Bob Coppenhavers ExecuFolio

First Draeger Safety iPhone app.

Bob — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 13:16:32 +0000

Conceived, architected, and project managed first Draeger Safety iPhone app. App available at no charge to aid in customer acceptance of Draeger products and eliminated need for printing and shipping of two thick reference manuals. Customers are now able to look up information on hundreds of gas tubes and gas instruments as well as search by chemical to determine right products. While the app eliminated the need for customers to carry two volumes of gas data, it also includes gas guide reference material with an introduction to gas measurement and monitoring as well as providing a free text search capability greatly improving the customer experience.

Commercial Marketing & Thought Leadership

Bob — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 03:51:52 +0000

Bob merged traditional marketing methodology (advertising, direct mail, PR, and tradeshows) with Inbound methods (Social Media, white papers, case studies, web, SEO, etc) yielding an integrated marketing platform maximizing message and reach in a way that is interesting, engaging, and informative for customers. Bob’s notable accomplishments include expert webinars which were repurposed to eBooks, mobile technology apps, online calculators, and a virtual reality world used for customer engagement and training. To see details of Commercial Marketing & Thought Leadership see here and here for examples of Inbound Marketing.

Product Management & Innovation

Bob — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 03:45:20 +0000

Bob deploys a product lifecycle methodology within organizations creating sound business cases, product plans, forecasts, financial calculations and marketing plans of multiple products driving new product development while managing all product stages. Through analysis of market conditions, segmentation and Voice of the Customer, Bob defined features and functions for next generation products creating disruptive technologies. Results delivered 15+ product launches and delivered over $1Billion in incremental revenue. To see details of Product Management & Innovation see here.

Marketing Strategy & Vision

Bob — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 03:23:55 +0000

Bob creates multi-year strategic plans allowing focused deployment of resources on the greatest opportunities to increase sales, brand awareness, and sustainable competitive advantage. Bob develops strategies by scanning and analysis of the internal and external environments. Internal factors include the marketing mix, internal capabilities, and strategic constraints. External factors include customer analysis and segmentation, competitor analysis, target market analysis, and SWOT analysis. Bob’s strategic analysis resulted in methodologies for identification of business alternatives, prioritization of investments, establishment of goals, formulation of the optimal marketing mix to attain these goals, and detailed implementation and tactical plans resulting in new product and service offerings. To see details of Marketing Strategy & Vision see here.

Blog Post: Steve Jobs 1955-2011

Bob — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 16:08:10 +0000

My experience with apple started with my first job out of college. My employer bought an Apple II with Visicalc to circumvent some of the mainframe issues we had. I thought this was absolutely amazing and just had to get one for myself. As it was my first job out of school, the price tag for an Apple II WITH a 5 1/4 floppy and monitor was roughly equivalent to 2 months of my net pay…..but it didn’t matter. I knew there was something revolutionary here and I had to be part of it. To save a few buck I was able to score a Bell & Howell Black Apple….the ones used for the education system. How cool was that! 64K memory and a ultra-cool amber monitor to go with my black Apple!

Since then I have used Apple products on and off again….largely dictated by my work environment and what they were using. Fortunately, I had some progressive employers who used Macs for more than just graphic artists and actually standardized on them from 1989-1998 or so. Ultimately though, the IT department finally won and we converted over to PC’s. This was a sad day for me as I have always been a power user, and the Mac just seemed to handle multi-tasking and applications better than any windows box ever could.

