By Leo Valiquette
There is no shortage of counsel that an economic rough patch is the time to ramp up, not reduce, a company’s investment in marketing and public relations. When potential customers are reconsidering or holding off on purchasing decisions, you need to be out there giving them a reason why they need to buy, and buy from you, now.
In the current environment, companies that are nimble and can adapt quickly will not only be the ones that survive, but will also be the ones that prosper as they take advantage of the confusion, fear and indecision of competitors standing on the sidelines wringing their hands as the same old way of doing things fails to yield the results it once did.
What needs to change is the message you are putting out. Everyone is feeling the pain of a recessionary economy. Our motto at inmedia has always been that it’s not about the technology, but about the business case for the technology. We always emphasize to our clients that their messaging must articulate how their product or service is the drill the customer needs to make that hole in the wall. (Or as the case may be, the patching compound that will make the hole go away.) Marketing and PR are crucial tools to convey how your product or service can address the most acute and top-of-mind pain points of your customers. They are also key to reaching and cultivating new markets.
Entrepreneur Magazine recently published a good article on where to avoid the temptation to drop the axe to cut costs. It featured a great perspective from Ann Handley, chief content officer at MarketingProfs. She emphasized the importance of marketing in a slump to maintain the volume of sales leads, and to adjust your messaging to reflect the current realities facing potential customers.
“If you sell washing machines, for example, and people don’t want to buy new models, you can stress how much they’ll save on maintenance and electricity with a more energy-efficient model,” she said.
Of course, adjusting your messaging and targeting new markets must make sense and hold the potential of a return greater than the investment. My catalyst for writing this post came from a radio ad I heard the other day from a company that is obviously thinking outside the box to reach a broader demographic of potential customers.
The ad came from retail pharmacy chain Jean Coutu and featured a fellow talking to his buddy about how busy he is taking care of the baby on paternity leave. His comment was along the lines of, “My wife does her part, but thank goodness for Jean Coutu.”
OK. Creative thinking on Jean Coutu’s part? Yes. An untapped market? Maybe. A big market worthy of the effort? Not so sure on that one, though I will concede it may catch the attention of a broader male demographic than just dads on pat leave. What’s important is that it demonstrates the kind of creative thinking that companies need to succeed in the current environment and the value of maintaining the marketing investment. (Consider this free plug I just gave Jean Coutu because I heard that ad and it resonated because I’m a father with a four-year-old.)
By Francis Moran
It might seem odd for this tech-focused blog to be writing about ringette, Canada’s other very cool game played on ice. Believe it or not, however, Ringette Canada was an original inmedia PR client, one for which I had been working for a few years when I founded the agency in 1998.
Another inmedia original was Alayne Martell, who was employee number 3, joining us scant days after we legally incorporated the company. Alayne swiftly assumed responsibility for the ringette account and, when she and inmedia parted ways a few years back, we agreed it made most sense that she take that account along with her.
Alayne being the phenomenal media relations practitioner she is, she has built up the account and continues to provide incredible service to the Canadian — and, periodically, even the international — ringette community notwithstanding that she lives on tiny Brier Island off the very tip of Digby Neck in her native Nova Scotia.
Alayne told me a few days ago about a terrific media hit for the sport and I promised her I would blog about it here. The CBC’s resident funny man and political satirist Rick Mercer suited up last month with the Cambridge Turbos of the National Ringette League and the piece will run on The Rick Mercer Report tonight at 8 p.m., repeating on Friday at 7:30 p.m.
Maybe the only thing in Canada faster than Mercer’s mouth when he’s doing one of his famous rants is a ringette player closing in on the net. Tune in; it should be a hoot.
By Danny Sullivan
I just read John Rogers’ AP report on the PR phenomenon that surrounds “Octomom”, the California mother who successfully gave birth to eight babies last month. It seems the initial widespread news reporting of the “miracle” story has quickly given way to almost universal derision of the woman for her irresponsibilty in having more children and her attempts to gain financially from the story. Indeed, the mother’s publicist, who had represented her for free, was forced to end his work with her after receiving death threats. Unbelievable.
But this example shows how quickly the double-edged PR sword can turn on you. If the mother had opted for privacy following the birth, the breaking news stories would have come and gone, she would likely have had to lie low for a few weeks until the buzz died down, and might then have been left in relative peace to get on with changing all those nappies. Instead, it appears she opted to capitalize on the PR, and is now paying the price for doing so. Ultimately, the realities of her full story did not meet with the same reaction as the initial focus on the miracle of eight surviving babies.
I’m not sure it would have made any difference to Octomom’s situation, but there is a lesson to be taken from this. Focusing on a single key message, whether it be eight babies or a “world-first” technology, can be a tremendous way to generate headlines, but there always comes a point at which your story’s surface will be scratched and the deeper details will be revealed. Whether you’re planning a product launch, publishing the results of a study, or announcing a new business strategy, make sure that whole story stands up to scrutiny or the initial headlines will always be superceded by the truth.
[Tags] Octomom, octuplets, messaging, marketing, public relations [/tags]
By Leo Valiquette
“Venture capital is dead. It’s gone.”
Sir Terry Matthews didn’t mince words Thursday morning as the keynote speaker at OCRI’s Technology Executive Breakfast. Not that he ever does. And while some might argue that statement about the status of Canada’s venture capital industry, or at least its level of activity in the nation’s capital, may be a bit premature, that’s not the point.
