Turkel Talks

Why Can't Ethnic-Owned Shops Be Agencies of Record?

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:59:00 +0000

Hadji Williams, a 17-year advertising copywriter, posted this and I thought it was just too damn good not to share. Mr. Williams points out a lot of things I've often thought about, he just says them more eloquently than I ever have. You can reach him at hadji@knockthehustle.com

Since the 1930s there's been one major yet unspoken requirement for U.S.-based agencies to become an agency of record for a general-market client: Your agency must be a majority White-staffed and -owned shop.

With a couple of exceptions, a Fortune 1,000 company will almost never retain an ethnic-owned shop as its AOR for general market pieces of business. Furthermore, few ethnic shops have ever even been allowed to compete for the chance.

Now this wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that general-market spend nearly 95% of their budgets with White-owned agencies, which relegates Black-, Hispanic- and Asian-owned shops to beg/fight over the remaining 5% slice of the pie.

So why the disparities? Well, the excuses have been numerous. Here's a look at the Top 6:

Excuse No. 1: Black Ad Agencies are too small to be AORs.

Quick: What do you call five White ad pros starting an agency? A boutique. What do you call five Black ad pros starting an agency? The boutique's Black subcontractor.

I've worked on over 60 new-biz pitches over my career. New business is about getting laid -- and everyone lies on the first date. For most White agencies, touting global capabilities is like Paris Hilton saying she owns hotels -- her daddy owns hotels, she's just the name. Secondly, some of the creative work that helps land accounts is often done by hired guns (like me). As for their "core competencies," you can thank their holding company's roster or so-called strategic alliances for the extra muscle.

Every big shop is just a small shop that won a couple AOR gigs. Unless you're a Black small shop, in which case you don't get that chance.

Excuse No. 2: Black agencies aren't good enough to be AORs.

Black agency creative sucks. There, I said it. Most won't, fearing being labeled "racist," but it's true (and I'm Black, so I can say it and you can't. Deal with it.). But seriously, a lot of work that comes out of Black agencies just isn't very good. (God knows I've done some crap. But I've done great work, too. So have a lot of Black creatives. And Latinos and Asians...)

A big reason most Black creative work is so bad so often is that Black agencies are forced to translate and adapt general-market executions and strategies to their audiences whether the strategies are relevant or the work's any good or not. (Nothing creates crappy creative like having to boilerplate someone else's idea with a fraction of the budget in a fraction of the time.)

But despite all those handicaps, the crap coming out of ethnic shops doesn't hold a candle to the sheer volume of garbage cranked out by general-market shops. But truth be told, general-market shops have turned brand-killing, clutter-creating and off-base strategies into sweet sciences -- out of sheer trial and error, if nothing else. Yet general-market shops will continue getting the chance to jump every shark and miss the broadside of as many barns as they want mainly because they're not Black.

Excuse No. 3: Black agencies lack the mainstream insights/connections needed to be AORs.

No minority survives without being able to understand and adapt to the majority's cultures, standards and values. That's true of every aspect of any society -- and the advertising industry is no different. People of color have survived and thrived in America since Day One because we've had no choice but to understand and adapt to White America's ideas, ideals, values, mores, etc. But somehow once we hit the doors of an ad agency, that skill set goes away?

Also, lemme get this straight: General-market shops and clients can jack everything including the kitchen sink from Black culture for profit and cool points, then claim Black shops filled with the same folks who create the culture they ripped off can't do the same?

In 2009, clients and general-market shops alike still rationalize making Black agencies translate often-irrelevant general-market campaigns for Black audiences and call the process "integrated."

Conversely, recent industry studies have shown that more and more work created by Black agencies targeting Black audiences actually resonates equally well with White consumers.

Excuse No. 4: Black Agencies are too "unprofessional" to be AORs.

Heard it. Seen hints of it, too. Funny thing is, when White shops dress in non-business attire, rock faux-hawks, goatees and pepper their pitches with mood boards and silly buzzwords, they're labeled as "hip." When Black shops rock trendy clothes, use insider-ish lingo and nontraditional work approaches, they're labeled "unprofessional." When general-market shops fail it's "the consumer didn't get it" or "but the research said..." When ethnic shops fail it's because we were off-strategy or our work was wrong.

If Black Agencies were afforded half the excuses general-market shops are allowed to make, they'd enjoy twice the billings they have now.

Excuse No. 5: Black Agencies are too "race obsessed" to be AORs.

Working at general-market shops and dealing with general-market clients always reminds me of one thing: Most White people still think the world revolves (or should revolve) around their view of it. For example:

When a general-market shops say "18- to 34-year-olds," unless ethnicity is specified, they mean White 18- to 34-year-olds and whoever else follows suit. It's why we use handles like Soccer moms, Gen-Xers, X-Gamers, Tweeners, Baby Boomers, Nascar Dads, etc., and claim we're targeting everyone. But when you note that ethnic consumers of color might be overlooked by these efforts, out comes the hand-wringing, backtracking and occasional crocodile tears and confused stares.

Why?

General-market shops are still largely filled with and run by White liberals who, like the Democratic Party, take Black folks for granted (beyond talking about how rotten their alternatives are), while general-market clients seem content to treat Black agencies as tax write-offs. The process creates ad efforts that are more remix-the-GM shop's work and pseudo-kumbya PR ploy than legit partnership. And with 40-plus-million Hispanics to court, this biased indifference now has a lucrative backdoor to snake out through.

Excuse No. 6: The economy/changing landscape is tough ...

I know, I know, money's tight and budgets are being cut across the board. Plus the internet is killing everyone, too. Cuts have to be made.

So why not start with the companies and communities you don't respect as equals and take for granted? After all, if you can keep the consumers and cut the agencies, vendors, media outlets out of the equation, that's "good business," right?

In the end, Black Agencies and marketing/PR firms (the good ones, at least) don't want (or need) to be handed their crowns in the manner Donny Deutsch and other Whites got theirs. All they need and deserve is to have their insights and talents respected enough to be taken seriously -- first as human beings; second as professionals, and thirdly, as assets to the brand-building process.

Also, if Blacks can dedicate nearly 85% of their some $700 billion in annual spending power to general market companies (nearly 85% of every Black dollar goes for non-Black businesses) and endorse general-market products on camera, then why can't Black professionals get an equitable shot at building those brands behind the scenes?

Lemme leave you all with a challenge:

If general-market shops are really so great, then why not end the White-skin privilege and start developing work that doesn't co-opt cultures of folks you won't even hire? Why not open up the pitch process across the board and let the best shop, regardless of color, win?

