The definition

Here’s how I like to simplify the marketing definition, whenever anyone asks: “A strategic process and set of tools wrapped in a philosophy for helping an organization do what it wants to do.”

People forget that marketing is first and foremost a process that helps organizations attain their objectives as effectively and efficiently as possible. It follows  a specific process and various frameworks (such as the 4P’s) that have been developed over many decades.

Why did we start CEPSM ?

• Marketing is one of  the most misunderstood functions in the public sector, often confused with “promotion” and “marketing communications”.
• A major primary research study on The State of Marketing in the Public and Non-Profit Sectors reinforced our beliefs early on.
• There is confusion between the “marketing” function and the “communications” function. In some cases the two are falsely seen as the same thing.
• There is a very evident lack of marketing expertise within the government environment. People are being put into senior “marketing” positions having never taken a single marketing course in their lives, let alone attained a business degree.
• Marketing is perceived as an “art” with no attention being paid to the “science” side. Big mistake.

What has changed?

Very little so far. Having worked with over 50 government clients I can say there is still a tremendous issue with people working in silos and not sharing experiences with each other, thus repeating the same mistakes. Tactics are still being developed without any strategies to guide them. Something needs to be done at a more holistic level.

Every year about 15-20 people go through our Professional Certificate in Public Sector and Non-Profit Marketing (through Carleton University). This course (or something equivalent) should be a mandatory prerequisite for anyone taking on a “marketing” position in government, or a “communications” position that has marketing elements to it. The problem is that people think marketing is some “fluffy” position that is responsible for glossy brochures and tv ads. As a result, any kind of formal training is often ignored. This is especially frustrating for people that actually have marketing/business degrees and are put into these positions surrounded by people (often their bosses) who don’t (I have met plenty).

What keeps me believing?

I have recently noticed an interesting rise in thirst for strategic marketing thinking in government. The neat thing is that most people don’t know that they’re asking for it , albeit indirectly. I’m referring to the thirst for my niche, i.e. anything to do with web 2.0, gov 2.0, social media, etc…

When it comes to social media marketing, there is a lot more interest than pure old “marketing”. Thanks to this, I have been invited to numerous senior management speaking engagements , conference presentations, and workshop courses. The  interesting part is that what I teach in my social media marketing workshops, is essentially  “marketing 101″ with a modern twist that takes into account the necessary organizational culture change that is needed to integrate social media  into an organizational strategy. Therefore I am able to put forth basic marketing principles and get people thinking using the strategic mindset that is “marketing”.

My conclusion from all of this….

…the “sexiness” of social media is a great opportunity to push forward “strategic thinking” and the “marketing process” in government! Especially since social media is something that very few people understand, but almost all want to participate in. Of course there are elements of the marketing process that social media has re-defined (e.g. marketing research can be crowd-sourced, niche audiences can be easily found, feedback can be collaborative, etc…) but the importance of  having a “strategy before tactics” will stand the test of time.

What is MARCOM 2009?

Basically the only marketing conference that is dedicated solely to marketing professionals working in the public and/or non-profit sectors. It is run by a sister company of CEPSM (our organization) called CMG Canada.

Why did I attend?

Besides the fact that I was chosen to speak and thus had to attend, I really love how niche of a conference MARCOM is and how much subsequent value I always receive. Most importantly however, I love surrounding myself with people that are passionate towards their jobs. The vast majority of private sector marketing conferences are about marketing product/service “X” whereas MARCOM brings together people that use marketing to improve such initiatives as classroom literacy,  public transportation,  spousal abuse, foreign credential recognition, etc…

What did I think of the speakers?

This year the line-up of speakers was outstanding. I was able to attend the following:

Arlene Dickinson (Venture Communications/Dragon’s Den) –> How can not-for-profit and public sector marketing get the respect it deserves?

• Brilliant marketing mind
• Emphasized “strategy before tactics”, which is what I live by.

