Influencers

Nov 03 2010

Campaign Season – Not THAT Kind, But a Different Kind

Suffering from the post-campaign blues (or “reds”)? How to apply what you’ve watched to this game called “Marketing.”

The Day After. This party did this, that party did that, we’ve moved this direction or that direction. We’ll get more done, we’ll get less done, we’ll be gridlocked. Good stuff, right?

Well, if you’re not in the political arena, you can still borrow some tricks from winners and losers after this Election Day. 4 nuggets of advice:

1. Get all your mistakes out of the way early. Tea Party darling Rand Paul said some “interesting” things about the Civil Rights movement. Taken out of context, they sound racist. Taken in context and, it can be argued, he’s reading the Constitution verbatim.

Oh and all this happened way back when, in the summer, when the Tea Party movement was just gaining momentum.

Contrast this with Sharron Angle, whose “you don’t look Hispanic, you look more Asian” comments were idiotic at the very least. Her mistakes were late in the game – so late that, in a “lesser of two evils” race, she was never able to get momentum back.

Test your silly notions early, not late. Get your slipups out of the way early.

2. Stay on message. Duh, this is campaign 101 stuff. Don’t stray, don’t waver.

Also helps to have a defined message. Where does your campaign stand on Immigration or Health Care Reform?

Remember “Hope and Change?” Pretty clear. Well-defined. However…

3. The alternative can be good. Here in Illinois, the Senator-Elect, Mark Kirk, didn’t really have to run a campaign that centered around anything but three words: “I’m not him.”

It was an ugly campaign – even by Illinois standards. But the “him” he wasn’t like was Alexi Giannoulias. AND Giannoulias ran on a campaign that, to this reporter, played up only one trait: his connection with Barack Obama.

It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to realize that, in a year where people are looking for alternatives to Hope and Change (see above), being something else is good.

Does your marketing play up how you’re the alternative? If not, can it? Should it?

4. Make Mom Proud. In a really, really, REALLY ugly year for campaigns, maybe we should all take a look at some of the old maxims. Or the old-new maxims. Like “never Tweet anything you wouldn’t want Mom to see on a billboard.” Or “Would you talk to your Mother on Facebook with that mouth?”

Not that easy in marketing – or is it? We have things like the FTC, the Truth-in-Labeling Act, even Federal CAN-SPAM guidelines.

Marketers know better than to ever bad mouth their competitors. So maybe politicians should learn from us?

Happy Post-Election Day. Now, go hit the campaign trail!

Oct 21 2010

Buzzword Watch – How to Change the Game by Being a Game Changer

UPDATE: November 10, 2010 – we have removed the Amazon affiliate link in this post. All other text remains unchanged.

More than a best-selling book: a way of life for the buzzword-addicted. Here’s what’s wrong with Game Change(r)s.

Book from Heilemann and Halperin

If you think about the book “Game Change” you can learn quite a bit about when it makes sense and when it doesn’t make sense to use the term “Game Change” or its variation, “Game Changer.”

First, a layman’s definition, in plain English. Obama won not because he defeated John McCain, or even Hillary Clinton. He won because he campaigned against George W. Bush and Washington as usual. He was an outsider, outsider equals good, good equals electable. If you run a political campaign that accomplishes one of these things, congratulations: you have successfully created a Game Change. (BTW, if you want to get a copy of the book, our affiliate link to it is below. Rock on.)

In business, if you create a product or service that is a category unto itself (what they used to call a “category killer”), you are a Game Changer.

In fact, let’s use the 2010 elections and the holiday shopping season to give you a very short list of people, places and things that are right now “Game Changers.” For instance:

The Tea Party: Game Change. What’s most interesting about the Tea Party movement, to this reporter, is not its ubiquity but its lack of a concrete message. The seminal moment of this Tea Party is widely considered to be a rant by CNBC reporter Rick Santelli. Yet, hardly present in this current movement is any mention of derivatives, securities laws, mortgage-backed bond trading and stuff like that. (“Stuff like that” is a technical term.) The Tea Party appears to be about change – back to the Constitution in pre-bailout mode, where “Don’t Tread on Me” is a way of life.

iPad: Game Changer. It’s not a phone, it’s not a TV. It’s somewhere in-between. Gartner predicts that 19.5 million units of “tablet computers” will be sold this year. 54 million units are projected to be sold in 2011. The rules of the game changed: don’t sell people a phone, don’t sell them a computer, sell them something in-between.

