Flickr: Swamibu

Sorry, but the iPad announcement was an iDud.  Steve Jobs looked and sounded weak, and I just got the feeling that the iPad was a LARGE TYPE version of the iPod Touch. So much missing. But perhaps he’ll get the sympathy vote and the product will recover.  Just such a yawn — and after all of that uncharacteristic leaking of information and features!

And the State of the Union?  Again, the anticipation preceding any speech from the Great Orator is always high — and I’m not sure even Chris Mathews felt the tingle up his leg after this one.

Are we in a marketing malaise?  A Sargasso Sea of cynicism?

Or just the winter doldrums?

Based on the roaring finish which was calendar Q4 of 2009 (at least for us), I think it’s precisely the wrong time to curl up in ursine slumber.  And marketing must continue to lead — to set the psychological tone months ahead of consumer sentiment broadly.

Let’s be bold, people!

Now, on the other hand, here’s a new web site that has done something extremely bold: GolfTripGenius.com.  Disclaimer: I’ve advised them over the past few months.

They’ve solved several of the most annoying problems facing golf trip captains — and done so with extremely powerful technology made simple.

Whoda thunk the golf industry had much room left for innovation outside club design and fertilizers to keep those desert courses green?

You?

I was walking to work this morning (after writing my Apologia to the Blogosphere for last night’s rant & rave), and out of the corner of my eye I caught a passing delivery truck with a large soft panel bearing a promotional message for a printing company.

“Plus que du papier.  Print.”  More than paper.  Print.

Imagine the challenge you face if you are in the print industry today.  The butt of carbon footprint jokes, the scourge of the global climate change movement.  “People who consume paper are ravaging our wilderness.”  Though printers rarely consume paper except at the behest of their customers, it must just the same be extraordinarily painful to be a printer in the current climate, so to speak.

I’ve always believed that outdoor is the most challenging medium.  In few words, with the opportunity to capture attention which is measured in milliseconds, how do you inspire minutes of follow-on reflection and reaction?

“More than paper.  Print.”  This firm’s  job is to help you communicate.  The paper is a detail.  An important one, an interesting one, an emotion-laden one.  But for me these five words effectively persuaded me to rethink the role of the printer… and to stretch the category in my own mind.

I find this extremely compelling outdoor copywriting.  I did a Google search, but found no reference — and I did not see the panel long enough to capture the company name — another hazard of outdoor.  Do any of my Swiss readers have a tip on whose great work this was?

I work with executives and entrepreneurs in businesses large and small.

Most are technology firms.  They are trying to innovate — to create a solution which never existed before to a problem which is plain to see but perceived to be difficult or impossible to solve.

On the other hand, I also work with small businesses, like a couple who just opened a gift shop where they want to offer quality crafts,  gifts and decor at an attractive price.  Far more straight forward.

Both, however, need to build a brand — create a memorable impression for potential customers about who they are, what value they offer.

Larger, more sophisticated businesses seem to have a far harder time remaining steady and consistent in expressing their essence to the community.  Smaller firms in niches, in general, do a better job “sticking to their knitting,” than larger companies hoping to serve many segments or industries.

“Who am I?”

Here, I am a writer and from time to time the provider of advice and services related to marketing and communication.  I may be other things to my family, loved ones, and even to my enemies.  But here, I am an advisor to businesses seeking to grow — not only to survive but to thrive.

In that role, I try to inspire my customers / partners to imagine and to stretch — but I also try to help them avoid making mistakes — including some which I have made myself.

Have you ever rolled down your car window so that you can honk the horn, make a gesture, and holler all at the same time after getting cut off in a downtown intersection?

When I was younger, I used to do that a lot.  I do it far less frequently since a friend offered me this timeless piece of advice: “Breathe.  Once in the morning is not enough.”

Well I stopped breathing yesterday.  I was riled up after a very busy (if productive) day.  I was packing up at night and feeling energized about my final day on my current business trip — and excited about getting home again.

I “checked the traps,” which is my term for catching up on email and other networks, reading some news, and so forth.  Someone sent me a link to a funny YouTube video which got me clicking through several related links of very funny and irreverant celebrity impressions.  I have no idea what he was singing, but I was laughing myself silly at a Korean band where the lead singer was doing an impression of a pop duet — both the male and the female parts.  Switching gears, I checked out some the blogs I regularly read.

