About Christopher Korody

http://www.ckwrites.com

I am a 40 year veteran of the event marketing industry. I work with corporate clients and event marketing agencies in the areas of event strategy, creative direction and performance metrics. I am especially interested in the intersection of social media and events.

Posts by Christopher Korody:

The Jolt! from ckwrites 06.11.14

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Well imagine that – Eric Cantor outspends the competition 10 to 1 and down he goes. Looks like it’s going to be a rough and tumble November. In other news, Nate Silver is picking Brazil to win the World Cup.

Here is another one from the files – I am still deeply engaged in post move recovery and executive speech ramp up. Was discussing with ace journalist Mitra Sorrells at Bizbash how daunting it is to know that the speech could be panned on Twitter before it is even over… talk about sudden death.

Which is actually a pretty good summary of how the event industry is changing much faster then anyone wants it to.

Event Marketing is going from marketing-driven to market-driven.

Jeff Bezos, with a little help from Amazon, bought the Washington Post last year. (Note a year later we still don’t know what he’s up to but it might involve drones replacing paper boys.)

So much for the folks that brought you “Deep Throat.”

Forget about “all the news that’s fit to print.”

Now folks in DC are going to get what they’ve always dreamed of: “just the news you want to deal with.”

The Shift To Market-Driven Events

Every day our audiences are making more choices about what they will – and won’t – pay attention to in every aspect of their lives.

One result is that sponsors and agencies are increasingly caught between achieving event objectives and giving the audience a reason to come back.

That in a nutshell is the old world of ‘marketing-driven’ where in theory the sponsor is in charge, and the new audience fueled world of  ‘market-driven’ events.

Say what you will, but there is no doubt that the room is getting tougher to work.

Let’s look at 3 of the trends driving this transformation.

Trend 1: Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is changing the way that events are promoted, designed and extended online. I apologize for being obvious, but there are some larger points to be made.

Here are 3 examples among many.

Sharing, posting and tweeting enables audience acquisition teams to effectively target smaller niches.

  • It is possible to build a buzz for your event – if the content resonates with the audience.
  • Consider the food truck phenomenon. This has huge implications for experiential programs where real success depends on delivering an authentic experience to a narrowly defined audience.
  • Another example is the spread of TedX events. There are clear parallels to user group “no fluff” events; homegrown affairs which sprung from the desire for high quality content.

The sponsor’s ability to manage the guest experience is being changed by on-site tweeting and blogging.

  • The technology has enabled a dialog that the event owners can not control.

The disgruntled have a louder voice. There is a growing body of research that suggests that the unhappiest attendees are the ones most likely to tweet, post and otherwise pin the sponsor to the wall. 

  • Consider the recent Samsung 4 launch at Radio City Music Hall launch; and the tremendous amount of negative commentary it prompted even before the event was over.
  • Here is one headline from among many: “Samsung weird: how a phone launch went from Broadway glitz to sexist mess.“

Events may be proprietary, but they are no longer private. What happens on-site, no longer stays on-site.

Trend 2: Networking Is Replacing Learning

This might also be titled: Virtual Content Is Killin’ Ya…

Not glamorous, (who ever loved breakout sessions?), but for decades the primary reason to attend an event has been to acquire skills, knowledge and otherwise useful information one can apply to their work.

  • Historically, networking was a little discussed bonus.
  • Especially in talent driven categories, everybody was happy to poach, but no one wanted to be poached.

Content drove attendance, valuable content increased attendance year over year.

  • Recent survey data suggests that this is changing for non-technical events.
  • For many people, “getting content” on site is no longer a reason to attend.
  • Why travel and spend big bucks to get what is available (free) online?
  • Oh, and why go all that way to get hyped, when you can sit at home and hit Delete?

That’s why I think that a growing percentage of people are attending events specifically to network with their peers.

  • I believe that this is a direct extension of customers taking control of the product research process.
  • If sharing information on a blog or in a forum is good, then it is likely that meeting with your peers face-to-face is even better, especially for complex technical products, which often require a great deal of support from the manufacturer.
  • “So how has the support from XYZ on the new jibber wacker been?”

One consequence is likely to be that an attendee who is focused on networking will spend less time doing other things – going to sessions, meeting with their reps, talking with partners on the show floor.

  • Does space allocation need to change to offer more space for people to talk?
  • Do the sessions need to deliver “more stuff, less fluff?“
  • What can you deliver on-site that they can’t get (or you won’t give them) online?

Do you actually know why people are attending your events, and what they are doing while they are there?

If not, how will you adjust the event to better meet their interests and ensure their continued attendance?

Trend 3: Performance Measurement Metrics

Given my interests, this might be the most fascinating trend of all.

I feel as though I am standing in a tunnel watching the headlight coming towards me.

There is no way to get off the track…

It’s not ‘if’, but ‘when.’

So what exactly is going on, and why?

In a massive global survey, IBM found that CMO’s were under increasing pressure to demonstrate the return on marketing programs.

  • How events have dodged this litmus test that is all too familiar to advertising, direct marketing and social media, is somewhat of a mystery.
  • The answer differs by the company and their goals.
  • Based on a lot of studies, it is clear that almost all marketing departments struggle with capturing, integrating and analyzing event data.
  • Add sales data to calculate ROI, and we’re talking MI, Mission Impossible…

Still, the event budget is almost always the biggest single line item in the marketing budget.

That is what will drive the CFO to insist that the CMO:

  • define outcomes,
  • measure them and
  • provide data that can be integrated with other business metrics.

This goes well beyond justifying the spend and comparing the effectiveness of event marketing to other tactics.

The goal is to manage the expenditure to provide the greatest possible return on each part of the event.

As my friend and client Mike Trovalli, the Vice President, Global Events for SAP, reminded me recently, this kind of insight has been the “Holy Grail” for a long time.

With the advent of the big data and predictive analytics, the Grail is one step closer.

The more sophisticated the client or company is, the sooner they will begin to try to figure it out.