The point is, who cares?
Matthews and partner Michael Cowpland began the first incarnation of Mitel in 1972 with persistence, sweat and a $4,000 bank loan. That was enough to get their first product to market in nine months. This was followed by Mitel’s breakthrough product: a PBX phone system with a software switch. Mitel beat out about 40 larger competitors to win a watershed contract with AT&T, the first time, Matthews said, that the telecommunications giant contracted out. That deal, and a $250,000 grant through Canada’s IRAP program, took Mitel from zero to a 20-per-cent global market share in five years and made millionaires out of penny investors.
And while sheer persistence and hard work were part of the secret sauce for Mitel’s success, and for every success Matthews has had since then as the man behind the creation of more than 80 high-tech ventures, he cited an even more important ingredient: the core competency of partnerships.
Partnerships build technology clusters. Partnerships allow a company to capitalize on another’s strengths without having to carry the overhead of developing a particular area of expertise in house. Partnerships take advantage of another’s time and money invested in R&D to compliment your own.
Matthews holds Nortel’s utter aversion to partnerships to blame in no small degree for the company’s misfortunes.
And while there undoubtedly are challenges in the marketplace at present, Matthews insisted there is a resurgence at hand as ambitious and nimble entrepreneurs of the next generation make their mark. They just need a commitment of time and mentorship from those with experience and money to invest. Venture capital is irrelevant. Time is what’s important.
Matthews’ approach is to find the key contact in a post-secondary institution passionate about commercializing ideas into start-up companies to help him cherry pick the cream of the crop from among new grads. He wants to work with the handful who have the drive, ambition and adaptability critical to surviving and thriving in tough times. He puts these teams together, puts his resources behind them, and sets out to identify and develop a viable product and market niche. By engaging with the market, he will guide this team through the process of honing, refining and focusing the idea until there is a viable business ready to be formally launched.
In return for this intensive mentoring and a high-pressure work schedule that pays little attention to weekends and holidays, each team member is paid the lofty salary of $25,000. However, what they should be paid but are not is parlayed into ownership stakes in the new company.
Matthews believes there is no more effective way to quickly bring a product to market. And being first to market is the only way for North America and Europe to compete in a global economy that is now flat with few if any true trade barriers. With Asia pumping out engineering talent that works for a 10th of what ours does, trying to compete on cost is a death sentence.
So the next time you hear someone pining for the return of the good ol’ days of the telecom boom, or whining about the demise of the venture-capital industry, do as Matthews does and take a chapter from Darwin: it is not the strongest or the most intelligent that survive, but the ones most capable of adapting.
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We’re now Twits!
February 25, 2009 by Francis Moran
By Francis Moran When we launched this blog about 18 months ago, I blamed congenital social media addict Alec Saunders for persuading me that I and my colleagues here at inmedia PR had enough to say that we should be blogging. Nothing we’ve seen in the time since would persuade me he was wrong; our […]
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How stale is your contact list?
February 24, 2009 by Leo Valiquette
By Leo Valiquette There is no question that we PR types are often taken to task for blitzing the world with news of little relevance or importance or, at least, for failing to ensure that the news is relevant and important to the hapless targets in range of our scatter guns. In an ongoing series of […]
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Two inmedia clients among OCRI awards finalists
February 19, 2009 by Francis Moran
By Francis Moran Two inmedia clients, PIKA Technologies Inc. and Vocantas Inc., are finalists in two different categories of the 2009 OCRI Awards. Interestingly, both work with advanced voice technologies. PIKA, a developer of media-processing hardware and software, made the cut in the Product of the Year category while Vocantas, which develops advanced interactive voice-response […]
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Media train, but don’t overdo it!
February 18, 2009 by Danny Sullivan
By Danny Sullivan Last week was a particularly uncomfortable one for four ex-banking bigwigs here in the UK. They faced a public grilling from British MPs about their roles in the events that led to two of the country’s biggest banks needing to be rescued with taxpayers’ money. The extensive media training that each received […]
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Positive PR on a personal level
February 13, 2009 by Leo Valiquette
By Leo Valiquette A recent example of how not to manage the hack-flack relationship provided some entertainment value for the Twitter crowd and profound embarrassment for the National Post earlier this week. The war of words between marketing consultant April Dunford and Post writer David George-Cosh in such a public venue (though as you can see […]
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Straight from the dragon’s mouth
February 06, 2009 by Leo Valiquette
By Leo Valiquette “Even if there’s blood on the street there’s always somebody making money. You just have to make sure you’re on the right side of it.” The son of poor Croatian immigrants, he sold his first company for $100 million in 2000. His second company, launched in 2003, is now the largest privately held IT […]
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Having skin in the game
February 05, 2009 by Leo Valiquette
By Leo Valiquette “What we’ve done is turn our people into raving capitalists.” Not the label one might think to apply to the employees of Canadian airline WestJet, but that was how Duncan Bureau, WestJet’s vice president of sales, characterized the company’s singular focus on customer service while delivering the opening keynote at the 2009 […]
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January roundup: Murder, just rewards and straight talk
February 02, 2009 by inmedia
By inmedia In case you missed them, here’s a recap of our blog posts from January. Francis Jan. 16: Why is a startup like murder? Jan. 30: ‘It’s just unbelievable how far customer service can go.’ Danny Jan. 12: Could recession spell the end for print? Jan. 23: The value of shooting the breeze Leo […]
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