Then someone must have cut me off in the proverbial downtown intersection of cyberspace.  I decided to “rant,” which I think is to blogging what a “flameogram” used to be to email.

It felt great to get some of my deepest darkest feelings off my chest.  I swore in my blog post.  I was vitriolic and mean.  It felt great.  I got more comments within an hour than I’d received on my best-read posts in weeks.  By some blogosphere standards this was a good thing.

Another questions: have you ever wished you’d waited just a little longer before pressing the “send” button on an email?  I know I have.  And a trusted friend who has, too, called me up and provided me with some marketing advice: Unsend.  Hit the delete key.

What I had done was wrong.  And so I took advantage of my self-publishing power and I hit the delete key — a privilege one has in the blogosphere (which my rant had just viciously criticized).

Today I can’t wait to get home.  Today, I will breathe.  Once in the morning is not enough.

Have you made ever made a mistake?  It feels great to admit it, and to learn from it.

Michael Calienes is a blogger and marketer I stumbled across as one does about a year ago.  I clicked through a link recently to a fine piece of guidance for marketers planning their next communication program — whatever the media and however narrow or broad the goal.

It’s called the “three-step strategy statement,” is available readily at his site, and represents the kind of simple but planful thinking we should all do to keep our communication programs on the same path as our broader business strategy.  An excellent tool.

Thanks, Michael!

Improves Attention in School!

I have a problem.  I was taught grammar, and required to memorize my vocabulary lists.  Yes, I had to create sentence diagrams as a child.  Feel free to observe, as many have, that all that teaching was a waste.

This has had one lasting side effect.  When I hear things like television advertisements, I sometimes notice what’s being claimed.  Listening to a Frosted Mini-Wheats advert recently I picked up on this claim: children who had Frosted Mini-Wheats for breakfast were 11% more likely to be attentive in class than children who had not eaten breakfast.

Hoo Ray!  Frosted Mini-Wheats kids outperform the starving!

So that’s absurd on the surface, but in doing some follow-up research for this post, I discovered that Kellogg’s has been taken to task by the Federal Trade Commission, and penalties were imposed, for this claim in the recent past (April 2009).  A common-sense blogger, rangelife, shared some information about the case, which I recommend to you.  Turns out only half of the Mini-Wheat-eaters showed any improvement in attentiveness, and only 11% showed an improvement of 20%.  I happen to be numerate, so the microscopic insignificance of this claim, in the scheme of things, is obvious to me.  Pity the poor consumer trying to pick a breakfast food based that will give their cherub the competitive edge on this week’s grammar and vocabulary tests, and therefore get them into Harvard.

The TV ad is still running, modified to conform to FTC Truth in Advertising requirements.  In my opinion, the spot still makes a ridiculous claim, and one which fails any test of responsibility in communication, never mind Truth in Advertising.

Is there any wonder that traditional promotional schemes (slick and manipulative television advertising copy) and old-school media continue to suffer as buyers gain more access to more information on the web?

Nope.

I spent 12 years working for Lotus Development Corporation – the latter four as part of IBM.  At the time IBM acquired Lotus, the Lotus brand was under extreme pressure.

Definition of a

IBM Acquires Lotus Development

Microsoft was killing Lotus on the desktop.  Excel was wiping out Lotus 1-2-3, Microsoft Office cratered Lotus SmartSuite.  Lotus’ challenge: drive growth in the Lotus Notes and cc:Mail businesses rapidly enough to offset precipitous declines elsewhere.

In the end, Lotus couldn’t stretch their brand far enough. But IBM could stretch theirs.  They acquired Lotus for over $3.5 billion, with the strategic intention of infusing IBM’s brand image with some of the Lotus goodness: innovation, agility, imagination, ambition.  Merged with IBM’s enduring attributes of trust and reliability, the acquisition proved “money well spent” as IBM’s brand image got an update, and the company made inroads into new channels.

IBM survived the Microsoft challenge and the “threat” of the Internet, continued making massive but complementary acquisitions, and quadrupled the firm’s market capitalization during the ’90s.

What a brand.