Think about it in the context of what you’re doing in business: unless you are coming up with a new way of computing, or a new way of positioning candidates as you enter an election, you’re not a Game Changer.

Guess what: that’s okay.

We’ve bumped into literally hundreds of folks whose businesses are not in the middle of a Game Change. But they are watching the rules change and shifting their own strategy to follow along.

This can mean restaurants that tweet deals, or lawyers who blog, or fundraisers who abandon the old way of doing things and try something new.

You don’t have to be a Game Changer. But you should watch the rules of the game, and play along.

Oct 08 2010

Ready, Fire, Aim Returns in the ’10s

Should you launch first, then adjust your plan?

It’s so bloody easy to launch a product these days. Find a need, exploit the need, get a website, send a few emails, and you’re launched.

Is it really that easy? Should it be?

: Gantt Chart, (c) SmartDraw.com

Or should you wait – plan, plan some more, sit on the sidelines watching others make mistakes?

We think the “Ready, Fire, Aim” approach is back with a vengeance.

We’re not saying the plan is dead. We’re not advocating “Fire, Ready, Aim” either.

Two cases in point, from our experiences here at Area 224 HQ.

One is the book idea “Nichification” – which is taking longer to get off the ground than we would have hoped. (The “we” is myself and Jim Alexander.)

We conceived the idea in the Winter and proceeded to conduct dozens of interviews with people, from a variety of places and walks of life, all of whom had one thing in common — a niche business. We got help from a professional writer (Jody Calkins from Emery Road, who I would recommend highly). We had discussions with publishers – not just the “fill out the form and we’ll get back to you” stuff, but actual discussions with publishers about real book deals.

So we’ve got content. We’ve got a concept. We’ve got a few chapters. But we don’t yet have the book. Why?

We have to adjust our aim.

Part of the aim adjustment process involves that dreaded word “Objective.” The objective of the book is NOT to sell it and make a zillion dollars in royalties from selling the book. The objective of the book IS…well, that’s the thing that we’re fine-tuning.

But there’s another example, too…

We see a need (and actually a niche within a niche, one of the themes we’ve heard over and over in the book interviews) for professional communicators and marketers in the energy industry to connect, to share ideas, to learn about best practices.

Having spent some time working in the energy industry and working with Realtors on things like “green” and “LEED” marketing — well, there’s a hook here.

So we fired — you can see the Facebook Group here — and we’ll adjust the aim as time goes by.

What’s the point?

You could probably point to a thousand examples of companies that launched product X thinking it would fill need Y and make Z money; only to find out that product X does A+B-C and the money is somewhere in the middle of the alphabet.

But you could point to 100,000 examples of the guy sitting at the bar saying “I had the idea back in the 90s to create…”

Ready? Fire! Aim.

Oct 03 2010

Teachable Moments from TechCrunch, Groupon and Freshbooks

Were it just that simple: come up with the concept, make things happen, make it big.

But, hey, there’s still time. Plenty of time. This is a marathon, not a sprint — and we found three “teachable moments” from the world of startups, technology, communicating your vision, etc. that we can’t wait to share. Here goes…

TechCrunch sold to AOL. Because they worked their collective a$$ off for a bunch of years, Michael Arrington and his team were able to leverage their position as the leading breaking news blog for technology into a nice payday. AND a chance to keep on doing what they’re doing.

Teachable Moment: Did you notice they worked really, really hard at it? Like non-stop, 24×7? Any doubts, read the Inc. Magazine Interview with Michael Arrington. Good stuff.

Groupon Spawns About 250 Competitors. If you haven’t heard of Groupon, that’s okay. You’ll be hearing a little bit about it, or one of its competitors, when it comes to a town near you with a daily deal site. In fact, you can learn about any of these daily deals by visiting a site called Deal Radar and sorting through all of the deals in a town near you.

Teachable Moment #1: (There is more than one teachable moment here.) First of all, while first mover advantage is huge in this case, the fact that there are 250 competitors — and even olde tyme sites like Open Table are getting into the act — there’s time if you’ve got a twist on a current idea, or you want to be hyper-local, or you just think you can do it differently.

Teachable Moment #2: Chicago, Baby! When this reporter was running his first startup, Chicago was very much a “who sent you?” and “old school banking” town. The fact that Groupon’s Andrew Mason (and people like Jason Fried from 37 Signals) can make it here gives hope to others in a town that, darnit, has finally gotten some entrepreneurial swagger.

