Image courtesy of insurancemarketinghq.com

About this whole blogging thing. It’s not easy to produce good content and it’s even harder to find the time to write. The Insider Award nomination, in addition to being flattering and humbling, gave me the continued encouragement to keep writing, keep sharing and keep telling my stories. It might be about something as non-businessy as chivalry being dead or something with strategic insight like my opinion on why Kodak failed. I sometimes start writing and think, “who the hell cares about my opinion on <insert topic, rant or rave>?!” and then I tell myself, “write, dammit.” And so it goes. I am thankful that I started my blog back in 2008, even tho I had no idea what I was going to say. My first blog post was published just a few days after being laid off (for the first time) and realizing that social media was at the center of getting on my feet toward what was next. I always say that things happen for a reason. Had I not been laid off, maybe I would never have started my blog. If I hadn’t started my blog, I wouldn’t have a soapbox for my rants and raves. And, without my soapbox, there would be no BostInno Insider Award nomination. And here we are. Thanks for the nomination, guys. I am super-psyched.

PS: If I’m lucky enough to have you as a reader of my blog, I’d love your vote…#imnotworthy

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What I didn’t know at the time was anything about the camera market. For example, that Polaroid launched the first instant film camera and Kodak copied it and went through what ended up to be a 10 year legal battle over the copyright to the instant film. The sad end to the story was that Kodak was forced to discontinue making the film for my beloved camera because they were late to the game and couldn’t copy the technology without copyright infringement. Maybe it was foreshadowing for the recent news – the king of film files for bankruptcy protection.

In my opinion, the “what happened” is not a story of 35mm film going by the wayside and putting them into bankruptcy. It’s a story of what happens when you:

1. drink too much of your own koolaide
2. don’t anticipate what the customer needs
3. have blinders on when it comes to the competition
4. stop paying attention to how technology and your market are changing
5. forget that you can become a commodity (see #1 & #3)

Had Kodak perhaps kept their eye on Fuji and their Japanese competitors, listened and anticipated the trend to digital and put egos and boardrooms and the way it was always done aside, perhaps they would be in a different place today. The wikipedia page mentions

However despite high growth, Kodak failed to anticipate how fast these digital cameras would become commodities, with low profit margins, as more companies entered the market in the mid-2000s. Also, an ever-smaller percentage of digital pictures were being taken on digital cameras, being gradually displaced in the late 2000s by cellphones and tablets‘ cameras. In 2001 Kodak held the No. 2 spot in U.S. digital camera sales behind number one Sony, but Kodak lost $60 USD on every camera sold. The film business, where Kodak had enjoyed high profit margins, fell 18% in 2005. The combination of these two factors resulted in disappointing profits overall.^[17] Kodak’s digital cameras soon became undercut by Asian competitors that could produce their offerings more cheaply. In 2007 Kodak was No. 4 in U.S. digital camera sales with a 9.6 percent share but it has lost ground since then, and by 2010 it held 7 percent in seventh place behind Canon, Sony, Nikon and others, according to research firm IDC. ^[19]

It’s easy to say: we’ve always made this widget, so we’re going to keep making this widget and people will buy it. When suddenly your competition, who you never really paid attention to, starts making your widget even better and sells it for less. Some call that eating your lunch. I call it taking your eye off the ball. You know what happens when you take your eye off the ball…you miss it.

Listen to your customers. Pay attention to your market. Understand price pressure and how it could squeeze your profit margins. Understand this crazy dynamically changing technological world we live in. Eat and breathe it. It’s okay to think your company or your product is all that and a bag of chips. Just be sure that in your passion and love for what you do and what you’re building, you are looking for those indicators that, if missed, could one day put you out of business. RIP Kodak. I miss my instant film and it’s sad to see what was once such a dominant brand be shelved just like my camera.

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I was looking at the upcoming local events at Rue La La and I had some ideas.

Join me on Rue!

First off, I must start by saying that Rue La La, or “Rue” as I call it among friends, is my favorite private sale site. Hands down. I love the exclusive feeling of “members only”, rewards for inviting friends and amazing brands, the fantastic copywriting (I am a sucker for great writing style). As I looked at the site today today and had my big idea for Rue La La, I went to my blog and started writing. I tried to find the Rue blog so I could link to it from my blog. I searched all over the Rue site – seriously all over – and didn’t see the word “Blog.” Call me a simple girl, but I call ‘em like I see ‘em. So, I started clicking on links and found “About Rue La La” is the blog. Huh. Not really what I expected. I expected the “About” page to tell me, well, about the company from a business perspective: Mission statement (which they have, well done), Team page (lots of ideas here on how to expose the super-talented team members who make it all happen), Investors (where da cash at), Press (who’s been talking them up), News (what’s happening in the industry). Now that’s an About page. Instead, the About was more like the “Account” page. <end rant> But, the good news is that they have a blog – a great blog – and it is so much of the “About” so I see why they made it the About.

