THINKing

Plan? We Don’t Need No Stinking Plan!

Now that technology has rendered every moment a marketing moment, how do you develop a plan in which you can have any confidence? That’s the question posited by colleague Scott Hepburn recently and I thought it was a good subject for this blog to tackle.

I’ll admit to you that I am a planner. I believe in setting strategy first and then letting the strategy dictate the tactics. I believe that if you have done the thinking upfront, you’ll be ready for serendipity or crisis if they arise.

Or as General Dwight D. Eishenhower once said, “plans are nothing; planning is everything.” What I believe Eisenhower was saying is that you must plan your attack but once the shooting starts you must have the flexibility to handle the unexpected. So, I’m on the same page with him, as is Rodger Johnson, who says, “focus on the important interactions and let research reveal those.”

Jason Falls appends Eisenhower’s thoughts, “hire smart people who can make plan-based decisions on the fly.”

“A marketing plan is built around a sustainable, true brand,” says Jay Ehret. “Trying to build a marketing plan that accounts for every interaction is sure to lead to a convoluted, cumbersome plan with a heavy reliance on tactics. However, if you build a plan around being and living your brand, then you are prepared for every interaction, because you are being the brand you promised to be.”

According to Tom Pick,  social media and marketing are distinctly different. “Marketing plans are for marketing.  Social media guidelines are for providing basic guidance for interactions from other functional groups.”

That’s what we say. What do you think?

Listen Up

Last week digital colleague Jay Ehret asked me to participate in his weekly Marketers  Roundtable podcast along with Bill Schley and Denise Lee Yohn.  We batted around integration, messaging in social media, brand leverage and listening to customers. So, give us a listen here. 

Connections Revisited

I asked what social networks you are a part of and several of you have waded in. Let’s see what’s working for our readers:

Ashleigh Hunter of Bank of America wrote:

I am a part of linkedin and facebook actively. I have an account on jigsaw but have not figured out how to effectively use it. I typically end up X-raying linkedin for the right folks as opposed to going through my network. This is the one I find the most useful.

Your PR Guy Blogger Rodger Johnson wrote:

I’m in 5 social networks: Facebook, Linkedin, MyRagan, Smaller Indiana, and Twitter. I’m finding that Facebook is meeting my business objectives the least — but connecting with other professionals has been more fruitful in MyRagan, SMIN, Linkedin and Twitter. I must say, however, Twitter is still new to me.

WebMarketCentral Blogger Tom Pick wrote:

About 40. For standard websites: StumbleUpon (by far - better than all others combined). Then, in order best to least, Bibsonomy, Mister Wong, BeeTooBee.com, Ma.gnolia, del.icio.us and Netvous. For blogs: Technorati (again, by far — as valuable as the next four combined). Then, in descending order, StumbleUpon, Searchles, Facebook, Digg, del.icio.us, Zimbio, IceRocket, BeeTooBee.com, Clipmarks and Sphinn

Social Media Explorer Blogger Jason Falls wrote.

I’m involved in too many to name, but because I’m supposed to know and understand them for my job. (Advising people on how to use them.) But I’m primarily active on the following, all of which have business implications: SocialMediaExplorer.com - My own blog and mini community, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo Groups, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us.
A number of niche forums/message boards and communities connected to my clients (like RobbysUprising.com, a Ning community for fans of Robby Gordon, Jim Beam’s NASCAR driver.)

Blogger Joe Pulizzi wrote:

LinkedIn is most effective (outside of Junta42 of course). Other network I’m involved in is Facebook. I’ve tried others as experiments, but they are so unimportant at this point that I can’t remember the names.

Sandy Vasseur of Little Architecture wrote:
LinkedIn gives me the best opener a person can have, regardless of whether or not I am personally acquainted with someone. I can say, “We’re linked in via John Doe.” Or, “I’m two-times removed from you on LinkedIn.” Most of us are online for the same purpose, and those opening lines always get me a response.