Moving forward in time, after leaving an employer early 2008 I needed to get a new laptop. I needed to have a computer that could handle my workload, but even more importantly….and Steve Jobs understood this, one that I would love to use. Of course I bought a MacBook! Steve has continued to provide joy and wonder for me since that day with my Touch, iPhone, iPod, and iPad. No one has had such an impact on me that could get me to freely give so much of my earning to them as Steve did. His vision and creativity will be sorely missed and there is a large hole in the universe today. As a final tribute, in Steve Jobs own words: “No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs

R.I.P. 10.05.2011

An Epic Battle

Bob — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:53:46 +0000

There are many potential epic battles going on in today’s world.
- RIM vs Apple vs Samsung vs Motorola on tablets (HP webOS now gone)……but this battle appears to be over for now with 95% of the population preferring the iPad according to a report published by Robert W. Baird.
- Android vs Apple on phones. While Android is gaining market share, the consumer preference still belongs to Apple.
- Apple vs PC’s on laptops.
- Enterprise software suites with Oracle, IBM, Microsoft offering full suites and a possible merging of HP and SAP for vertical enterprise stack.
And recently, we are seeing a battle for intellectual property between Microsoft, Apple, and Google with the latter buying the assets of Motorola Mobility to shore up their Android defenses.

But, the biggest battle will likely be fought between companies that did not exist before 1997 and whose true assets are only the eyeballs they reach versus any products that are sold. Namely, I am referring to the new social war between Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. While the battle will likely involve Twitter, my interest is on the showdown between FaceBook and Google+ as this will likely comprise the battleground for future corporate users. I will not discuss the merits of how powerful social media can and will be as a future business driver, but more specifically who will win and why.

While there have been other small players in the social networking space, Facebook has had little real competition in the past. While they have close to 700 million users, versus just over 100 million from LinkedIn, the increase in users they are seeing is more from developing countries. According to Inside Facebook, Facebook is actually losing members in the USA & Canada while growing in countries like Mexico, Brazil and India. According to the report, Facebook lost nearly 6 million users falling from 155 million to 149 million just during the month of May. This could be due to some of the privacy issues that have arisen regarding FaceBook policies or could be that Facebook isn’t as “sticky” as many believe. Also many people consider the interface counter-intuitive and the pages are cluttered with a plethora of ads. The introduction of third-party apps in Facebook certainly appealed to many users with the introduction of things like Farmville, but moved it further away from being a business tool with even more clutter and a higher probability of being a time waster.

After previous failed attempts (remember Google Buzz and Google Wave), Google has now offered a new social platform called Google+. While Google+ is still in beta, it has introduced a number of new features that make it attractive and it has grown very quickly. In the first 8 days of existence it had 10 Million members and 20 Million after only 20 days. It is now estimated to be at 25 Million members.

While there are a number of reasons Facebook is losing traction, I believe the reason Google + will win comes down to one small feature Google offers that FaceBook does not (at least not in a way that is intuitive). You see, many users (and I include myself in those numbers) like to segment business contacts from personal contacts. I even lecture about this when I discuss the differences between LinkedIn and Facebook. For me, Facebook is akin to a backyard barbecue with family and friends, while LinkedIn is more like having a professional breakfast meeting with a client. While these two groups occasionally overlap, it is rare that they do with any significance. For this reason all my personal contacts are on Facebook while all my professional contacts are on LinkedIn; and of my 400+ contacts on LinkedIn, only one is on Facebook as well. But in all reality, this issue goes beyond professional versus business contacts. Circles allows me to segment my professional and personal contacts with even finer granularity so I can get an update from someone about a social or professional activity without hearing about their nephews birthday party.

Google+ has addressed the one issue which has precluded me from using Facebook as a business tool to connect and update other business people with the introduction of circles. Circles allow me to create professional group of people that I may or may not have a mutual connection to as well as having other circles of friends, relatives, neighbors, etc. I can segment posts as well as my feeds. This capability is the same as is found in TweetDeck allowing me to keep my work and personal life separate. Google also has additional capabilities built into it’s service including “hangouts”, this allows video conversations with a group of associates and even has an integration to YouTube. While one can see where this could be a large time waster, it also provides the foundation for remote learning and demonstrations.

While Facebook will continue to have traction for B2C engagements, I believe the battle for B2B will go to Google as they continue to roll out additional features including company pages and a tighter integration to search and the other Google properties.