Otherwise, let's just re-post the Whites Only signs at the receptionists' desk. At least then, we'd be putting some truth back into advertising.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hadji Williams is a 17-year advertising industry vet and author of "Knock the Hustle." As a copywriter, he's built brands, helped win and maintain accounts ... and has even managed to tell the truth. He can be reached at: hadji@knockthehustle.com

The Mrs. Kravitz Effect in Social Media

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:17:00 +0000

If you are a baby boomer like I am, you probably remember the 60s television show, Bewitched. Mrs. Kravitz was the busybody next-door neighbor of the sitcom’s main characters, Darren and Samantha Stevens. Mrs. Kravitz was extremely nosy; always peeking through the curtains to see what was going on at the Stevens’ home. If there was anything strange activity or unusual behavior, she knew about it (Samantha practiced witchcraft, so strange or unusual was an understatement.) The point is, she was extremely observant and clearly saw the goings-on where no one else did.

In today’s social media environment consumers have enormous control over what is said about your product or company. In fact, studies show that most people now rely on recommendations from trusted friends and Web sites over advertising when making a purchase decision. Just take a spin on consumer rating sites like Tripadvisor or Buzzillions. Technology has empowered consumers to expose the good, the bad and the ugly about your product.

Because we have this technology that allows us to hear what people are talking about, the true value in social media is to know what our customers want in real time. To understand what they care about, what they’re looking for and to be able to provide products for them. The key is to monitor the chatter and react accordingly. It’s what I like to call the Mrs. Kravitz effect. We need to constantly peek through the curtains and monitor what our customers are saying about us.

If we’re monitoring online chatter then we can respond in real time. When we hear someone talking about needing help with something, we can give them information. When someone talks about how much they liked our product or service, we can respond to them because we have an evangelist. But if someone talks about what they didn’t like, it also gives us an opportunity. It behooves me to contact that person and say to them, hey sorry you were disappointed. Where did I let you down? How can I make it better?

When you make a bad situation into a good situation, you make the relationship with your customer stronger than it ever would have been. It’s not so tough to prove friendship and commitment when things are good. The opportunity to really prove that you have something to offer is when things are bad.

Social media also lets us become information providers. When we’re monitoring online chatter using a microblogging site such as Twitter or Lunch, we can take information that we find interesting, and that we think others will find interesting, and we can retweet or redistribute it. If you have a blog and you find an article someone else has written that you think the readers of your blog would enjoy, it’s quite simple to paste the link into your blog post - giving attribution to the author, of course - and say hey, I think you guys would find this interesting. The problem is there’s so much information out there that it becomes impossible to read it all. So you can now take on the role of editor. You can become a thought leader and people will look to you to provide information that your customers want, and that will make a difference in their lives. Unlike Mrs. Kravitz, when you give advice, or express an opinion, people will take you seriously.

Just who is your competition?

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:36:00 +0000

Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy and author The Influential Marketing Blog, made me think twice today. He asked:

“If we were to ask you to describe your competition, you'd probably talk about companies that do exactly what you do. The owner of an Indian restaurant will discuss other Indian restaurants, for instance, while a florist will focus on rival flower shops. That approach is completely understandable—they are, after all, direct competitors. But if you let your vision get too category-specific, you might miss the fact that you're also competing with companies that offer products and services quite unlike your own.

"On any given night," explains Rohit, "any Indian restaurant might compete with a fast food joint, or even a grocery store. The flower shop might compete with a chocolate store on Valentine's day, or even with charitable causes when it comes to donations people make in memory of their departed loved ones." Battle your indirect competition head-on. One way to lure customers from alternate categories is to make yours the more convenient option.

"People decide on dentists, dry cleaners, gas stations and much more based on little more than whether or not you happen to be on their way home," he says. Another is to demonstrate how your product or service addresses their underlying need in a way they might not have considered.

"As marketers and businesspeople, we often focus on fighting against our competition," says Bhargava. "Sometimes, the better course might just be to see if you're even fighting against the right foe."

And ask yourself this...."if no one knows about me, how am I supposed to get opportunities"?

Living a Life of Purpose; The Richly Working

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 01:02:00 +0000

Steve Spalding suggests that 80% of People Quietly Despise Their Lives. Are you among them?

Via: http://howtosplitanatom.com/news/80-of-people-quietly-despise-their-lives/

This isn’t a statistic tic, it’s a casual observation based on talking to way more people about their careers than any normal person should. I’m convinced that most people dislike their lives, not in any robust way but with the kind of casual contempt that can be easily ignored by a society that prizes movement and action above just about everything else.

They dislike their jobs, they dislike their boss, they dislike the things they must do in order to make the living that will allow them to continue disliking their life.

They don’t yell and scream and complain about it, in fact, they shuffle their way through it peacefully enough and teach their children that life is hard and painful and that they should appreciate any ounce of goodness that the universe deems them worthy of.

I think that the older you get, the more likely it is for you to fall into my 80%.

Children typically like life a lot. Teenagers are a little wishy-washy on it, but for the most part they think it’s the tops. The problem starts somewhere around the mid-20s, when we get thrown out into the world to do “whatever we want to” and we realize that the majority of that time will be spent surviving and helping others to survive.

Kind of a bummer, especially when you spend the majority of your early days looking forward to the freedom of being an adult. This realization is enough to cripple most of us, and very few who survive it make it through unscarred.

So who, you might be wondering, are the elusive 20% who are actually enjoying the ride?

The richly working.

More than any other criteria – age, class, wealth, sex, whatever – it’s the people who have a purpose, who have something they believe in and are willing to work on it despite whatever obstacles might get in their way who end up being happy. It’s the people who wake up and know they are moving in a direction, towards something that is important to them, that end up loving their lives. It’s the people who don’t think about retirement because whatever it is that they are doing is truly meaningful that end up being truly content.

Before you ask, you don’t have to quit your job and move into a commune to pull this off.

Having a purpose doesn’t mean devoting your entire life to that purpose. While the more you can do the thing you love the better off you will be, the more important thing is to identify why you wake up in the morning. You need to come to grips with something that you value and be willing to make sacrifices in order to move towards it.

It might take you 20 years to write your novel, but put a sentence or two on a page every day.

It might take half your life to save up enough to open your restaurant, but do save and make concessions, make sacrifices to see to it that you will eventually get there.

Don’t just hope that things will work themselves out, understand that you can make goals and as long as you actively pursue them it’s not foolish or crazy to think that you can really accomplish something.

A big part of happiness is having something that makes you happy. A bigger part is doing something with it, developing real, practical steps that you can use in order to reach your goal. You can work your entire life and never do anything that you like. Considering time is the only resource that is truly scarce, you have to ask yourself whether it’s worth it.

The Beginning (Or The End) For Ad Agencies?

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:34:00 +0000

This speaks to the current POV that agencies who focus solely on brand building and marketing will have a hard time growing their business. Clients realize they can now do much of the marketing heavy lifting themselves — and very cheaply. Agencies who focus on providing content and building customer relationships via multiple distribution streams will be the big winners.

MINT.COM - started at home by one man, sold to Intuit for $170 Million.

