Favorite Blog Post

One of my favorite blog posts: Rupert Walker

Date: December 1, 2011

Post:

What Inspires Me.

I am inspired by risk, courage, and innovation.

(Side note: I think it is equally important to effectively communicate through visuals as it is through words…….Also, if a pictures worth a thousand words then theoretically this post contains just over 3000….haha)

Who to Idolize?

Post: Who to Idolize? by Greg Friesen

Date: November 28, 2011

Comment:

That was a very informative article. I had no idea that Bill Gates was so involved in non business practices. That makes me very happy to know that there are at least some people out their that do not sit back greedy with all their money and hog it until they die and it gets left behind.

In terms of a person, I will definitely look up to Bill Gates in higher regards to Steve Jobs, however as a business/marketing genius, I still give Jobs the title. Gates took a monopolized product and sold it for a super high price gouging their customers while Jobs created value and a loyal fan base. Either way, both men have had massive effects on the lives of billions of people around the world. Lets appreciate them for what they have done, but lets please not go as far as idolizing them.

Measuring Marketing Campaigns

Some people are scared of marketing because they spend money and don’t think they see it back. They are filled with uncertainty around what that investment is doing for them. Is it actually benefiting them, or are they wasting money they can’t afford to waste? They continue to do it because that is how a business is supposed to work, your supposed to spend money marketing and somehow it helps them.

The reason for this uncertainty among business owners is the lack of measurement involved. It is important to measure the effectiveness of a marketing campaign. It allows the owner to make an informed decision about the campaign. If it is bringing in money, then their won’t be the same worry about wasting money. If it isn’t stirring any business, then the owner knows he needs to do something else that won’t through money away. Quite often, the campaign will just need some tweaking in some areas to improve it and make it most effective.

The method I like to use in measuring the effectiveness of a marketing campaign is ROI – return on investment. This answers the question, how much money am I generating through that investment. In order to know what the ROI is, you must be able to track results. For a small trades business, using direct mail where someone needs to call or email works. Measure the cost of the marketing pieces against the revenue generated from the clients that were brought in from the campaign. It is important to remember that the client you gain will probably be a repeat customer and you will see more revenue generated in the future. Do your math, it will be different for every business, but you should know and understand the business well enough to be able to forecast revenue generated from a loyal customer. Other forms of marketing are easy to track as well. If coupons or gift cards are used, its simple enough to track how many were used.

It is difficult to measure campaigns that are tossed out their just to create better awareness around the company. Try and stay away from these types of marketing approaches unless you are cash heavy and can afford it. In these cases you can still measure by looking at your overall sales differences and measuring the increase if you have just launched a major campaign.

Another way to track results is by having a draw for customers, all they have to do is fill out a form where they answer how they hear of the company, and other types of questions related to the specific business and marketing campaigns in place.

There are lots of options for business owners to measure marketing effectiveness, it will usually take a combination of a few of them. Try them out, do your math and homework and find out how your money is working for you. Look at the ROI and try to continually have a higher return percentage.

Mint Flavoured Parking Tickets

Post: Mint flavoured parking tickets are marketing genius by Darren Tang

Date: November 20, 2011

Comment:

This is absolutely brilliant. We so often see advertising campaigns shoved down our mouth in a way that we hate, obvious marketing ploys that just seem to annoy people more than anything else. This is essentially doing the exact same thing, but yet, it is somehow more subtle at the same time. They aren’t telling you how good their product is, or making of crazy and lame reasons to why you should use their product over the competition. Instead they give an actual taste of the product. The fact that they aren’t expecting it has them shocked and this grabs their attention and makes a lasting impression on the consumer as they look down in astonishment at the parking ticket and see the ad.

I hope that as marketers we can continue to come up with these original ideas that capture attention rather than using brute techniques that just gives the profession a poor reputation.

The Company Men

I recently watched the movie Company Men that had a solid cast starring: Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper, and Kevin Costner. The movie is about three successful men that are part of the same company that is downsizing. Each individual has his own experiences that the movie captures well.

