Seth Godin @ The Art of Marketing

Posted on | March 9, 2010 | Comments invited

SETH GODIN was the BIG DRAW at The Art of Marketing Conference held in downtown Toronto on March 2, 2010. Sponsored by Microsoft Dynamics CRM, this Conference drew an audience of 1,600 people to to hear six internationally renowned thought-leaders and bestselling businessbook authors talk about critical cutting edge marketing issues

What Seth Godin DID there was WHAT he has been doing oh so well for the last 15 years: – helping us ALL do a ‘Screen Refresh’ on our Business Brains, this time by sharing his views on Leadership & Creativity in marketing today.

EXEC SUMMARY: SETH GODIN on LEADERSHIP & CREATIVITY

NOW is time to re-appreciate your marketing fundamentals.

MARKETING going forward will be all about focusing on Creating Value for individual customers in individualized ways that are relevant, specific, and special to each.

To do this requires individual and organizational Freedom, Creativity and Courage. This is the only way to commandingly Connect with People today, get them to WANT what you have to sell (if they find it wantable), buy your offerings, and join your TRIBE of loyal followers.

To marketing people and organizations: do this and you will SUCCEED; don’t do this and you will get FIRED!

[* The enduring value Seth Godin delivered at the Art of Marketing Conference was NOT in the 'WHAT' of WHAT Seth Godin said but in the 'WHAT' about WHAT Seth Godin talked about. In this I encourage you to think along the lines of Marshall McLuhan and his statement that “The Medium Is The Message” because marketing success today is not to be found so much in doing what Seth Godin says but in doing things like Seth Godin does. Baffled? Well then I invite you to read on for there is an explanation in the assessment / evaluation commentary section below.]

SETH GODIN in Profile

Hailed as "America’s Greatest Marketer" by American Way Magazine, Seth Godin is best known for:

• Promoting emarketing terms and popularizing concepts like permission marketing among many others;
• writing the most popular marketing blog in the world;
• being the author of numerous bestselling marketing books including All Marketers Are Liars;
• speaking to large groups on marketing, new media and what’s next;
• and being the founder of Squidoo.com, a fast-growing recommendation website.

Read more…

How to Succeed Like TIFFANY & CO.

Posted on | February 28, 2010 | 2 Comments

Want more revenue? Well then, make your offerings stand out more, so much so that your customers and prospects see what you have to sell as head and shoulders above the competition. You can do this if you harness the power of focus, clarity, simplicity, and utility, for these are the hallmark aspects of so many great things. Harness them in your business and you will enjoy no end of success. But you need to appreciate how doing this can prove quite a challenge. That’s because strengths like these cannot be gauged effectively on their own (or by you looking just starring at yourself and your company in the mirror). No, these are aspects that require a benchmark to be judged.

Tiffany & Co. presents a powerful and readily accessible benchmark for gauging your offering’s sales and marketing strength, one that B2C and B2B businesses can both use.

If savvy business owners and top executives pay attention, they can learn a lot about how to thrive on the lengthy road to success from this world renown manufacturing and merchandising company, particularly in the realm of brand focus and how to craft high demand offerings. Started with a $1,000 loan by two entrepreneurs almost 200 years ago in New York City, Tiffany’s products and iconic brand have long stood out, winning a legion of loyal customers in the highly competitive arena of the jewellery business.

Tiffany’s Mission Statement & Brand Promise

To quickly put the above comments in perspective, let’s have a look at a Tiffany & Co. advertisement that appeared in the front section of the Monday February 22, 2010 Globe & Mail newspaper. I invite you take in the Focus, Clarity, Simplicity, and Utility conveyed in this ad, as well as its marketing message and what it powerfully has to say about Tiffany’s mission statement & brand promise: Read more…

How Best to Grow & Sell More

Posted on | February 25, 2010 | 1 Comment

It’s hard finding ways to beat the competition let alone keep up with them, especially in the challenging economic times we have today. So, if you get a chance to hear about key business strategies that ambitious companies intend to follow in the coming year, I think it’s well worth the time and effort to pay attention to what gets said.

And courteously of Ernst & Young LLP, that’s exactly what I got to do a week ago when I was in downtown Toronto attending the Financial Executive International Canada breakfast seminar called “Managing the upturn: Key strategies for sustained profitable growth”.

Today’s Key Strategies for Sustained Profitable Growth

This February 19, 2010 seminar was held to report the findings of a January 2010 executive research project undertaken by CFERF (the research foundation of FEI Canada) and sponsored by Ernst & Young. Their report presents the consolidated survey results from more than 200 Canadian senior financial executives that identified key strategies they will be using in 2010 to position their companies advantageously for the emerging recovery as well as detailing what are their current main issues and key concerns. 

