All Good Things. . .

OK, so I’ve been a very bad blogger the last couple weeks and haven’t posted anything on schedule.  I could blame the usual “Dog ate my blog,” but the fact of the matter is that I’m working on transitioning to a new life.  While I’m someone who loves to talk (more than I should most of the time) and to write – I was at a loss for words when it came to what’s been going on the last couple weeks. 

Recently, as a company exercise, everyone in the office read the book “Who Moved My Cheese?”  For anyone who hasn’t read it, I highly recommend it.  It’s a very quick read – took me less than an hour I think, but it has a very poignant message in it.  While this was intended to enlighten everyone on a professional level, it also enlightened me on a personal level. 

It all boils down to the fact that things are changing in our lives constantly, and we need to be ready to change with them.  We tend to hold on to things because they’re comfortable.  We don’t always notice when something becomes less enjoyable because it’s still comfortable.  We keep thinking it will become what it was when we found it, even though all the signs say it won’t.  The people around us can see how things have changed, but we can’t because we’re still stuck in the same mindset.

It could be that the situation has changed, but we think it will change back to how it used to be.  It could be that the situation changed, but we’re in denial so we pretend it’s the same as it was.  Or it could be the situation is the same, but we’ve changed – things that used to be a priority don’t matter as much as they did.

In my case, the latter is the reason I’m “transitioning”.  The priorities in my life changed quite a bit after some very serious upheaval in my personal life last year.  Ever since then I’ve been trying to make my old situation sync up with my new priorities – understandably, it wasn’t working.  Then a couple weeks ago another change to my situation made me really take a look at things again.  This time I took a really good look at things and the starkness of it all stared me in the face.  I made a decision to let go of the past and move on.  Once I made the decision things became much easier.  While the road ahead has me more than a little scared, it also has me very excited.

So my friends, like the title of the post implies – All good things must come to an end.  This will be my last post under this blog.  I will most likely set up another one in the near future dealing with similar topics, but in the interest of making a clean break and starting with a clean slate, I think I should go ahead and close this chapter. 

When I launch a new blog I’ll announce it through one of my social networking pages.  So, if you’re interested on what’s coming next, be sure you’re connected to me on LinkedIn or Facebook.  (Links to my profile are in the sidebar of the blog page.)

In the meantime, keep thinking up those gonzo ideas.  Take care and I’ll catch when I return to the blogosphere!

The Dog Ate My Blog – The Sequel

Ahhh, the holidays.  Kids are thinking, “It’s never gonna get here.”  Adults are thinking, “I’m never gonna get it all done.”  Unfortunately, I’m an adult (although some people would be willing to debate the issue) and the holidays throw my schedule into chaos.  In all honesty, I completely forgot yesterday was Thursday until it was almost over so I didn’t get around to making my regular blog post – hence the title.  (If you don’t get the reference, take a look at this post:  The Dog Ate My Blog)

This lends itself to a good topic for today’s post – planning out your guerilla tactics.  (How’s that for a smooth segue?)  Guerillas don’t throw out random marketing and hope something sticks.  By definition, guerilla marketing is about setting an objective & planning on how to get to it with minimal resources.   If you don’t plan out what you’re trying to do, you won’t be able to do it with minimal resources.  Lack of planning usually means you’ll be paying rush charges or you have to cut out important pieces of the campaign because you won’t have time to get them done. 

All of your marketing should have a strategic plan attached to it.  At CMC we don’t do anything for our clients without having a strategy behind it.  By starting with “What are you trying to do?” you get results.  If you start with “I’m doing this,” and then try to squeeze your goal into it – you usually end up with a lot of headaches. 

I met with a new business owner awhile back who was just launching & was ready to take out a bunch of ads.  He had no idea what he wanted to say, how it should look, or what he should be trying to get out of it – but he wanted to take out these ads.  After we talked for awhile I was able to show him how, while ads may be a good path for him at some point, it wasn’t a good starting ground.  He needed to develop a strategy for getting where he wanted to go.  Then, when the groundwork had been laid and the time was right, we could take a look and see if these ads were still a good idea.  If he had started down the path he was going, the first impression his target audience got from him would have been the wrong one. 

Whether you’re doing a big campaign or a simple flyer – start by asking yourself, “What am I trying to do?  What’s my strategy for getting there?”  You’ll be glad you did. 

I’d love to hear about the strategic high’s and low’s you’ve seen.  What was the best use of strategy or the most ill-conceived campaign you’ve seen?  Let me know.  

