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Insights from the other side

• Posted by Leo Valiquette
• April 22, 2008
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By Leo Valiquette

For the first time in almost eight years, there’s a different employer cited on my voice mail and e-mail and that comes as a far greater shock at this point than realizing my transition to the Dark Side is complete.

If you have had a chance to read Francis’s post below, you already know my background as a journalist, most recently as editor of the Ottawa Business Journal. Last week as I bid a fond farewell to the OBJ, my former colleagues teasingly referred to my career change as “The Quest for the Bling” with a mock front page that featured me as Frodo in a still from “Lord of the Rings.”

Well, I can’t say that income had nothing to do with my decision to take the leap, but of far greater importance was finding a shop with good people with whom I shared a common philosophy in terms of how PR should be done. The technology sector was obviously a key area of focus for the OBJ, but the paper is not a trade publication. How technology works, the minutiae of bells, whistles, and compatibilities, is not the focus of the paper’s coverage. What’s important is the business case for a particular product or technology. What need does it fill in the market? How does the company intend to exploit that need and build a sustainable stream of revenue? Those are the kinds of questions we wanted to explore at the OBJ.

When I started casting the net for career options, it didn’t take long to find kindred spirits at inmedia, where there is a similar emphasis on how clients’ stories are told. In fact, it was a breath of fresh air after enduring reams of poorly researched and ill-prepared pitches while working as a journalist. Nothing burned my bacon more than junior PR flacks who tripped through their delivery as if they there reading a script that had just been handed to them, or more seasoned professionals who should have known the OBJ was the wrong kind of media outlet for what they were peddling. My thought was, if you haven’t taken the time to figure these things out, why should I take the time to listen?

But a PR pro who understands the importance of personal, hands-on service is only half of the equation. The other is the company executive holding the purse strings. Working as a business journalist gave me the opportunity to speak with scores of talent managers, headhunters, venture capitalists and sales and marketing gurus about what it takes to build a strong and successful company. A company that doesn’t rely on the “wow factor” of a product’s bells and whistles to drive sales and realizes that to settle for being “local” rather than global is to settle for mediocrity. Some executives get it, some don’t, and others never will.

In my new role with inmedia, I look forward to working with the ones that do and winning converts from among the rest.

Leo Valiquette

Posted in:

• Public and media relations
• Technology marketing

Welcome to the dark side, Leo

• Posted by Francis Moran
• April 21, 2008
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By Francis Moran

In the ongoing, mainly good-natured battle between the ink-stained wretches of the journalism trade and the spin doctors of the public relations game, it is generally acknowledged by both sides that they (the journos, that is) are seen as the forces of goodness and light while we, the spinners, are evil incarnate. (Personally, I have found PR to be a more honestly straightforward, if more obviously commercial, proposition than the necessary compromises, deals and half-truths of journalism, but that’s an entire other blog post. Or three.)

I am lapsing into this philosophical musing today because we have won another one over to the dark side, and we’re proud of it.

Today is the first day at inmedia — indeed, the first day in PR — for Leo Valiquette, who spent nearly 10 years on the other side of the great divide, the last eight or so at the Ottawa Business Journal where he most recently was editor of the weekly. Leo is well known around the city and, if the number of congratulatory emails I’ve received since news of his move first slipped out are any indication, is also well respected.

We know Leo from many years of effective dealings with the OBJ on behalf of our clients and have always found him to be a good writer, with a firm grasp of the issues and a decent guy. We’re delighted to have him on board.

Welcome to the dark side, Leo. The plans to the death star are on your laptop.

Francis Moran

Posted in:

• Public and media relations

ITWorldCanada names Canada’s top 10 technology blogs

• Posted by inmedia
• April 21, 2008
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By inmedia

ITWorld Canada has put together what it considers the country’s 10 top bloggers on the subject of technology. If you’re looking to add to your blogroll, perhaps some of these will be of interest to you.

A shout-out is in order to our favourite Ottawa blogger Alec Saunders, who made the list at No. 7. (We blame Alec for getting us into this.)

inmedia

Posted in:

• Social media
• Technology marketing

The state of B2B publishing

• Posted by Linda Forrest
• April 18, 2008
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By Linda Forrest

There has been a lot of bad news coming out of the publishing sector in recent years and the latest segment of the publishing world to sound the alarm has been the business-to-business space, with the majority of high-profile publishers like Ziff Davis Enterprise, Nielsen and Penton announcing layoffs and restructuring.

