A mash-up idea

Last week there was a great post by the always enlightening Mitch Joel on his blog - Six Pixels of Separation. (I think you would enjoy his musings).

In this post he shared a TED Talk by James Howard Kunstler on Sense of Place. James speaks to how urban design has mutated into something awful and basically - designers and planners don't give a damn. It's a great rant, and a passionate viewpoint.

Mitch equates the talk to how online advertising sucks. You may get even more out of it, if you are willing to stretch the thinking beyond simply urban design. For instance, I was impressed with the idea of caring. Caring about our work. There are times every week where I know I want to say, "screw it", and just grin and bill it. I'm sure you do to. But truly caring about the work, your clients and the folks who look at your advertising means not saying screw it. It means being very thoughtful about everything we put out.

Now the mash-up.

I am reading (and I'm a bit embarrassed to say) for the first time, How to Win Friends and Influence People. What a great book! Read it - or read it again. You will find so much valuable information in it for working with people.

In the opening of the book Dale Carnegie illustrates an important idea - conducting a weekly review. In the case of the illustration, he tells the story of a banker who at the end of the week would go to his calendar and think through all the engagements, discussions and meetings that had taken place during the week and he would ask himself what mistakes he had made. What did he do right? What could he have done better.

The reviews often made him upset at himself for the mistakes he made, but as time passed the mistakes became fewer. Wouldn't it be a great idea to go back and review your work for the week and see where you just said "screw it"?

Then ask yourself what could I have done better? How could I have avoided that?

I'm going to try it - for my meetings and discussions but also for the work we put out.

Terry O'Reilly Interview

For the latest issue of Canadian Gaming Magazine, I interviewed Terry O'Reilly of Pirate and CBC's The Age of Persuasion. Terry spoke quite passionately about the need for any brand to do some brand advertising - in addition to what terry called "the tougher aspects of marketing."

Download the article here from Docstoc.

I had forgotten to post this article, but I was reminded about it, after writing my last post. What is the balance between the tougher aspects and branding? I work with a lot of small businesses, or brands with smaller budgets, and finding that balance is one of the bigger challenges. In the end, as Terry says, a good ad will make the cash register ring. But is it just one ad?

Great branding should create that happy association - elicit the consumer response of, "I like you."

Then, when you get to the tougher aspects, actually selling me a car for instance, I am open to the relationship, I have a sense of trust and I'm willing to deal with you. It doesn't give the brand carte blanche though. As I learned again in our losing pitch last week — you still need to give me something I want. The branding won't help if there's no value in it for me at the end.

Anyway, read the article, it's for Canadian Gaming Magazine so it does have a Casino focus, but the ideas are universal. Love to hear your comments. Except on the spelling. I don't know whether it was Canadian Gaming Business who made me look bad, or whether I rushed this article off without proper proofing—either way, cut me some slack!

A lesson from a losing pitch

This week we lost a new business pitch; it was one I really wanted to win. In hindsight, I know why we lost. We pitched on our reputation. Really not much else. We have done so much great work, it was irrisistable to simply tell the stories. The stories demonstrated the attitude and thinking we would bring to the account. Basically we told our brand story.
It was strong but it was all about us. We, we, we all the way home.
Hardly a word about what we would do for them. Not even one idea about them.
If I were on the other side of the table I would have thought, "well these folks think they're pretty hot shit."
It's a great lesson for any brand; you can't rely simply on your reputation no matter how great you think it is—the customer still needs to know what you are going to do for them.
The brand, in many ways, sets the table. You still need to serve a meal.
It was ridiculously easy to get caught up in myself. To prattle on about the many meals we have served, how great they were, how satisfied everyone was, while at the same time completely ignoring the hungry client in front of me.

I promise

Once a week. At least. There. I've said it. Now, let's see how long it will take to reach 100 readers

Canadian Gaming Article

Here's my latest article for Canadian Gaming News. It's about being true to who you are, or as grandma says, Grow where you're planted!

The Atkins diet and new media

I believe in moderation. Too much of anything is, well... too much.

My radar goes off when someone tells me there is one solution to all that ails you. Diets are a great metaphor for what is being said about social media these days.

From a media perspective, there are very few people extolling the virtues of a well-rounded diet, and loads of people claiming that you need to go protein heavy or all social media. I don't think it's for everyone. And for most, it's best in small doses.

It's frustrating when the experts are insisting all the brands start conversations with their consumers. Connecting is important, and I applaud their passion. But I would add some words of caution.

Pamela Ross, VP of communications and CMO at Sunnybrook in Toronto wrote a great piece on this for Strategy in March. She quotes Mitch Joel as saying, "without a one-to-one connection of some kind, consumers won't care about a brand." Pamela then goes on to say, "Such a proclamation makes me think hard about my connections to brands I use. I think, for example, about the fact that I have no one-to-one connection with Tide, but it's the only laundry detergent I'll buy."

Does Pam want to have conversations with Tide? No. And I don't want a coversation with my phone company or my toothpaste.

If your product has fans in the real world, it will have fans online. Sports teams, bands, movie stars, TV shows and movies - they had fan clubs before the Internet. People wanted to read about them, learn about them and connect with them.

Now, we're being advised to create that relationship with nearly everything. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

I was in the check out at Safeway and greeted with the offer to Follow us on Facebook. Follow Safeway? Facebook is filled with brands that want you to become their fan. I shop at Safeway. In fact in my neighborhood, 13th Avenue Safeway is small and quite intimate. I feel connected to the store, but do I want to fan it on Facebook?

No. I don't want to have a one-to-one connection with the store. I know a few cashiers, and the pharmacists, and the shelf stackers, but do I follow them? That's getting weird.

And that's a store with which I have a pretty good brand relationship. Most of our untilities in Saskatchewan have FaceBook pages - The Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan has a FaceBook page. Is this what people do on FaceBook? Not in my experience. My experience has friends connecting with friends. They're playing scrabble, FarmVille and sharing photos and experiences. They aren't talking about brands.

For most brands FaceBook is not a strategy, it's wishful thinking.

So should we advise brands to pull money and resources away from mass media and into social media? Perhaps. For some it might be a very good strategy. But for most of the brands we have the privelege to work with I would argue that you have a better chance of reaching customers through their interests (sports teams, TV shows, movies...) then you would through FaceBook or Twitter.

Off line

Over the next couple of weeks I am going to research beer and build a deck. I am "planning" on going off-line. Of course, I could never totally disconnect, but I will shut myself off from all work-related communications. This year, I simply need the break. We'll see how it goes.

They say how you do one thing, is how you do everything.

The deck is only half-planned.

The beer is already chilling.

Cheers!