And this is where you, as a small business, have it over the big guys. Large companies are so invested in a point-of-view (usually management’s point-of-view, not that of their customers) that they can’t make an adjustment to respond to the information in front of them. Imagine being at the helm of a huge cargo ship and having to make a u-turn in a space as wide as 42nd St.  Not only is it not easy, it’s almost not do-able.  So when situations come up that require a quick response to get to the market, the big firms are basically out of luck. Which leaves lots of room for you … if you’ve done your research properly.

Check out Isaiah Adams’ post and how research can help you … and hurt you if you’re not listening to your audience.

http://blog.optimizationgroup.com/bid/281279/

It’s also about losing focus on the prize – moving your business forward – while distracted by the dazzle – the allure or promise of raising capital any way you can.  The article details what’s legal and not legal in the world of raising money for your company.  I hope you use it as a guide to do your fundraising the correct way so you can avoid the fate and outcomes (jail time?) of this unfortunate company.

http://holtzmancom.com/teamwork_latest_news.php

Date: May 3, Friday
Time: 5:30pm-7:00pm
Location: Katie Murphy Amphitheater

Tickets: www.fitnyc.edu/BARK

Watch videos of previous shows: https://www.youtube.com/user/FITProfStudies

Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BARKPetFashion

Licensing is a great source of primary or additional income for your product(s).  Learn the basics about how to navigate the world of licensing in four weeks!  And get the lowdown from people who live licensing!

My guest speakers this term will be:

David Kalow – An Intellectual Property attorney with fashion product experience
Arnold Burstein – A Licensing Agent who knows all the in’s and out’s of the licensing world and is the Chair of the NY Chapter of the Licensing Executives Society
Serena Godwin – Licensing Manager, Natori and (surprise guest speaker?)
Nathan Fleisig – An FIT faculty who specializes in licensing names and products
Outerstuff:  Director of Licensee Global Social Compliance, and an FIT faculty member.

It’s not too late to register!
CEO 035 (55A) Licensing
Thurs., April 25, May 2, 9, 16
6:20-9:10pm

There was more of an exchange on multiple topics and again near the end I made a suggestion…” remember, if the audience interrupts you with questions go with the flow and answer them. Don’t worry if you don’t get back to your presentation. This is more important.” So many presenters answer a question (some don’t even do that) and instead of going back and giving the audience (in the case of investors, they are usually the ones directing the conversation) your canned presentation, let them lead you to where their interests lie. First, it shows you are flexible and connected to the conversation. Second, is says that you are not rigid and insisting on the presentation. The purpose of being prepared is so when this sort of thing happens, which is virtually all the time, you can go with the flow.

More useful tips are offered by David Holloway, management consultant http://sangira.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/WPPDF-Entrepreneur-Pitching.pdf and by Entrepreneur with some serious tough love advice http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/201826

Fashion advertising has always been more visual than verbal, which may play into its favor in the current, highly visCOMual marketing environment. We are seeing a trend in this mega-media environment for marketers to be involved in a heightened sense and use of visual literacy, visual thinking, visual perception and visual communications.

It has been our practice in our teaching and in our marketing and brand consulting to stimulate thinking by refashioning some of the terminology. It is our way of encouraging our own team and other participants to stop, think and apply the concept being presented through a new and different term such as visCOMual.

As in this case with visCOMual, we have noticed the need for more arresting visual communications in our digital, instant messaging world. To emphasize the importance of applying this to our clients’ branding messages, we created our own word for these innovative communications. Stop, think and recognize what is going on around you – what are you noticing about the visual communications you are encountering in your life? Even though the visualization of fashion has long left still-form, “proper” posing, as in the Levi’s ads of the 1950’s (seen here), to keep up with our own human evolution, there is certainly a need for the creation of effective matrices for this newly defined visCOMual process.

1950’s Levi’s version of visual communications is “proper posing”

The visual literacy process can present fashion modeling with language as unique as the product design. There are advertising/brand managers and catwalk directors who are working on nonverbal languages of their own. Their intent is to grab attention with this new imaging language and visual meaning newly applied to their brands. They may now create a mind’s eye matrix for visCOMual that correlates visually with elements that are: emotional, rational, imaging, associative, symbolic and/or cultural, as in the Levi’s ad of today. The goals are to engage the customer’s seeing eye, the cultural eye that perceives the inner-mind or “my-style” eye, and/or creates a video-eye that records in the must-have, shopping mind.

2013 Levi’s visCOMual – new-world posing and connecting with the Levi’s customer of today…

The positioning of visual communications for designers, brands and retailers is to encourage additional purposes for our ever growing and changing technologies. We are all working to create new areas of communication that can provide: product information—knowledge, self-design aspiration, increased meanings, and unique expression in our new visCOMual languages…

Drawing by Art Winters

What strikes your mind’s eye?

Arthur & Peggy Winters co-teach SXB 200 Brand Marketing Communications for Image & Meaning and SXR 050 Intro to Branding: The Art of Customer Bonding.