So, I guess there’s are two ideas.

Second idea happened as I was watching last night’s Bruins game and they won in OT. Nice! And was thinking that it would be really cool if Rue had more local sporting events. I used to work for a Kraft Group company and was thinking about maybe a luxe offering – two tickets club-level to a Pat’s game, Sox, Celts, B’s. I know Rue has a local sports offering but when I looked up the upcoming events, there was only one sports event – World Series tixs. Hm, and Boston is out of the running! I would totally be in for a special sports events package. I also think about how Rue can attract more men to the site and believe that women would buy packages like that as gifts for the men in their lives for bday gifts, holidays and a special night out. Maybe even add in sports charity events – I love stuff that’s a great cause and something I love.

The amazing Marybeth Fratus, survivor and model - pretty in pink.

And then I was thinking about my Catwalk for a Cure event last week. And I was thinking about the photos I took from the end of the runway (so honored) and about the strong survivors who came out and showed their spirit. And the amazing designers who shared their passion and joy and created passion and joy. My friends were there to support me, to support the local Boston fashion scene and the  survivors who brought their pride, passion and strength and lit-up the runway. And I thought, next year, I need to talk to Rue La La about participating in the event. It’s a perfect match – two creative companies with aligned passions – fantastic experiences and amazing fashion. Rue, we’d love to have you help us next year!

So, I guess that’s three ideas and it’s only noon on Sunday:) See what happens when I have charisma to spare?

What say you, Rue?

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Here’s what we did.

I got the team together, including our designer who is a shared resource for other parts of the organization. Each person got a stack of index cards in a particular color (mine are pink, how fitting:). We spent 5 minutes writing down all of the projects we are each working on and then we organized them on a tackboard by person. Once that was done, we started running down the list person by person and prioritizing the work. Quickly, we recognized the benefit of doing this as a priority for our designer was not on his list because he was waiting for info from another team member. A new index card was added to the designer’s list and he now had his top priority for the week. We worked together to identify what is hot fiyah and what is not and gained alignment on the priorities for the week.

In the world of Scrum, it’s the Scrum Leader’s job to ensure there are no roadblocks and to minimize distractions. Sounds like a good job for me. The new process will give my CEO full visibility into everything we are working on and he will need to work with me to reprioritize or add/change requirements (I’m on to you, Dave). We spent about 45 minutes going through each project to make sure everyone understood the requirements and then we prioritized and aligned priorities across the team given high interdependence on other resources to get stuff done.

Another benefit – you quickly see who is over tasked and who has capacity. Our brandy new intern had just two things on his list. (Poor kid started on Friday!) Man, that changed fast. We were able to reprioritize projects on other team members’ lists and give those to the intern, thus freeing up other resources to complete the higher priority projects.

So, overall, a great start to Day 1.

Time spent scrumming: 60 minutes

Projects prioritized: 35

Number of index cards used: 64

Number of lives saved by having a process that creates organization and priority: 5

Stay tuned as I’ll give you an update next week to see what else we’ve uncovered as efficiencies and how we are using Scrum to make our team more effective. Are you using a Scrum process in your Marketing department? Would love to hear your experience!

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I put babes in videos and babes in a trade show booth and I don’t regret it for one minute.

Great, now we’ve got that over with, let me explain.

There are times in the life of a brand where you’ve gotta get scrappy. You know – no budget, no one knows who the heck you are, you have to spell your company’s name s l o w l y and fight the uphill battle of spending on brand awareness versus spending on lead gen/conversion. In this scenario, most marketers are willing to do one of two things.

Thing One: Wait it out. Use the traditional means of marketing, advertising, PR and whatever other tools they have in that fancy bag of tricks. Then, cross their fingers that the marketing programs will eventually work and people will start to know the brand and buy something.

Thing Two: Take a risk. This is where I add the “don’t try this at home” disclaimer as this isn’t for everyone. Taking a risk is just that – a calculated bet that the aggressive programs you run will leapfrog the wait it out approach. It does not always happen this way. In my case it did and here’s why.