If you have not seen the movie and plan on watching it, be weary of trailers for this movie as they tend to give away too much information. If you do not plan on watching it or already have and need a refresher, refer to the trailer embedded below. I do however suggest anyone to watch the movie, it was excellent and thought provoking.

I used to have a very hard heart and mind that thought of business success first. If you have ready earlier posts of mine than you would realize that I have gone through a change in views. With that being said, I always held the idea that cutting employees loose by mass downsizing was just part of business and people shouldn’t be too expected and should just work harder so they are the ones in position to make the downsizes apposed to the ones being laid off. I always felt that the companies laying them off are the ones that had in the first place given them the opportunity and made them who they are so they had the right to take it away just as quick.

Partly through the help of movies like The Company Men, and other reasons, I have come to have different views on the situation now.  I am not apposed to all downsizing and can understand that it may be the only option available to a company. It is better to layoff half the employees to keep the company afloat rather than going bankrupt and having everyone lose their jobs. I feel that a lot of time the decision to downsize is not in such a lose-lose scenario, but more of a greedy decision by those in charge. I don’t understand how people can feel that it’s better for the company stock price to rise 2 dollars than for it to employee thousands of people that helped it get to where it was.

Another underlying piece of the movie’s story that was great was how they portrayed working in construction or trades. Having had some trades experience, I can appreciate the hard labour and long hours put in just to stay afloat. I don’t think a lot of people appreciate the work they do. It can be a harsh career without much reward. There are a lot of hard working people in the world that keep the economies grinding on, without them the highly rewarded businesses would have nothing. I plead for corporations to realize this and help in any way possible.

IKEA ‘Manland’ Comment

Post: IKEA ‘Manland’  by Aleks

Date: November 15, 2011

Comment:

I love it! Thank you for posting this, I am so happy I got to read this. The idea is very simple yet is brilliant, guys do not like to shop and women do. I don’t know how many times I have been dragged to do some shopping and just sat there bored for hours; it is awful!

I do agree with you that since its furniture it is very different than if it was clothes. I would want my opinion on the furniture picked out for my place. I have never been to IKEA before so I’m not sure how it compares to other furniture stores. Either way, when I have gone shopping for with a women for something I was interested in having an opinion on I still got bored as I like most men want to get in and out while it tends to be a longer process for women. I would give my opinion, let her do her thing for another few hours while I play then we can make the final decision together.

Either way, having ‘Manland’ couldn’t hurt IKEA, so I think it is a great idea. I really appreciate it when stores try and be creative to offer their customers something new, it is fun. Just the fact that they have done something like this has created a better image of them in my mind and I will probably be slightly more inclined to shop their if I have a need.

The Purpose of Business

Post: Business Greed by The Small Business Blog

Date: November 14, 2011

Comment:

We are told over and over that the purpose of business is to make a profit.

Why does profit have to be the be all and end all where people are willing to stomp on others, use them and then discard them in order to make that profit.

Greed runs our a society. I understand the arguements for Capitalism. I have nothing against someone having the freedom and ability to grow their own position within the society. People need motivation to work hard, it’s just too bad that they work dirty as well. I wish that we could be unified in our purposes. Why do individual people feel the need to have millions of dollars when there are millions of people that only wish to have enough to survive. We have the ability to unify and solve world poverty, but we instead live in a place where corporations own millions of dollars.

 

Presentation Analysis

Above is a presentation made by Hans Rosling on the topic of the global population growth and the issues surrounding this circumstance. Rosling did an excellent job of making this presentation clear and understandable while keeping the audiences attention and instilling a sense of urgency and importance to the message.

He used good props to help us visualize his speech. He moved away from the digital presentation for the most part that we see often in presentations. He could have used regular bar graphs instead of using IKEA boxes, but it would not have had the same effect. We see bar graphs on PowerPoint type software so frequently that is has lost some of its power, and makes it more difficult to realize the full effect.

Rosling did a fine job of helping the audience understand something that is fairly complex by simplifying it. Many people get excited in the climax of the message that they forget the audience won’t have the same level of understanding on the topic as them and thus will not take the same importance out of the message. Rosling made sure to do a quick summary of the issue to bring everyone up to snuff on the basic principles. This allowed us to garner the full message out of the climax of his presentation.