At a panel in San Francisco Donna Wells, Mint.com’s chief marketing officer, stunned a room full of digital marketing pros when she admitted she didn't have much of a marketing budget. Mint.com has gone from zero to 1.5 million users in two years with no ad campaign, save for a mid-five-figures sum spent on search. Rather than purchase traffic, Mint.com has pursued the same type of strategy that food trucks and online magazines do: use free social media and piggyback on popular new communications technology. Mint.com has more than 36,000 Facebook fans and 19,000 Twitter followers, a well-trafficked blog, and a popular iPhone application.

Mint.com, which advises customers on how to pinch pennies, does penny-pinching of its own. It uses Wordpress (free) to run its Web site and blog. To analyze traffic partners, conversion rates, and other essentials of an online business that generates its revenues through lead generation, it uses Google analytics (free and sufficiently simple that Wells’ marketing staff can use it without the help of software experts). Wells referred to a bunch of other services it uses to keep tabs on its site, such as ClickTale, Crazy Egg and Compete, as “virtually free” — costing a few hundred dollars a month. Mint.com’s main market research tool is Zoomerang, which helps companies conduct online surveys and collect user feedback. The cost: about $700 per year.

Brands bruised in battered economy

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:18:00 +0000

World's 2 most valuable brands: Coca-Cola, IBM By Emily Fredrix/The Associated Press/September 18, 2009

Consumers lost trust in brands this year as the recession deepened, according to an industry report released Thursday, although longtime staples Coca-Cola and IBM retained their spots as the world's two most valuable brands.

This is the first time the combined value of the world's top 100 brands as ranked by Interbrand, a branding agency, has fallen in the 10 years Interbrand has assessed them.

The list's total value, including brands like Google Inc., Nintendo and Sony, fell 4.6 percent to $1.15 trillion, Interbrand estimates.

"That says something about the environment that we're in, especially when you consider that brands are by nature less volatile than business valuations," said Interbrand CEO Jez Frampton, who called a company's brand its most valuable asset.

The environment — a recession the likes of which the world hasn't seen for decades — has eaten away at people's trust in specific brands, starting with financial companies, he said. Consumers even started to question retail brands as stores slashed prices to get sales, leading consumers to wonder about pricing, and why they had to pay so much before.

"All of these things lead you to re-evaluate the nature of the relationships that we have with brands and indeed how confident we feel in brands to live up to the promises they make," he said. "Brands are promises which we value and are prepared to pay for and if we feel those promises have been broken we're less likely to trust."

Brands are more than just names, colors or logos — think Coca-Cola's red or McDonald's golden arches. A brand includes all the elements of a product or service from its design, ingredients and manufacture to its marketing, advertising and logo.

A well-honed brand evokes in consumers an emotion and a promise of what it will deliver, without the consumer having to do much — if any — research, said Allen Adamson, managing director at branding firm Landor Associates. Brands are important for all businesses, and critical in categories that have direct consumer contact, like autos, he said.

Each year, Interbrand ranks companies by the amount of their revenue that is attributable to their brands, using a formula that takes into account the brand's future strength and its role in creating demand, whether among consumers or business customers or both.

The firm assigns a monetary value to each brand and measures annual growth, in this case from July 1, 2008, to June 30, 2009.

The value of online giant Google's brand grew the fastest in the world again.

Deborah Mitchell, executive fellow at the Center for Brand and Product Management at Wisconsin School of Business, thinks Google already has found balance by earning consumers' trust.

That's partly due to Google's value statement — "Do no evil" — which resonates with consumers, especially in a downturn, she said.

"There's been a shift in the focus on values and not just economics to consumers," she said. "They're looking more closely at who is selling them what."

You Have To Be Cheapest Or Be Best

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:27:00 +0000

Another brilliant blog post by my friend Andrew Jaffee:

Motorola is one of America's proudest brands. Started by the brothers Galvin in Chicago in 1928 as a battery company, it moved to manufacturing car radios, hence the name a combination of “motor” and “Victrola.” In 1943 the company went public, after producing the first walkie-talkie for the military and all kinds of cellular infrastructure that made possible the cell phone of today.

It pioneered developments of solid-state technology which led to the transistor radio. Beginning in 1958, it developed two-way radios for NASA space flights, allowing Mission Control to communicate with astronaut Neil Armstrong as he stepped on the moon in 1969. It began manufacturing televisions in 1947 developing the first truly rectangular color TV, a business it later sold to Panasonic.

In 1983, it came out with the first commercial cell phone, a DynaTAC 8000X. Along the way, it also invented Six Sigma, a quality improvement process Jack Welch at GE made famous.

But with all these inventions, Motorola was perpetually developing products which ultimately some other company did better-often after buying the brand, a team of engineers and their management from Motorola.

Nothing is sadder than the tale of what happened to the RAZR. This amazingly thin, handsome clamshell phone was developed by Motorola in July 2003 and introduced a year later. Shortly before that, I remember being at a board meeting of the VCU Brandcenter when Geoffrey Frost, Motorola's marketing chief, slyly opened his fist and passed around this most intriguing jewel. Geoffrey, who unfortunately died two years later at age 56, planned and executed the “Hello Moto” campaign that launched this product, and was around long enough to see it sell 110 million units worldwide, boosting Motorola for a time to second only to Nokia in handheld phones.

But before long competitors began to come out with better features--rich 3G phones that cut into its sales. Manufacturers, including Motorola, began slicing prices in a battle for market share. Though some people still swear by it-Israeli's former foreign minister Tzipi Lini still carries one-even before Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in June, 2007, the RAZR was doomed.

Motorola, under CEO Ed Zander, never was able to get a second act. Today Co-CEOs Greg Brown and Sanjay Jha are trying to save the company, now based in Schaumburg, Illinois, as it moves away from producing cellphones to other phone-related technologies. But its revenues fell last year to $30 billion and it had negative net income of $4.2 billion.

This is a case where marketing can't save a brand, no matter how revered. As Sony has discovered with micro digital music storage and delivery systems, it's no good being almost as good. You either have to be cheapest or the best.

Cheapest means allowing price to overcome value and turning your inventions into commodities. Being best lends itself to great marketing, but only if you can maintain that top-of-the-hill technology ranking. Even Apple has had either to cut the prices of its new iPod-like devices, or keep innovating and introducing new technologies. But Apple now has another advantage that will confound competitors. It owns “best of class” ratings in two separate categories, digital music storage and delivery and 3G “smart” cell phone telephony. And all its devices synch to one another. So it's very hard for competitors to outdistance it.

At the beginning of this decade, the field in handheld technology was wide open. There were Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and Blackberries, among others-fighting Motorola in cell phones. For Motorola to have gained the lead not only in image but volume and then lose it due to a failure in innovation and vision seems particularly unfortunate. And the blame must be laid first at the feet of Zander and his management team.

Some in the blogosphere say that the RAZR killed Geoffrey Frost through overwork. Maybe so, but one thing is certain: whatever Geoffrey did to carry Motorola to the mountain-top, it wasn't in his remit to keep it there. The story of Motorola's collapse only makes Jobs' accomplishments at Apple all that more astonishing.

