Betty Benton Mann, the “Betty” Behind the Betty Factor, Died Friday Morning

Betty Mann (of "The Betty Factor" fame)

Betty Benton Mann, my 83-year-old mother-in-law and the inspiration behind The Betty Factor, died in her sleep early Friday morning, December 4, 2009 of health matters incident to old age and having her gall bladder removed earlier in the week.

Here is a copy of her obituary.

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After 83 wonderful years on earth, Betty Benton Mann returned home to her Father-in-Heaven, the Savior, Jesus Christ, many loving family members and friends, and her beloved husband, Ray, on December 4, 2009, nearly two years to the day after Ray’s passing.

Born July 3, 1926 in Boise, Idaho to Mamie Thompson and Otto G. Benton, Betty was the fifth of nine children. She was raised in Boise, Twin Falls, Idaho and Redondo Beach, California.

From the day she first walked herself to services as a young child, Betty was a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). As a teenager, she was president of her ward Golden Gleaner organization and helped plan and run the first ever LDS Youth Conference in southern California.

After graduating from Redondo Union High School, she moved to North Salt Lake to help her oldest sister, Wanda, care for her children, and it was there that she met her future husband, Ray Elwood Mann.

Betty and Ray were married in the Salt Lake Temple of the LDS church on May 4, 1948. They settled in Bountiful, Utah where they raised three daughters and two sons, while she also worked as a dental assistant for many years. Betty was active in the PTA in Bountiful where she ran the Halloween Carnival for three years and served as PTA president for two year.

After their youngest children graduated from high school in 1975, Betty and Ray spent an adventurous year in 1976 in West Germany for Ray’s employer, Chicago Bridge & Iron. The next year, Ray was transferred to world headquarters in Chicago where they lived until 1984. During their time in Naperville, Illinois, Betty filled an eight-year volunteer assignment with LDS Social Services working with out-of-wedlock mothers, including service as a counselor to birth mothers and transporting newborns to adoptive parents. She also served for a time as a member of the Relief Society presidency in the Glenbard Ward in Illinois.

Betty and Ray moved to Sandy, Utah in 1984 where they made their home for the rest of their lives. In Sandy, Betty served for 18 years in the LDS church’s Data Entry Program in the Canyon View Stake. She and Ray also served a one-year LDS Service Mission in 1994 near Bakersfield, California for the Home Management Department.

Betty was preceded in death by her parents, five siblings, her husband, and one son, Clyde. She is survived by four children, Linda, Pam (Harold) Egginton, Todd, and Allisha (David) Politis; 18 grandchildren (evenly divided between boys and girls); and 14 great-grandchildren.

A viewing will be held at Mountain View Mortuary at 3115 East 7800 South in Cottonwood Heights, Utah from 6 to 8 p.m. on Tues., Dec. 8, 2009. The funeral will be held at the same location at 11 a.m. on Wed., Dec. 9, preceded by an additional viewing from 9:45 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. Interment, on site, will follow immediately after the funeral.

The family extends its heartfelt thanks and admiration for all of the fantastic doctors and medical providers who worked with Betty in addressing her health concerns during the past few years. In addition, Betty (and Ray) loved living at South Towne Ranch in Sandy, Utah where they made many wonderful friends.

Betty had a sharp mind and wit her entire life, and she loved studying the gospel of Jesus Christ and learning about LDS church history. She was a devoted and loving wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and friend, and although she will be missed, we are happy she has “graduated” from this life to be reunited with her husband and best friend, Ray.

Goodbye for now, Betty.

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Although we had some initial son-in-law / mother-in-law challenges early in the 28 years of our relationship, we both grew to love and respect each other over time, and I’m grateful Allisha and I were able to have both Betty and Ray live so close by as we raised our five children.

She was a good person and taught me much, not the least of which was to always remember to work and work and work to make sure what I wrote could be easily understood by anyone, even my mother-in law.

To that end, I will always use the phrase “The Betty Factor” as a shorthand reminder of that lesson. I will also keep this blog alive in her honor and as a way of continuing to teach about the importance of keeping all marketing messages simple and on-point.

Thank you, Betty, and for now, goodbye. 

Want Better Results? Write Better Headlines!

