Alberta Business Marketing

Tags: BizBeat - Editor's Blog, Klein, Mayer, Teilhard
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That's the message from Terry O'Reilly who addressed CMA's National Convention last week in Toronto. O’Reilly provided a fascinating and unique perspective on how to effectively market to a target audience.

“Sometimes people want and sometimes people need friction in the process before they buy a product or idea,” O’Reilly said.

This approach represents a paradigm shift away from the marketers’ traditional practice of helping their clients find the most efficient and speed bump free pathway to a sale.

O’Reilly used both historical and contemporary examples to show the dramatic impact friction can have on sales.

During the late 1950’s, a major food company developed an instant cake mix. The product was initially very popular, but was soon being ignored by its target consumer - housewives. After undertaking extensive research, the food manufacturer determined the cake mix was making women feel uninvolved in the cooking process. The food manufacturer decided to remove the egg from the mix so women could add it themselves. The result was a significant spike in sales. Women became instantly more attracted to the product with the added friction of having to mix in the egg themselves.

Another relevant example is pharmaceutical giant Johnson and Johnson’s development of an antiseptic cream to promote the healing of cuts and bruises. The companies’ scientists designed the ‘perfect’ product that was both effective and painless. Initially, sales were quite impressive but surprisingly, there were few repeat purchases of the cream. After the company engaged in a significant amount of product research using focus groups, they made an important determination about human nature – people tend to see pain as a positive indicator of a healing product’s effectiveness. Johnson and Johnson subsequently added a small amount of alcohol to the product to give it a sting – and sales increased dramatically. As O’Reilly explained, the friction of pain convinced consumers that the product actually worked – and left the company’s scientists in a state of utter confusion about where they went wrong.

A more recent illustration of the impact of friction involves a Google analytics professional. He was hired by an E-commerce site to replace its current five-step cart checkout process with a much simpler model. The business considered its current five-step process to be overly time consuming - so they requested the development of a single step process. To the company’s surprise, the new model failed miserably. The friction of the five-step process had given purchasers an added sense of security, which dissipated once the five-step process was reduced to one simple step.

There will always be a tendency for marketers to provide their clients with strategies that emphasize efficiency and convenience to sell a product.

O’Reilly summed up the idea of friction as a persuasion tool:
“If you ever need to make people believe, if you’re ever struggling to get people to a certain place, if you need to get noticed, if you’re ever looking for the leverage point to move a mountain - maybe what you need is a little friction.”

Jordan Sandler

Tags: Strategy
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I find myself these days with three Apple products at the ready at all times and with our team at Ulistic growing, collaborating and sharing of information amongst our team members is crucial to our success.  Our MacBooks, iPhones and IPADs travel with us everywhere we go and this allows for keeping in touch with our clients when they need us.   Having instant access to our client data is crucial to our success but having this luxury within our budget is especially critical.

The Internet Cloud allows Ulistic to operate in a manner that meets all of our needs for access, security and affordability.

Enter another robust, secure and free/nearly free solution for business

I stumbled upon a great “free” application over the weekend and what is even more impressive is how seamless it works with all of our computers and mobile devices.  For me personally, one of my biggest challenges throughout my business career has been taking accurate notes of things that happen or are said in a meeting.  I just wasn’t one of those guys who took notes on everything that was said in a meeting.  But I think I just found a solution that can cure me of this challenge.  Sure I tried Microsoft OneNote but it didn’t have a solution (when I was using it) that worked when I didn’t have my laptop.  With this new application I learned about over the weekend I may have just finally found a cure for my challenges with keeping track of what happens in our meetings.

Notetaking Software that just works

Enter Evernote! Evernote is simply one fantastic service!  Evernote offers free and “nearly free” services to a busy guy like me who doesn’t have countless hours in a day to wrestle with technology.  Evernote’s simply interface and synchronization allows our team at Ulistic to have our notes with us whereever we go.  MacBook, iPhone or iPAD they all work like a charm.  Synchronization works virtually without any user interference to all of our devices without any headaches at all.  Need to start taking notes for an idea that pops into your head, no problem, just open Evernote wherever you are a make a quick note.

This includes pictures, movies, typed in notes and audio recordings.  Can you say SLICK!

The free version of Evernote allows for 40 MB of data transfer each month, not bad as a starter. Go Premium with 500 MB of synchronization traffic for only $5 per month or $45 per year – less than the cost of that memory stick you just bought.  When you combine Evernote with other great online services such as Dropbox and Google/Microsoft hosted email, why would you ever need a server or complex information technology solution for your small business?  It just makes technical and economic sense to choose robust, secure and efficient services such as Evernote and the others if are simply sharing files and sending emails.

Evernote also works on the Microsoft Windows platform and Android, Palm Pre and Blackberry mobile phone services.  I am giving Evernote two thumbs up and placement on my home screen of both my iPhone and iPAD.  Great tool for any size of business.

Something else that is cool, Evernote can also track where you were when you worked on a file and bring up that location on a Google map.

