Archive for August, 2009

Think about what it would be like if you started from scratch. If there was no such thing as advertising agencies. No preconceived notions.

You have a big entrepreneurial idea. You figure you could  start a business that solves problems for companies by executing efforts that reach new customers and motivates them to buy something. You’d integrate other efforts with those efforts that would retain existing customers, too. And probably a few reputation-building efforts thrown in to make sure stuff like the company’s social license to operate is in good order, and that various stakeholders feel good about their investment in the company.

If you were to start from scratch, you’d probably do a bunch of research to figure out what companies’ pain points are, what they’d expect, and what they’d be willing to pay for it.

My guess is you’d find companies with pretty basic needs. Get us lots of customers, make our existing ones so happy that they buy again while telling others to come to us, and give our other stakeholders a good feeling about their investment in us.

I’m guessing you’d also find plenty of companies willing to pay handsomely for that, so long as you can prove what it is you’re doing actually works. My guess is that your research would conclusively demonstrate that any investment a company makes must demonstrate a return, and the investment made in your activities would be no different. Management and stakeholders wouldn’t have it any other way.

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My father wasn’t much of an arts and entertainment kind of guy and he had but a few jokes at his disposal. One of them was a Bill Cosby take on doing drugs. Goes something like this:

“People say that drugs enhance your personality. Yes, but… what if you’re an asshole?”

So to be discovered on Google I should be consistent. Be a one-note blogger. Write myopic web copy.

Yes, but… what if I’m multitudinous? What if the value I add to clients and the world is an ability to connect and align seemingly disparate data points into a cohesive and effective strategy that uncovers efficiencies and new ideas? What if I see branding as much about leadership as marketing? What if I find as much professional inspiration from Walt Whitman as Seth Godin?

I don’t want to be known for what Google says I’m known for. I don’t like how it evaluates people and their value. A good yellow pages. Not a good relationship builder.

We are large. We contain multitudes. Sign me up for references and conversations.

That’s my context, anyway. Not the right approach for all brands and clients. (Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself.)

Any other people out there who feel their brand is larger than keywords and alt tags? What’s the Song of Your SEO? Would love to hear your approach.

Ed Stein, EdSteinInk.com, reprinted with permission

If the current dialog about health care reform can teach us anything, it highlights the importance of figuring out our values.

We all know the importance of inside-out strategic planning (and brand development, for those who consider them separate). The enterprise values, vision, and mission (brand) should be a collective exercise. Involve as many people as possible. Hold retreats, perform exercises, play games, put the words of participants on giant sticky notes. Transform the more insightful quotes into pictures on the graphical strategy map. Include verbatims in the final deliverable. Stage-gate the process by communicating back to the larger enterprise during development.

And we’ve all seen the process devolve and the gears grind. Collaboration turns into open season across units: operations launch scuds at market verticals, marketing challenges revenue models. Anyone can write copy — wordsmith-ing hijacks strategy.

Then at some point getting the damn thing done trumps involvement. Can we just move on already? I’ve got work to do.

How to avoid this in strategy and brand development? It’s probably in the values.

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If you’ve ever been the person at a trade show booth or behind an event table, you could really feel for the exhibitors in the basement of Club 303. The event organizers of Summer Toast, Denver’s big social event for marketing people, had no idea it would get so hot and stuffy downstairs last night, doubtless. But it did.

Heather Florence was behind one of the tables. Her company is places2network.com, and I asked what I could do for her (from a network perspective, as in, who can I introduce you to). She said “you could bring me a fan.”

Which I did. A big one. One of those industrial beasts, six feet tall if it was an inch.

I found a bartender to help me move it. People were watching, people I knew asked if I was officially a part of the event and when I said no, exchanged looks. The fan put a nice grease stain on my shirt (my wife was happy about that).

I didn’t care. I was adding value. At all costs. My ego started inflating, I imagined conversations – what a helpful guy. He’s adding value at all costs.

The row of exhibitors literally applauded when I brought the fan over. I was Caesar returning to Rome.

One problem. I couldn’t find an outlet at the new location. I found an extension cord, but no outlet. As I searched it became stuffier downstairs. And stuffier. And stuffier.

Then I lost the bartender. So I couldn’t move the fan back. People turned on me, started complaining. (Et tu, Brute?) I slinked away.

So a public apology to everyone downstairs at the Summer Toast event of 2009. Lesson learned: make doubly sure you can add value before you begin the execution process.

And thanks to everyone for a fun event last night, and to the sponsors like Heather and places2network.com.

I promise to not touch anything next year.

Right around the time Dave Mathews Band broke through with their huge hit Satellite, a friend of mine attending a hippy jam-band show told me about a bumper sticker he saw in the Red Rocks parking lot. It read: “Remember when Dave didn’t suck?”

A recent article from a farmer makes no bones about Michael Pollan and his dilemmic omnivores acting as “Agri-Intellectuals” with no moral authority: one-book experts who think farmers are “too stupid to farm sustainably” and “too careless to worry about their communities, their health, and their families…Enough,” he writes. “Enough. Enough.”

Crocs, once “the quintessential American success story” with their staggering IPO giving a windfall for fashion laymen in Niwot, Colorado is facing a series of oddly brash predictions of their demise. Crocs is “toast,” and needs to “do the right thing” for shareholders and sell. The ugly shoe we love has somehow become the ugly company we hate.

Today, the jam-band festival of the internet, the gathering place for media-intellectuals, the promised land for laymen content creators is under attack. People are happily pointing out the cracks in social media.

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