The good news is that knowing more about our audiences will enable us to create an event that delivers a more valuable experience. Think of it as growing attendance numbers and job security.

If there is a downside, it is that our recommendations as event professionals will be set aside in favor of the numbers. And another era will come to an end.

I’d like to ask you for your feedback:

  • In what ways has social media changed your events?
  • Has virtual content impacted attendance?
  • Are you seeing evidence of the networking trend at your events?
  • And where are your clients and your company on implementing performance measurement metrics?

If you haven’t subscribed to The Jolt! from ckwrites yet, please do. Just click here – easy, peasy and done.

And please be sure to bookmark ck Curates. Because you never know when you will be in desperate need of an alternative activity to replace the one that you are not particularly engaged in.

 

 

 

 

The Jolt! from ckwrites 06.04.2014

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Hi all. I am in the midst of moving and on a mad deadline as well.

Truly sorry but there will be no Jolt! today.

If you miss it – and I hope you do – please hop on over to ck Curates, my e-zine. It’s organized just like the Jolt! and it’s online 24/7/365. I update it every time I see something that I think that you might be interested in so please stop by often and let me know what you think.

ck Curates is designed for people who are bored – in a meeting, an airport or a strange hotel room. As well as those who love being at the head of the class. So please bookmark it and take it with you!

See you next week.

The Jolt! – Defining The Differences Between Event Marketing and Experiential Marketing

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Saddened to hear of the passing of one of our authentic voices, Maya Angelou. Here is a nice collection of quotes.

This is one of the first posts I wrote last August. It remains the most discussed on both Linkedin and Twitter.

I am bringing it back since many of you subscribed after it was published…

====================================================

Shot at the 1983 Apple Sales Meeting when the sales team previewed the Macintosh.

Shot at the 1983 Apple Sales Meeting when the sales team previewed the Macintosh.

One of the challenges that our industry faces is explaining the nuances of the wonderful tactics that we can deploy for our clients.

I recently read a post on LinkedIn lamenting the fact that the poster’s prospects didn’t seem to grasp what Experiential Marketing was. From the 60+ responses, it was pretty clear that it is a poorly understood tactic.

So I thought I would add my two cents to the confusion, and perhaps stir up some discussion, by offering up a working definition of Experiential Marketing that we can use going forward.

As it is always easier to position against something, let me start with my definition of Event Marketing because it comes with a good story.

The Back Story

I first heard the term “event marketing” used by John Sculley to describe an event we created to launch the Apple //c at Moscone Center in April, 1984.

It’s easy to forget that at the time, the Apple // product line was paying the bills… but because of the Mac hoopla it wasn’t getting much respect. This event was in part intended to restore the balance. (The political infighting is well documented by the books covering the era.)

The audience consisted of the entire Apple Computer US dealer network – some two thousand people –  a large contingent of press, a handful of analysts and hundreds of enthusiastic Apple employees who got the day off to drive up from Cupertino for the biggest event in Apple’s history.

copyright SoftTalk Magazine

500+ employees simultaneously revealed the Apple //c.

At the time, it was the most amazing event in the history of the personal computer. It was one of those magic days that makes this business so fun.

  • Softalk described it as ”part revival meeting, part sermon, part roundtable discussion, part pagan rite, and part county fair.”
  • To paraphrase Time, “the show had all the flash and trash of a Detroit automobile dealer meeting.”

What is Event Marketing?

Apple // Forever is prototypical event marketing because the event was designed to provide a focal point for a wide range of sales and marketing activities that extended beyond the venue.

In this case Apple // Forever:

  • Energized the dealer body – every dealer received a beautifully boxed Apple //c that they carried home through just about every airport in America.
  • Engaged the press – garnering coverage for both the Macintosh and the Apple // family.
  • Galvanized the company – the vast majority of who worked on the Apple // and had been alienated by the incessant focus on the Mac.
  • Bumped the stock price – the analysts loved the idea that John Sculley had magically brought the two product lines together.

If you fast forward to recent Apple Worldwide Developer Conferences, you can see how this strategy has evolved. Today social media journos tweet and blog live alongside representatives from the traditional press and analyst communities.

Where did Experiential Marketing come from?

An attention getting gag meets many people’s definition of an experience. For those folks, Apple // Forever could be defined as experiential marketing.

The confusion comes because Apple // Forever is clearly event marketing. So is one always the other? Are they synonymous?

IMO NO

book cover

Pine and Gilmore defined the concept behind Experiential Marketing.

The Experience Economy is the book which is credited for providing the intellectual underpinnings for experiential marketing.

What Pine and Gilmore posited in 1998 is that consumers would pay for a new class of “product” that offered an evolutionary step forward from goods, no matter how unique; or services no matter how personal. They called it “an experience”.

The value proposition was kind of earth-shattering: businesses would form to orchestrate memorable events and the individual’s memory of their experience would be the deliverable.

Paying to remember is the essence of selling air, and the race to leap on the bandwagon was underway…

What Is Experiential Marketing and Where Does It Fit?

Experiential marketing has always relied on creating or leveraging an event to attract the individuals to whom the experience will be offered. A  sporting event, a concert, a charity event or an exclusive invitation-only shindig all fulfill the same function as a corporate event. They provide the bodies for the experience makers.

Note that the agendas of the event sponsor and the experience agency are not necessarily aligned – sponsorship being a prime example of an experience agency leveraging an otherwise unrelated event for their own purposes.

I am going to offer up the following definition – I’d love to hear from you on how you would amend it…

  • Experiential marketing creates a unique, real-time individual experience of a good or service.
  • The experience is designed to be compelling, memorable and positive.
  • The participant’s memory of the experience should result in them being more favorably inclined towards the sponsor.
  • The favorable impression can manifest as a preference, a purchase or another behavior that the sponsor has decided will provide a return on their investment.

