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Ask and ye shall receive

• Posted by Leo Valiquette
• October 17, 2008
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By Leo Valiquette

A frequent challenge with the classic pitch approach to technology trade media is that, while you may have crafted a well thought out and punchy line to approach them with, you have no idea what it is the editors are actually looking for. Sure, you may sometimes find your approach is successful, but many of your failures could have been averted by following a simple procedure: Ask the media about what elements they see in your story that are of interest to them.

In addition to being a less aggressive tactic than trying to sell a specific story angle every time, this kind of approach is also often welcomed by the editor or reporter, who is fed up with fending off pitches that don’t hold any interest whatsoever.

I am not throwing the concept of the story pitch out the window – some of the best hits come through bringing an innovative story idea to editors that they had not previously considered. But asking questions can help even the best pitchers to improve their game.

Once you have established a clear idea of what your various targets are looking for, then your pitches can be tailored to fit the needs of those targets. It sounds obvious, but this is about more than just going to the web site and reading the “how to get coverage” section. It is about approaching a specific person and getting them to provide you with their perspective on what elements of your company or product story could be useful to them.

Coupling this information with your knowledge of what you can deliver gives you a clear view of how to work with this target. It may mean that you have to wait for six months for some kind of milestone or industry event to occur, but the important fact is that you know what the opportunity is.

Leo Valiquette

Posted in:

• Public and media relations

Mole hills can build mountains

• Posted by Leo Valiquette
• October 16, 2008
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By Leo Valiquette

Labarge Weinstein hosted yet another well-attended and informative Startup Drop-in event last night for The Ottawa Network, and the theme of the evening demonstrated how seemingly innocuous things can have a most profound impact when duplicated on a large scale.

The theme was cleantech, featuring Ron Dizy of Sempa Power Systems, a Vancouver firm that specializes in hybrid power systems that help cut utility bills for commercial and industrial buildings. Ron talked about how customers can cut their power bills by 10 to 30 per cent by switching to electrical heating during off-peak hours and back to fossil fuel-based heating when the demand for, and the cost of, electricity is at its highest.

The evening also featured three of Ottawa’s rising stars in the cleantech sphere.

Energate, which helps consumers and utilities manage and reduce energy use in the home, was represented by chairman and CEO Niraj Bhargava. He emphasized the simple truth that we’re all creatures of habit unlikely to adopt methods of energy conservation if they mean curbing our use of the domestic comforts we’ve all come to take for granted, such as heating and air-conditioning. Energate’s speciality is managing energy use in ways we can bear to live with.

Dave Gerwing, president of Menova Energy, talked about how much power there is untapped in the rays of the sun. (I believe he said enough sunlight strikes the earth in one minute to power the planet for six months. Any error in that statement is entirely mine). But the trick is to capture it. Menova has developed a high-efficiency solar concentrator that captures this clean power source for electrical power, heating and lighting, hundreds of times more efficiently and at a fraction of the cost of traditional solar power technology.

But the most profound illustration of how the little things can add up to monumental proportions came from Scott Feagan, CEO of TireStamp. His company is in the business of making devices that allow corporate fleets to monitor and manage tire pressure and condition. Sounds like a practical enough solution, but not much of a “Wow” factor, is there?

Well, then Scott started talking about how quickly an under-inflated tire wears out, how under-inflation impacts fuel efficiency, how many gallons of oil are needed to make a replacement tire, the highway fatalities attributed every year to blowouts on commercial vehicles, and the billions some of the big parcel companies pay each year in fuel, no one in that room was left with any doubt that proper tire inflation and maintenance is a huge factor in reducing global pollution and resource consumption.

As individuals, we often wonder what we can do to make a difference. The truth is, there is no magic bullet to cure our environmental challenges. But, as last night’s event demonstrated, all those little things we can do, either at home, on the road or in the workplace, can add up in a big way.

Leo Valiquette

Posted in:

• Startups

Show them the money, not the bells and whistles

• Posted by Leo Valiquette
• October 15, 2008
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By Leo Valiquette

The Ottawa Citizen’s Mark Anderson wrote an entertaining and insightful piece this week about the tribulations of being a generalist business and technology reporter confronted by media releases loaded with tongue-twisting jargon.

As a former business journalist, I can certainly empathize with the challenges faced by those on the receiving end of the pitch machine. Attention spans are pinched by the news demands of the day and the host of other pitches clogging up voicemail and email inboxes. That which isn’t easily understood is easily trashed in favour of that which can be deciphered in five seconds or less.

