of how many times people asked me where I got the coat and I know of at least one friend that went online and bought a similar coat from Overstock.com. And by the way, 33.6 percent of shoppers according to BIGresearch said their apparel decisions are also influenced by word-of-mouth.

Seems the more shopping we do on the Internet the more important good reviews become. In fact a large part of marketing firms’ “word-of-mouth” campaigns involve recruiting real customers to write good reviews for their clients online. They are not paid to endorse the products — but it’s a fine line.

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I can’t remember all the times I’ve heard the phrase “do more with less” this year…it has officially been filed under my list of Overused Phrases of 2009. But every once and a while the notion actually works.

This spring, four Baltimore tourism entities announced they were pooling their resources (namely, money) to market the Inner Harbor this summer in a $400,000 campaign called Waterfront Invasion. The Maryland Science Center and the National Aquarium in Baltimore teamed up with Visit Baltimore and the Waterfront Partnership to promote the waterfront, the aquarium’s “Jellies Invasion: Oceans Out of Balance” exhibit and the Science Center’s “Chinasaurs: Dinosaur Dynasty” in a media blitz that hit TV, radio, newspapers and billboards in Washington, Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

It was the first time such a collaboration had been attempted for downtown Baltimore tourism.

The result? Attendance numbers at the Science Center and aquarium surpassed projections and hotels benefited from the travel packages. Specifically,
• The ticket upgrade sales for Chinasaurs doubled projected numbers.
• Summer attendance at the aquarium was 13 percent above projections.
• More than 874 room nights booked through Waterfront Invasion packages.
• Waterfront Invasion media coverage reached 23,385,771 people and generated $648,911 in advertising equivalency.

The industry has noticed: the campaign won the Maryland Tourism Council’s Industry Partnership Award at their summit last week and last month it won an Award of Distinction from the International Downtown Association.

This year was such a good experience, tourism officials are considering a repeat performance.

“We are excited about last summer’s results and about proving that collaboration among Baltimore’s cultural attractions and marketing organizations can bring success to all of them,” said Denise Aranoff-Brown, senior director of marketing for the Aquarium. “We are in preliminary talks about how we can collaborate again in the future if the conditions are right, and hope we can bring the Waterfront Invasion back to Baltimore.”

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Wow. In this 24-hour news cycle, if you don’t get in front of something right away, the rumors will fly.

Nike issued a statement this morning saying it is NOT signing Vick. From the Washington Post:

“Nike does not have a contractual relationship with Michael Vick,” the spokesman, Kejuan Wilkins, said, according to the reports. “We have agreed to supply product to Michael Vick as we do a number of athletes who are not under contract with Nike.”

Meanwhile a quick Google news search shows that about 850 news articles and opinion colums were published between 6 p.m. yesterday and this morning on the Nike “deal.”

So what the heck took Nike so long to correct this error?

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