So now that we’re ending the first quarter of the year…here’s some helpful directions to focus on in your marketing and business (they are in no particular order of importance)

1.       Integrate your marketing
As much as everyone would really love “the answer” and that it be just one thing…social media is the “one” at the moment…that’s just not how marketing works. Marketing is an eco-system that includes social, PR, collateral, branding etc.

2.       Put in a call to action in every piece of marketing you do
This may sound self-serving but it actually helps direct the customer to the key next steps in order to buy your product or otherwise engage with you.

3.       Create content that is valuable to your customers
This includes helpful tips and case histories that will help move the prospective forward to become a customer.

4.       Communicate
Tweet, blog, get your voice out there and heard.  I posted a jobs graph from another source a while back and suddenly it’s been “Pinned” by dozens of people on Pinterest. Who knew?

5.       Do primary research with your customers
Ask them open-ended questions about what’s important to them about your product or service and what will drive them to buy it.

6.       Listen to your customers’ answers
The information may be different from what you expected. Welcome the face that you do not know it all and keep your ego out of it.

7.       Follow-up after the sale
Thank your customers. If they have feedback (which you should solicit) listen to it and if something is wrong, make changes or otherwise implement their feedback.
Follow-up again.

8.       Identify your influencers
Build a relationship with them either on-line or in person.

9.       Brand yourself, your product, your company
Remember, you are your brand.  Use experiences and stories to help with brand identification. Your customers will also help you create your brand.

10.     Write better subject lines
It’s a crowded, competitive world out there…make sure your communications are opened.

Sandra Holtzman teaches CEO 035: Licensing.
She is the author of Lies Startups Tell Themselves to Avoid Marketing.

Thinking of taking an online class, like my Web Design class, here at FIT?

Let me give you some reasons that you will not see any where else on why learning online just might be fore you.

1. You can eat anything you want in class. Order a pizza and a coke and spill it over your keyboard. No one will tell you that you can’t have food in the lab.
2. You can wear anything you want. Fashion is totally up to you when you take an online class. Work in your T-shirt or even a little less.
3. When you get up at 2am, rather than eat a piece of chocolate cake, you can feed your brain with something good to learn.
4. Didn’t swallow a bottle of Scope just before class? Not to worry. Bad breath is not a problem.

Some Online Classes that start soon
CEO 003: Formulating Your Financial Strategy
CTD 361: AutoCAD I
CTD 525: Interactive Design for Tablets and Smart Phones
CTD 600: HTML
SUS 001: Introduction to Sustainability
SUS 032: Sustainable Design Technology
SUS 041: Sustainable Product Development II
Click for all Online Classes offered

Bud Kraus teaches CTD 600 Web Design: HTML , CTD 605 Web Design: Cascading Style Sheets, and CTD 613: WordPress.

I’m sure anyone who really wanted to record that movie illegally could.  And probably did.

This situation reminded me of airport security.  We are all willing (and to differing degrees, happy) to give up our rights and privacy, and possessions in order to obtain something.

While the above is a common but somewhat extreme example (although I was the only one in the theater that seemed to think it was extreme), we willingly give over personal information – and take that of others’ – in the name of a contest, gaining access to something, etc. on the internet all the time.  How many times have you been given the option to log on to a new site using your Facebook, Linked In, Google or other social media password? As a business owner, how often have you been told to run a contest/sweepstakes/drawing in order to build your database?  I won’t do it. And if that’s the only option to obtain access, then I will forgo entering the site.

Big Brother is alive and well but here’s the question – how far will YOU go with YOUR products or website?  What an absolute marketing coup it would be to have a website that was exclusive and didn’t “share” information.  Sure, you couldn’t build up the numbers on your database quickly.  But the folks you will have on your database will be much more valuable.  And you also weren’t giving your database and your personal information away.  As a business, how much do you protect your customers’ privacy?

Something to think about.

Sandra Holtzman teaches CEO 035: Licensing.
She is the author of Lies Startups Tell Themselves to Avoid Marketing.

———

Client Acquisition Strategies for Startups
Educational Lecture Events – Thursday, 3/21/13

Sandra Holtzman, Serial Entrepreneur
David Schmidt, Strategic Advisory Services

When:
Thursday, March 21, 2013
5:30 PM to 8:15 PM

More info: http://www.angenadvisors.com/8.html

Sandra Holtzman teaches CEO 035: Licensing.
She is the author of Lies Startups Tell Themselves to Avoid Marketing.

“Versailles ’73: American Runway Revolution”
Tuesday, March 5
Haft Auditorium
227 West 27th Street (between 7th and 8th avenues)
5:30pm, doors 5pm

Atlanta-based director Deborah Riley-Draper will present her critically acclaimed documentary “Versailles ’73: American Runway Revolution” that recounts the legendary fashion show of 1973 at Chateau de Versailles that catapulted African American models and American sportswear designers onto the European stage.

