Marketer Synergy

I take this break from my hiatus to formally anounce my hiatus.  For those who don’t know, which I would imagine is the bulk of you, in addition to leaving PDA I’m in the process of moving.  I’m not sure how long the “process” takes, but I’m in my new house and have 95% of unpacking left.

I hope to resume posting within the next week or so, as there’s only a 2 week break between my two jobs.  In the meantime, I’ll be secretly hiding in the bushes as I read your continued posts and I’ll be adding to my Last.fm profile.  

If you haven’t already, take this time to add my feed to your reader, so you will be alerted automagically when I return!

Next Wednesday, April 30th is my last day at Progressive Design Apparel.  I submitted my letter of resignation and have been wrapping up my business.  One of the main things I wanted to do was continue to train our new addition.  I’ve also started saying my goodbyes.  I’ve been with PDA for 10 months and it’s amazing how many people can touch your life in that short period of time.

As a teacher, 10 months would be enough time to make a world of difference.  There’s something special about bringing in kids and watching them grow in front of your eyes.  In 10 months at PDA, I’ve not seen as much personal growth, but I have seen a lot of relationships form, change, and even end.  Ten months is a rather short life cycle, but the beauty of short life cycles is they’re easily observed.  And now I have to say goodbye.

I already sent an email to my biggest client.  She’s just a sweetheart to work with.  I’ll miss the fact that no matter what craziness happens, I could get the job done and make her happy.  She’d probably be embarrassed to know how much I like working with her.  And I’d be embarrassed for her to know, too.  But how often do you get a huge client that’s also your nicest client?

I emailed the one client who seems I can never make happy; also a big client.  I walked in 10 months ago picking up the pieces of someone else’s mistakes and couldn’t ever get on this client’s good side.  I bent over backwards the way none of my colleagues could or would have and still couldn’t make her happy.  Of course, I’ve never let on to her that she’s the only person I can’t please, so I did the respectable thing and sent her an email of my departure.  I was sure to include a line about how much I enjoyed working with her.

Although, it’s not the same as saying goodbye to my kids, it’s still hard to say goodbye.  Where will my clients end up down the road?  Will they be taken care of?  Will I ever again cross paths with them? 

I’ll likely never know the answers to those questions, but right now I’ve got bigger questions on my mind.  Where will I be in a year?  Will I be a success?  Will I be happy?  I’m excited about moving forward and growing, but there’s always that uncertainly before embarking on something new.  But you know what?  No one ever found the next great thing in life by staying in the same place.  I have to get out there and explore the world and discover things for myself.  I have the best support system I need, a great wife and a couple of pups who don’t care what I do as long as it involves petting them.

I haven’t decided what to do with this blog yet.  I’ve been doing it for a couple months now, so I’m starting to get decent traffic.  At the same time, I’m going to be less marketing and more sales in my next position.  So my options are ditch this blog, start a new blog more about me personally, start a new blog more about me professionally (like this one), or drop blogging altogether.  I generally say give the people what they want; problem is, I don’t know what you guys want.  I’ll let you know what I come up with, but if you have any suggestions please let me know. 

The other day, I mentioned I was going to a convention to sell shirts.  The convention was PhenomeCon, a day-long event that featured the usual convention fare, speakers, vendors, etc.  My company, Progressive Design Apparel, printed the convention’s shirts and setup as a vendor at the event.  Ben, from our art department, created a great design for us to sell on shirts at PhenomeCon.  We printed 72 shirts on smoke, aloe, independence red, city green, and lake Anvil T’s.

Ben’s design incorporated various imagery from the paranormal world, angels, skulls, and ghosts.  It also had a Ghostbusters quote for a little humor–”Back off man, I’m a scientist.”  Instead of normal plastisol, we used discharge and water-based black.  For those that don’t know, plastisol is the type of ink most shirts are printed with.  It’s a plasitc-based ink and can be a little heavy.  Discharge is a chemical reaction that takes the die out of the fabric.  The reason you’d do this is twofold, 1) because it adds zero weight to the shirt, and 2) it allows you to add lighter, water-based ink without the dark shirt color bleeding through.  The combination of discharge and water-based black gives the shirts a light feel and an extremely soft hand.