In the meantime I’m gonna chase down that dog and see if I can keep him from eating my blog again.  I can’t guarantee he won’t be back, but I’ll do my best to keep him on his leash.

The 30 Second Copycat

Earlier this year I had the privilege of being asked to teach a couple classes at a local Expo.  For one of the classes I was on a panel with two other speakers.  We each taught different facets of marketing.  One of the other speakers gave a presentation on how to guarantee that you get referrals when you give your 30 second elevator pitch at a networking event. In a nutshell he suggested the best way to get referrals at a networking function was to include the following in your pitch:

 ”Today I’m looking for (fill in the blank).  If you know of someone who (fill in the blank), please write their name & e-mail on the back of your card and pass it to me before the end of the meeting.”

He went into more detail about how and why it worked for getting introductions to qualified leads.  All of it was very good advice and I made a note that I should try it one day.

The next week I attended a networking meeting & several of the people there had been at the Expo and attended the class I taught.  As I listened to them giving their networking pitches a theme emerged.  One by one they all gave the same pitch, word for word:

“Today I’m looking for (fill in the blank).  If you know of someone who (fill in the blank), please write their name & e-mail on the back of your card and pass it to me before the end of the meeting.”

After hearing it from the 5^th person I had to fight to keep from laughing.  As I looked out at the room, I could see people mouthing along with what they new was coming as soon as someone started in with, “Today I’m looking for. . . “   Looking at those lined up to do their pitches, I could see fear in the eyes of the people who thought they had struck gold with this new technique, only to discover it was fast becoming a joke & they didn’t have anything else prepared.  Even though I could see it pained them to do so, they gave the pitch anyway, hoping some form of amnesia would strike the audience and they would forget the fact that they’d heard the exact same words from at least 10 people that day.

This is an extreme example, but it illustrates an important point.  No matter how good your elevator pitch is you need to be prepared to mix it up a little and play to the room.  In order for an elevator pitch to be successful it has to grab the listener’s attention and draw them in.  No matter how much people want to pay attention, if things become too predictable they tend to zone out.  As the person who’s giving the pitch, your job is to snap them out of their slumber and get them to take an interest in what you’re saying.    It’s a catch-22.  People need to hear your message several times before it sinks in, but if the same people are hearing the same thing every time – they’ll stop paying attention because they know exactly what’s coming next.  I usually recommend having 3 or 4 variations on your pitch to keep the audience interested.

Has anyone else ever been to a predictable copy cat meeting like this one?

By the way – I attend this same group every week.  In the 9 months since this happened, nobody has given this pitch again.  Maybe I’ll use it next time.

Because of Thanksgiving I won’t be making a blog entry next Thursday, but I will be making a post on December 1^st for Bloggers United.  Hope you all have a great Thanksgiving & I’ll talk to you on the first.

Bloggers Unite for Refugees

 Since I found out about Bloggers Unite I’ve been trying to wrap my brain around what I could write about relating to this months topic of refugees.  Then, the obvious chant echoed in my head, “Write what you know.”    While I hate to admit it, I don’t know enough about the current situations of refugees around the world to speak intelligently about the subject.  But I do have some experience related to the refugees in my own backyard.

 In the 80’s I remember hearing a new phrase: “Urban American Refugee”.  Soon this was replaced with a simpler term: “homeless”.  However, this didn’t refer to the “bums on skid row” that we thought of when we imagined people living on the street.  These were families with kids huddled in cardboard boxes and lined up at outdoor soup kitchens in cities all over the country.  One wrong step on the path of life had sent them falling over a cliff, landing in an impossible situation. 

They had no residence so nobody would hire them, and without employment they couldn’t afford a place to live.  Without a home address the children weren’t allowed in the school system, and without basic education their future was all too predictable.  Their Catch-22 situation ripped apart families as parents were forced to give up their children in order to save them.  I remember seeing countless stories on the subject that tore at my heart.  I contributed what I could to projects like Comic Relief and urged family and friends to do the same.

About this time I was doing some part-time work as a “cater-waiter” in Denver to earn extra money for the holidays.  In conjunction with a church charity, a movie theatre booked us to do a “special event” for homeless families.  Families were invited to a G-rated movie for the kids and popular holiday sweets were served to make their holiday a little brighter.  