A Bubble that Burst

After I left IBM in 1999, I went to work for one of the last of the 20^th century’s “hot” internet startups – a company based in the quaint sea port town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  Bowstreet had deep-pocketed investors, and during my tenure as CMO there we spent

$1,000,000 on a single day

in order to break through the noise and establish Bowstreet as a durable presence in the software market.

Our big brand splash included:

1. A three-page print ad in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, and the Boston Globe
2. A magnificent 24-hour event held at San Francisco’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel, featuring the brightest lights from the venture capital community, representatives from all the major industry analyst firms, and over 500 of the internet elite
3. A billboard on Route 101 in Silicon Valley – in 2000, a property as hot as Dutch tulip bulbs in the 1630s.

You get the idea.  For the time, it was a plan which leveraged the most powerful marketing vehicles at a technology firm’s disposal.  We generated over $50 million in sales during the four months which followed the launch.

The bubble burst at the end of 2000.  Pipelines dried up – but awareness of Bowstreet and industry memory of the company enabled the firm to survive until Bowstreet was acquired – by IBM – some five years later.  The impact Bowstreet had on the market was a top subject in job interviews for years after I left the firm.

These are stories of elastic brands.  Brands that stretched to respond to changing market conditions.  Lotus and Bowstreet stretched too far.  IBM stretched… but returned to form a stronger, more vibrant, more compelling brand.

And this all transpired in the last century – before the media world completely changed. Before buyers took control over access to information about vendors and their products.

They aren’t giving it back.

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Crosswinds, cross currents

[Disclosure: this story, in part, recounts a client engagement to bring appropriate new media tools to a B2B software business]

There are at least two interesting currents out there, as I work with clients and speak with colleagues and friends in my network.

One has to do with the disproportionate volume of information about how to use new media, social networks, Twitter, etc.: I believe I’ve received tweets encouraging me to uncover 246 essential tools, 78 ways to get productive, 92 techniques to grow my following — and that’s just today.

The other has to do with a persistent question coming from those responsible for generating real revenue for real businesses with real customers and real employees: what are the relevant and practical ways to use the new media that will realistically have an impact on my business in my lifetime — which is getting shorter with each passing day during the economic crisis.

In essence, enterprise marketing leaders (CMOs, VPs of marketing) want to embrace new techniques, but can’t afford to appear to be investing in trendy activities with limited near-term impact.

Here’s my “Lather, Rinse, Repeat” advice for businesses from really small to really large:

Find something buyer-worthy to communicate.

You may be thrilled beyond belief that version 3.0.6 of your enterprise cloud infrastructure platform has finally made it out of development and QA.

But buyers ask themselves one question: will my life the day after I buy something from a vendor be improved in ways that far exceed what I paid?

Stories that convey that messages tend to be less often about a product and its zippy new feature set, and more often about a real return on investment achieved through the intelligent use of the product.  Less like this, and more like this.

Tease the story with a post or two on your company blog.

The blog platform, which is more reactive, opinion and judgment-oriented, and less formal, is a perfect place to begin to set the stage for the announcement itself.

Pick a fact or two from the bigger story and begin to tease your regular readers with the news.

Cross-post a microblog on Twitter.

If you haven’t already, get a corporate Twitter account and start building the search queries that will help you identify potential buyers NOW.

The hype about Twitter will thrill you with tales of how big news broke about Lance’s crash in the Vuelta Castilla y Leon in Spain today.  And as interesting as that is, I’m not now nor do I expect soon to be either a Tour de France cyclist nor a journalist or press photographer.  I just can’t do much with that information except be a bit sad about the pain he must be in.

However, if I construct an intelligent search string, I can find dozens, if not hundreds, of potential buyers who are thinking about the problem my company solves right at this very instant.  Now that I can get excited about, and you should too.  Tweet a link to your blog post.

Go for an old-school press release.

The traditional (print) press, PR firms, and the wire services are taking a hit these days, but for my money (namely less than $400), a sure-fire way to get lots of ‘impressions’ is to get a news release out on one of the wire services.

Despite my recent editorializing, PRWeb does a great job of this at a great price, as long as you can bear with their occasionally misleading user interface!

Make sure there’s a highlight of the story in an extremely prominent location on your website.

This one shold be obvious.  What’s the expression? “If it goes without saying,…”

Notify your social and professional networks.