Michael Cleland (City of Mississauga) & Rupen Seonie (Environics Analytics) –> Moving beyond demographics to psychographic segmentation

• If you’re a marketer and you haven’t heard of PRISM C2 yet, get on it. It’s the most comprehensive segmentation of the Canadian population, period.
• If you have a database of your target audience (with postal codes), then you can overlay the PRISM C2 clusters and find out crucial psychographic info.

Wayne Carrigan (ThinData) & Jim Jeang (Canadian Blood Services) –> Email and social media: natural allies

• While I was skeptical at first as to what social media has to do with email, I did end up enjoying this presentation due to Wayne’s thorough knowledge of the email industry.
• Jim spoke to the “tactical” side of social media , focusing on the tools he used within CBS as opposed to more strategic elements I like to hear (i.e. determining the best ways to meet objectives and desired outcomes before jumping into tactics). That being said, it is always refreshing to hear about social media initiatives within government that have actually been implemented. I will be adding this to the Gov 2.0 Wiki for sure.
• Overall, both speakers were well prepared and placed a strong emphasis on measurement, which is always a good thing.
• Some interesting stats:
  • On average Canadians receive 130 pieces of SPAM per week
  • 2005–> mass email deployments
  • 2006–> email versions deployed to specific segments
  • 2008–> 1:1 dynamic deployment
  • Great CBS initiative: www.thankyourdonor.ca

Rahaf Harfoush (Obama New Media Team/World Economic Forum) –> Yes we did: Strategic insights from the campaign that changed history

• Rahaf gave a brilliant behind the scenes overview as to day to day life at Obama campaign headquarters and the many all-nighters that lead to such a tremendous victory.
• Be sure to check out the Barack Obama and White House websites.

Louise Clements (Facebook) –> Facing Facebook today: How to use Facebook to stay ahead of the game

• Louise has an extensive private-sector background in sales and has just been recruited by Facebook to lead the  Toronto office. She gave an excellent overview of the re-vamped Facebook social advertising platform (adverts), which to my surprise, few people even knew existed.

Brian Thwaits (Brainspeaker Inc.) –> Engage your brain!

• I highly recommend Brian’s new book, “The Big Learn” ,to anyone interested in the latest theories and studies surrounding left vs. right brain thinking. Great closing keynote!

Overall thoughts

Besides listening to speakers, I very much enjoyed presenting myself. I conducted a full-day “social media 101″ pre-conference workshop followed by a more advanced “social media research tools” presentation during the actual conference. For the latter, I paired up with Nick Charney from CPS Renewal who did a wonderful job tying everything in to a government work environment. I also had a chance to host two roundtable discussions, one on “government 3.0″ and one on “attaining senior management buy-in for social media engagement”. Both turned into rich discussions during which I learned quite a bit myself.

To sum up, I will definitely be coming back next year.

I also really like the “Did You Know 3.0” and “The Machine is Using Us” videos. Know any other good ones?

Ok, so without further ado…the winner is (drum-roll)…

JAMES TOURIGNY

Congratulations James! You and a friend/spouse are going to see Malcolm Gladwell at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa on June 11th, 2009. Tickets are valued at $75 each (donated to me by the wonderful folks at United Way Ottawa).

Please call me at 613.899.1348 to arrange ticket delivery.

As promised, I have posted up a video of the selection process for all of you to see. Thank you to my fiancee for agreeing to choose the winner and actually be on camera.

Why do I think this initiative will work? Because last time they had very little support and yet they managed to have citizens develop 47 applications in 30 days using crowd sourced government data. The estimated cost had they gone through the RFP process, would have been $2.3M, not to mention 12 years of procurement. The total cost ended up being the prize money of $50K. The ROI therefore was 4000%.

Have a look at this video if you’re confused.

Apps For Democracy Community Edition from Peter Corbett on Vimeo.

Ok, so first and foremost, in defense of the Catholic Church, I should point out that this is an isolated incident of a particular Scottish Bishop (albeit highly prominent). That being said, comments from senior officials like this definitely don’t help the Church’s overall goal to be more “in-tune” with the times.