Motorola. What a treasure. Will it end up like Schwinn bicycles, Polaroid cameras and Frigidaire refrigerators, with a place in America's brand pantheon-but without a dominant entry in today's marketplace? Or is there still time for Motorola to stage a comeback? If it does, the brand's heritage will be waiting.

Opportunity!!

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:26:00 +0000

Outside England's Bristol Zoo there is a parking lot for 150 cars and eight buses. For 25 years, its parking fees were managed by a very pleasant attendant. The fees were £1 for cars ($1.40), £5 for busses (about $7).

Then one day, after 25 solid years of never missing a day of work, he just didn't show up. Zoo management called the city council and asked it to send them another parking agent.

The council did some research and replied that the parking lot was the zoo's own responsibility. The zoo advised the council that the attendant was a city employee. The city council responded that the lot attendant had never been on the city payroll.

Meanwhile, sitting in his villa somewhere on the coast of Spain (or some such scenario), is a man who'd apparently had a ticket machine installed completely on his own; and then had simply begun to show up every day to collect and keep the parking fees, estimated at about $560 per day -- for 25 years. Assuming 7 days a week, this amounts to just over $7 million dollars!

And no one even knows his name.

Blackstar's Woodstock tribute, August 15th at Books & Books

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:39:00 +0000

40 years ago the world watched and listened in amazement as Yasgur’s farm was converted to 600 acres of peace, music, and mud. Having been just a few years too young to have actually gone to Woodstock, I grew up hearing the fuzzy memories of my friends’ older brothers and sisters, all of whom seemed to have been there. Of course if everyone who told me they were there truly went, the festival would have been a whole lot bigger than it actually was. Kind of like the Doors’ famous concert at Dinner Key – if everyone who told me they saw Jim Morrison whip it out were actually there the concert would have spread all the way to Coral Gables.

And speaking of Woodstock and Coral Gables, the Blackstar Band will be celebrating Woodstock’s 40^th Anniversary this coming Saturday night, August 15^th, at Books & Books at 265 Aragon Ave in Coral Gables. We’ve been rehearsing our best of Woodstock: Jimi Hendrix, Joe Cocker, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Mountain, and Ten Years After and will rip into it about 8 PM. So put on your finest tie-dye and join us. It’ll be groovy.

Toyota Flirts With Going It Alone

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:17:00 +0000

AdAge reported that Toyota is thinking of firing its ad agencies and doing everything in-house. My friend Andrew Jaffee has some interesting comments:

Toyota spends $900 million in measured media in the U.S. alone, according to Nielsen. That means they're probably paying $90 million to $100 million a year to their several ad agencies including, by my count, Saatchi & Saatchi/Torrance, Team One/El Segundo, Attik/ San Francisco, DentsuAmerica, New York and some dogs and cats who probably work on a project on an occasional basis. I'll bet someone told Yukitoshio Funo, CEO of Toyota Motor Sales USA, Inc., that he could create an in-house agency that could produce the same amount of work with the same punch for one-third the cost.

Who wouldn't want to save $60 million on ideation and production and $100 million on media in an economy like this?

Right? Wrong. This is the latest in an unhappy series of examples of client impatience with the high cost of advertising, as search and other digital forms of communication become more important and agencies have increasing problems with proving the ROI of what they do. Clients want communications that are measurable, have more punch, are produced faster and with less cost and that can be repurposed across multiple formats as audiences multi-task and become more elusive.

That's a worthy goal. But, if in trying to meet it, you conclude that advertising can best be made in the same kitchen that manufactures and sells Corollas, then you're missing the whole point of using arms length creative resources.

Creative people--the men and women who actually unlock the puzzle of how to communicate brand messages in fresh ways that people hear and remember-are hard to recruit and retain. Coming up with ways to make the oddly shaped Scion or the pricey Prius seem as charming and appealing as a square Taurus is not an easy task.

Toyota makes great cars at a great price, sans doute. As a result, according to a senior Saatchi executive I interviewed for my 2003 book, “Casting for Big Ideas,” Toyota USA executives “have contempt for just about everything that we do.”

How many ubiquitous American brands have felt the same way? Howard Schultz of Starbucks, after all, launched his brand by just building stores without any advertising. As a result, his customers have forgot that what he was really was selling is a personal reward and have begun to think of a Starbucks as a $2 cup of a black, caffeinated beverage. Wal-Mart kept their ad agencies on a tight rein, limiting them to cheap commercials featuring yellow smiley faces, until the anger consumers felt for the way Wal-Mart stores destroyed the retail environment of their small towns and pretty suburbs grew stronger than the desire to go into a noisy, dirty, giant warehouse and buy something cheap.

Eventually brands have to communicate not only price and availabiliy but value and emotion. Even as our attention moves to the Internet, where brands are often accessed as a button on a search page, there still has to be a reason for picking a J.Crew wedding dress over one bought at Macys.com. We have plenty of research proving we're not really rational animals when it comes to shopping. If we were, then I suppose Toyota is right: it's a lot cheaper to hire several 100 20-somethings and lock them away in a windowless office with plenty of free coffee and pizza, to grind the work out 24/7, then it is to deal with a number of different agencies, each with their prima donnas and occasionally over-the-top notions of great ideas.

But it won't take long, as it did for Wal-Mart, for Toyota to realize there is something very wrong with the captive agency model. That, in fact, it's better to have professionals knock themselves out-and even trash half of what they present--then to try to shoot “junk” and run it so often, the Toyotathon message finally gets stuck in people's brains. Even if you saved $50 or $100 million a year this way, sooner or later your sales department is going to complain that the work is not “making the cash register ring.”

I wager that before long you're going to hear from Toyota that the press release about firing its agencies “was an exaggeration.” And all Toyota Motors USA wanted to do was have a little in-house design agency in Torrance that could knock out an occasional sales brochure. Fire their agencies? Where did the “media” come up with such a bizarre idea?

Is There Life After Branding?

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 01:31:00 +0000

A few months ago I made a presentation titled Building Brand Value to a group of industrial service providers. While I spoke there were about 300 people in the room furiously scribbling notes. As soon as I finished talking, a bunch of hands went up and the crowd peppered me with questions.

It was the last comment of the morning that got me thinking. A middle-aged man in a green and white golf shirt stood up. He was obviously nervous but was concerned enough about his issue to get up in front of the whole room. "I think your ideas make a lot of sense," he started "but what you probably don't know is that even though we're all from different states, we compete with one another for the best projects around the country." He looked around the room and spread his arms wide to indicate he was talking about the whole crowd. "If we all follow what you say, we'll all do exactly the same thing and it won't benefit any of us."

He looked at the floor nervously and sat down.

I answered something about different people doing different things and even though they had all been given the same instructions, they'd interpret them in different ways. But that wasn't the whole answer.

While my last questioner was correct that all 300 attendees had heard the same thing and they did indeed compete for business, he was wrong when he said that they'd all do the same thing and therefore it wouldn't help any of them.