Even if you don’t have a Facebook presence for your business, many social networkers ‘blend’ their Facebook presence with professional updates to great effect. LinkedIn, too, now provides many ways for you to engage that community. More on both of these at greater length and in greater detail in future posts!

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In my last corporate marketing gig, we celebrated a strong finish to the year by putting together a quick video spoof on new sales executive orientation. It was a blast — and it sure made a lot of people laugh… but it’s no surprise they got rid of me a year later!!!

There are a few inside jokes, but this was a fun ride in the way back machine!

I posted this morning about the poignant and evocative performance by Seeger and Springsteen of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.”  Not an hour after posting, the link is bad because HBO has pulled the clip, “due to a copyright claim.”

At this time of transition, at this time of hope and dreams, at this time of economic stress and political optimism, pulling a clip from YouTube?

“Where was the trusted friend?”  One of my favorite expressions, and never more apt.  If anyone remotely connected with PR at HBO stumbles across this post (however unlikely ), exert some leadership.  Step up.  Restore sanity and humanity to your company!

Thanks to Ron Miller for the link to the performance by Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, yesterday.

The video clip is so evocative I had to stop work on another project to reflect.

We are at a genuinely interesting point of transition in the United States, and therefore in the world.  My genuine hope, and I use that word advisedly these days, is that Obama-imbued optimism will prove a tonic for our pandemic hypertension.  We need a “collective yoga class” in this country.  Perhaps the debut of our 44th President will have us all breathing deep into the far recesses of our lungs, stretching further and making more supple our cable-taught hamstrings.

Perhaps thus relaxed, even temporarily, we can once again envision a future characterized by economic growth, by the belief that we can coexist with earth, air and water while generating less fire, by a vibrant, tolerant, and free culture we can be proud to pass on to our children, and theirs.

If you haven’t heard this piece — I encourage you to do so.  Commentary continues below.

I am no Pete Seeger expert, but I have enjoyed his music since my childhood, thanks to my Mom.  I have seen great biographical programs, particularly the PBS show, “Pete Seeger: The Power of Song.”  He was among a group of artists and intellectuals who were grotesquely treated at another point of transition in this country — the debut of the Cold War.  He survived and ultimately thrived, on his own terms.

I could not help thinking I was seeing Pete Seeger perform live for the last time.  He is aging.  Gracefully, but aging.  His voice and timing are not what they once were.  But there he stood, before the Reflecting Pool, part of a political event which must have had him full to bursting with pride.  My throat tightened and the tears did in fact well up.

Toward the end of the clip, the producers “pot up” Springsteen’s mic, and his distinctive, almost twangy, harmony strengthens in the piece.  As you may know, Springsteen produced a CD / album and a fairly extensive tour behind his recordings of Pete Seeger greats: “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions.”  His admiration for Seeger is well documented.

Think about that metaphoric transition: from Seeger the American Communist Party member, the political protestant, who lived a modest material existence but dedicated his life to human rights causes and a world of man living in harmony with nature and the earth; to Springsteen, sprung from working class roots near the cosmetically uninspring Jersey Shore, seering advocate of labor in industrial America, critic of immigration and domestic issues like privacy protection in an environment of wire-tapping and other surveillance, multi-millionaire leader of the E Street Band which regularly tops the music industry in concert tour receipts.

 I find the difference in “cultural authenticity index” between the two poignant.  Today we think of U2’s Bono and Springsteen as media beacons with enlightened political consciousness.  Their presence at certain types of political events has become predictable.  Whatever your view of Seeger, Springsteen, Obama — there can be no doubt that among them (at least judging to the date of this writing), Seeger is the only among them who truly lived “an examined life.”  He is a man whose vision for humanity can be seen in all aspects of his life.  His political and social views; his choices about lifestyle and consumption; his application of his God-given artistic talent to his dream for mankind.

I am a huge fan of “The Boss,” and while I found U2’s concert a let-down, I would not deny them a spot in the pantheon of modern rock bands.  But neither is up to the standard for authenticity set by Seeger.  Not even close.  And believe me, my judgment is not based on the merits of their political views, as many who know me can attest.  It is based on the depth and breadth of their conviction; of the completeness with which they pursue life in all its aspects.

The question becomes, who among us is?