Here is a summary of the report’s main findings:

~ 60% of those surveyed expect a return to normal growth in mid to
   second half 2010
~ 70% expect inflation to be the biggest concern
   (but this is expected to become problematic only in 2011 or later)
~ 38% felt declining profit margins was their most significant financial risk
~ 50% see IT systems as their number one capital investment priority

And of particular interest to me was the following -

~ 80% have ‘grow revenues’ as their prime 2010 corporate
   strategic objective!

This ‘we-want-more-sales’ statement really jumped out and caught my attention. That was because the specifics on how such results are expected to get delivered were not provided, other than the vague suggestion made that such would be achieved by providing better customer service. But the logic that providing more customer service can generate more sales doesn’t work for me. I think this because I see customer service as being fundamentally a post sale activity. When it is a pre-sale activity, I view it as nothing other than an expected component of the sales solicitation process.

In tough economic times, saying your organization is going to drive more sales by providing more service sounds suspiciously like nothing more than politically motivated corporate messaging ‘coded’ by executives to divert attention and deflect potential criticism, not manage expectations. Read more…

Biz Owners: Can $’s Buy You Happiness?

Posted on | February 11, 2010 | 9 Comments

Motivation (yours, mine and everyone’s) is ‘the’ bedrock issue when it comes to business. That’s because in capitalism and the study of it (economics), there’s nothing more fundamental.

As business people / managers / owners, we’re all focused on motivation: how to motivate ourselves? / how to motivate staff? / how to motivate customers?

But isn’t the way to better motivation management to be found by knowing more about the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ of motivation, ‘the why’ of motivation, and ‘the science’ of it? I think so which is why I invite you to join me now in an exploration of the ‘why’ dimensions of motivation — particularly as they apply to entrepreneurial and family owned business situations.

Maximized Happiness: I Want It But How To Get It?

So why do we or our companies do what we do? Check any basic economic textbook and you’ll find economists saying what drives people is the pursuit of utility maximization. But what really are they talking about? Heck, when the subject is nothing more than an abstract concept, how can you go about maximizing it?!? Read more…

Debt Chickens Coming Home to Roost

Posted on | January 21, 2010 | 5 Comments

Today’s online newspapers have real drawbacks.

First, they don’t let you to scan all the news. Second, all too often important articles in the print edition never make it to the paper’s website. And let’s not forget how fewer and fewer people are getting real newspapers delivered these day. As a result, there is a ton of important developments that go unnoticed by an ever growing portion of the public at large.

Now, just getting a real newspaper doesn’t means you read it or even absorb the information presented there, but what I saw today that really caught my attention in Globe & Mail’s Report on Business section were a raft of business failure related articles and announcements.

It made me think: finally, we’re starting to see all the big debt and business failure ‘chickens coming home to roost’ for a bunch of high profile / high flyer companies in a really public way. And because of that, and how the rest of us in business could learn important lessons from these situations, it made me think of car crashes.

Bankruptcies Really Are Like Car Crashes

Car crashes always get lots of attention.

The bigger they are, the more destruction they cause, the more fatal their outcome only serves to compel us all the more to slow down and take a good look at what happened. You know what I am taking about. Picture the scene: all those flashing lights, all the police and emergency vehicles, all their personnel taking charge, and all the traffic tie-ups.

But what value is there in slowing down to look? Read more…

Risk, Character & New Year Resolutions

Posted on | January 15, 2010 | 3 Comments

It’s January 2010. Welcome to the second decade of the third millennium!

To those of you who made New Year resolutions this year, good wishes and good luck achieving your goals. Given that only two weeks has passed since we sang Auld Lang Syne, I trust you still are keeping diligently to all the pledges you made. If you are, great. But do you have what it takes to make these promises come true? Many, dare I say most, don’t. And the reasons why may surprise you.

What’s The Relationship of Resolutions to Business?

Let me suggest to you that there is an important relationship between New Year’s resolutions and business. What links the two is: Character.

Character is a multifaceted window that allows observers a glimpse into a person’s psychology and motivation and you can learn much about the strength or weakness of a person’s character from how they deal with making commitments, not matter if they are trivial, personal ones, or important business ones. Such knowledge is really important and helpful when deciding who deserves to be on your company’s management team and who does not. And I for one think that character, particularly when companies are looking for new executive talent, is something that is too little considered in new hire decisions.

The character a person shows in respect of making and honouring commitments gives great insight into that person’s integrity, something that is a really important quality for everyone in management, from ownership on down first line supervisors. Read more…

Matt Barrett & the CEO Mindset

Posted on | January 2, 2010 | 2 Comments

After a very distinguished and sometimes controversial long career in international financial services, Matt Barrett finally retired three years ago. That’s when he stepped down from being Chairman of Barclays Bank PLC after having been a long serving CEO of both Barclays in the UK and Bank of Montreal in Canada.

Here are some career facts he and I have in common.