Social media has advanced experiential marketing in important ways:

  • The individual can share their memory in an immediate, highly personal way.
  • The assumption is that more often than not an individual will share with people who are psychographically and demographically like them – i.e. people who are also likely to be interested in what the sponsor is offering.
  • This highly targeted reach is more efficient than traditional media, more credible and less expensive.
  • Measuring social media activity provides more precise metrics then were historically available.
  • To date this depends on measuring success in terms like likes and tweets, but inevitably this will expand to capture more of the dimensions that the sponsor hopes to influence.

Summary

Event marketing is a one-to-many experience.

  • The audience is invited because they have common elements in their profile. 
  • They experience the event as a group, simultaneously.
  • The event, which is much more about the content then the gag, continues to influence over time.
  • Typically an important component of the event is press coverage which provides reach.
  • Increasingly individual audience members share their experiences with peers, partners and prospects further extending the reach of the event.

Experiential marketing is a one-to-one experience.

  • Each person has an individual experience.
  • Because the experience only exists in the moment, it must be continuously recreated.
  • The memory of the experience is amplified by sharing with like-minded individuals.

If this sounds a bit like sampling, test drives and tastings, I think that may be because it often is. The desire to be all things complicates defining experiential marketing and often makes it more difficult to present a clear value proposition to a prospect.

I’ll leave the final word to Jonathan Edwards, the Strategy Director at Sledge, a UK experiential marketing agency.

“Advertising tries to persuade me – but a good experience also gives me a reason to persuade other people.”

An answer like that would no doubt delight a lot of prospects!

I’ll see you next week.

Please let me know what you think. What did I miss? What did I leave out? What do you agree or more likely disagree with? How can we tighten this up?

If you haven’t subscribed to The Jolt! from ckwrites yet, please do. Just click here – easy, peasy and done.

And please be sure to bookmark ck Curates. Because you never know when you will be in desperate need of an alternative activity to replace the one that you are not particularly engaged in.

The Jolt! from ckwrites 05.21.14

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So AT&T is about to gobble up DirecTV – talk about convergence. Lot of moving parts there. Here on the high mesa, Spring finally looks like it’s here to stay.

Here’s The Jolt! from ckwrites.

Pitches

Remember this great lyric?

You’ve got to know when to hold ’em
Know when to fold ’em
Know when to walk away
Know when to run.

Partners,  The Gambler by Mr. Kenny Rogers (and that’s a link to the original music video) is one of my favorite life lessons.

And in my opinion, 5 Warning Signs Your Sales Opportunity Won’t Close from Jill Konrath’s new book, Agile Selling, is a modern day equivalent.

This is tough love advice, but then the old gambler was no fool and neither is Jill. (A recent post covered her equally gimlet eyed Crap Selling Toolkit.)

  1. Not sure when they’ll change: If they’re hemming and hawing about when they’ll change, they’re not a prospect right now.
  2. Shift in Priorities: If they tell you other, more urgent priorities have emerged, they’re not going to be buying in the near future.
  3. Boss Isn’t Sold: If they tell you that the boss isn’t sold, it’s not likely you’ll get a signed contract anytime soon.
  4. Unresponsive: If they don’t respond to your calls or emails, take them off your prospect list right now.
  5. Interested but expecting delays: You’ll want to keep in touch if they are still very interested but projecting significant delays – but don’t count on them.

Learning to let go is an invaluable skill… It keeps you realistic about the opportunities (or lack of them) in front of you. It frees up mental energy to pursue new prospects that you have a better chance of winning. It keeps you agile.

http://ckwrites.info/1o8S6ja

Content

How do you activate your sponsorship of the World Cup?

If you’re Sony you hire a bunch of really smart Brits from Isobar U.K. to create a online platform, called One Stadium Live. It’s a new form of crowd sourced real time publishing that will bring together conversations and content across Twitter, Facebook and Google+ before and during the World Cup.

Nick Bailey, CEO and executive creative director of Isobar U.K. describes it as being “like a social broadcast channel for football. It will be like turning social content into TV content. You’ll be able to tune in and see what people are saying, but in an engaging and entertaining way. It won’t feel like just a load of Twitter hashtags – it will be a snapshot of what the world is feeling.”

Here is the staggering statistic driving this:

The last tournament in 2010 attracted two billion TV viewers, and since then internet use has increased by 53%, Twitter use by 13,500%, and Facebook has gone from 300 million to one billion users. Twitter expects 60% of all tweets during matches will be World Cup-related.

http://ckwrites.info/1k0A7ey 

The Big AHA!

What does great branding look like?

Amazing for one thing.

Benetton was one of the first to hire a creative director and do really edgy work – I’m talking 25 years ago. So its good to see that their passion for design and their mastery of the edge is once again (or is it still) part of their culture.

Each issue of their magazine, Colors Magazine, (which was launched in 1991!) is dedicated to a single theme – the current issue is Moving.

“It was started with the idea of making a magazine that was different from the other magazines that were around,” said Cosimo Bizzarri, executive editor of Colors Magazine. “It was based around this premise that globalization means diversity and diversity was a good thing.”

Colors is developed at Benetton’s think tank Fabrica (it means factory) whose mission is to be a communications research center. The site includes social campaigns, design, editorial and news. It’s a trip and well worth a browse.

Always changing and always staying the same: sounds a lot like the world Colors has been covering for 20 years.

http://ckwrites.info/1h1Vzv0

Metrics & ROI

How do you make all that data look like you own it?

The short answer is, get your art squad a copy of Visage, a new graphics app from Column Five. Column Five was one of the pioneering firms in the infographic space, so developing compelling ways to present data is very much part of their DNA.

This is a fun story for me since I’ve been chatting about dashboards and the like with Jake Burkett, one of the co-founders, since Visage was the vaguest outline of an idea.

Visage is an app that was designed from the ground up to incorporate each client’s color palette, fonts and symbols. In fact they’ll even customize your copy to meet your brand guidelines. Not sure how long that can possibly last, but it’s a great deal for you early adopters.