This piece in Folio analyzes the recent spate of announcements and asks whether it’s time for B2B publishers to panic. The conclusion seems to be that those publishers that have already made a significant transition from print to online holdings will prevail, whereas those exclusively devoted to print will continue to struggle.

As noted in the article though, it’s important to realize that B2B readers behave somewhat differently than B2C readers in that they’re not sitting in front of their computers all day, meaning that print publications and portability play a more important role with these outlets.

Only time will tell how trade information is communicated in the long term. For the time being, however, there’s a healthy mix of both print and online outlets where our clients can receive valuable coverage and glean intelligence about their markets.

Linda Forrest

Posted in:

• Public and media relations

‘First-inch’ devices spur broadband uptake

• Posted by Francis Moran
• April 18, 2008
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By Francis Moran

Back in the early years of this decade, when my wife worked in marketing for a large optical components company and inmedia‘s client portfolio was well studded with fiberoptic and next-generation communications companies, it just wasn’t Q1 in our household unless one or both of us were headed to the big Optical Fiber Communications Conference and Exposition, usually held in March at the Anaheim Convention Center.

At one memorable session at OFC2002, Kevin Kalkhoven, who had recently stepped down as CEO of JDS Uniphase, asked how many of those in the room had access to a broadband internet connection at home. About 10% of the hands in the room went up. And this, mind you, in a room full of people whose very business was high-speed communications!

My own hand was not among those in the air, but it wasn’t for lack of desire or want of trying to get a broadband connection at home. At that time, we lived along the Rideau River about 30 kms south of Ottawa. We were more than eight kms away from the nearest telephone carrier central office, so beyond the reach of DSL. Our cable service provider had not yet installed the necessary infrastructure to support an internet service. A very promising high-speed fixed-wireless transmitter was in the neighbourhood and we did fall within its footprint, but, being on the river, we were down in a slight valley and so shadowed from that transmission tower where line-of-sight was necessary. I eventually invested a huge sum in a satellite service that delivered a blinding 640k down and about 128 up.

Kalkhoven went on to describe the market forces he thought were in play that would drive broadband uptake at home. This was in the immediate aftermath of the dot.com meltdown, when massive investments in fiber networks and the hardware to manage them were being seen as utter folly. Thousands of miles of optical cable were lying dark, and some were wondering if those networks would ever be lit.

Kalkhoven told the crowd not to lose faith. Key among the the drivers he identified was what he called “first-inch” devices, a phrase that has continued to make an impression on me both because it was so highly descriptive but also because it was so unusually customer centric. One of the problems with the communications industry, Kalkhoven said that day, is that it refers to that last final link to the end-user as the last mile. “Since when was the customer the last part of anything” he asked, insisting that the link to the customer should be called the first mile.

He then went on to describe first-inch devices, those things that customers hold in their hands that would drive broadband demand. He said that the most popular gift the previous Christmas had been digital cameras. And what do you do after you take a picture with your new digital camera, he asked? You send it to grandma.

Second-most popular gift was game consoles, many of which were internet-ready, meaning players could connect with other players across the net.

Both these new toys were first-inch devices that were going to drive massive demand for broadband in the consumer market, he predicted, and this was before VoIP telephony was much more than a gleam in an engineer’s eye and social networking was something you tried to avoid contracting if you were sexually active.

Fast forward to today, and a Scarborough Research study that has measured a 300% increase in U.S. household broadband penetration since Kalkhoven gave that chat at OFC. According to the study, just less than half (49%) of U.S. households currently subscribe to a broadband internet service, up from 12% in 2002.

Impressive though that growth may be, the U.S. still significantly lags the world. Using a somewhat different index, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said in June last year the U.S. had 22.1 broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants, good for only 15th place among OECD countries. Leading the pack were Denmark with 34.3, Netherlands with 33.5 and Switzerland with 30.7. Canada was in ninth place with 24.9, and the United Kingdom clocked in at 11th place with 23.7.

Francis Moran

Posted in:

• Product marketing
• Technology marketing