We both are former bankers. We both worked for the Bank of Montreal at the same time. And we both have been CEOs. That is why I perked up earlier this week when I saw the Globe and Mail article about him called His Story is Still Being Written.

Now admittedly, there’s a whole lot that’s different between us.

Here is how that list begins. Matt is a half generation older than I am. He is much taller than me and my 6 feet. He has led much bigger companies and enjoyed much more success than I have even though with a BA, MBA and two professional designations, I have four more credentials than he does. And oh yah, he’s also much more chatty, charming and extroverted than I am too, something that maybe is due to his being Irish. That birth factor when combined with his charming personality and engaging nature might explain why he has had so many wives while I’m still living with and loving my first.

But no matter what others say (and he has had his detractors), Matt Barrett has been a tremendously successful large company CEO. In fact, I’d say he was by far the best of the three financial services CEOs I worked under.

So, if you are interested in learning something about how to develop a winning CEO mindset, I recommend you copy a few key pages from the Matt Barrett management ‘play book’ if you can. Read more…

Christmas: For Making Biz Connections

Posted on | December 22, 2009 | 3 Comments

Ho Ho Ho,
it’s Christmas time.
May your days be merry and bright,
and may all your business connections be tight.

Christmas is really the most democratic of holidays because everyone is welcome and encouraged to celebrate its real purpose.

That’s why I invite you to forget about the religious connotations the coming days have by leaving that stuff for church or whatever. Rather, enjoy these holidays because, no matter who you are, this time is not just for Christians or all about the birth of Christ.

No, what Christmas really is, I suggest, is a reaffirming connection opportunity-time. Read more…

Failure to Adapt Kills 2 Many Companies

Posted on | December 17, 2009 | 14 Comments

When everything from wealth to glory is on the line, athletes aren’t the only ones who freeze, choke or come up short. But in business, that shouldn’t and doesn’t have to be ‘just the way it is’.

It’s entirely normal, if you’re normal, that to some extent for some period of time your brain’s higher-level thinking processes will shut down when adversity strikes.

And no matter how much of a brave face you put on or how hard you try to come across looking detached, cool and calm, all of that can’t and won’t prevent you from having this kind of reaction. That’s because only psychopaths don’t freeze up when trouble or threatening situations happen. (All psychopaths care about is achieving their own selfish goals, no matter if that means ripping you off in the process, or arrogantly ignoring problems, or irresponsibly jumping a troubled or seemingly sinking ship.)

In such circumstances, the key risk business owners, CEO’s, lenders and investors really need to guard against is having their company go bust or suffer great damage as a result of the top decision maker(s) becoming functionally ineffective, or inappropriately responsive, as a result of the leader developing pathological tendencies or their falling into a prolonged mental state of paralyzes due to one or more causes.

Business Risk Misassessment

Unfortunately, it is too typical for non-psychopathic people in top level company positions think that mental paralyzes is something that can’t, won’t or hasn’t happened to them. This is similar to how the same people are likewise prone to materially under estimating their company’s risk of business collapse. (Psychopaths, for their part, are arrogantly overconfident and naturally dismissive of problems they are responsible for or not interested in addressing.) So, if you go on thinking you or your company are, or will be, immune from the laws and limits of human psychology or business economics because you or they have been so successful / strong / hard / tough-minded or whatever in the past, you will be seriously kidding yourself and threatening your company’s survival. Read more…

Ego & The High Cost of Cheating

Posted on | December 11, 2009 | 5 Comments

Tiger Woods’ GiNORMOUS public flame-out this past week due to marital “transgressions” should serve as a stark warning to everyone about the extreme social ignominy risk that cheaters of all kinds all run as do those who can’t or don’t want to control the egos.

Tiger has become as clear a case of ‘the bigger they are, the harder they fall’ as you can get! [... OMG, just what was he thinking ?!?! ]

There Is A Business Lesson Here To Learn

Putting our shock and indignation aside, there is a vital business lesson here for business owners, entrepreneurs and managers at all levels to learn in Tiger’s embarrassment, pain suffered-and-inflicted, lost social stature, severely damaged earning power, and globally-promoted public censure. That is: be responsible, be reasonable, and control your bad habits and base tendencies.

Yes, we’re all human and too prone to sin on occasion, but that is no excuse for bad behaviour. God may forgive you but others won’t, certainly not the judges out there that sit on court room benches nor those in general society who are self appointed.

Like Tiger has just demonstrated, all people in positions of privilege and power are at real risk of either (a) becoming arrogant, (b) getting uncontrollably obsessed with self interest or visions of personal conquest or achievement and/or (c) loosing empathy for others such that they become mindless of the damage they can or do cause others. Often such people are bright if not brilliant, but nonetheless, it has been endlessly repeated with all too sickening frequency just how limited the range of such talents really are. So beware and be warned. Read more…

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