Regardless of the specific industry you work in, everyone is always looking for ways to be more successful and generate better results. For those of us with marketing and/or communications responsibilities, that means getting more people to read, listen to and/or watch our stuff.

Why? Because the more people we can engage with our marketing/communications stuff the more successful we will be and that invariably means MONEY!

So if you really want better results, that means writing better headlines . . . at least that’s what MarketingSherpa says.

MarketingSherpa is one of the leading publishers of information and data on what really works in all areas of marketing and marketing communications. They have hundreds of thousands of subscribers to their free online newsletters, and do a substantial business in selling reports and studies and producing conferences around the U.S.

Last week, MarketingSherpa.com ran a great story in their online newsletter titled “4 Takeaways from MarketingSherpa’s Newsletter Subject-Line Analysis.” (Not necessarily the snappiest headline, but it does follow one of the four rules. See below.)

In summary, MarketingSherpa had their own people go back and analyze every headline for every article they had published in the last year to see if they could identify which articles were the most successful. Naturally, each article topic stands on its own and one topic may be inherently more interesting and/or relevant to more people than the rest.

But by the time they were all done - particularly analyzing click-to-opens (the number of people who clicked on a link to see an entire article) and reviewing clickthroughs (the number of times people clicked on a link within, or connected to, an article) - they came up with Four Takeaways, namely

1. The first two words in any headline are the most critical (such as How To, Top 12, Simple Email, and HTML vs, among others),
2. Use “trigger words” in your headlines (you’ll need to read this one because there isn’t a simple rule to follow, but they did suggest you “dedicate at least a few hours to the subject line“),
3. Avoid hard-sell headlines or headlines that ask for reader action (NOTE: The worst performing 10 headlines for MarketingSherpa last year ALL USED HARD-SELL LANGUAGE OR REQUESTED READER ACTION), and
4. Use “hot brands” in headlines wherever possible and practical (headlines that included company names like Facebook, Google and Wikipedia pulled the best for MarketingSherpa articles).

They also came up with a BONUS TAKEAWAY, which is

• Shorter headlines are ALMOST ALWAYS better (but there are exceptions, and MarketingSherpa provides a few examples).

This article has really inspired me to work smarter, harder and longer (when necessary) when it comes to writing any headline.

I believe that anyone who is focused on following the principles of The Betty Factor will do the same.

Five Marketing Lessons Learned from Watching Movie Trailers

My wife and I took three of our kids to go see the new movie “Prince Caspian” last Saturday, the second installment in the Chronicles of Narnia movie series originally penned by C.S. Lewis. (I loved the movie, by the way, whether or not it adhered precisely to the book.)

However, this article is not intended to serve as a critical review of this or any other movie. Rather, my goal here is to examine the role played by entertainment marketing experts as they advertise forthcoming movies through that long-used vehicle known as a movie trailer.

Originally, these long-form advertisements would follow feature-length films after they finished playing in the movie house. By the 1960s, however, filmmakers realized that they were losing the potential impact of such “trailing” ad efforts because moviegoers were leaving their cinema seats as the closing credits began to roll.

So . . . even though such trailers began to play before the opening scenes of the featured film, the term “movie trailer” continues to be used in the entertainment vernacular today.

We in the Politis household are fairly active moviegoers, and we probably catch an average of two to three first-run movies each month (depending upon the month). And we typically try and watch movies during their opening week. As a result, we get to see a LOT of movie trailers; not as many as movie critics or hardcore movie fans, but enough to be sure.

As a strategic marketing communications professional, I find movie trailers fascinating, if for no other reason that some are so fantastic, some are so awful and some are so average. (Probably a simple mirroring of the movies themselves, eh?)

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Mobilize the Penny Pinchers

Talk of a recession is not going unnoticed by the average American. We already seem to be staying home, driving less and cutting back on things like entertainment, food and travel. The government’s effort to curb this prediction is to offer the individual economic stimulus package, giving about $1,200 per couple. While exciting on the receiving end, I am interested to see if this one time “gift” is really going to get us out there buying any of the great new products marketers are ready to launch.

When consumers are pinching their pennies, what is the best way to introduce a product they don’t really need? The answer maybe found in a simple marketing strategy that has fallen by the way side in the last 10 years.