The sad truth is that if we go back and poll the group a year from now, what we'll find is that very few of them actually implemented many of the things we talked about. Sure, they were excited and energized when I got done talking but let's face it, once they got back to their offices the daily grind took over.

The truth is while all 300 people in the room heard my message, only a very small percentage will actually put the message to good use. And it's the implementation -- not the learning -- that creates success.

Think about the unfulfilled aspirations you may have had when you were in college. Whether it was to learn to play the guitar, be a better tennis player or get a black belt in karate, if you had started working on your dream back then you'd probably be pretty good at it today. But as John Lennon sang: "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." And so life got in the way and it was easier to do what you wanted to do or needed to do or liked to do rather than buckling down and putting in the hard work and practice it takes to be successful at most endeavors.

I remember when I first decided to write a book. I though about what I wanted to write about, I dreamt about what I wanted to write about and I told everyone I knew about what I wanted to write about. The only thing I didn't do was write.

Even though I wasn't actually working on my book, I still believed I would write it. Steven Pressfield, who wrote The Legend of Bagger Vance says that's because "we don't tell ourselves, 'I'm never going to write my symphony.' Instead we say, 'I am going to write my symphony; I'm just going to start tomorrow.'"

One day a friend of mine who had published a few books of his own asked me how my book was coming. I was about to launch into my standard pitch about all the thinking I'd been doing when he stopped me. "You haven't ACTUALLY started writing, have you?" he asked.

I shook my head slowly.

"You know," he went on "if you just write a page a day, that's a book a year."

That little piece of advice was all I needed to get started. After all, writing a book is a scary and intimidating goal. But writing a page a day? Anyone can do that. Heck, I figured on a good day I could probably write two or three.

Building your own brand value is exactly the same thing. While it may be intimidating to look at well-established brands and wonder how you'll ever create such notoriety, it's not nearly as difficult if you break down the intimidating whole into lots of little manageable bits.

Perhaps your boss won't approve US$50,000 a month for an entire social media program. Well, you can still start building an active following on Twitter. Maybe you don't have the budget for a comprehensive in- and out-bound telemarketing program. You can still walk down the hall and talk to your receptionists about how they answer the calls of people calling about your company.

I was in a meeting with my favorite health care client the other day and we were talking about how they answer the phones at their health centers. It seems that they were trying to impress upon their employees the importance of dealing with health care problems as quickly as possible. The problem was that if a potential patient was told they couldn't see a doctor for two or three weeks then that patient would either go somewhere else or would simply ignore their condition until they wound up in the emergency room with a very serious, and expensive, problem.

And so my clients instructed their receptionists to begin answering the phones this way: "Welcome to MetCare. Do you need to see a doctor today?" What they found was that not only were their patients delighted with the considerate question but that their employees quickly figured out how to implement the scheduling programs necessary to accommodate the expedited appointments. Not only that, but the customers who didn't need immediate treatment were willing to be much more flexible with their scheduling demands because they felt comfortable that when they did have a more pressing problem they'd be treated as quickly as possible.

Let's face it -- there are only so many practical, affordable, and doable branding techniques. And if everyone used them, there would be some repetition and monotony. But knowing the techniques is not the same as employing them. And as long as you can count on others' inertia to hold them back, you can always move your brand forward towards increased success.

As George Eliot said, "It is never too late to be what you might have been." All you have to do is get started.

Ad changes depending on whether someone is looking

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:59:00 +0000

This bus stop ad, recently erected in Hamburg, Germany, changes whether or not someone's looking at it. Using a built-in camera with eye-tracking technology, it can tell exactly when someone is checking it out.

It uses this to get across an anti-domestic abuse message. When no one is looking, it shows a man hitting his wife. But when you look right at it, it changes to a picture of the couple looking happy and normal. A cool piece of tech used to powerful effect.

Coloribus Via Dvice

I Am Ready For Death

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:59:00 +0000

Owen Frager's compelling review of Social Media's significance:

As Iranians defy Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s warning that there will be blood on the streets of Tehran if there are continued protests, it’s now clear that there are indeed extensive protests going on in Iran — and the latest is that two of the key social media sites on the Internet now have reports saying opposition candidate Hossein Mousavi who was earlier reported to be detained is now on the streets and has told demonstrators “I am ready for death.”

It’s taken a revolution over there for everyone over here to finally acknowledge the revolution over here called social media- mainly Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Without these social media tools we’d still be left in the dark about the events in Iran.

And If you are like most people you’ve probably heard the word Twitter so much right now to the point where your calling guys like me to find out what it’s all about. Let me share what I told a friend who joined today:

Think of it as a soap box and everyone has their own station. If you attract followers they will get your 140 character pearls of wisdom and vice versa and maybe pass it on to their sphere of influence. (kind of alike a new morning paper customized for you).

But at the minimum you need an account to send messages to others with accounts- mainly letters to the editors- so if you want to "weigh in" and have your voice heard (perhaps on TV) this is the universal letter to the editor writer you'd use.

If you are in corporate gig you could establish yourself as an industry expert/spokesman and your tweets would be the sound bytes they'd seek out when looking for guests or editorial fill on the current reporting. From that you might get exposure and a job or business offer. That's the biz upside of it.

All I can tell you is that in few short months on Twitter I’ve attracted over 1000 followers with no contests, gimmicks or tricks. The resulting inbound feed created has given me access to all kinds of information and articles, providing content for my blog, daily doses of continuing education and the opening of networks with easy access to just about anyone who is who.

A year ago I read an article about Web Moguls who cashed out young on great ideas and the writer wondered what they could do for act two. For Ev, the creator of Twitter who made his money selling his previous invention blogger to Google, Twitter wasn’t about money but about a legacy money can’t buy. And that’s changing the web so the web can change the world. He must be very fulfilled seeing his vision come alive this weekend.

At a minimum, what social media marketing should we do?

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:33:00 +0000

Like the author of this article, we're often asked how companies should start using social media. When a link to this piece popped up on Twitter, we thought it was good enough to share with you.

VIA MarketPlane:

As B2B tech marketing consultants, we spend a good deal of our time talking to companies about their product marketing strategies. Many companies we talk to are already engaged in social media marketing, however, a fair number are not. In most cases, these companies “plan to do social media marketing”, but haven’t had the time or resources to get a program off the ground. At this point in the conversation, we explain the value of doing a thorough review of their marketing audience, objectives and metrics, in order to develop a social media ROI analysis. Essentially, the ROI analysis is a forecast of what a social media campaign would return, based on their marketing objectives.Without this stepping stone it would be hard to know where to go next.

Yet, as we allude to in our blog topic, typically the response from many a company is “OK. We hear you, but we’re still not ready to launch a program. Is there something we can do now without committing lots of time and resources? At a minimum, what social media marketing should we do?” Well, we’ve heard this question so many times it seemed worthwhile to share our thoughts in a blog post.