Everyone loved Ben’s design, so I boxed up the shirts and headed south to Columbus, Indiana’s Crump Theater, location of PhenomeCon.  We knew our audience.  Or so we thought.  Turns out we got lots of compliments on the shirts there as well.  But we didn’t sell very many.  Why?

It wasn’t the price; no one tried to haggle.  It wasn’t the design; lots of people told us it was cool.  It turns out that there was a unique physical characteristic that the majority of the audience shared.  And this hampered our sales.  In fact, it entirely hamstringed our success.

Lesson learned?

Know your audience.

Don’t just know what your audience likes.  Know who they are.  Know why they like what they like.  Know why they don’t like what they dislike.  Knowing who your audience is and not just the perfect item to sell them will make sure you don’t end up like me, with a box of product and a convention of interest.

With a hat tip to Paul Williams, I’d like to remind everyone not to forget reputation. 

• Brand = Reputation
• Image = Reputation
• Survival = Reputation

In the sink or swim world we live in, reputation is everything.  Sure, you can get by for a little while skating around like an elephant on an April ice sheet, but sooner or later you’ll crash through into the hypothermia-inducing water (i.e. have to go out of business).  If not go out of business, you’ll have to run and hide.  Or change your name and move to a non-extradition country with lax laws regarding entry.

In order to get repeat business–or even stay in business at all–you’ll have to manage your reputation.  And with a bad experience spreading on the Internet faster than a virus in a 90 minute horror movie, you have to regularly stay on top of what’s being said about you–and who’s saying it.

Nobody has the luxury of enough time to constantly monitor their mentions online by going from site to site haphazardly.  That’s why you can setup a Google Alert for your name, company, product, or anything.  Google with its minions spiders all over the ‘net will let you know when your alert word is mentioned.

Your survival in business and your professional survival is all about your reputation.  As Paul points out, many people lose touch with what a “brand” is.  What people think of when they hear, “Mac”, “F150″, or “Coach purse” is reputation.  I’ve never owned a Mac, F150, or a Coach purse, but because of their reputation I have an opinion of those brands.

• Do you monitor your brands, products, or person online?
• What products/brands do you want based on reputation only?
• What products/brands do you want nothing to do with based on reputation only?

In case any of my regular readers (lol @ the thought of me having regular readers) have wondered what happened to me, I’ll share.

I’ve gotten tons and tons of hits since I last posted.  Apparently, I’m now decently ranked in Google for a Ronald McDonald image search.  Also from that same post, a lot of people search for the freaky clown bed Homer built Bart.

I was gone half of last week. I was in North Carolina. We stayed at the Biltmore. Toured the house and gardens. Pretty amazing place.

This image (click for full-size) is a panorama of the Biltmore with pictures I took stitched together using a great little program called Hugin. It was the first time I ever tried doing this and it was a handheld series of photos, so I don’t need the criticism. It did turn out darn good though.

This week, I was getting ready for a convention I’m going to tomorrow. Somehow I ended up signing myself and my wife up to go to a paranormal convention to sell shirts. They’re awesome and everyone loves them, so I’m hoping we’ll sell out. I was having a hard time getting the shirts out of PDA without all the employees scarfing them up.  Of course, a perk to selling them is I get one for myself!

We also just got two new employees at PDA, one of which I’ve been pretty extensively training. (With my experience as a high school Biology teacher, training is a given–and I really enjoy it.) They’re both really nice girls. We all get along really well and go out to lunch together and hang out sometimes on weekends and holidays. It would be cool if the new girls like us enough to hang out with us.