Freshbooks Hosts Supper Club. I totally loved this event last week. In Chicago, over drinks and dinner. Pitch-free. Freshbooks invited customers to informally gather and talk business. No pressure.

Teachable Moment: Be Awesome. Freshbooks has a Chief Handshaker in Sunir Shah. Talking with him about marketing and engineering and how the two go hand-in-hand was totally cool. (Guest blog post to come. You’re all forewarned.) But Sunir seemed to think — and I agree — that focusing on the product (or service) and making it awesome is the way to go. In fact, I can’t totally remember where I saw any marketing messages from Freshbooks. I do remember, however, hearing people say how easy it is to use Freshbooks. How well it integrates with other stuff (like Basecamp, for instance). Etc.

So, go out there and make something — big, huge, simple, important, or just plain cool — happen.

Aug 31 2010

Better Checkins

This is not a story about Foursquare. This is not a story about Facebook Places.

Actually, this is a story about the goofiness that is an airport checkin (or is it “check-in?”) these days.

So, as I write this, I’m at O’Hare Airport, waiting to board a United flight. (I won’t tell you where I’m going.)

Here goes:

At-home checkin.

Sounds like it should be a breeze, right? I have a computer at my home with Internet access. And I have a United Frequent Flier number. And I ordered my ticket on Orbitz.

You can imagine all of the permutations – use my BlackBerry to wire a boarding pass, or triangulate my location with IP address and stuff. (Saying “and stuff” makes it sound like I really know what I’m talking about.)

However…I can’t check in online.

Despite the fact that I have had a frequent flier number with United for what seems like forever, and despite the fact that my Orbitz account probably goes back to 2000, I’m not allowed. My account information has been locked.

Okay, then, I’ll check in at the airport.

Airport checkin.

Here’s where it’s gonna be better. I’m in a great mood, as I travel light and don’t have any bags to check. I’m early, so it’s not that big a deal if I have to hit this little kiosk thing.

First up, I choose to find my reservation by locator number. That’s actually flawless – and, since I haven’t been on a plane in two years (!) I only have to enter a few additional details to confirm that I am indeed me. (I am me, so I’m pleased that the airline agrees.)

But hold the phone (or kiosk) as there’s now the possibility to select a different seat. Good call – I’m in seat 2-million-B, so I’ll be in the middle above the engine and am no doubt going to be between a family of wailers.

I’m given the option to “upgrade” to Economy Plus. More legroom! Another good call. $39 sounds like an okay deal, actually, as it’s about a 20% premium on what I paid for this leg of the flight.

I am violating a Cardinal rule – don’t tell anyone what you paid for your flight. I’m not sure I agree with that rule. I know I paid more, as I bought by ticket two days before departure. Big whoop.

However, I’m torn: the only open seats in Economy Plus are middle seats. Now it’s not looking like the best idea. I’ll pass.

After clicking “decline option,” I’m off to the next leg of my checkin journey – the chance to pick a better seat, for no additional charge. Done: I’ll take a window in the 30^th row.

But after picking my seat, I’m given something murky: the chance to purchase a Mileage Accelerator.

For the low, low price of $27, I am told I can get this package. I’m also told something about 888 miles. Am I buying 888 miles – which is the length of this particular flight – for $27? What does this accelerator do?

I even do the quick math in my head: if a mile is worth, in theory, 3 cents, 888 of them would be worth…$26.64. So I’m accelerating somewhat. I’m buying these miles for what I would be able to cash them in for.

But I don’t know if this is a good deal – really, will I be able to trade these miles? Are they going to be worth 3 cents a mile when I finally do, or 30 cents? Or .003 cents?

I decline.

NEXT, THERE’S MORE: PRIORITY PRIVILEGE

I would happily pay for this – if I knew what it was.

Seriously, I think I was asked to pay another $20 to allow me something that, again, had all the clarity of mud. Does it let me board earlier? Do I get a free ride to my gate on one of those golf carts? Can I get a little toy plane to take home?

Actually, right now, even though I said no, I’m wondering if I made a mistake. Will it restore my ability to check in at home, get me in Economy Plus, add to my mileage account AND give me Priority Privilege?

That, and maybe a great credit card offer, and you got me.