On the day of the event, there was a beautiful snow storm.  It was heavy, wet snow.  Annoying to drive in, but the kind you don’t mind because it transformed the city into a remarkably beautiful winter wonderland.  As I stood there in my itchy cater-waiter tux offering fruit juice and hot cocoa to the kids, I watched the blanket of white get thicker, deeper, and more Norman Rockwell-esque by the moment.  I was filled with a nice “warm fuzzy” feeling because I was doing something to would make these families have a merrier Christmas.  

As I looked at the other caterers I could tell they felt the same.  Their smiles were different than the predictably plastic grins we glued to our faces at other events.  This time the smiles were real.  We were making a difference.  We were part of the solution, improving the lives of these long-suffering families.  Then, after the movie ended and we were packing to go home, my soft and gooey inner-glow was frozen solid by the angry voice of one of the homeless fathers.  His frustration echoed through the theatre as he pointed at the snow, “What are we supposed to do now?!”  The futility of what we had done hit me like a sharp rock to the temple.  

The heavy snow had been falling continuously since before the event began and was easily up to my knees by now.  The families had been brought in on busses, but the busses were gone – it was a one-way ride.  The area of the city with the homeless shelters was at least 70 blocks away and the temperature was falling.  Snow means shelters fill up fast.  These families were likely to be left out in the cold, and it was guaranteed to be a night so cold it burned.  The organizers of this “special event” didn’t consider the reality of the beneficiary’s daily lives.  They were brought to an area of the city that may as well be Siberia for them.  We’d filled their bellies with empty sugar calories and now we were sending them out into the bitter cold without so much as a pair of dry socks.  Never had the phrase “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” meant so much to me. 

While I waited for my car to warm up enough to drive home, I noticed a handful of families huddled together in the entryway of the theatre.  I saw others slowly trudging through the snow.  They knew they may as well start back because it was going to get a lot colder before it got warmer.  The theatre would be opening to the public and their gracious hosts would soon be chasing them away to clear a path for the paying customers who would be offended by their presence. 

I pulled out of the parking lot as soon as my car was warm enough to drive. My destination was in the same direction as the walking families, but instead I went the opposite way. I didn’t want to risk getting stopped at a red light and catching the disappointed eyes of the people I’d hurt, if only by association.  At that moment I felt about as socially responsible as Marie Antoinette, and I’d even been serving the cake. 

The snow continued to fall all weekend long.  It wasn’t as beautiful as it used to be, at least not for me.  And every holiday sweet I had that year tasted just a little bit bitter.  However, on the other side of the equation, my drafty apartment didn’t seem so cold that winter, and the distances I had to walk in the snow seemed a lot shorter. 

Fast forward more years than I’d like to count.  Just like any long-term problem, homelessness drifted from the headlines and was replaced by another story demanding society’s outrage.  Stories about the homeless became as invisible as the homeless themselves- seen, but unnoticed.  Stories about people who pretended to be homeless and scammed drivers at red lights replaced the faces of the homeless children on the evening news.  And, while I hate to admit it, I’d moved on too. 

Then a few years ago the cold and unforgiving waters of hurricanes Katrina and Rita washed the Urban American Refugee back into the headlines.  In a matter of hours, the lives and livelihoods of thousands of families were swept out to sea.  Those who were teetering on the verge of homelessness had just been pushed over the edge.  And those who thought homelessness only happened to other people discovered that the remainder of their lives could fit in a shopping cart. 

A very good friend of mine is director for the Texas Homeless Network, and I remember him telling me Katrina caused the number of homeless in the city of Austin to double overnight.  When I told him I was writing this post, he gave me some information that’s both encouraging and disturbing at the same time.  

At any given time there are approximately 6000 people experiencing homelessness in the city of Austin.  After hurricane Katrina, 6000 more homeless people came to Austin from New Orleans and were placed into the system.  Within about 2 weeks, the city of Austin and various non-profits were able to get housing for almost all of the evacuees.  This begs the question:  Why couldn’t we do it for the people who were already homeless?

As we head into the holiday season we’ll start to see the perennial red kettle in front of retail stores.  We’ll see features on the news about food pantries, toy drives, and other ways for us to make a difference in the lives of the homeless and others less fortunate than ourselves.  Many of us will open our wallets and our hearts to contribute.  Then after Christmas we’ll make a New Year’s resolution to do something to make our lives better.  While giving of ourselves during the holidays is a good thing, if it only happens once a year, the long-term effect is similar to the special event I catered so many years ago.  It’s a short-lived “warm fuzzy.” 

