By Linda Forrest
There’s an old adage about the cobbler’s kids having no shoes, which means the shoemaker is too busy making shoes for his customers to ensure that his own children have shoes on their feet.
There’s an unfortunate parallel in marketing: marketers are often spending so much of their time marketing to prospective buyers that they fall down promoting the virtues of marketing to their higher ups, who make the ultimate decision about whether to sign off on the proposed marketing budget.
In an agency environment, the failure to articulate the value of marketing and why it’s an investment rather than a cost centre, can spell death for the business altogether. When internal marketing resources fail to sell their marketing proposals to the C-suite, the repercussions are felt far beyond the marketing department as campaigns not fully executed result in fewer leads entering the pipeline and fewer sales down the road.
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This the first in our “Best of” series, in which we venture deep into the vault to replay blog opinion and insight that has withstood the test of time. Today’s post hails from September 2007. We welcome your feedback.
By Francis Moran
When I started this little tech PR agency, the world of online media outlets was still very much in its infancy. And an early fiction we had to deal with was a widely held belief that online media were some kind of a different beast from their print or broadcast brethren, and that only a PR agency that specialized in online media could reach these brave new e-journalists.
Our conviction was that these outlets might well be new but that there was nothing at all novel about a time-tested best-practices approach to pitching them, one based on pegging the natural news value of a client’s story and then pitching it only to those who would see that value. And we were right; from Day 1, our clients enjoyed the same widespread coverage online as they did in other media formats.
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Associate Peter Hanschke is an Ottawa-based product management specialist. His post is part of our continuing series about the ecosystem necessary to bring technology to market. We welcome your comments.
By Peter Hanschke
I’ve seen this situation far too often.
The engineering team and product management decide on what the next revision of the product needs to be or, in a new product introduction case, what the new product will be. The development team goes through its process to define how to build the features or product and starts a large development cycle.
There is always a great deal of interaction between engineering and product management, but, sadly, marketing is left out. I’m not sure why; maybe they feel that marketing won’t “get it.” Instead, the development process winds through the last test phase without any input from the marketing team. When all the critical bugs are fixed the product is released. It is at this point that marketing gets the product information thrown over the wall with the unrealistic expectation that it will create an immediate miracle. And then everyone wonders why the press release, the collateral, the web site, and so forth are so late in coming.
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By Alexandra Reid
I watched a mesmerizing documentary the night before last called Future Intelligence that examined how smart technology will eventually be embedded everywhere, including our clothing, furniture, cars and even our contact lenses. Futurists, including Ray Kurzeil, predicted that within 50 years, entire cities will be connected to the web and things will communicate with each other with their own artificial intelligence. Yesterday, as reported by ReadWriteWeb, Cisco stated that by 2020, there will be 50 billion “things” connected to the Internet, including everything from your body, car and alarm clock to cows.
We are already inventing technology that is smarter, stronger and faster than us, and giving it the power to communicate. Cisco is currently developing connected city buses that will communicate with the Internet to give passengers information on location, estimated time of arrival and the ability to surf the web through touch screens. Soon, the buses will be equipped with smart technology to reduce collisions and emissions and help drivers avoid congestion, locate points of interest and contact emergency services.
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This is the 25th article in a continuing series that examines the state of the ecosystem necessary to successfully bring technology to market. Based on dozens of interviews with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors, business leaders, academics, tech-transfer experts and policy makers, this series looks at what is working and what can be improved in the go-to-market ecosystem in the United States, Canada and Britain. We invite your feedback.
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
Scott Annan is no stranger to the Ottawa startup community. The founder of software development and web consultancy Mercury Grove and social utility Network Hippo fits the mould of what we describe as a champion. In addition to his regular involvement with various organizations and events around town that help nascent entrepreneurs get their technology to market, he hosts DemoCamp and opens up Mercury Grove’s HQ as a co-working space.
A couple of weeks ago, Scott announced that he and a host of other stakeholders in the Ottawa technology community will launch this fall a new incubator and accelerator fund that will provide up to $25,000 in seed financing to eligible participants. Five to 10 startups will be accepted into the first intake of the four-month program, which will operate out of the Mercury Grove office.
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Content marketing as an antidote to media’s game of broken telephone
July 15, 2011 by Linda Forrest
Does everyone remember the game broken telephone? There’s a brilliant example of it from the Simpsons that added the phrase “Purple monkey dishwasher” to the lexicon of some circles […]
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Google Plus could revolutionize the social media landscape, if it listens to early adopters
July 14, 2011 by Alexandra Reid
Google Plus is all the rave, but will it eventually experience the same outcome as Wave? Bloggers and social media enthusiasts are clearly excited about the new platform, dissecting, praising and criticizing its features and debating […]
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Making lemonade: Four big ideas
July 13, 2011 by Andrew Penny
Global warming, Greek debt crisis, Chinese labour issues, U.S. unemployment, Royal visits… life is tough and running a business with all this change and uncertainty is even tougher … or is it? I say when life gives you lemons, open a lemonade stand! […]
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Help reduce web garbage by committing to a social media content strategy
July 12, 2011 by Alexandra Reid
Engaging content is integral to the success of your overall social media efforts. It has the potential to be the lifeblood to your digital persona that motivates your audience to engage with you. It can embody your mission, positioning and approach and humanize your business by giving it a voice […]
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Championship: Back to school
July 11, 2011 by Francis Moran
A couple of moons ago, we talked about how “entrepreneur” is often a four-letter word on the university campus. Too many schools fail to appreciate how Web 2.0 has democratized innovation for the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world and make the mistake of assuming it’s only engineers or physics students who can come up with the next billion-dollar idea […]
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Champions in the media and analyst communities
July 08, 2011 by Linda Forrest
My colleagues have been writing about the role of champions in bringing technology to market, examining what role internal and external champions play in determining the market success of your product. I’d like to examine a subset of the external group […]
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Fiction: Media relations is “free advertising”
July 07, 2011 by Francis Moran
At the time my PR agency, inmedia Public Relations, was founded, I worked out of a large integrated agency in the city and some of the account executives there loved to push my buttons by declaring that media relations was free advertising […]
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Measuring social media: A step-by-step guide for newbies
July 06, 2011 by Alexandra Reid
Over the last two weeks, I have taught our readers how to grasp the basic concepts required for monitoring and managing social media so they can be more effective in marketing their businesses on these channels […]
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Traditional Marketing is Dead – Long Live Bikini Waxer Marketing | Scalexl : [...] pointed out by Alexandra Reid on the Francis Moran website content marketing is becoming more and more like journalism. So, it is not just about the content, [...]
It’s Summertime…and the Networking is Easy? | THE MERRAINE BRAIN : [...] In fact, summer is perhaps one of the times least used to network, yet at the same time has shown to be the most productive time to network. People tend to be in a brighter mood compared to during the gloomy winters-especially where I am from in England! Networking needs to be fun and not approached as another chore, like mowing the lawn. (http://francis-moran.com/marketing-strategy/social-media-strategy-why-meeting-in-the-real-world-matt...) [...]