Go to the site and you can download A Business Guide To Visual Communications which explains “why our brains love visuals.” Page 6 invites you to Find The Story In Your Data and reviews many of the visualizations that are commonly used, while page 13 offers up 10 Tips for Design. I love the brand promise:

We believe that beautiful data visualization should be available to anyone… Our unique SaaS application transforms the uninspired data in your reports into beautiful, branded visualizations that make your message more impactful—and make your work look good.

http://ckwrites.info/1jxmcxv

Marketing 501

Is content marketing the most complex thing you’ve ever tried to do?

For me the answer is yes – by a wide margin. It is something that no company I have ever worked with is prepared to do. It requires silo busting, great instincts and lightning decision making and processing. The combination of tools and techniques is one thing, but the number of departments, agencies and partners involved makes it exponentially more complex. Add to that the relentless pressure to produce more and more against a tight calendar, and its no wonder that people are developing apps to try to manage it all.

The root cause is not surprising:

Altimeter finds 70% of marketers lack a consistent or integrated content strategy. Despite a growing awareness (and acceptance) of the fact that content is the atomic particle of all marketing — essential for fueling paid, owned, and earned media — organizations lack a cohesive, coherent, strategic approach to content.

The Content Marketing Software Landscape: Marketer Needs and Vendor Solutions from the Altimeter Group tries to make sense of the options and match needs and solutions.

Much of the report looks at how three content marketing scenarios are driving the evolution of these tools.

Feed the Beast addresses the unending demand to create more content faster.

Refine asks how the enterprise can get smarter about what it’s doing and how how it’s measuring the results.

Govern looks at two issues which must be solved if the content is to be timely and relevant.

  • First how to scale a content marketing initiative across the organization. This in my opinion is essential if a company wants to access the in-depth knowledge that is located across the organization.
  • Second, how to operate in real-time (e.g. at the speed of tweet) and still ensure compliance.

Even if you don’t have to deal with this (yet), it will give you some insight into what is going on in other parts of your client’s organization.

http://ckwrites.info/R23GAD

If you haven’t subscribed to The Jolt! from ckwrites yet, please do. Just click here – easy, peasy and done.

And please be sure to bookmark ck Curates. Because you never know when you will be in desperate need of an alternative activity to replace the one that you are not particularly engaged in.

 

The Jolt! from ckwrites 05.14.2014

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Can’t believe it is the middle of the merry month of May and it’s snowing. Wild and whacky.

Here’s The Jolt! from ckwrites.

Pitches

Do you know what separates the winners from the also rans?

In John Doerr’s new book, Insight Selling, you’ll learn that the sales reps who consistently win business are those that provide new ideas and insights to their clients. They are also effective collaborators.

Here’s the deal. Providing insight is not the same thing as touting your firm. It’s much more subtle. It’s about specifically applying what you have learned about your business to your prospects situation to help them to solve their problems.

Here’s what Doerr says about why it works.

What we say in the book is it’s about connecting with them—both on a personal level and connecting the dots for them—and then convincing them that they will get maximum value and minimize their risk. And finally collaborating with them to demonstrate that you have their best interests at heart.

I can hear the howling – why should they benefit from my hard earned experience before they even pay me??? Fair question. This approach is not right for everyone which is one reason that it works.

I don’t know if its win-win. I do know that its increasingly difficult to win any other way.

http://ckwrites.info/1qxChXK

Content

Are your clients ready to let their clients tell their story?

If you’re IBM, the answer is yes – and let’s call it made with IBM.

IBM sent three crews to three continents to interview over 40 customers and 20 IBM’ers. The results – 50 TV commercials and an incredible trove of digital assets exploring how clients have applied IBM technology to change their businesses.

But here’s the surprise. Even though this was coordinated with and through their lead agency, Ogilvy NA, the decision was to sent documentary crews led by journalists – as opposed to commercial directors. Steve Simpson, Chief Creative Officer, Ogilvy North America explains that “we are trying to find out what is happening and collect the evidence – and not impose a view on it. Documentarians go in without an agenda – they go in to find out what the true story is…”

This is way beyond the case studies many of us cut our teeth on. For one thing its all housed on a very slick hub that allows you to filter the stories from multiple perspectives. Presented in a tabloid style, a click on any story takes you into a carefully formatted template that let’s you “see what the world’s making today.”

This story (and last weeks post about Microsoft) clearly demonstrates that last years discussions about bringing journalists into the mix is already bearing fruit. Very exciting to see and watch.

Ann Rubin, VP Branded Content & Global Creative who headed the charge said that “now we are talking about what is actually happening with clients – moving from the why to the how.”

Made with IBM is not an advertising campaign. I think it’s really about shifting a mindset from ‘I am doing advertising’ to ‘I am creating content.’ I don’t know if we’ll ever just shoot a TV commercial again.

 

http://ckwrites.info/1lqtGkj

The Big AHA

Have you found your passion?

Find Your Passion With These 8 Thought-Provoking Questions was developed by interviewing entrepreneurs, innovators, consultants, and creative thinkers–with the intent of helping people figure out where their heart lies and what they really ought to be doing. The article is adapted from Warren Berger’s new book, A More Beautiful Question.

It is an article that is worth your time to read, so instead of trying to turn it into Cliff Notes, I am going to share the first question.

“What is your tennis ball?” comes from a commencement speech at MIT by Drew Houston who is the founder of Dropbox (I didn’t know either.)  If you own a retriever of any kind you are probably conjuring up the dog’s joyous dash… And that is exactly the point according to Houston.

“The most successful people are obsessed with solving an important problem, something that matters to them. They remind me of a dog chasing a tennis ball.” To increase your chances of happiness and success, Houston said, you must “find your tennis ball–the thing that pulls you.”

So pay attention to what pulls you. For instance, “when you’re in a bookstore,” says author Carol Adrienne, “what section of the store are you drawn to?” That will not only tell you what books you love–it may point to where your tennis ball can be found.

http://ckwrites.info/1jbBmZ1

 Metrics & ROI

Do you know all the kinds of stories you can tell with data?

