This is the next entry 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 January 2011. We welcome your feedback.
By Francis Moran
I heard the saddest story the other day.
A few years ago, we worked on the launch of a new personal finance website developed by a veteran personal financial advisor. The site was detailed, secure, incredibly useful and solved a sharp, expensive and disruptive pain that the advisor had been running up against his entire professional life.
Our media launch went well. We got some decent coverage, both in mass media and, more valuably, in the trade media reaching financial advisors. Although the site was designed for individual subscriptions, advisors were identified as its most important channel to market since they were expected to counsel their clients to use it.
We were a little confused when the campaign was not continued past that initial launch, especially since some of the best opportunities we generated for the client were over the long term, including, for example, an agreement to have the site’s creator contribute a regular column to one of the key trade publications in the space. From the other folks working on the launch we heard encouraging news about the possibility that the site would be white-labelled by one of the largest firms of financial advisors on the continent, and other early signs of traction. So we were at a bit of a loss when everything went unexpectedly quiet.
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By Leo Valiquette
I’ve blogged before about my ambitions to become a fabulously successful novelist and my annual April trek to Toronto to attend the Ad Astra literary conference. Having just returned from the 2013 edition, here are my latest observations that apply as much to entrepreneurs as they do to authors.
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By Denzil Doyle
By definition, innovation is all about change, which means that the duties and responsibilities of a high technology CEO are bound to change as the company grows.
While a board of directors must pay close attention to those changes and how well the existing CEO is reacting to them, the board must resist the temptation to terminate the CEO prematurely. This is particularly true if the founding CEO is a technical person. Many directors are of the opinion that it is their responsibility to bring in a more “business-oriented” person at the first sign of trouble.
Unfortunately, business orientation can mean different things to different people, but as a general rule, the following four parameters are important in a CEO’s evaluation:
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By Daylin Mantyka
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are ReadWriteWeb, Ventureburn, Techvibes, Damn, I Wish I’d Thought of That and Velocity.
Smarter marketing: How minority report got it all wrong
In her article, Sarah Rotman Epps talks about the Smart Body, Smart World paradigm — how sensor-laden devices like wearables give us access to new domains of information. When speaking with marketing executives, Sarah finds a consistent comparison to the 2002 movie, Minority Report. She argues that the Minority Report-style marketing is a “dumb vision of the smart future” and provides some intelligent advice on implementing innovative tactics that rightly embrace the future of marketing.
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By David J. French
Businesses, particularly when they are starting out, often make the mistake of assuming that by merely incorporating they have reserved their name. They have acquired some rights, but only in the smallest sense. The corporate register that issues a corporate name, for example the province or the federal government, will not create another corporation with the same name. But that does not mean that merely because a corporation has been formed that such company has the right to stop others from using its name simply because it has been incorporated.
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‘You can’t cross a canyon in two leaps’
April 03, 2013 by Francis Moran
Canada lost one of its most populist and colourful political characters last week when former Alberta premier and Calgary mayor Ralph Klein died. There are a number of marketing lessons, both salutary and otherwise, to be drawn from the exploits of this seemingly simple man […]
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Best of: Just the facts … no, these facts
April 02, 2013 by Leo Valiquette
In my years as a journalist I endured my fair share of embarrassing gaffes, both my own and those of my staff (which I was often on the hook to explain, apologize for and redress.) Despite the emphasis on clean, factual and reliable content, the occasional mistake is made in the newspaper business […]
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March roundup: What does it take to get technology to market?
April 01, 2013 by Leo Valiquette
March break aside, we kept up the pace last month with a great lineup of content that featured some excellent posts from our guest bloggers. Hot topics included opportunities in the global smart TV market, criteria for hiring a worthy writer and the risks and rewards of having a product that is truly unique in the marketplace […]
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Great articles roundup: Social media strategy, product differentiation, investor questions, Canadian startup ecosystem
March 28, 2013 by Daylin Mantyka
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are Marketing Tech Blog, Duct Tape Marketing, Ventureburn and StartupNorth […]
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The ‘Accelerator Bubble’ will pop, but not for the reason you think it will
March 27, 2013 by Jesse Rodgers
The incubator/accelerator market has a growing number of people watching and waiting for its bubble to pop. The reasons cited for this looming pop should be obvious: most accelerators aren’t going to perform as well as some TechStars programs and not even close to Y Combinator […]
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The ballad of the undifferentiated product
March 26, 2013 by Francis Moran
I’ve been doing a lot of work with clients lately on refining their messaging and marketplace differentiation. It has always been clear to me that this is not a trivial thing […]
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Three (not so) simple strategies to avoid ‘losing the plot’ in marketing
March 25, 2013 by Rob Woyzbun
In today’s hyper-paced marketing and advertising world, it’s easy for marketing management to “lose the plot” related to the purpose of the firm, the understanding of the customers it serves, and finally the profitable creation, production and delivery of products and services […]
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Great articles roundup: The mission question, content marketing, motivation, innovation, Starbucks’ epic fail
March 22, 2013 by Daylin Mantyka
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are copyblogger and Read Write Web and three great articles from Fast Company […]
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The Future of A&R – Walabe : [...] http://francis-moran.com/marketing-strategy/top-10-questions-every-strategic-communicator-should-ask... [...]
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...) [...]