The risk I took was to feature beautiful women in a variety of settings for a marketing campaign before we launched our product. I took the Take A Risk approach, if you didn’t catch that. My friends and marketing cohorts said, “How can you exploit women like that? You’re a chick?!” But, I am a Marketing Chick and maniacally focused on programs that will grow our business. And sometimes you need to pull out all the stops to make it happen. My company was in a cluttered space – big big companies with deep deep pockets all around us gobbling up every eyeball I so desperately tried to capture. I couldn’t buy enough advertising to tell our story or enough paid programs to make a difference. Our target audience was male and, let’s face it, guys like hot chicks. Hey, even I appreciate hot chicks. I thought that because our brand was different than all the other muckety mucks with the deep pockets, we should do something they would never do – use hot chicks to promote our brand. Different.

The critics might say, what does some randomly cast hot chick know about your product? The answer: nothing. But that’s not the point. I recently read an article by Christine Crandell about the ROI of booth babes and it spurred me to write this post. I agree with Christine’s position that dressing your product in a french maid’s outfit and sending it off to ‘sell’ is rather outrageous and, in my opinion, tasteless and a waste of marketing dollars. But, I do think that there’s a time and place for some brand sauce – you know a way to shake things up a bit, give the potential buyer something unexpected and do it in a tasteful way. The ‘butt-shaker’ videos, as they have been coined, did exactly what I needed them to do. They created a buzz. They created an aspiration for our potential customer (99.9% male) to achieve. They explained the product in a simple way and with a clever, unexpected hook. They caused a bit of a commotion that resulted in over a half a million views on You Tube for just one of the videos in the series. They were conceived with a strategy, a pithy pitch, a catchy hook, a top-notch video production crew and stellar execution. The result was a home run in breaking through the clutter and appealing to our audience. The video series increased leads, brand name recognition and credibility – believe it or not, customers loved that we were willing to do something different.

Now, the booth babes. So, we go to Vegas and it’s our ‘break-out’ show. I put two lovely girls – twins in fact – in jeans and a custom-made tank top. No boobs hanging out. No glitter bikinis. Fun yet tasteful. They knew enough about the product to attract peoples’ attention and did an excellent job mingling with our booth traffic.

Would I do it again then: yes.

Would I do it now: no.

Why? It played a very particular role for a particular time in our brand’s evolution. I go to these shows every few months and see the same companies with the same shtick. Booth babes and give aways and I think…really? Is that all you’ve got?

Part of being a good marketer is transforming your brand little by little. Innovating. Creating. Differentiating. The same old same old is too predictable. People like being surprised and delighted. I believe that brands and babes can live together in harmony if, and only if, they serve a very specific purpose. I also believe that it gets played out fast, so if that’s all you’ve got in your bag of tricks, you better stop at the trick store for some new ideas.

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David said, “Flash frustrates the hell out of me. Stats have shown that you have approx 15 seconds to garner my attention and/or bring me to the content I am seeking from your website. Why would you waste that time waiting for your fancy Flash website to load? Anything built online needs to be done with the modus operandi of how does it benefit the end user? The move to HTML5 as the web design standard should help to accelerate the shift away from Flash-based websites because 5 is becoming the universal standard across the web.” ” He goes on to say, “Look at the iPad. Apple has sold somewhere around 25M of these devices and they are the clear leader in the tablet category…and even Apple devices don’t support Flash. In my opinion, Flash as a primary means of website design has had it’s time.”

I couldn’t agree more and would like to urge you marketers and designers out there to consider another way to get your message across – fast and succinctly – without using Flash. Pretty please…with a cherry on top? 15 seconds, baby.

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The topic was around the role of marketing in today’s globalized world. I had the pleasure of meeting fellow panelist,  Joan Schneider, president of Schneider Associates. It’s amazing that our paths haven’t crossed until today as she is also a passionate marketer and creative brand thinker – and we tend to agree on alot of points, which is nice when you’re sitting next to someone for almost 2 hours. The conversation kicked-off around launching new products, something Joan and her firm know alot about. Being in start-up land at Currensee, launches usually happen over-night, or so it seems. Joan talked about launch planning and how she helps her clients get ready. Her advice? Start the launch planing while ideas are still ideating. Waiting until the widget comes off the assembly line is often too late to plan all the details and line up the pieces for a successful launch. I spent time talking about launching a social network and how to gain sign-up momentum. The key? Identifying your influencers – the people who are willing to try your product early and tell other people about it. Joan and I both agreed that influencers are everyone from mommy bloggers, to WSJ press to the average consumer. It’s all about figuring out who they are, how to connect with them and what helps them engage with your brand.