10 Kinds of Stories to Tell with Data got my attention. Here’s the premise:

What’s needed is a framework for understanding the different kinds of stories that data and analytics can tell. Practically speaking, there are four key dimensions that determine the type of story you can tell with data and analytics:

Time: Analytical stories can be about the past, present, or future.

Focus: Are you trying to tell a what story, a why story, or a how to address the issue story?

Depth: There is also a depth dimension to analytical stories. (Fun here)

Methods: Finally, there are different types of stories based on the analytical method used. Are you trying to tell, for example, a correlation story—in which the relationships among variables rose or fell at the same time—or a causation story, in which you’ll argue that one variable caused the other?

People—particularly those in the media—tell bad stories all the time because they confuse causation with correlation.

http://ckwrites.info/1iM5M2r

Marketing 501

Would you like to know what kinds of content B2B buyers value?

Three Research Backed Content Marketing Insights You Should Know provides insights that you can leverage to ensure that the content you develop and deliver is both strategic and effective:

  1. B2B Buyers Want Industry & Product Driven Content. Whitepapers still top the list but video is now only 1% point behind case studies – of course we’ve been doing video case studies for years… (See the made with IBM article.)
  2. B2B Buyers Want To Find Your Content Through Search. It makes sense, that way they don’t have to interact with you. This is a continuation of the disintermediation of sales and marketing from the process.
  3. There are five key reasons people share content. There’s good stuff here – turns out that the motivations are all about making themselves look and feel good. i.e. so you want someone to share your stuff, you had better offer something cool.

http://ckwrites.info/1mRP8m2

If you haven’t subscribed to The Jolt! from ckwrites yet, please do. Just click here – easy, peasy and done.

And please be sure to bookmark ck Curates. You never know when you might be in desperate need of an alternative activity to replace the one that you are not particularly engaged in.

 

.

 

The Jolt! from ckwrites 05.07.2014

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Hope you enjoyed Cinco de Mayo. Don’t forget Mother’s Day!

Here’s The Jolt! from ckwrites.

Pitches

Do you know what the worst thing you can do in the C-Suite is?

The answer is simple. And painful.

Arrive unprepared.

That’s all it takes. You can avoid that nasty little trap and further fine tune your approach by reading this free e-book, Best Practices for C-Suite Selling from Boardroom Insiders.

These best practices are equally applicable to calling on any new account. Here are the research elements that you need to complete.

Industry Intelligence: What are the main issues in the customer’s industry today?

Company Intelligence: How are these issues impacting this particular customer–and how is the customer responding?

Executive Intelligence: What is top of mind for the executive you are targeting?

The first thing to remember if you are trying to engage a CXO is that they are unimaginably busy. They are surrounded by people whose sole function is to filter out any “noise” unrelated to the executive’s top business priorities.

The second thing to remember: you are “noise” until you prove otherwise.

http://ckwrites.info/1jvhleF

Content

On a scale of 1-10, how persuasive are you? 

Even if you’re a legit 10, chances are good that 10 Theories to Know For Greater Persuasion can help you to add some new tricks to your repertoire.

The author has bundled an amazing number of theories into a relatively coherent article and peppered it with useful examples.

Here’s what you’ll find.

1) The psychological theories of influence and persuasion reviews 10 different psychological theories, each of which addresses the subject of how to influence others.

2) How to write for what we all crave applies Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs which you probably studied at some point.  The author notes that:

The three steps in between the physiological needs and the fulfillment needs are where marketing most directly applies.

  • Safety
  • Belonging
  • Esteem

3) How to win friends and influence your audience picks up where Dale Carnegie left off.

4) How an influential nudge leads to conversion introduces The Persuasion Slide. The process starts with a ‘nudge’ which is when you get attention and begin the process of persuading your prospect. After that it’s all about ‘gravity’, ‘how steep’ the slide must be and how much ‘friction’ there is.

5) The 6 Principles of Persuasion are from Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion which links back to the 10 principles we started with.

6) Psychology in action in your copy and on your site presents techniques like ‘disrupt then reframe’ and ‘the key to good storytelling’.

7) Opportunities for persuasion suggest five areas you can put the concepts to work in your own materials.

Yes, this certainly looks like more than one blog post to me…

http://ckwrites.info/1lSKYaG

The Big AHA!

Remember that great old saying about “throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks”?

Lessons From Chucking Noodles With The Microsoft Stories Team is an inside look at the development process used to develop the Microsoft Stories website, a platform for stories about Microsoft and its people, products and ideas.

With all the interest in brands becoming publishers, here’s a firsthand look at what some talented journalists can do supported by a crack team. The story is very rich with some great links. And it makes a slightly quirky case for the value a trained journo can bring to the table.

The author plays out the “noodle” idea in a set of best practices that came out of their processes.

Noodle One: A good story is a good story is a good story. But is it a good story? i.e. Why should anyone outside of Microsoft care?

Noodle Two: “Eureka!” can strike the same place twice.

Noodle three: Embed… Or approximate the experience. This is how to find the details to be authentic.

Noodle Four: Follow the Golden Content Rule.

No fun for the writer, no fun for the reader.

Amen!

http://ckwrites.info/1q86oVp

Metrics & ROI

Why do so many conferences suck at collecting data?

Yes, most do. Because:

Measuring requires planning. Planning requires responding to measuring. Most humans do not like to do either. They rather thrive on inspiration and positive emotional responses, and blame their problems on things our of their control.

OK, admittedly that’s a rather large gauntlet. One that Conferences Need Quality Measurement Tools And Feedback To Spur Innovation picks up.

Note that if all you want to know is if the rooms were adequate and attendees could hear the speakers – i.e. the AV guys did their job which is different from the speaker being intelligible – you should probably skip this article.

But if your attendees come to learn skills they can apply to their jobs, you will benefit. Why? Because you get The World’s Best Evaluation Question For Attendees. 

What kind of difference would this make to your content development people and the presenters?