Blogger Carter Langston, ABC wrote:
I incorporate LinkedIn as one element of my larger email database for my ‘connected’ networking. While I think I understand what you mean by ’social,’ my offline social networking is much more extensive and diverse. Some very important people in my sphere of influence just aren’t part of the Internet Social Revolution, so my networking takes place online, offline, face-to-face, etc.  Within the greater LinkedIn population, there are sub-groups that I find personally beneficial. For instance, there is the ExecuNet Group, IABC Group, CEO Exchange and more that refine the target audience a bit.  In terms of business objectives: Have I received business directly from those in my network? No. But I interact with people, share information, help other professionals address their issues and concerns. In the process, I learn from others, sharpen my own counsel, build relationships and earn referrals.  In terms of sales objectives: There is nothing more effective than face-to-face networking and talking to people about meeting thei tangible business needs.

Sending Out An RSS

Photo By photopia (Flickr)

RSS is a friend of mine. Subscribing to feeds helps me keep current on a wide variety of blogs and topics. So, today I thought I’d share some of my thoughts on using RSS.

Now, I have a number of blogs I keep up with, like those of my digital colleagues Jason Falls (RSS feed) and Rodger Johnson (RSS feed), to mention a couple. Instead of visiting their sites ever day, I subscribe to their feeds and have the information come to me. Feel free to subscribe to this blog’s feed.

I’ve started using the new browser from Flock and have found it an excellent tool for keeping up with key feeds. It’s Firefox on steroids. But that is a topic for another day.

Now, another tactic is to use Google’s blog search for terms or phrases you follow. For instance, I follow the phrase “stumbleupon marketing“. So, type in your term under Google’s blog search. When the results come up, you’ll see in the left hand column about halfway down is the word “Subscribe”. Below that is the word “RSS” hyperlinked. Click on that and you’ll be subscribed to the search. Anytime it changes, you’ll be automatically updated.

How are you using RSS?

Wealthy Wake Up To Social Networks

It was only a matter of time until the Facebooks and the MySpaces were invaded by older, wealthier people, as pointed out today by eMarketer. See graph below.

The wealthy seem to know a simple fact that others don’t: staying connected is the way to wealth. Doesn’t matter whether it is face-to-face or computer-to-computer. Andrew Carnegie figured this out years ago. Someone once asked him, doesn’t it bother you that you have 15 people working for you who make more than $1 million each?” Carnegie said, “No, because each of them is making me about $15 million.”

He picked the right people to work for him and the right people at other companies to network with in order to expand his wealth. Carnegie then told Napoleon Hill his networking secrets and Hill wrote the first - and still the best - self-improvement book, Think And Grow Rich (free audio file of the book).

Carnegie’s best lesson is that it is not about the money. It is about what you can achieve with the money. DC (digital colleague) Jason Falls picks up on this theme today in his posting investment of giving.

The message is that if you think and network like the rich, you, too can become successful.

Get out there and start networking. Start with me. Visit my profile and connect with me using my harry at my-creativeteam dot com email address.

Bad Rep

As we’ve seen recently with the self-inflicted wounding of Eliot Spitzer, reputations take years to build but only seconds to destroy. It is particularly so now that digital technology has given us a minute-to-minute news cycle. DC (digital colleague) Rodger Johnson has an interesting piece on reputation management in the digital age.

Die Damn You, Part Deux

Today’s dinosaur that needs to die is ad agencies. OK, I know I am biased on this subject since it is my sworn duty to become the creative resource for all Fortune 1000 corporations, displacing their agencies. But let’s forget about that tiny detail for a moment, shall we?

Here is what set me off. I’ll not name names because it is not my intent to embarrass anyone. But I ran across something yesterday that summed up how totally out of touch most ad agencies are with what is happening in the market today. On a social media platform that shall remain nameless I saw a message from an agency executive’s assistant that read something like this, “I’m trying to get (executive’s name) photo into his profile on (name of social media platform here).

So, it appears that ad agencies now are utilizing social media assistants to handle their networking for them. It’s like the old “have your girl call my girl and set up lunch” mentality. Now, there are some ad agencies out there doing the right things in the new marketing environment. Digital colleague Jason Falls and his employer Doe Anderson come to mind. But those are few and far between.