Speaking of dinner with friends, I’m going to dinner with my wife’s friends in a little while, so I’ll wrap it up!

I came across a post today that “Hemingway was challenged to write a story in only six words.” He came up with, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Even alcoholic misogynists can have their brilliance.

If you can whittle your brand, your product, your image, your career, even you down to 6 words, you can get a better grasp on who or what you really are. I’ll give you examples from my life:

Progressive Design Apparel (PDA): Colorful, creative, happy place to work.
Promotional Products: Used wisely, best bang for buck.
Bella apparel: Soft and cute; everyone agrees 100%.
Alo apparel: Bella’s great, moisture-wicking exercise line.
UltraClub organic T: Softest organic T, unbeatable price point.
Dri-duck endangered species hat: Soft, organic cotton; adjustable and pre-embellished.
Myself: Forever student; sometimes funny; always honest.

How would you tell your story or the story of your product in 6 words? I’ll do a few more to get your wheels turning:

GM: Crumbling giant, epitome of corporate incompetence.
Starbucks: Grew too fast, lost reality grasp.
Windows Vista: Over delayed, under functional, software bust.
iPhone: Hyped marketing; new AT&T contracts frustrate.
Global warming: People pretend to care; do nothing.
Chinese Democracy: Axl’s unfinished masterpiece? Axl’s big joke?
2007 New England Patriots: 18 and 1, perfect season choke.

Now your turn…

On my drive into work this morning, I saw row of yellow signs on the side of the road. “Why are we here?” “Does God exist” “Come in for answers.” So I have to wonder: what happens when you promise more than you can deliver?

Religion permeates nearly every culture that has existed in the past 5,000 years. How can that be? Faith, by definition, requires no proof to believe in something. So if you go into the church, I have no doubts they’ll tell you about God. But how do you sell God? How do you say, here’s a story, believe it or else?

Is it just because everyone else believes? Is church just peer pressure?

I’ll give you story and you tell me if it’s as believable as the God story:
A man who lives in the arctic loves kids. Once a year, he brings them toys he has his helpers make. He flies in a sleigh pulled by some herbivores and goes to each house to make his deliveries. Oh yeah, and he does it all in one night.

Why don’t most people believe that story? Probably because it takes a little more proof to pull off. For God to exist, there’s only one thing to believe: there is a god. For Santa to exist, you have to believe that reindeer fly and he visits every house in the world while leaving behind presents. You’ve never seen God and you’ve never seen Santa. Yet God is much more believable. We tell kids there’s more to the world than what you can see. Air, bacteria, wind; things we know exist without being able to see with a naked eye. Yet you can’t prove either God or Santa exist. So why is selling God so much easier?

I’m not saying I don’t believe there’s a God. I would just like to know what about God is so easy to sell. And please, atheists don’t shy away; I’d particularly like to hear from you as I don’t know any atheists. I’d love to go into that church for answers, but somehow I think asking a church about believing in God is a bit biased; kind of like asking a hungry tiger if his porterhouse tastes good.

Quite frequently, people have bad experiences as a customer and reach out to a company looking for help. So many times, as I’m sure you’ve experienced, you’ll end up on the line at a customer service center in Bangladesh with a nice guy named, Phil. Phil will listen to your problem and offer advice in broken English. I actually use the name “Phil” as an inside joke to myself, but I have experience with emailing a “guy” named “Phil” who seems to work 24/7 and always signs his name followed by a “T” and a double digit number. For example, an email will say,

“Your request have been forwarded. Thank you, Phil. T38”

Unfortunately, the “Phil”s of the world aren’t always able to solve problems. This leads to many blogging about their experience or performing an “executive email carpet bomb.” Surprisingly enough, some CEOs and high-level executives are reading blogs. They must have been smart enough to setup a Google Alert with their company’s name.