We talked alot about social media and how we are using Twitter, Facebook and other social channels to engage customers and how we measure the success of social media. It was a topic that picked up on the themes from last week’s Espresso lunch with friend and colleague, Marta Kagan, where we talked about how social media is creating new channels and new challenges for us as marketers. Before, customers wrote an email or called us to complain. Now we manage the trials and tribulations of upset customers who can do more to damage to a brand in 140 characters than we ever thought possible. Measurement of social engagement, awareness, lead gen and membership is blurring the lines of ROI and marketers often don’t have the time or budget for big measurement products and, quite frankly, they’re not always the answer to the measurement question.

After a great discussion that’s far too detailed to transcribe here, we opened the session to the audience, mostly comprised of students. There were some great questions:

- What do you do when you have a bad press launch? How do you measure that and communicate that to your clients/management team?

- How do you decide what level of writing is appropriate for an audience mixed with newbies and experts?

- How do you find the influencers who can help launch your brand?

- What advice do you have for finding an internship or full-time job?

The last question really stood out to me because it takes marketing full-circle. Marketing is all about identifying the differentiator – the value prop that makes your idea, brand, product or service unique from the other guy’s down the street. Then, once you figure out what that is, you write it down and convey it in everything you do – consistently and emphatically. You talk about it, you Tweet it, you find people to talk about it. The it is the differentiator and the differentiator is the marketing. When it comes to getting a job, the same rules apply. You send me a resume. I look at it. The marketer in me does a few things immediately – 1) Assess the design. Did you just use a Word doc template or did you actually get creative and create a logo or unique format? 2) Check for typos and grammar. I know, it’s so anal but I can’t stand typos in a resume. You want me to hire you but you don’t have the attention to detail to actually proof your resume before you send it to me? Trash can.  3) Scan to figure out what’s different about you. Oh, you know Word, Excel and PowerPoint…yawn. Oh, you were the captain of your lacross team? Hm, team player, competitive, interesting. Oh, you were a sugar plum fairy in the Nutcracker Ballet? Discipline, focus, practice, cool. You started a mentoring program for inner-city kids? Initiative, compassion, giving back. Love it. You did an intership for the summer? Gave up the beach for the office. That’s dedication.

In my book, you have about 30 seconds for your resume to either get my attention or not. I apologize that I have the attention span of a gnat when it comes to stuff like this but I know I am not alone. People are busy. You need to cut through the clutter and create your difference. Whether you’re marketing yourself or a product someone’s going to buy, you’ve got 30 seconds to get your differentiator across, get them to understand it and make them feel like they need it (or you) right now.

And, now, over to you. Are you marketing your differentiator?

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I’m the marketing chick. I come equipped with a designer bag full of tricks. There’s Twitter, Facebook, blog posts, email campaigns, partner marketing, affiliate programs, you know the drill. But, there’s alot of noise. If you post a Tweet to 1,000 followers, do they hear it? In my opinion, not so much. So, my mission is less about getting the message out and more about standing out.

I watch my six year old with her friends. They pretty much do everything that the other person is doing, wearing, saying. Their mission? To be the same. Standing out is scary when your six. You could be placed on exile island during recess by the mean girls who are all the same. Most brands act like six year olds. Oh, we can’t say that or someone might be offended. Hm, we can’t show that or we might get sued. Jeez, we can’t suggest that or someone might think we’re not professional or perhaps semi-crazy.

What a load of crap.

Isn’t the whole point to create your differentiator and stand-out? As my friend, Alex Neihaus, so poignantly penned in his blog post yesterday:

In high tech marketing, the “blend” is everything. You gotta have creativity… you gotta have authenticity…and given that small tech startups are either a) a completely new idea and/or b) trying to unseat titans, you gotta have balls to make your point. Big ones.

And my friends at currensee.com have ‘em. Watch this video. In just 1:02, you get it all in the blend. The beans (what currensee.com is), the roasting (it’s a social network for currency traders) and the infusion of…well…tush into the blend. If you don’t smile — and then head right over to the site — it’s definitely your problem.

My hat’s off to Dave and Michelle for ignoring all the reasons marketers come up with not to stand out and delivering their message (make more money trading money with a group) with a liberal dose of authenticity and humor.

As you’ll see from my latest “project”, I put the big ones to the wall and admittedly teeter on the edge of controversial, sexist and down-right inappropriate. At the end of the day, producing another campaign or line of copy can only get you so far. I say, take a risk, put it out there, make your mark and have some fun. I sure did.

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