Many people in the agency world agree with me. Take Olivero Toscani, creative director for Benetton Group, for instance,

“ad agencies are obsolete. They’re out of touch with the times; they’re far too comfortable. When the client is happy, they stop trying. They don’t want to know what’s going on in the world.”

Or how about this from Dan Santy, principal of Santy in Phoenix,

“The traditional ad agency model is broken and dead. What clients need to know is about how to successfully navigate the shifts in marketing and how to solve their business problems. As agencies, we need to prepare them on how to navigate that shift.”

So, let’s agree that ad agencies should die and that all of their business should come to My Creative Team.

Update: Just ran across this solid post from CustomersAreAlways about how companies want to advertise instead of connect via social media. This is another case where ad agencies don’t show any leadership or foresight. Sometimes you need to tell your client, “No, that tactic is counterproductive.” Here’s a post from Conversation Agent that also points out the bad things agencies do. Bad agency. Naughty agency!

Where’s Mikey Now?

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Above is Mikey, the creative muse and living logo of My Creative Team, the company Brant Waldeck and I started a little more than a year ago. His creativity is legendary. He guides us in all of our work. He gets around, so you may have seen him. Recently he was in Arizona on a video shoot, and he slogged through a snowstorm in Kansas City January 29 on another video shoot. DC (digital colleague) Jason Falls has suggested we bring Mikey to Louisville and let him tour the facilities of his client, Maker’s Mark.

Soon, we’ll be telling you his life story in words and pictures. Here’s where we will be needing your help. We want to invite creatives of every stripe to help us tell the story of Mikey. Write up stories about his creative escapades. Photoshop him into scenes from around the world. Design ads using his likeness. We want Mikey to become the digital equivalent of Flat Stanley. Send your work to Harry Hoover, and we’ll place it on this site for everyone to see.

Off Topic: My Biggest Influencers

DC (digital colleague) Tom Pick, inspired by Paul Gillin’s book The New Influencers: A Marketer’s Guide to the New Social Media, has tagged me with the meme: my biggest influencers. Here goes.

1. My father. Although he died when I was 11, he had a profound impact upon me. He was always reading and learning new things. After he died I had people come up to me to tell me how he helped them when they were strapped financially. So, from him I get my love of learning and my charitable focus.
2. My mother. She always handled things in a disciplined, rational, positive way. After my father died in 1963, she took over the reins of the family and did what had to be done for us to get by. From her I get my discipline, focus and optimism.
3. Reverend Caldwell. He was our minister when I was 6-years-old, and was always serene. I’m wired a little tightly so have always worked at being more like him.
4. Mrs. Phillips. My third grade teacher taught me that things are not always what they seem. Don’t take everything at face value. Good advice for a future journalist.

As I started this post, I was thinking solely about my early influencers. My Biggest Influencer, however, is Terry Hoover, best friend/wife/mother of my children/social director/cheerleader/novelist extraordinaire. She taught me how to have fun.

That’s it. Now, I’m tagging Mark Harrison, Jason Falls and Rodger Johnson with this meme.

Hunting New Business: A Primer

DC (digital colleague) Rodger Johnson asked me recently about how a new PR Counselor can acquire new accounts. I don’t know that I have any words of wisdom but I do know how I did it successfully. So, that will be the story of this new series of posts. If you have other advice, please wade in.

I’ll start from the beginning, and I mean the beginning.

I was making a new business pitch to a Charlotte area professional services firm shortly after going out on my own. The second meeting took place after I had provided a detailed proposal to the company on how I work. From the two meetings and the proposal it was made abundantly clear that mine was a comprehensive, strategic approach to communications.

One of the partners asked me if there was a “PR light” alternative. This meant that he wanted a tactical program that required very little involvement or input from him and the other partners. I assured him there was, but that was not my approach.

I guess I could have taken the company’s money every month just to perform a few tactical activities, but it would have been wrong for both of us. I wouldn’t feel right taking their money, nor would I be happy implementing a program that a PR intern could accomplish easily.

Needless to say, the firm selected another communications agency. To understand why this new business loss was a success, we need to look at a definition of positioning. That’s up next time.

New Business Primer - Part 2

New Business Primer - Part 3

New Business Primer - Part 4

New Business Primer - Part 5

New Business Primer - Part 6