Social Media Monitoring: First Steps

At a minimum, start with the basics: social media brand and competition monitoring. We’ve found that with a relatively small investment of time, you can see some positive results, including: learning from what your customers and prospects are saying about you, minimizing negative discussions about your product, keeping on top of your competitor’s message, and tracking problems real users are experiencing.

Step 1: Brand Monitoring

The goal is to track how people talk about your brand and products in social media, including news, blogs, social discussion groups, file sharing and video content sites, and Twitter. If you have a budget, there are SAAS toolsets which you can use to help you track key social media metrics, including tns cymfony, Radian6, and a few Twitter specific tools such as Chatterbox and Publicitweet. If you don’t have a budget for new tools, you can do this by tracking your company and product name(s) as keywords using tools like Google Reader for news, Google Blog Search or Technorati.com for Blogs, and a tool like TweetDeck for Twitter. All of these tools are easily configured and some can even send you an email if there is any keyword activity. You may want to capture your weekly the results in a word doc, which you can share with other members of your team.

What you should watch for besides the obvious?

1. People routinely blogging or tweeting about you. If they like you – build a relationship with them. They can become an evangelist or reference for you. If they don’t like you – try and find out why, and if there’s any easy way to change their opinion.

2. What is being said? Is it a topic you can address with a blog post of your own, a position paper, or a white paper? Look for opportunities to expand on your message.

3. Analyst/industry bloggers writing or tweeting about you. Your goal should be to build relationships with all of these folks. We’ve seen companies quickly build relationships with industry bloggers, which led to multiple sales opportunities. Industry bloggers are well respected, have a strong readership base, and they are active at industry events in their region.

4. How influential are they? Tools like URLFan tell you how influential a particular blog site is based on the number of feeds, posts, and mentions. Use them to track and evaluate the influence of a particular blogger.

Step 2: Competition Monitoring

The goal is to track how people talk about your competition in the various social media channels. Again, a similar approach - you will need to track your competitor(s) and their product name(s) as keywords just as you do for your own.

What you should watch for besides the obvious?

People routinely blogging or tweeting about the competition. Find out who they are and what they do. If they like the competition better than you, they can negatively influence your prospects. Make sure your marketing and sales teams have counterpoints to their messages.

What your competition says about themselves. If they write blogs, keep track of the blog topics and keyword tags. Look for opportunities. What they don’t talk about may be even more important. Companies usually avoid talking about their product weaknesses.

How your competition interacts with their customers and prospects. If they use Twitter, what do they talk about? Track their follower rates. Are they just sending out tweets or are they actually engaged?

Analyst/industry bloggers writing or tweeting about the competition. Make sure these folks understand the features and benefits of your products too. Again, look for opportunities.

On average, it takes 4-5 days to get a monitoring system in place and fine tune it, and requires 30-60 minutes a day to review the results. What you learn from these efforts will set the stage for the next step in a social media marketing program – interaction.

Social Media Corporate Policy

Lastly, we strongly recommend companies put a corporate social media policy in place. A social media policy outlines for employees the corporate guidelines/principles of communicating in the online world, as representatives of their company. Most companies have a policy in place for working with media and a social media policy is just an extension of what you currently have in place.

You Can’t Rebrand Until You Rebrand

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:15:00 +0000

Mark Trueblood commented on my post that the Republican Party should take a branding lesson from Cadillac: "I think the GOP's problems are much deeper than an lack of youth or sleekness…their image problem is not their age, it is their actions and ideology."

I think Mark's right.

A few weekends ago the Republicans announced that they were going to rebrand their party. They staged an event at a pizza parlor, got their PR ducks in a row and even got their conservative bloggers all lathered up. All good branding practices.

The only thing they forgot was the “Re” part of “Rebranding” and instead paraded out the same old tired people and perspectives. Let’s face it, how much rebranding are you going to do when Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney and Eric Cantor, three reliable Republican warhorses, are given the responsibility of being the new look of the party?

Where were the women, the minorities, the new faces? Most importantly (and to Mark's point), where were the new ideas? As Republicans continue to rely on their aging Southern white male constituency for support, they continue to offer up the same tired policies that their irrelevant, but vocal, supporters clamor for. And while they claim to be putting a new face on the party, whom do they pick to replace Arlen Specter on the Judiciary committee? The ardent Alabama conservative Jeff Sessions (white, male, southern, conservat…but then, you see their tired pattern already, don’t you?).

I’m a branding guy. I believe in the power of branding to change an organization’s business. Hell, I even wrote the book Building Brand Value for that very reason. But even I know the Republicans don’t have a PR problem. Their problems are a whole lot bigger than branding.

Thanks Mark.

Search All The Public Parks…

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:06:00 +0000

The Future of Journalism

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Fri, 29 May 2009 20:38:00 +0000

Vanessa Horwell is Chief Visibility Officer at ThinkInk. Vanessa works with companies in the U.S., UK and Europe to improve their visibility through strategic public relations and new media channels. Her views here are excerpted from an article she wrote in Mobile Marketer.

Although I am in PR, I am not isolated from the events taking place in the newspaper industry. You know why? Because they are a lifeline. Without newspapers and the existence of quality journalism and print media, the PR industry and indeed the entire advertising industry will suffer in a very big way.

In PR, companies rely on us to get them in the papers, on TV, on the radio, and then finally the web. And usually in that order.

You’ll probably find that statement counterintuitive in a digital age where we all talk about convergence, emerging media, social networking, search and online ROI. But that’s marketer-speak.

In non-marketer speak, it’s much simpler. “Get us into The New York Times or Wall Street Journal” is what many companies understand and see great value in. Not the Huffington Post or Gawker.

Many consumers just don’t hold the same value for online content as they do for print. They’ve grown up to online being free. They’re used to content being available at an instant, but without regard for the efforts to create it. Print still represents something fixed and tangible, and it’s going to be one hell of a struggle for us to change this perception. Here’s one example:

We had a client who complained that his company was being featured in Forbes.com, but not the print version. We argued that 15 million eyeballs seeing his story online would make far more impact than the 5.4 million print readers … but the client wasn’t convinced. He wanted the prestige of print. He thought it was more valuable, regardless of readership numbers. And he also told us this … “who wants to be online if it’s free?”

If something is free, it’s because we haven’t paid for it. We didn’t spend our hard-earned income to buy it, so we don’t hold it in the same value system as something for which we have paid.

I’m no psychologist, but that’s pretty much how I feel about my paid subscriptions. I value them and look forward to them. And if I find content that I want, enjoy and feel is of value to my life, why should I expect NOT pay for it? I have to pay for everything else.

Let’s frame this issue in another way. Hire talented people, incur overheads and operating costs, and start giving away your services for free. Offer a great product, but don’t monetize it. What’s going to happen? Your business is going to fail spectacularly.

And that is precisely what happened with the newspapers.

In media’s migration to the web, they forgot one of the most fundamental lessons about business … charge what you are worth.

We will be creating more valuable vehicles for content: consumers will be willing to pay for them and advertisers will pay more to reach these consumers. And so begins a new chapter.