Coupons. Coupons, Coupons, Coupons.

A recent study from ICOM Information and Communications says that of the more than 1,500 survey respondents, 67 percent said they were much more likely or somewhat more likely to use coupons during a recession.

Picture this, Suzie Homemaker is frustrated with her broom and dustpan. She has seen several commercials for the brand new Swifter Vac, II. She wants to try it but an additional $25 or $30 to her grocery bill will put her over her tight budget. Next, factor in a $5 off coupon sent to Suzie because she opted in to receive weekly emails from P&G. You now have a much better chance of getting Suzie to invest in your new product. Also, you can track every step the coupon makes, evaluating along the way if the strategy is working.

Bottom line, let’s mobilize the penny pinchers. Let’s give them a reason to buy our new product or service. There is no need for manufacturers to send out more coupons. They do however, need to focus on sending them to the right individuals and maybe consider extending expiration dates.

ZDNet’s Krigsman is Correct: I.T. DOES Lose Credibility by Speaking in Technical Jargon

Michael Krigsman, driving force behind ZDNet’s IT Project Failures blog, nailed it yesterday when he wrote, “Is IT becoming extinct?”

In one of seven points he makes as to why he believes that the average Information Technology department is headed for death’s door, he writes,

“IT loses credibility by speaking in technical jargon . . .”

Michael Krigsman, “Is IT becoming extinct?” ZDNet, 3-23-08

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Better Media Coverage Requires an Ongoing PR Effort

In a relatively short item posted a few days ago on the Wall Street Journal’s Independent Street blog, Kelly Spors outlines five insights from a small business entrepreneur on “How to Get Killer PR” (see http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet/2008/03/13/how-to-get-killer-pr/.)

Specifically, Spors relates how she had “encountered” Sarah Endline several times during a period of a few months, which led Spors to wonder if such encounters were merely the result of a shrinking world or perhaps the workings of “killer PR?”

Although curiosity may have killed the cat, it led Spors to track down Endline, the founder and CEO of Sweetriot (a five-person, NYC-based company) for the story behind Endline’s PR success.

Of the five PR tips that Spors gleans from Endline, I particularly appreciated Tip No. 5:

Devote time. If you think PR will help your company, make time for it. It can’t be just something you try to squeeze into your free time between sales meetings. It takes time, persistence and strategy. 

To me, this is a great insight for any executive, business owner, entrepreneur or marketing type to take to heart.

Politis Pointer: 

I have found that it is VERY RARE INDEED when an organization or individual can come up with that one killer PR, marketing, advertising, promotional, direct response or interactive execution that launches a service, product, person, company or idea into eternal orbit.

Successful marketing communications campaigns are (in my opinion) successful because

• They are campaigns, and
• The people pulling the marcom levers recognize that consistent marketing communications success requires consistent effort.

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One more thing. Having a topnotch PR agency on Sweetriot’s side doesn’t hurt either, as it’s apparently currently using (or has worked with) NYC-based fashion/celebrity PR  shop Think Public Relations. 

Save Me a Slice: Mouthwatering Pies

When it comes to e-mail campaigns, your 50 character headline is sometimes all that stands between you and your customer’s spam folder.

The title of this blog post is the subject line of an e-mail I received from Albertsons.com last week. Not only was the subject line catchy but receiving the e-mail at 12:30 p.m. perked my stomach’s attention as well.

Honestly, I was most impressed that the subject line was interesting without the use of ALL CAPS, obnoxious exclamation marks, or a 24-hour deadline. There is a fine line between “catchy” and “spammy.”

Now, where is that pie?

Book Review: “MADE to STICK”

I had a seatmate on a recent airline flight tell me how much she loved “MADE to STICK” (subhead: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die) by Chip Heath & Dan Heath. Her recommendation reminded me that I had seen the book and prompted me to pick up a copy.

Chances are you’ve seen a copy as you’ve walked past an airport shop that sells books or if you frequent bookstores. It’s the book with the florescent orange cover with a strip of gray duct tape stuck on the front cover. At least that’s what the cover looks like from a distance.

Pick up the book and you discover that the duct tape is actually a photographic image of a strip of duct tape, which in and of itself was a great idea.

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