When he did use a digital graph, unlike many others, he explained it well for maximum understanding as he went on rather than throwing up a ‘pretty’ image that would look impressive and allow the audience to try and decode it themselves.

Rosling’s word choices throughout were able to strike the appropriate emotional and intelligent responses as well. These responses created the urgency and importance in his message. Without people feeling the urgency and importance in what Rosling was saying, they would not be called to action. The purpose of a presentation like this is to inform, and then to call us, the audience, to action to help resolve the issue. Since we felt the message was urgent and the issue important, we have a much harder time in ignoring it to live on with our daily lives as we wish.

Rosling did not just leave his message and call to action hanging in the air. He offered up a solution for people so that they would know where to start. Many problems like this are complex and we would like to help but have no idea how or where to start. It would not have helped much if he made the presentation doing an excellent job teaching the audience of the magnitude of the dilemma and then leave them in wonder on what to do about it.

Overall, Rosling used some very effective techniques in his presentation on the global population growth issue that allowed the audience to stay interested, to understand clearly what was being said, and have the right emotional and intelligent responses calling them to action. There was also a solution offered by Rosling.

Changing the World

After recently listening to a couple podcasts by Terry O’Reilly on the CBC’s “The Age of Persuasion” I have been filled with renewed hope. The podcast that elicited this emotional responce was the one discussing Marketing Pioneers.

The podcast discussed multiple cases where a regular person like you or me were able to not only create new products, but entirely new industries that changed the world. They discussed how something like a diamond which holds no real use other than the ability to sparkle was turned into a high priced commodity. This was done by a piece of brialliant marketing that linked diamonds to engagement rings. They also used the slogan “A diamond is forever” which discusses both the actually durability of the diamond itself, as well as introducing romance into the picture; marriages are meant to be forever, so diamonds are the perfect choice for the ring.

The podcast also discussed of how credit cards became popular. We all know how popular they are now in the “but I want it now” age. A few other examples were used to illistrate the point that their are pioneers with ideas that overcome what seems like insurmountable obstacles to change the very world we live in.

On a personal note, listening to the podcast has renewed my hope that I do have the ability to make a difference and change the world, and if for whatever reason I am unable to do this, at least I can always hope that their will be someone out their that will. People always discuss changing the world in a way that makes it seem like it is impossible, that there are only a few people that have lived that will make a true difference. We always think of someone like Ghandi or Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King or Jesus. The reality is, the world is always changing. There have been millions of people that have lived that had a drastic influence in the world we live in today. The task of influencing events does not seem near as daunting a task anymore.

My suggestion to people that also dream to make a difference with their lives, don’t give up hope thinking that you’ll never reach the point of Ghandi, but realize that every action and choice you make can change the world for someone. Why always think big, there is nothing wrong with thinking small and changing the lives of a few in a way you never thought you could.

On a professional note, I now realize that things are always changing and I can influence people through smart strategic marketing to become successful.

The Greatest Speech Ever

Post: Absolutely Almost by Angela Meadows

Date: October 26, 2011

Comment:

I have seen this video so many times as it too has been circulating through my facebook pages. I absolutely love this speech and feel everyone needs to listen to it. I don’t just refer to people watching the video, but actually taking in what is being said and listening, understanding, AND most importantly, acting on the emotions brought forth through the video.

This video is very relevent right now with the Occupy Wall Street protests against corporate greed. Corporations are essentially using the every day working folk as ‘slaves’ to get them rich. I say this because it seems like there is no humanity involved, they have no issue laying thousands off at a time for a quick easy solution or make a few more bucks while they continue to pay their CEO ridiculous money.

I have never understood why we have to have the national barriers that causes competition and seperation. Why is it impossible for our globe to unite as one power that can share resources amongst everyone. There is no need for all suffering that happens in our world. It is possible within humanity to unite and live peaceful, but we will never reach that point with the structure, power, and greed that we see everywhere.