As Mark emphasizes, this doesn’t mean that you have to try and provide the Dummy’s Guide to your client’s technology in the brief time you have to make your pitch. What you must do is convey in clear dollars and cents terms the significance of the news. Companies don’t peddle products and services unless there is an obvious financial benefit (well, they shouldn’t anyway). There’s the benefit to themselves in terms of the value they are bringing to the market, and there is the value to their clients to improve their own service offerings or drive greater efficiencies that will boost profit margins.

As we say at inmedia, it’s about the business case for the technology. Follow the money and find your story.

Leo Valiquette

Posted in:

• Public and media relations

The foreseeable future isn’t

• Posted by Francis Moran
• October 14, 2008
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By Francis Moran

“Life has a way of making the foreseeable that which never happens … and the unforeseeable that which your life becomes.”

I heard that line on Thursday evening last week when I went to see the new movie, Appaloosa, a terrific duster starring Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen as two gunslingers hired to keep the peace in the town that gives the movie its title.

But the words could just as easily have been spoken by Stephen Poloz, senior vice-president of financing at Export Development Canada, who earlier the same day gave the keynote luncheon address at the Ottawa Venture and Technology Summit.

For a banker, Poloz had lots of funny lines as he delivered a logical explanation of how a bit of a live-for-today spending spree by American consumers in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks led inevitably to the near-collapse of the entire capitalist system.

If your world can be randomly eviscerated by unimaginable events well beyond your control, he argued, “what’s the point of having a credit card paid off?” This attitude led Americans to “spend every nickle they earned and every nickle they could borrow.”

The banks played along. “You can’t have a good speculative bubble without a good bank,” Poloz said, adding that the key thing the banks did was redefine what once was known as “uncreditworthy.” “Now we just call them sub-prime, and give them a loan.” Those loans were packaged up and sold off as well-rated and secure investments, adding further leverage to a situation that was already cranked way beyond sustainability.

And when housing prices stopped rising, the blow that American consumers feared would come from terrorists ended up being a self-inflicted wound. This last bit is my take, not Poloz’s.

What Poloz could not do, however, was give any counsel, and this is where he started sounding like novelist Robert B. Parker’s enigmatic retired soldier Everett Hitch. “The most important insight here is, we don’t know” what’s going to happen, Poloz said. “The models don’t explain what happened and they can’t explain what’s going to happen.”

Trouble is, he then started applying those broken models by way of reassuring his audience.

For example, he said the $700-billion package put together by the U.S. government would be enough to counter the $7 trillion he said speculators had blown into the markets because banks can take a dollar of fresh capital and lever $10 in new loans from it. Well, maybe under the old model they could.

Further, he said the meltdown of the U.S. economy would not have the same repercussions as those experienced by Latin American countries or Japan or others in decades past because, unlike then, the economy is not fragile, the regulatory regime is strong and the government has a good balance sheet. I’m not sure which American government he was referring to, but none of those three sound anything like they apply to the government that runs a big country just south of here.

For all of us who have been whipsawed by the markets over the past several weeks, the unforeseeable truly has been made into what our lives have become.

Francis Moran

Posted in:

• Marketing strategy
• Technology marketing

A stick handler extraordinaire

• Posted by Leo Valiquette
• October 10, 2008
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By Leo Valiquette

Before I head off to a long weekend of turkey, ham and all the various and sundry other foodstuffs that go along with it, I’m joining what promises to be an A-list crowd peppered with big names from the NHL for tonight is the annual CEO of the Year gala hosted by my former colleagues at the Ottawa Business Journal.

It promises to be a memorable evening, even for one such as myself who has only a lukewarm interest in the professional hockey season, with tributes from Wayne Gretzky and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.

They’re coming, of course, to honour the 2008 CEO of the Year, Ottawa Senators chief executive Roy Mlakar. This year’s pick, as determined by OBJ senior staff and the winners from previous years, is a departure from the typical private-sector executive one would expect in a tech-heavy town like Ottawa, but as this week’s profile in the OBJ attests,  Mlakar has proven himself a savvy and successful CEO who has confidently guided the franchise through some shaky times.

Congrats to Mlakar and hats off to the team at the OBJ for the work they do to recognize business excellence in our fair city.

Leo Valiquette

Posted in:

• Random thoughts