To summarize why I think Google+ will win:
1. Circles – Allowing me to segment my posts and incoming streams so I can have real separation between various aspects of my life.
2. Group video chat and “Hangouts” – Ability to have you and your associates discuss videos or other matters in real time.
3. Privacy – Although Google + profiles themselves cannot be private and they make you use a real name, thanks to circles it is easy to have fine grain control of how my posts are shared
4. No ads – While this may not last, today the Google+ space is not littered with a lot of meaningless ads and the space is clean.
5. “Farmville” free – While Google+ is not game free, Google makes the games less irritating by relegating all the games to a dedicated tab
6. Clean Interface – No doubt the lack of advertisements contribute greatly to this, but the clean, white interface is very pleasing and there is nothing to distract you from the content you are there for.
7. Integration with current and future Google properties – Google+ already works across many of the existing Google products like Gmail and Google Calendar. Rest assured, Google has a history of innovating and Google + will end up being the recipient of the new technologies Google will develop for the future. Company pages will probably be the first of many new features in Google+.

As a former president of MySpace (remember MySpace?), Tom Anderson wrote in July, “It’s because G+ is about people and community. It’s a celebration of our very existence, in a more obvious way than ‘organizing the world’s information’ ever was.” While many can not envision Google + taking over the sheer mass of Facebook, how many of us ever envisioned MySpace being dethroned before Facebook came along?

Innovating the Steve Jobs Way

Bob — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 17:57:58 +0000

Although I originally posted this previous to Steve Jobs passing away, I think it is even more poignant in his death: There is a new ebook released that focuses on one of the great visionaries of our time, Steve Jobs. If you have read “The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs”, this should be familiar to you. These principles have guided Steve Jobs throughout his career and are principles we can all use today to be more “innovative”.

1. Do what you love – Find your passion and follow it
2. Put a dent in the universe – Never underestimate the power of vision.
3. Kick start your brain – Creativity leads to innovation. Creativity is connecting things
4. Sell dreams, not products – Help your customers achieve their dreams, and you will be successful
5. Say no to 1,000 things – Say no to things that derail your focus and yes to those that help you meet your goal.
6. Create insanely great experiences – Enrich your customers lives and have fun!
7. Master the message – Think visually and bring your story to life.

When all else fails, ask yourself, “What would Steve Jobs do?”

For more info, see http://tinyurl.com/Innovate-theSteveJobsWay

Marketing Crash Course

Bob — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 22:56:50 +0000

During the Fall of 2009 I had the pleasure of teaching a 3 week Marketing Crash course via Corporate College. The curriculum I developed featured sections on marketing definition, conducting market research, analyzing markets, market selection, market positioning, designing products & services, pricing, distribution channels, promotion, sales, creating a marketing plan, and a special section on using social media. The slide content leveraged the excellent work of SmallBizU and a number of other sources identified in the presentation. To see the first part of this presentation click here and for the second part click here.

Blog: VOC Thoughts

Bob — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:24:50 +0000

It seems to me that many people are jumping on the bandwagon when it comes to doing Voice of the Customer (VOC). I truly believe that many of these people have the whole VOC process a bit misconstrued. Let us start by defining what VOC is not. It is not a sales call! It is not a problem solving session for current products (although, you may find that you need to do that as a separate part of the meeting to get the customer to really engage with you). It is not a time to show next revisions of your product to your customers. The true goal of the VOC is to understand the customers issues and problems….not just with the product they are buying from you, but the business issues and problems. It is our job as marketeers to understand these problems and issues and turn them into opportunities and growth vehicles by finding ways to solve their problems that the customers haven’t ever thought of. This can best be accomplished by forgetting your current products and services and focusing on the customer!

Updated LinkedIn presentation

Bob — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:39:28 +0000

I have updated my LinkedIn presentation and incorporated elements of Social Media in it as well as expanded on the original slide deck. If you are interested, please visit my downloads section where you can view the latest slide deck and download a PDF version. It is called “Getting Social with LinkedIn”.