So what’s wrong with the Bishop’s comments?

Nothing at all. Everything the Bishop is saying here makes sense, including my favourite line:

“We should avoid an obsessive need for virtual connectedness and develop primary human relationships, pursuing true friendship with real people.”

Here’s what he completely missed the boat on: THESE ARE ALREADY REAL PEOPLE BEHIND THE TOOLS!

The “obsessive need” he is referring to is not for “virtual” connectedness, it’s for connectedness with other humans! The same need that has existed since the first human set foot on this planet. What’s new here is that these channels drastically amplify the spectrum of potential human connections that individuals can now make.

Last I checked, my Facebook friends were pretty real, in fact I spent Saturday enjoying some quality time drinking beers at a friends bar (for my buddy’s birthday) and then ripping up the dance floor at a club across the street.  How did I find out about the birthday get-together? Facebook. How did my other friend organize a scattered group of “late-twenty somethings” to come to his bar in a few short hours? Facebook. I don’t “hang-out” on Facebook, I use it to augment and strengthen my “physical world” friendships. Let’s shift to Twitter for a second. In the last 6 months, I have invited at least twenty “virtual business connections” out for a coffee or a quick lunch. These are people that I would have never met without social media channels that managed to bring us together. A few of these I now meet in-person on a regular basis but sometimes staying in touch on Twitter is absolutely sufficient. Much better than the alternative; not connecting at all. I simply don’t have enough time in each day for in-person meetings with the hundreds of people I consider myself to be good friends with.

Here’s my point. Nobody ever said these channels are supposed to outright replace face-to-face human contact, which is what the Bishop is implying. If that were the case, then I would wholeheartedly agree with him. Someone needs to give the Bishop a nice presentation describing all the incredible human collaboration occurring right now on a global scale thanks to these channels. Not just in the developed world, but in developing countries as well.

Next time let’s hope the Bishop does his research. I suggest a few good books as a starting point (in case the Internet is evil):

• Wikinomics – Don Tapscott
• Grown Up Digital – Don Tapscott
• Here Comes Everybody – Clay Shirky
• Groundswell – Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff
• Tribes – Seth Godin
• Naked Conversations – Shel Israel & Robert Scoble
• The Long Tail – Chris Anderson
• The Wisdom of Crowds – James Surowieki
• Join the Conversation – Joseph Jaffe
• Cluetrain Manifesto – Rick Levine, Chris Locke, Doc Searles, Dave Weinberger

And of course, no intro research would be complete without some videos by my favourite cultural anthropology professor Michael Wesch.

Facebook Lexicon (new edition)

Use this tool to gauge the conversation occurring within Facebook. The new version includes demographic, psychographic and geographic data.

TwitScoop

This is a tool that let’s you observe the aggregate live discussion on Twitter in real-time (in the form of a tag cloud). I’d be surprised if every single modern news outlet in the world right now isn’t listening in on this. Variations of this tool allow you to form tag clouds of specific groups of people.

Technorati Blog Search Graph

While not necessarily the best tool out there for monitoring blogosphere discussion, where Technorati really comes in handy for me is with it’s updated graph monitoring feature that allows you to track various keywords/keyphrases. It’s best used as a visual performance benchmark when you are trying to increase discussion levels in the blogosphere on a particular topic within a specified period of time.

Let me know if you know of any other old tools out there that have recently gotten a makeover!