Because in life, there is no such thing as free.

Branding Yourself

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Wed, 27 May 2009 11:41:00 +0000

Via: Owen Frager

With Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter becoming your defacto resume, and shaping the image how most will perceive you, our friend Jay Berkowitz shares a great read from the Brand Building Blog.

To make it simple, branding yourself is about letting everyone know who you are and what are you specialized in. Branding yourself is part of the many things that will help you create success, because it will help you to attract people from all walks of life to be your friend, your network contact, a new client for your business, or maybe someone who wants to introduce you to other of the same type of interest. Branding yourself is a major part in Internet marketing or the network marketing industry.

Branding your name, along with the online business is very important. Branding yourself is the key.

The point is this. Branding yourself is all about self-expression. The notion of branding yourself is not new. Your idea of branding yourself is a dynamic strategy everyone should use if they plan on being a big success. What prevents you from over branding yourself is the ability to express a quick summary or movie preview in a concise and articulate way. Particularly in any sales-driven industry, branding yourself is as integral to the success of your business as the company logo.

Branding yourself is for executives, entrepreneurs, and those who aspire to be either. It’s for corporate employees, business owners, solo-preneurs, and those in particular professions, such as medicine, law, and architecture.

Having your business cards, letterhead, brochures, fliers, cards and labels in a distinctive and consistent style as your Website are also ways of branding yourself. Brand yourself by your interests, whatever you have a good amount of knowledge in.

Brand yourself by lending a helping hand and you’ll be in a prime position when the people you’ve helped decide that you’ve got what it takes to coach them. Branding yourself by your Domain Name: If you have already chosen your niche, you have perhaps also thought about how to market in it.

Brand yourself by adding pictures, audios, and videos to your website. Branding yourself is one of the most important marketing tricks on the books; it is about being an expert or learning how to be an expert and then telling everyone about your knowledge. It is one of the most important tasks you have as a small business marketer.

Branding yourself as an artist is becoming more and more important. Year by year you see more and more “celebrity brands” springing up and there is a definite reason why. Branding yourself creates opportunities and generally increases cash flow for the artists that engage in branding. Business cards and stationary items - Handing out business cards and stationary are a great way to brand yourself. Business cards are cheap to get and easy to create.

“Branding Yourself” is the application of certain techniques which will help you gain popularity on the Internet by making yourself well known, maybe as an Expert in your field. When people recognize you as an expert you will gain popularity by means of more free publicity than you can imagine.

How do you Brand Yourself? There are many techniques and methods, but it can be as simple as a hidden personality trait, a nickname (maybe something like “Wild Bill”), or helping others by consultation or assistance. Branding “You” (a phrase borrowed from Rick Beneteau) is a power that you can’t afford not to understand and use.

Branding yourself is a major part in Internet marketing or the network marketing industry. Branding yourself is one of the most important marketing tricks on the books. Branding yourself is the key to being different. A replicated site will get you replicated results. Fluency in a foreign language tends to stand out quickly enough and is guaranteed not to be forgotten.

If you have an online business one of the most important concepts you must learn in order to survive on the Internet is branding yourself. One way of branding yourself is by writing articles.

Working hard branding yourself will get you opportunity. Personal branding is the way you clarify and communicate what is special about you, so that you don’t have to talk so hard (or hope for the right question) to explain exactly why you’re the best candidate for the gig (be it a job or a freelance assignment).

Understand that this is all OK. Because you can leverage this same site to brand and promote yourself and your products as well. But it’s worth it. However if you have the right systems in place, you can brand yourself quickly while doing your marketing. This is a very powerful way to brand yourself and generate some nice targeted prospects in the process.

Successful branding comes from within—who you are today as well as the dreams of the kind of person you want to be. You can live your dreams if you put in the effort.

The Branding Transformation of Glen Beck

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Sun, 10 May 2009 16:21:00 +0000

A year or so back, I was on the road somewhere and flipping through the channels on the TV in my hotel room when I came across a new FOX show featuring Glen Beck. I watched for a few minutes and while I didn’t agree with what Beck had to say, I thought he was measured, reasonable and even thoughtful.

Fast forward to just a few nights ago. We recently got a new cable provider (we traded Direct TV for AT&T) so I didn’t know where my favorite channels were. I was surfing through all the new channels (who was it that said men don’t watch what’s on, they watch what else is on?) when I again came across Glen Beck. But this time he was a fire-breathing dragon, gesticulating and gyrating like a crazy man. If I hadn’t seen the FOX logo onscreen I would have thought he had become a Pentecostal preacher and was speaking in tongues.

What happened to change Beck from the mild mannered conservative I had seen to the raving lunatic I was watching? Believers would say it’s his ire at the goings-on of the Obama administration but I think that’s naive.

Being the sharp pitchman that he is, Beck realized that the audience FOX attracts isn’t interested in a calm, measured response to the news. Instead, the party of Limbaugh and Palin has sunk to the lowest common denominator and feel they have to pander to the basest impulses of their most rabid viewers. Regardless of what this precipitous drop in standards ultimately does to the party, it increases Beck’s viewership and explains his meteoric, though ironic, rise.

It's not ideology, it's marketing, plain and simple.

The Republican Party Should Take A Branding Lesson From Cadillac

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Tue, 05 May 2009 12:05:00 +0000

Used to be that a Cadillac represented the ultimate achievement. Leonard Chess created a music empire by paying his blues and rock & roll stars with Caddys. Presidents were chauffeured in them. Corpses took their final rides in them. The word Cadillac even became an adjective, as in “the Cadillac of toasters,” or “the Cadillac of fountain pens.”

Then, like the rest of the American automobile industry, the brand fell from grace, replaced by technically superior imports from Germany, England and Japan.

Cadillac couldn’t revamp their brand and attract younger buyers without alienating the few stalwart customers they still had – retirees who appreciated the giant cars’ floaty ride and outdated looks.

But finally realizing that their core audience was dying, Cadillac bit the bullet and redesigned their cars, trading their over-inflated look for sharp angles, modern creases and a big helping of performance and design. To announce their transformation, Cadillac even licensed a Led Zeppelin song for their commercials – “Been a long time since I rock and rolled” indeed.

Now think about the Republican Party. Once the overstuffed party of corporate CEOs and the power elite, they now represent the right wing fringe and aging southern white men. Republican values and power are rapidly being replaced by the younger, sleeker and more progressive Democrats. Even though Republicans desperately need to change, their power structure is terrified to alter their brand and alienate the few voters who still support them.

But like Cadillac, the Republican Party’s choice is simple. Either change the brand and begin to attract new consumers or stick with their existing image and be relegated to the scrap heap of irrelevance.

Old and stodgy or young and sleek. The decision is easy. The implementation, though, less so.

What Would Barack Orama Do If He Was A GEO Domainer?