What if the stakeholders walked away with the following summary sentence: 80% of attendees said they are now ABLE TO PERFORM ACTUAL JOB TASKS at a FULLY-COMPETENT level. Now that shows change and can drive future programming.

If you’re interested in the topic, I highly recommend the follow-on post as well. Jeff Hurt is as good a writer and thinker on measurement as is out there.

http://ckwrites.info/1mwhzWB

Marketing 501

Can you list the 10 most abused words in marketing?

How many of them appear in your Linkedin profile? Your capabilities presentation? Your elevator pitch? Your website?

Whatever you guessed – and especially if you’re not sure – take a minute to read The 10 most abused words in Marketing. They are presented in a handsome multi-colored word cloud that would make a great t-shirt or refrigerator magnet!

  1. Relevant.
  2. Consumer insights.
  3. Brand equity.
  4. Target market – the description must include both demographics and psychographics.
  5. Alienate.
  6. Benefits –  “what do I get?” (for rational benefits) and “how does that make me feel?” (emotional benefits).
  7. Brief – on a personal note “be brief, be brilliant, be gone” sums this one up.
  8. Brand.
  9. New Media – about 20 years old now.
  10. Strategic – Strategic Thinkers see “what if” questions before they see solutions. Non Strategic Thinkers see answers before questions.

The author concludes with two insights.

It’s OK to use these words, as long as you use them correctly.

The problem I see is that a generation of Brand Leaders have not been properly trained and it’s starting to show. The mis-use of these words can be linked to the lack of understanding of the fundamentals of marketing.

http://ckwrites.info/1njHcXr

If you haven’t subscribed to The Jolt! from ckwrites yet, please do. Just click here – easy, peasy and done.

And please be sure to bookmark ck Curates. You never know when you might be in desperate need an alternative activity to replace the one you are not particularly engaged in.

 

The Jolt! from ckwrites 04.23.2014

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Hope that everyone enjoyed Easter. It’s put me behind, so this week’s issue is 22% shorter than usual.

Here’s The Jolt!

Pitches

Is the client always right?

This is the kind of existential question that kept Don Draper up at night… or not.

You know that the answer is probably not. But then again, most of us don’t really want to say “you are so wrong.” This article takes a good long look at the art of managing clients. It proposes three tenets:

You have to set client expectations from the beginning. Schedule is important (and recommended) but I very much like the suggestion to “establish the level of involvement the project will require from the client.”  Experience suggests that there is a corollary between how vague the goals are and how much effort the client will have to put in (or is it out?)

One of your jobs is to be a sounding board. Clients (like corporations) are people and people need to talk. Sometimes it’s about the project, sometimes it’s not. Hearing someone vent about their day at the office can often provide valuable insight into how things work – and don’t work. Whether you use that to avoid potholes or provide sage advice is of course up to you….

Don’t be afraid to push back. This is not an invitation to be rude. But it is a reminder that you are getting paid the big bucks because you know something that the client doesn’t.

When you share your expertise in an empathetic, goal-oriented way, it’ll be clear that it’s not about who’s right and who’s wrong. It’s about working together and trusting one another to achieve a common goal. This kind of relationship is what gets great things done.

http://ckwrites.info/1k4Kw7A

Content

Is the conference, as we once knew it, dead?

It’s a provocative question. And it’s not just about Millenial attendees.

The premise is that the Industrial Conference, if not dead, is increasingly irrelevant. That’s the one where you sit and listen to the experts and go home with a stack of hand-outs.

In fact, it turns out that attendees learn best by talking to fellow attendees. And considering that most attendees attend most conferences to learn… well ignore at your own risk.

Consider this research about how people prefer to learn. Here are the recommendations based on the findings.

  • Focus less on top-down content creation and delivery (including organised and managed “one-size fits all” training.
  • Focus more on supporting the social and collaborative practices taking place in teams, projects and across the enterprise.
  • Make a major shift towards supporting autonomous workers and their own personal learning strategies.

Here are a few of the provocative questions the author asks:

What if we asked speakers to devote 25%, 35% or even 50% of their time to facilitating audience peer discussions?

What if we placed an emphasis on providing sessions that leveraged collaborative conversations?

What if we scheduled time and spaces for conversational sessions that created deeper understanding and engagement?

This is a major shift in the conference paradigm. However now that almost everyone is giving content away 24/7/365, it’s time for a new mission. The trick seems to be how to ensure that all this peer-to-peer conversation builds the brand and contributes to sales. Notice that once again marketing is being cut out of the pattern and control of the purchase process is moving to the consumer or customer. Oh brave new world.

http://ckwrites.info/1hmloEV

The Big AHA!

What’s the best creative work you’ve seen so far this year?

Here we have a modestly entitled post called The Best Branded Content of 2014 So Far. It’s a very fun – and lengthy – list from Contently.

For instant stickiness it starts out with the Hootsuite campaign The Game of Social Thrones.

There’s the new UK fashion rag, Porter. The Lego Movie which did $200M at the box office. Budweiser’s SuperBowl champion Puppy Love and 9 more including an adrenalin infused trailer for Red Bull’s ski thriller Days of My Youth

VO: If you say that money is the most important thing, you will waste your life doing things you don’t like doing.

VO: It’s so important to consider this question – what do I desire?

http://ckwrites.info/1rgYB4G

Metrics & ROI

Do liquor prices tell you anything about quality? 

Aficionados are honor bound to say yes. They live to discern minute differences and the subtlest nuances. Fortunately there is a counter-balance: Why Liquor Prices Tell Us Nothing About Quality.

Three quick points. First this is about liquor, not wine. Second this is a public service to save you a few bucks at the bar. Finally it is part of my unending effort to introduce you to specialized data sets.

This is a pretty ingenious study which no doubt came to life on a cocktail napkin. The study looked at the scores from 20 years of results at the San Francisco World Spirit Competition as well as other specialized resource. All of these resources utilize a common methodology – the blind tasting.

The Results – Price and quality have close to zero correlation across every category of liquor. The verdict: don’t bother with the expensive stuff. There are plenty of top-rated bottles for cheap.

http://ckwrites.info/1mwsSug

Marketing 501

Do you know the best way to sell luxury goods?

