Disinformation, Gen Z, Nike, and Tractors – The Sales Lead Digest Vol.

The new year starts with some scary news about disinformation campaigns on social media but we found another story suggesting the next generation may break current trends. We found a sales related article about a big steal from New Balance by Nike in the high stakes world of sports sponsorship, and end with a midwest story about re-discovering old tech to make more money in an uncertain economy. Opportunities abound! Good selling. 

dark web

Disinformation For Hire: How A New Breed Of PR Firms Is Selling Lies Online

“Peng, however, is undeterred. He said it’s easy to evade Facebook’s controls, and that demand for his services remains strong.
‘I think cracking Facebook is quite easy. My software is developed to constantly fight against Facebook,’ he said. ‘This is done because there are markets, customers, and needs, and people have money to pay for the service. We do it because there is a demand.'”

Another one for the file labeled, Best Solutions Tend to Win. It’s like when our president came back from an email conference shaking his head and muttering something about spam never ending. I have no doubt the metrics work for the companies that are paying, but there has to be another way besides abusing customers with spam or disinformation campaigns. Hey! I’m an optimist! READ MORE

Gen Z is reinventing social media marketing

“Livity recently worked with Playstation and Giphy to create a series of Playstation-branded GIFs that could be shared via WhatsApp while users are gaming. This came after the agency observed players sending texts and GIFs to friends via WhatsApp mid-game. With the branded GIFs, Playstation could participate in those conversations on dark social, where the brand would otherwise have little visibility. The GIFs have so far garnered 1.4 billion views, according to Giphy.”
I almost needed a thesaurus for this one! Dark social? Cancel culture? Below the line? Branded GIFs? Suffice it to say that word-of-mouth is morphing. With 16-24 year olds spending 7 hours a day online using social media almost exclusively, if your prospects are there you should be too. It’s a retreat to a weird privacy for sure but it’s best to be aware!  READ MORE

Nike Scores Jersey Deal With EPL’s Liverpool

“Underscoring the cutthroat competition for soccer sponsorships, Boston-based New Balance had fought to retain its relationship with Liverpool—the current runaway leader of the English Premier League—citing a provision that allowed it to match any competing deal, but was ultimately unsuccessful.”
I was just listening to a sales guru talk give his 13 “dials” to use in proposal writing and one of them was the inclusion of a right-of-first-refusal covenant. I used to bump into this with government contracts and used it as evidence that we needed to not only be as good as the incumbent, we needed to be much, much better. It’s how you work about these attempts sellers make at being immovable. New Balance learned that no advantage is insurmountable. We should think the same way! READ MORE

For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

“Tractors manufactured in the late 1970s and 1980s are some of the hottest items in farm auctions across the Midwest these days — and it’s not because they’re antiques.
Cost-conscious farmers are looking for bargains, and tractors from that era are well-built and totally functional, and aren’t as complicated or expensive to repair as more recent models that run on sophisticated software.
‘It’s a trend that’s been building. It’s been interesting in the last couple years, which have been difficult for ag, to see the trend accelerate,’ said Greg Peterson, the founder of Machinery Pete, a farm equipment data company in Rochester with a website and TV show.”
Our customers are open to any solution to their problems including resurrecting old technology to manage costs. I used to work with a tshirt company who found a big increase in sales from their back catalog of designs when print on demand technology showed up coupled with Amazon’s reach. Dig into your firm’s old assets and dust off ideas and products left for dead. It’s time for some testing!
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