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 21:09:00 +0000

==> From OFrager How would Barack circumvent trademarks, local media and C&V operaratives to own the oportunity? Special guest Bruce Turkel (that's me) will tell you LIVE tonight. And the answers will blow your mind. I promise you will never look at the way you approach the business of domaining the same again. JOIN US: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/931514363

Divorce Attorney Business Card

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:23:00 +0000

The Problem With Newspapers Is The Word "Paper"

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 17:20:00 +0000

A few days ago I posted this on Twitter: "Problem with the newspaper biz is they have word PAPER in name. Change that & perception changes to the NEWS biz." In a 21st Century example of putting the cart before the horse, that abbreviated Twitter post got so much response (ReTweets in Twitter parlance) that I thought I should expand on the idea on my blog.

I don't know whether the point is profoundly simple or simply profound but as I watch all the hand-wringing over the fate of the newspaper industry, it occurs to me that the problem is not that people don't want to buy what newspapers offer -- news -- but that the distribution model -- paper -- is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

I like reading my paper newspaper as much as the next guy but am I really reading it for the tactile experience or for the information? More important, am I willing to pay extra for the privilege of finding the paper on my doorstep when I wake up in the morning?

Think about it -- as citizen journalism becomes more and more ubiquitous, where will consumers go for news they can trust? If you add up the names of trusted sources in this country (major newspapers, news magazines, TV news, NPR) you'll be hard-pressed to count more than 40 or 50 virtually unimpeachable sources of information. Are these companies trusted because of their distribution models (newsprint, radio waves, etc.) or because of the quality of the information they provide?

It makes sense then that the future for the newspaper industry is in providing news and information regardless of the way it's consumed. By delivering newspapers only to those willing to pay extra for the privilege, and building revenue models to post data on blogs, websites, iPhones, Kindles and whatever comes along tomorrow for the rest of the world, news organizations will be able to deliver what their customers most want -- real information they can count on.

News - yes. Paper - not so much.

Recruiting and Hiring Via Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 12:14:00 +0000

Thanks to Owen Frager for Organic's six tips for recruiting Via Twitter:

• Create a branded company Twitter profile. Assign a key person -- or automate tweets -- to post jobs as they become available. This person should also be responsible for following professionals that could be potential candidates.

• Don't be a Twitter wallflower. Engage in conversation with the people you are following -- and your followers -- whether you have job openings for them or not. Then, when you need to speak with someone about an opportunity, you've already established rapport.

• Create a protocol for your job Tweets. Consider searchability by using hash marks (#) around key words. Include a trackable URL to your job posting so you can monitor the number of click-throughs a job posting receives.

• Help your search by using a third-party tool such as TweetBeep, which alerts you to tweets relevant to your search.

• Encourage your staff to retweet job openings by providing an incentive such as a referral bonus for candidates sourced through tweeting.

• Don't be a one-track tweeter. Be varied and creative in your approach. To keep it real and not boring or spamlike, tweet on a variety of topics including industry-related items of interest, some personal tweets and, of course, your job postings.

Click here to read the full-story of how Organic is finding all their staff on Twitter and eliminating hiring delays, mistakes and cost.

A Business Plan For Today's Difficult Hotel Environment

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Turkel) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:56:00 +0000

Stanley Turkel, MHS, ISHC.

As a hotel industry historian, I was happy to come across a Wall Street Journal front page article dated December 12, 1972. 'Economy Motels Lure Travelers With Prices as Low as $6 a Room.'

What caught my attention was the opening sentence, 'Remember when motels were Spartan $7-a-night places that beckoned you with a 'Kleen Kabins' sign and offered you little more than a bed and a shower?' The WSJ article goes on to criticize the subsequent upgrading:

'Then they got fancy, with bellhops, room service and plush cocktail lounges- and the price shot up to $20 a night. Now here's the latest thing in the motel business: Spartan, $7-a-night places (without 'Kleen Kabins' signs) that offer you little more than a bed and a shower... Bargain-hungry travelers are flocking to so-called budget or economy motel chains, and in the process they are igniting a boom in a brash little industry that's taking on the established motel chains on their own turf. Budget motels are sprouting up all over the country- most heavily in the Southeast and in the West. In many places, they claim occupancy rates of better than 90%, while more expensive competitors struggle to keep their rooms 70% full.... The four or five most active budget companies are run by people with background in construction rather than hotel management. There won't be any meeting or convention facilities, the lobby will be so small as to be nonexistent, and there may not be a restaurant on the premises. One company- Econo-Travel Corp. of Norfolk, Va. even does away with swimming pools. They're an added expense most people don't use, the company reasons.

The question that pops into my mind, 'Is it time for another resurgence in inexpensive guestrooms in budget-oriented hotel properties?' As I was quoted in the 1972 WSJ article, 'The conventional hotel-motel industry has priced itself into the stratosphere. Why should a guy pay $18 a night for a hot shower, an hour of Johnny Carson and a night's sleep when he can pay $10 or less at Shoestring Motor Lodge next door?'

At that time, the leading budget motel companies: Motel 6, Scottish Inns of America, Chalet Suisse International, Days Inns and Econo-Travel, were doubling their occupancy each year. The established operators were caught in a dilemma: they were pincered between the prospect of losing customers to the budget operators if they didn't emulate them and the danger of undercutting their own conventional units if they did.

Are we entering a phase of new economy hotels (geared to cost-conscious travelers) which employ advanced construction techniques and operating methods aimed at holding down the cost of a night's lodging?

If you wonder how a group of small companies with no experience in the motel business can penetrate an industry dominated by corporate giants like Marriott, IHG, Hilton and Starwood, just recall what William W. Becker (founder of Motel 6) said in 1962: 'When we entered the business, we had the advantage of not knowing anything about it, so we weren't burdened by pre-conceived notions.' At the time, Motel 6 and others built their rooms more cheaply than the conventional companies and kept dreaming up new ways to shave costs and increase revenues. Remember when Motel 6 charged 25 cents to watch a few hours of television. Guestrooms were designed to reduce the time it took a housekeeper to clean them, beds were built flush to the floor so the area underneath them didn't have to be cleaned, bathtubs were rounded to save scrubbing in corners and glasses were replaced with disposable plastic cups. In those days, Motel 6 didn't put dresser drawers in its rooms because most travelers didn't use them and they took time to dust.

So, here's a great business development plan offered without cost to any entrepreneurs smart enough to exploit the current economic malaise:

1. Create a new budget limited-service hotel brand (consider the name Shoestring Motor Lodges)

2. Attract franchisees who own or can acquire exterior corridor properties.

3. Provide a franchise system that is 100% compliant with AAHOAs 12 Points.

4. Provide renovation and redesign for the guest rooms so that they are unusually attractive and colorful.

5. Review the amenities which are usually offered and eliminate all those that are not necessary. Promote and advertise these cost-saving actions.

6. Advertise Shoestring Motor Lodges as the safest and most accessible of all roadside properties:

- Park outside your guestroom

- No long, dark and unsafe corridors

- No elevators

- Great access for road warriors, ADA guests and senior citizens