Drum roll please. Experiential Marketing. This according to Wealth-X’s Luxury Sentiment Survey of 1,000 brands in a variety of categories.

Sixty-eight percent of luxury industry insiders believe digital marketing is not an effective method to reach ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) individuals.

The survey reports that 84% of all luxury brands use digital marketing to increase brand awareness.

“Everyone should have a great presence in social media as a brand, and you should have great content, but you’re not going to connect with UHNW individuals in a way that leads to acquisition of business online,” said David Friedman, president of wealth intelligence firm Wealth-X, New York.

“Making a purchase of $100,000 is an emotional decision,” he said. “Luxury brands who are seeking that market are crafting experiences that can’t be bought.

http://ckwrites.info/1lC8XIU

If you haven’t subscribed to The Jolt! from ckwrites please do. Just click here – easy, peasy and done.

And please be sure to bookmark ck Curates. You never know when you’ll be in desperate need an alternative activity to replace the one you are not particularly engaged in.

 

 

The Jolt! from ckwrites 04.16.14

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Hope everyone is getting ready for a great Easter. Definitely a big deal here in Northern New Mexico. I’ll be traveling The High Road to Taos (actually headed the other way) on Good Friday to go to the noon mass in the Church of Santo Tomas Del Rio de Las Trampas, which was built between 1760 and 1776 and is seldom open to the public. Then it is down the road to El Santuario de Chimayo to join the 1,000’s of people who walk and drive to this holiest of sites. I am not a particular fan of organized religion, but the fervor and the passion is an incredible thing to experience.

Here’s The Jolt! from ckwrites.

Pitches

Feel like you’re selling CRAP?

Jill Konrath says don’t. Cut out the CRAP and watch your numbers go up. To help you get to where you need to go, she is offering a free CRAP Selling Toolkit which consists of:

CRAP Selling Manifesto Watch your sales soar when you follow these seven guiding principles. Download

CRAP One-Sheeter A great summary of how to make sure you never sell like crap! Download

CRAP Detector Cheat Sheet Keep offensive words out of your emails, voicemails & conversations. Download

I’ve left the links live so you can cut straight to the chase. It’s tongue-in-cheek but very solid. The Detector Cheat Sheet is priceless. And what might be in there?

  • Promotional Puffery
  • Technical Tripe
  • Creative Crap

Whether you’re trying to capture your prospect’s attention or differentiate from your competitors, make sure you cut this crap out of your vocabulary.

For more terrific sales tools and resources visit Jill’s site:

http://ckwrites.info/1eHazgA

Content

 Wish you knew how to work smarter?

Here are 5 Scientifically Proven Ways to Work Smarter, Not Harder. To give a little credit where it’s richly deserved, you are already probably working about as hard as you can. So how do you change that to working smarter?

I don’t know how scientific some of this is, but it all passes the common sense test. And the article includes a lot of interesting references.

1. Take more breaks. Because on average we can only stay focused 90 minutes. So taking a break for 15, lets you get ready to do it again. Kind of like a coffee break for the mind.

2. Take naps. Because napping benefits the learning process. Same reason probably that reviewing something before you go to sleep, helps you to remember it.

3. Spend time in nature. Again letting your mind unwind enables you to focus again. Personally I am always amazed what a walk does for whatever I’m working on.

4. Move and work in blocks. This is a novel idea called “workstation popcorn.” The idea – and I’ve never tried it – is to move from place to place – with a specific task to complete at each. So the Intro at Starbucks, the Strategy at Peets and on… Probably better suited for you metro dwellers.

5. Check your email first thing. I swear by this one, it’s part of the morning ritual. The more far-flung the team’s time zones, the more important. Similarly I like to get work and email out first thing when I am ahead of the rest of the team.

http://ckwrites.info/1gXlN0l

The Big AHA!

Ever wonder what a writer really does? 

Barry Feldman is a talented writer and after 25 years on the job he has the big picture – A Great Copywriter Has At Least 21 Personalities. Amazing what a writer can do and has to do to keep a project moving along. Here are three…

Pastor You want the congregation to put their faith in you? Brother and sisters, you better believe what you’re evangelizing. You answer to a higher power (the client). Say amen.

Outlaw Great copywriters must break rules.

Sponge Great writers read, and read, and read some more. Reading is how we train. We must soak up the wisdom and words of the worldly.

By the way, let me suggest that the better you understand what a good copywriter can do for your project, the better you can take advantage of their skills. (In a nice way of course.)

http://ckwrites.info/1t2v1Sx

Metrics & ROI

How do people really make decisions?

It’s all about how our lizard brains (thank you Seth) are wired. The Neuroscience of Decision Making Explained in 30 Seconds offers a lot of clues.

30-Second Brain is here to fill your mind with the science of exactly what’s happening inside your head. Using no more that two pages, 300 words, and a single picture, this is the quickest way to understand the wiring and function of the most complex and intricate mechanism in the human body.

Here’s the book.

http://ckwrites.info/1erEgr3

Marketing 501

Are you maximizing the use of social media at your events?

There is no doubt that events – which are by definition social gatherings – work well with social media. But bringing social media together with events is a pretty new idea. So how could we possibly be maximizing something moving this fast?  Good defense, but 4 Incredibly Easy Ways to Use Social Media to Boost Events will help you to do better.

This article divides the application of social media for events into 4 buckets. From the UK so enjoy the very special spelling =)

Organizing an Event – Social media also enables you to involve attendees in the actual organisation process. By asking your audience to vote for their favourite talks, speakers, bands or activities, you can build up an event programme that you know people will enjoy.

Promoting an Event –  71% of us are more likely to buy a product when it has been referred via a social network, recommendations can be extremely valuable. (NOTE this is what is called “social proof.”)

Encouraging Engagement During an Event – Beyond the Twitter #big screen,s ocial media can also be used to get persuade attendees to visit certain specific locations or take part in particular activities.