A panel discussion with the director and special guests will follow. The showing of “Versailles ’73: American Runway Revolution” is in tribute to Women’s History Month and a salute to the 40th anniversary of Le Grand Divertissement a Versailles.

Confirmed panelists include:
Deborah Riley-Draper, Director
Alva Chinn, Model participant
Norma Jean Darden, Model participant
Bethann Hardison, Model participant
Mikki Taylor, Essence Magazine, Editor-at-Large

Now, don’t just jump up and run to the nearest networking events – there are too many each day. So you have to be selective.

Here are some tips that work for me on events:

• Select events that interest you – it’s easier to start conversations and ask questions of panels if you’re interested. Also once you’ve asked questions, people are aware of you and may approach you after the panel.
• Stretch – go to an event that’s geographically different – cross the river –  if you’re in Manhattan, go to Brooklyn or New Jersey. I’ve gone as far as the outer suburbs of Philadelphia.  I was in a networking event in Newark, and had the opportunity to meet Christine Quinn, President of the New York City Council, and chat with her for a  few uninterrupted minutes – I might not have been able to do that in a Manhattan venue (especially in her district) because when she’s local, everyone wants to meet her.  A few months later, I ran into her again at another event and she recognized me – we chatted again and I was connected to her chief of staff for ongoing communication with her. Valuable connection.
• Use social networking to find out which events are high quality.  Sometimes someone in the know will offer you a discount to the event. Almost always someone will direct you to a good event and maybe even one you hadn’t heard of before.
• Get to the event early – I often wind up speaking with the guest speaker or panelists prior to the event before anyone knows who they are – after the panel, they are usually surrounded by lots of people.
• Go no matter how you are feeling – sometimes just walking in the door without any expectations brings nice surprises.
• Don’t expect to meet everyone.  That results in lots of business cards in the trash later.
• Networking is not limited to a time and place – I know colleagues that got business by chatting while waiting on a long line at a professional meeting. Here are some other networking ideas http://adminsecret.monster.com/benefits/articles/1211-alternative-places-to-network

In my entrepreneurship classes, I sometimes run into an individual who is shy and says they can’t network. There is one universal answer: “get over it!”   If you are starting a business, the single most important factor in the business is you  — YOU ARE YOUR BRAND.  You must get out there and network because people are buying you.

Here are some more tips on how to make your networking succeed: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-bernard/six-tips-how-to-network_b_1954824.html

Sandra Holtzman teaches CEO 035: Licensing.
She is the author of Lies Startups Tell Themselves to Avoid Marketing.

Print Media Commissions are not in Mad Men Visions

drawing by Art Winters

In 2012, Google billed over 20 billion in advertising dollars.  This was more than the total of all U.S. print media.  What a contrast to what magazines and newspapers sold just five years ago!  In 2006, print media sold 60 billion dollars more in advertising than did Google!  How will this change brand marketing?  This isn’t your Mad Men’s day of advertising. (“Mad Men” is AMC’s TV show based on Madison Avenue’s advertising business and people in the early 60’s.)

So what does this mean for brand management performed by many of today’s advertising agencies?  Well, they had better get their act together.  They need to deliver branding power that can compete or at least do co-branding with the Googles, E-Bays, Amazon.coms, and many others, which will keep coming down the Internet superhighway.

The big question is how much of a threat is online advertising?  Is it delivering the ROI experienced through print media advertising?  It’s vital to realize that Google, just 14 years old, is now taking in more ad revenue than print media, which has been here for over 100 years!

However, it must be accounted that Google has a global operation, so this can’t be simply analyzed.  It must also be analytically figured that Google has seen a 15% decrease in ad Cost-Per-Click, CPC (the average fee that advertisers are charged for each clicked on ad) in 2012.  But now, Google’s CPC drop has slowed and perhaps turned the corner in January, as their CPC share increased due to click share on tablet devices. As more people are watching content across a variety of their mobile devices, Google has decided to pull out of its 5-year effort to build its TV Ads product.  Since 2009, they have shut down similar services for print and radio advertising.

Google is concentrating on beating Facebook in the sale of online display ads.  (Online display ads feature the advertiser’s content message on a destination website, usually in a box on the top or side of the page.)  The company is planning to lead web-search ads and online display ads that feature graphics, interactive communications and videos.

Google’s significant increase in display ads that concentrate on brand content is evidence that they have ambitious brand marketing goals.  Now Google is building and developing plans for their advertisers to more efficiently buy across a multitude of sites.

This is not only an important story for the online aspects of our businesses; it is also a good brand invention and reinvention story to watch in real time. 

Where has Google been and where is it going – stay tuned… the next generation of Mad Men is in the digital works….

Arthur & Peggy Winters co-teach SXB 200 Brand Marketing Communications for Image & Meaning and SXR 050 Intro to Branding: The Art of Customer Bonding.