By Bob Bailly
My recent posts have looked at how our evolutionary past has shaped our modern business behaviour. Recently I looked at the desire to live and work in a tribal setting – a feeling so powerful that many of our business practices are based upon a tribe’s primitive functioning. I also looked at the notion that tribes demand strong leaders, and these leaders must inspire their followers (through fear, heredity or action). Followers must also understand and accept their roles for the tribe to be successful.
I pointed out that there were other conditions necessary for us to want to belong. Here are three I noted, with some comments about implications for modern business.
- Tribes have a strong culture and are prone to develop and use cultural symbols.
- Tribes develop stories, sometimes magical and sometimes mythical, that define their values.
- Tribes have enemies, and the stronger the enemy the stronger the loyalty to the tribe.
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By Francis Moran
I first became aware of the Stop Kony 2012 campaign late on Wednesday evening and, from my very first viewing of the video, I had a sharp visceral objection to what I was watching.
The marketer in me objected to the video’s manipulative emotional hard sell whilst acknowledging with no small amount of awe the incredibly slick and effective manner in which it was done.
The informed citizen in me objected to the video’s simplistic reductionism of a complex, multi-dimensional and long-standing and intractable issue.
The journalist in me objected to the video’s factual misrepresentation and cheap sensationalism, and cried over the tragic African illiteracy of too many westerners that would allow this sort of intellectual pablum to be swallowed as truth.
The due diligence streak in me objected to the video’s expensive and lavish production values, and further investigation confirmed the charity behind the video has a superb track record at fund-raising and a less-than-superb track record of spending that money on front-line programming.
And, most viscerally, the Africaphile in me objected violently to the video’s deeply offensive subtextual narrative that Africans are helpless savages who must be rescued by some white man.
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By Martin Soorjoo
This is a guest post from investment coach Martin Soorjoo. We welcome your comments.
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail
– Benjamin Franklin
There are three undisputed truths:
- Delivering a winning pitch will often determine the survival and success of a business.
- People create their best work when they have time, space, and silence.
- Proper rehearsal is critical to delivering a professional, persuasive performance.
Yet despite these truths, most sales and investor pitch preparation takes place at the 11th hour, amid constant distraction and noise with minimal, if any, rehearsal. It’s a small wonder that most pitches are weak and ineffective and consequently fail.
The first draft of anything is shit.
– Ernest Hemingway
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By Francis Moran
Ottawa is about to finally get its own edition of Startup Weekend, a global phenomenon that has seen more than 45,000 technical and business people come together in more than 200 separate events around the world to spend a full weekend building new businesses. The intensive 54-hour company-building competition will take place in the nation’s capital April 27 to 29 at Shopify’s headquarters at 126 York Street in the Byward Market.
Although The Ottawa Network had a similar event a couple of years ago, this will be the first time the city has welcomed the official Startup Weekend, an initiative of the Kauffman Foundation, the large American NGO that promotes entrepreneurship. The event kicks off on Friday evening with rapid-fire pitches from participants who would like their ideas to be the focus of company-building teams over the weekend. All participants vote on which ideas will be workshopped, and teams form organically around each idea. The teams work feverishly all weekend, breaking occasionally for presentations, sleep and coffee, and present their ideas late on Sunday afternoon. A panel of judges selects the winning team.
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We kicked off the second year of our new blog with a strong month of posts that covered a wide range of topics including leadership, content marketing, SEO, Pinterest for B2B businesses, trademarks, free tools for social media and PR, and succession planning.
On that final point, we said a sad farewell to a valued colleague last month. For our Linda Forrest, it was time for a new challenge in a new city. After a successful seven years with us, Linda has taken on the role of Digital Media Communities Manager at the Canadian Digital Media Network based in Kitchener/Waterloo. We welcome you to reach out to her on LinkedIn or Twitter to stay in touch.
Without further ado, here are our posts, in case you missed them, from February.
February 8: Giving your team ownership by Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
February 15: Burning the candle at both ends as the clock ticks down by Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
February 21: What an IP Coordinator should know: Something about trademarks by David French
And on a related note…
In addition to our series, our associates and guest bloggers were also busy writing on a great range of topics. Here are our other posts from February, as ranked by the enthusiasm of our readers:
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Yeah, I am trying to get a product to market
March 05, 2012 by Leo Valiquette
For 12 years I have worked as a business journalist and marketing and public relations professional. In these roles I have engaged with a horde of entrepreneurs, executives, investors and other ink-stained wretches who would rather write about corporate stars than movie stars […]
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Yikes … we forgot the demo!
March 01, 2012 by Peter Hanschke
The ability to demo your product to a prospect is a key activity in the sales process. Prospects struggle to make the connection between what is shown in a slide deck and the issues that they need to address or the problems they need to solve […]
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A timely post about succession planning in PR
February 29, 2012 by Linda Forrest
In the modern age of wikis and intranets, there’s no excuse for your PR program to fall apart when there’s a change in personnel […]
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The free tools in my social media marketing toolkit — Part 2: Management & measurement
February 27, 2012 by Alexandra Reid
In my last post, I shared and reviewed my favourite (free) social media monitoring tools that I use regularly to carry out social media marketing strategies on behalf of clients. Today, I reveal the […]
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Using Google Alerts, HARO and other free tools to bolster your PR efforts
February 24, 2012 by Linda Forrest
Earlier this week, Alexandra wrote a post about some of the free tools she uses to monitor social media activity for our clients. Today, I’m sharing how free tools like Google Alerts and HARO can be used to bolster your PR effort […]
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Best of: Think like the fish
February 23, 2012 by Francis Moran
I can’t remember when or from whom I first heard the line, “Marketers should think like the fish, not like the fisher.” But I have always enjoyed it as a pithy summary of our marketing credo that says you […]
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The free tools in my social media marketing toolkit — Part 1: Monitoring
February 22, 2012 by Alexandra Reid
I talk a lot about social media marketing strategy here, but rarely do I mention the time-and-money-saving tools that streamline my community building activities and make our social media program an effective solution for businesses […]
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What an IP Coordinator should know: Something about trademarks
February 21, 2012 by David French
In the previous postings in this series we have addressed mainly issues relating to patents. In this posting we take a break from patents to discuss another very important type of Intellectual Property […]
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By Bob Bailly
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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...) [...]