Extending the Lifetime Value of an Event – People tend to stay engaged for 1-2 days after an event, so that’s your window of opportunity to encourage them to talk about it online, or share your content.

There is a useful infographic that provides more detail for each bucket.

http://ckwrites.info/1gXudVo

If you haven’t subscribed to The Jolt! from ckwrites please do. Just click here – easy, peasy and done.

And please be sure to bookmark ck Curates – http://curate.ckwrites.com – you never know when you’ll be in desperate need an alternative activity to replace the one you are not particularly engaged in.

 

The Jolt! from ckwrites 04.09.2014

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Nice to see the world thawing out a bit. I turned 65 over the weekend which had more to do with freezing over than thawing out, but hey think of the perspective you get. Many thanks to everyone who tweeted and posted their best wishes.

Here’s The Jolt!

Pitches

Are you looking for a way to refresh your elevator pitch?

There is lots of discussion about what makes a good elevator pitch… or if you should even use one. I come down on the “yes you should” side, because getting anything down to 30 seconds creates focus and that’s the first place people fall short – they ramble and wander and digress – none of which contributes to making a good first impression.

Draw Your Elevator Pitch comes from the Harvard Buisness Review. The cartoons which illustrate the article were done by a cartoonist for The New Yorker, so phrases like “too clever by half” quickly come to mind…

The authors offer up 5 reasons why this approach works. The best one is that cartoons are memorable, whilst the most disingenuous one is that they facilitate A/B testing which seems off point.

Storyboarding is part and parcel of the agency skill set. Would make for a great internal orientation tool too.

Stick figures can do; we don’t need to be artists. We just need to be able to think with clarity, concision, and discipline. That’s not easy — but that’s business.

http://ckwrites.info/1iqWBBv

Content

How far do you go with your personas?

OK – so maybe that’s a little tongue-near-cheek. Marketing Personas: The Complete Beginners Guide goes a lot further than I ever imagined. This is a very robust article – highly recommended because this is something you should be doing for every event you work on.

If you’re not familiar with the concept, it’s an increasingly formalized approach to developing an understanding of your target audience. Personas help you to understand the nuances so that you can do a better job of creating content – or as we used to call it, writing.

Intuition and data are combined to create a dimensional description. Here’s their take on where to start.

  • Check your site analytics – which can tell you who is coming and what they do when they arrive.
  • Involve your team – if you’re working with a client organization engage some people from the service and support areas, people who actually talk to customers…
  • Social media research – no telling what a little searching and listening might reveal about the company, the products or the relevant trends.
  • Ask your audience questions – yes of course survey. At the very least start with the last post event surveys. And interviews. Think about a Google Hangout for a low cost focus group.

With personas, businesses can be more strategic in catering to each audience, internalize the customer that they are trying to attract, and relate to them as human beings.

http://ckwrites.info/1hov5bE

The Big AHA!

Do you give good interview?

Getting to the Heart of your Audience: How to Conduct Effective Customer Interviews is a great companion piece to the Personas article.

This article presents techniques and tips, and follows that with a useful checklist of question types.

Under techniques there are a few you seldom come across (ah that UK sensibility.)

  • Ask for problems before solutions.
  • Create a safe space for honesty.
  • Allow tangents.

Interviewing a diverse pool of customers means not only looking at gender, income, age, etc., it also means looking at where interviewees are in the conversion funnel, and if you’re B2B, looking at where customers are in the decision hierarchy (CEO vs. office manager).

http://ckwrites.info/1g21TVW

Metrics & ROI

How are you measuring web content?

10 Charts That Are Changing the Way We Measure Content neatly captures the emerging debate about what really matters online. Even if your involvement is limited to event websites, this discussion will give you some new ideas about how to evaluate the success of a site – and the metrics you should be presenting your client.

Three key ones.

  •  What we engage with can’t be measured just with shares or clicks. The new math is all about how much time someone spends with your content.
  •  Many people don’t actually read the articles they share. So counting shares is perhaps not a useful indicator of much besides whether the headline is appealing. A corollary to which is that…
  • Specific emotions trigger the most intense sharing responses. Which is why campaigns that trigger emotional responses are often the most effective.

The article that started the debate is by Tony Haile, CEO of Chartbeat, a company which studies content for a living. What You Think You Know About the Web Is Wrong is a must read if only for Myth 4: Banner ads don’t work. Why?

66% of attention on a normal media page is spent below the fold. Yet most agency media planners will still demand that their ads run in the places where people aren’t and will ignore the places where they are.

Oh – if after you read all this you feel manipulated and perhaps a little soiled, I don’t blame you. Heck it might make you mad enough to share The Jolt!

http://ckwrites.info/1mVLvdI

Marketing 501

Are you keeping up with Gary Vaynerchuk?

You know, Gary. The Russian émigré who is the author of The Thank You Economy and now Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story In a Noisy Social World. The guy who created the hugely successful Wine Library out of his Mom and Pop’s liquor store in Jersey by posting over 1,000 episodes of Wine Library TV on YouTube starting in 2006. The guy who is now CEO of VaynerMedia.

Gary is the subject of a certain amount of fear and loathing in ad agency circles. He had 11 pithy things to say at the recent Ad Age Digital Conference. Here are three choice bits.

  • “Marketers ruin everything,” he said. “It’s what we do.” Marketers try to find a place where people are spending time and squeeze the living crap out of it.
  • “The easiest way to go out of business is to be romantic about how you make your money.”
  • “I would buy a Super Bowl ad over almost anything.” That’s because it’s live and attention is growing. But the rest of TV is still seeing that incredible commercial avoidance.

Good stuff for your next client lunch!

http://ckwrites.info/1oJsooP

If you haven’t subscribed to The Jolt! from ckwrites please do. Just click here – easy, peasy and done.

And please be sure to bookmark ck Curates – http://curate.ckwrites.com – you never know when you’ll be in desperate need an alternative activity to replace the one you are not particularly engaged in.

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