Do you care about your environment? No, not saving the planet or going green - we are talking about media placement.

Clearly there are certain ad placements that are advantageous - front or back inside covers, right side over left side, primetime network television. But did you ever think about choosing your ad space based on the other advertisers in the magazine?

A recent study in the Journal of Consumer Research shows that "expert" consumers that had knowledge about the target product's category were more likely to look favorably on a brand when its ad was placed near high end brands in noncompetitive categories - such as putting Armani or Rolex next to an ad for Honda.

Once the consumers were given technical specifications about the target product, their view changed accordingly.

So what does this mean for your media placements? Pay attention to who is around you - and not just your direct competition. Maybe a little savvy media placement can give your brand a boost. But be careful to know your audience - the study also showed that novices tended to have the opposite reaction, evaluating the target brand less favorably.

Yes, we do hate buzz acronyms like ROI, but it is a term that non-profits rarely get to throw around without feeling a twinge of corporate guilt.

The truth is, non-profits can and should think of marketing and branding as vehicles on which they can see a significant return. No organization should be creating newsletters, glossy annual reports or even flyers without considering who they are talking to and why.

Sometimes the return on investment is increased donations, but even this is a deceivingly simple "return." The most recent Bank of America philanthropy study showed that donors, specifically high net-worth donors, like to feel personally involved in an organization, and they like to see their own...dare we say it...ROI.

So, that means that in order to keep the carefully cultivated donors giving and spreading the word about your organization, you need to show exactly how the donations are being used and what kind of a difference the donations are making in the particular mission of your organization and the community at large.

Proving to your donors that their "investments" in your organization are bringing in returns means that you will begin to see a reciprocal return for all of that time spent documenting progress and creating communications vehicles for that information - more and larger donations.

And all of your communications materials - not just development brochures - should work together to promote this same message of return on investment, because an organization seen as making real progress on an issue is one that will have prouder, more vocal board members, more satisfied staff, and more happy "clients" who have been served effectively and want to sing your praises. In the end, it all translates to more funds to do more good work.

So, non-profits, demand return from your marketing activity the same way your donors are demanding it from you! Let's make "ROI" the overused buzzword of fund developers everywhere.

No, we're not talking soccer. We're talking an easy way to turn the thousand web reports you probably have access to into something other than meaningless jumbles of numbers.

If you run Google Analytics or a similar data collection program on your website, you know that you have access to a huge wealth of data. And you also know that you probably run a lot of reports that seem really meaningful - until you try to do something about them.

"Time on site" is great - until you realize that maybe someone is spending a lot of time on your site because your ordering system is so confusing.

"Bounce rate" seems very telling - until you realize that someone calling in an order off your homepage would be counted as a bounce.

So much beautiful data - so little information. One way to start giving yourself some focus and some context is to focus on specific goals. But not your own. Your visitor's.

Google Analytics and other programs allow you to start thinking like a visitor and decide what actions constitute a successful visit. This is going to vary widely. It might be someone seeing a "Thank you for your purchase" page, or it might be getting someone to sign up for a newsletter or RSS feed. It might be a brochure download or a view of the "Contact Us" page. Take some time and really be creative with it. Then set goals in your software and start tracking those instead of thinking of a simple visit to your site is a success. You don't want visits - you want conversions. It seems simple, but it can do a long way to saving a lot of wasted time and reporting for the sake of reporting.

The point is - start thinking in terms of customer experience and what a successful web visit means for your particular company or organization. And this means...your website needs to have a PURPOSE (gasp!). But that's a blog for another day.

Buzzwords are the opposite of creativity, innovation and strategy. They stop thought and they obscure the truth.

For some reason, marketing seems to be a magnet for them, maybe because they are a way for we marketing nerds to seem cool, or because they allow people who don't really know what they are talking about to make other people think THEY are the clueless ones. Who knows?

What we do know is that they drive us up the wall, even when we find ourselves reverting to them!

Among our "favorites": Turnkey Actionable Web-enabled Operationalize Leverage Mission-critical Paradigm (see also: Paradigm Shift)

And the clear winner of Most Ironic: Outside of the Box

Are you also numbed by jargon and buzzwords? Feel like you would rather gag yourself with a thumb drive than run another marketing meeting? It doesn't have to be that way.

Stand up with us against buzzwords! Help Smilin' Tom bury these bones for good! Submit your favorites to his blog. Or, if you are a buzzword-believer, defend them to the bitter end!