Even more surprising, some of these higher ups, are even responding to blogs. I had Chris Baggott, from Compendium Blogware, comment here. And I was recently reading a post where Zappos’ CEO Tony Hsieh commented. Though, I’ve not bought from Zappos (I’ve tried buying footwear online and so far it hasn’t worked out), I have heard from many people that Zappos’ customer service is excellent. (One of my workers’ brothers actually works there—I believe they have a location near Louisville, Kentucky.) So when Tony Hsieh from Zappos or Chris Baggott from Compendium or any big time business person comments on blogs it adds a more personal face to the company.

I read many prominent national bloggers on the Daily Fix and Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist; and for the star-struck bloggers like myself, reading a comment by a CEO is like being in the same room as one. I don’t have any of them giving me advice or meeting me for a drink, but it’s pretty cool nonetheless. While Slash, Willie Mays, or Sean Connery would be awesome to meet, I’d actually rather meet a successful business person like Warren Buffett or the aforementioned CEOs. I’ll never have the talent of Slash, Willie Mays, or Sean Connery, but who knows, I could be a successful business person someday. And if any successful business people have advice, I’d be more than happy to listen to the corporate rock stars speak. I probably just have to be a majority shareholder in their company to get noticed…

Maybe firing them is a bit extreme, but today I read an article that said make your marketing budget work by cutting it in half. Before I even got to the suggestion of why a company would do that I already knew why that was a good idea. What happens when you halve your budget? You have less to work with, of course. When you have less to work with, you have to work smarter and more efficiently. All of sudden, you see less money going out and more money coming in. You adapted; and it was a success.

According to Plato, necessity is the mother of invention. I strongly believe he’s right. From a biology standpoint, when something needs to be done it either gets done or you die off. It’s the same in the business world. Sometimes you need to get off the ground, spread your wings, and quit being a dinosaur. Whether that’s cleaning house or rethinking your entire image, a big change in results requires a big change in action.

Write that down, it’s important:

“A big change in results requires a big change in action.”

Read the entire article and then get to work.

In a story that surprised me, I just read that not all adopters of the ill-fated HD-DVD technology will spend eternity on a couch next to a stuffy man smoking a pipe and flaunting his contrasting elbow patches while they try to get at the root of abandonment issues caused by Toshiba pulling the plug after a short-lived, much-hyped battle with Sony over the next generation of home video. Despite it being 30 years full of bombs since the Walkman was introduced, Sony was bound to have another hit someday. Unfortunately for Toshiba and HD-DVD purchasers, Sony won with Blu-ray technology. So what’s an early adopter to do? Take a leap ala the stock brokers in the 1930’s?

Well, some will learn their lesson—though most won’t. However, if they bought their HD-DVD player from Best Buy, they’ll be able to get $50 on a gift card to soothe the pain of those who bought before the guillotine dropped. Granted $50 isn’t the $200 or $400 these people spent to get the player, it is a very smart move by Best Buy. Through credit card purchases, RewardZone records, or any other data trail they can sort through Best Buy will mail out $50 gift cards. Circuit City is extending its return policy to 90 days also (refund will be in the form of store credit). Certainly this isn’t as big. It tends to help those few who used their Christmas cash to buy HD-DVD, and it handsomely helps them big time. Though the early adopters are left holding the bag—and to be completely fair, they knew it was a risk of being an early adopter.

Best Buy and Circuit City are certainly trying to clean up their image a little and I think it’s a great PR move. I was actually strongly considering both purchasing an HD-DVD player as a gift and one for myself this holiday season. (Although the best prices I could consistently find were on Amazon.) I ended up doing something else for the gift and getting a steal on an upconvert DVD player for myself. It’ll last me until I get a Blu-ray player. I just hope prices will plummet in the next 6-18 months as more are bought (economies of scale—not demand).

A lot of people hate Best Buy and Circuit City, but like I said, I think this is a good move for corporate image. Does anyone see this as a bad thing? Any shareholders out there like to comment? Any HD-DVD buyers getting in on a refund?