I may have mentioned this in another post a few weeks ago, however it definitely deserves it’s own post. United Way Ottawa has invited  Malcolm Gladwell , one of the most influential writers of our time, to speak at the National Arts Centre on June 11th, from 4-5pm. The format will be MG having an open conversation with  journalist and member of the United Way board of directors, Mark Sutcliffe. For all you newbies, Malcolm is a staff writer for The New Yorker and has also written best-selling books such as The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers. Many of the concepts explained in his books stem from the findings of various researchers throughout the last century. Malcolm takes these concepts to the next level by applying them to modern times and using them to explain various aspects of social behaviour. If you haven’t read one of his books, stop what you’re doing, go to Amazon right now and order one…you won’t regret it. For the rest of you that need no convincing, read on…

As soon as I found out about MG coming to town, I ordered two $75 tickets without hesitation. A few weeks later one of my contacts at United Way Ottawa (former client) offered me two additional tickets. Rather than keep these to myself, I have decided to give these away on my blog in the form of a little Malcolm Gladwell “QCT” contest. Let me explain…

The Prize: Two tickets to see Malcolm Gladwell speak at the NAC ($150 value)

The Rules: Leave a comment on this blog post mentioning your favourite Malcolm Gladwell quote, concept, or theory. It can be one sentence or a novel.

The Deadline: June 1st, 2009 (midnight)

How will I pick the winner? I will write down the name of each person that leaves a comment, put it in a hat, and get my fiancee to pick a winner. I will announce this individual in a blog post on June 2nd, 2009.

Since I’m the one holding the contest, I may as well start it off by leaving you with my favourite Malcolm Gladwell quote:

“There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.”

Good luck!

The intent of “Get Prepared” is simple: “To ensure Canadians (during an emergency) are prepared to be self-sufficient for at least 72 hours while emergency workers focus on people in urgent need”.

There are three easy steps for Canadians to do this as illustrated in the image below and on their website. In terms of measurement, Google Analytics conversion goals have been set up to measure the successful navigation through each step. This is a great example of tying your website goals directly into your branch/organizational goals).

Here are some of the social media engagement steps they have taken that I’m excited about:

• Social Media Press Releases in both English and French
• Organic, genuine, strategic blogger relations (in this case with mommy bloggers). Have a look at an example here (note the comments).
• Lee Lefever video entitled: “Preparing a Family Emergency Kit” in both English and French (English version embedded below).

There are still many internal roadblocks that need to be overcome, however this team is definitely making strides in the right direction. Let me know your thoughts!

Back in late March, amidst some ridiculous client deliverable deadlines, I was asked to contribute 10 selling tips for an eBook entitled “Selling through a Slump: an Industry-by-Industry Playbook”. My initial thought was that this wasn’t a good fit for me or my blog , considering I’m not (by definition) a pure play salesman. However, after giving it some thought and looking at the existing contributors, I quickly realized that the word “selling” in the title of this eBook is used in a broad context. After all, I am a consultant  and at the end of the day, if I don’t “sell” my services (however subtle that may be), I will be out of business. These tips apply to anyone really.

The one question I had to figure out was: “What is the unique market vertical that I operate in?”

The answer? Easy. “I am a marketing and social media strategy consultant, working solely for government and non-profit organizations”. I therefore entitled my section as follows: ” Business Development Tips for Marketing Consultants Working with Public Sector Clients”. For simplicity, this was later changed to “Selling to public sector clients”. I hope you find my tips to be of value.

The other contributors involved, along with their respective roles and section titles were as follows:

• Charles Green – Founder & CEO, Trusted Advisor Assocaites – “Selling for accountants and consultants”
• Skip Anderson – Founder, Selling to Consumers Sales Trianing – “Selling for retailers”
• Mike Wise – VP, Ideastar – “Selling for insurance agents”
• Matt Homann – Founder, LexThink – “Selling for lawyers”
• Anneke Seley – Founder & CEO, Phoneworks – “Selling in health care”
• John Caddell – Founder, Cadell Insight Group – “Selling in telecommunications markets”
• Dave Stein – Founder & CEO, ES Research Group – “Selling technology”
• Jill Konrath – Author, Selling to big companies – “Selling in services”
• Anne Miller – Founder, Chiron Associates – “Selling Media
• Dave Brock – President & CEO, Partners in Excellence – “Selling to manufacturers”

You can download the full “Selling through a Slump” eBook here.

I’m looking forward to finally reading the eBook in its entirety. Let me know what you think of it!