This year I’m proposing something a little different.  How about if we don’t wait until next December to give of ourselves again?  How about if we volunteer our time more often than Thanksgiving and Christmas?  How about if our New Year’s resolutions aren’t about making our lives better, but about making someone else’s life better?  And how about if this is the year we keep that resolution? 

Final thought:  There will always be problems in the world that seem insurmountable, and there will always be another sensational story to make the last one fade into the background.  But just because the story isn’t being written doesn’t mean it isn’t being lived.

 

 

When Good Guerillas Go Bad

When I spoke with friends and clients about the blog I started on guerilla marketing, some were still a little confused as to what makes a marketing tactic into a guerilla tactic.  The short answer is a guerilla tactic uses unconventional means to generate maximum impact with minimal resources. 

One of the best examples I can think of is also one of the most notorious guerilla campaigns in recent history.  It took place last year in Boston.  Cartoon network hired a company to promote a movie based on a TV show called Aquateen Hunger Force.  The company placed lighted boxes with batteries and wires throughout the city.  Unfortunately these signs (which were meant to resemble one of the characters from the show) looked a lot like homemade bombs and caused a terrorist scare that basically shut down the city. 

Since the event took place, there’s been a debate in the marketing world about whether this campaign was a success or a flop.  It generated a lot of buzz around a movie that wasn’t going to get any real press coverage.  If you’ve ever seen Aquateen Hunger Force, you know it has a very narrow audience appeal.  But after this campaign, it reached a much larger demographic.  So from that angle, it was a success.  But in the process it caused a great deal of commotion, cost the city a lot of time and resources, the guys who placed the signs ended up in jail, and the parent company for Cartoon Network had to issue a formal apology for the stunt.  In many ways it gave guerilla marketers a bad reputation so from that angle it was a flop.

 This video by ABC News gives the details on the campaign as well as some good examples of other guerilla campaigns that were just as creative, but didn’t involve Homeland Security.

 

So what do you think?  Was this a good idea or a bad idea?  Have you put out any guerilla campaigns that had totally unexpected outcomes?  Have you seen any that made you think, “They went too far with that one?”  If so I’d love to hear about it.

Never Underestimate the Power of the Sticky Note

It’s only fitting that I launch into my guerilla marketing blog with my favorite guerilla tactic: promotional products.  It’s truly one of the most versatile mediums on the planet, and can be a guerilla marketer’s best friend.  When it comes to promos the question I get asked the most is, “what works?”  The answer is simple:  all of it, and none of it.  A lot of people think the key element in promotional products is the product.  They’re wrong.  The key element is the promotion. 

Take, for example, one of my favorite promotional products:  the sticky note.  They may not be very exciting, but they’re incredibly useful to a guerilla marketer.  Sticky notes are economical and versatile.  They come in a wide variety of shapes, can be used at tradeshows, included with purchases, and direct mailed without increasing your postage.  Best of all – nobody throws away sticky notes.

Now for the promotion side of the equation.  People think about putting their contact info & logo on the sticky notes, but a guerilla marketer goes beyond that.  Say you want to grow a networking group or promote a weekly event.  In addition to putting your contact info on the top and/or bottom of the sticky note you add a ghosted image in the middle that says, “Remember to join us for lunch & networking every Wednesday!”  (Not too dark, you need to keep the sticky note useful.)   Now hand out your sticky notepads to people you are trying to get to come to the event or include them in letters you send out.   You’re likely to set up a subliminal reminder because they see the message every time they use a sticky note.  Since sticky notes get passed around so much, so does your message.  This is just one of the many, many uses the simple little sticky note. 

The bottom line: your most successful promotional products will be the ones where you start thinking about your audience, your message, and your goal before you start thinking about your product.

 Did you create a promotional product campaign you thought was just brilliant?  Have you seen one of those “Why didn’t I think of that?” promotional campaigns?  If so, I want to hear about it.

Welcome to my Blog on Guerilla Marketing

Welcome to my blog on the beauty that is Guerilla Marketing.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, guerilla marketing gives smaller businesses a way to level the playing field with the big guys.  It’s more than tactics, it’s also a mindset.  Before I merged in with the CMC team, I had my own company built by guerilla marketing.  I teach several classes locally on this form of marketing, and many clients have asked if I’d like to share this info to a larger audience.  So, here’s the result:  my blog on thinking like a guerilla marketer.