Tags: android, Apple Inc., blackberry, Business IT, cellular telephone, Computing, Dropbox, Evernote, free solution, Google Inc., Google/Microsoft, information technology, information technology solution, iPad, iphone, Microsoft Corporation, Microsoft OneNote, Microsoft Windows, mobile devices, mobile phone services, notetaking, Notetaking software, onenote, Palm Pre Smartphone, secure and efficient services, Technology/Internet
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Are we at a major crossroads in business marketing?

I think we are at a critical junction in marketing, especially those focused on the online space and developing platforms.  Given all the challenges facing popular online networking services in the past week and the average Joe’s potential loss of trust towards online services, will it slow down the rapid advance that we have seen lately in the entire social media space?

Social Media is business can go one of two ways, it will either skyrocket or cave in.  The next few months will be crucial in determining the direction the social side of online marketing goes.

It does all begin with Trust

There are similarities between social media and the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland.  Eyjafjallajökull spewed ash for week and disrupted airspace over the North Atlantic and Europe.  Social Media is not so different.  There are many “Human Volcanos” spewing disruptive ash of their own and causing people to shut down or divert to other avenues. When you combine this with the recent privacy issues, does social media marketing have the potential of moving in the same direction as traditional marketing?

How will social media and business co-exist? This is something I spend most waking work moments striving to figure out and achieve here in the Canadian market.  Today, I am blessed to be speaking about “Trust Marketing” at the Alberta Association of Library Technicians 36th Annual Conference.  Trust Marketing is all about positioning yourself as a trusted business advisor who at least practices the 5 principles shared by Bob Burg and John David Mann in the Go Giver parable.

Trust Marketing is all about delivering value within your target marketing and community without being concerned if you are going to loss the deal or someone is going to steal your thoughts.  Here is a secret folks, all the knowledge you have is simply a Google search away, so we need to get over the fact that we know it all.  It is ok to give away knowledge to those seeking what you know, this is where the “law of value” kicks in.  You can read the 5 laws here.  What you will find is the more you give away in value and the better you serve folks in your business community, the higher your income will eventually be.

We all must be extremely open to sharing and this is the only way in my opinion social media marketing and business will work together. Business owners need to share and share often.  I have always been open to sharing information even with my so-called competitors (often beaten up by my co-workers as well about this) in the marketplace and especially with those looking to do business with us.  I think it is critical in the “feeling out phase” to be completely open and not hide a single thing.  Clients and prospects are not dumb, they know when you are holding back the goods and they appreciate it when you are open and serve them.

If your website, social media activities and online market are about sharing information, teaching people and offering insight you will be fine in the online world.

Can social media and business co-exist? What will it take for trust to shine through online?  What information do you trust more?  As a business owner, can you leverage “Trust Marketing”?

Tags: Alberta Association of Library Technicians, bob burg, Business, Business Success, Business/Finance, Europe, Iceland, Internet Marketing, John David Mann, Library Technicians, Man-Made Disaster, media marketing, media space, Natural Disaster, North Atlantic, North Atlantic and Europe, online networking services, online space, social media marketing, Social Media Ventures Inc, trust, trusted business advisor
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It’s funny how different aspects of your life serendipitously cross from time to time. Following my presentation at Leadership Calgary earlier this month about the current state and possible future of western democratic government (in LC speak it was titled “how do we build a systemically and systematically adaptive democratic government?”) we find a British Labour Party getting trounced from office primarily because of an expenses scandal, the Canadian parliment mired in public confusion as to why they would not want to let the Auditor General review MP expenses, and closer to home, the City of Calgary’s auditor says the procurement process is so murky and devoid of rules that fraud has almost certainly taken place.

What do all of these have in common? A lack of respect for the role the public plays in democratic government.

I won’t bore you with the details – I’ll save those for another post or for the Cities and Towns in Transition conference on June 4 and 5, which I have been asked to speak about this topic at – but at the end of the day public wisdom and government adaptability must grow together. Each relies on the other to succeed. This is done through transparency (government giving to public) and accountability (public giving to government).

I believe open data plays a big role in the transparency side of the equation, and a useful role in the accountability side, but I’ve recently been struck by the lack of systemic adaptability in our governance systems. In short, why are 15 people making all the decisions for the City of Calgary when we know public wisdom itself contains much more useful decision making information. One multiple choice question every four years hardly seems like the kind of thing our bravest citizens should be asked to give their lives to protect. Shouldn’t there be more? What of the really good ideas that lay outside the institutional input model? The good ideas that model is not designed to – and therefore unable to – reach? Do we just give up on those? Do we just call our current system ‘good enough’?

I’ve recently re-discovered Clay Shirky. I’ve been familiar with his work for several years but I’ve always classified them within the box of mind as applying to ‘technology’. Which is fair given that most of his examples lay in this field (Wikipedia, Flickr, Linux, Meetup, etc). But recently I was afforded the opportunity to apply his theories and teachings to the world of governance systems and I was surprised that what he was talking about almost seamlessly fit this world.

But so what.

I’m just a regular guy. I have no power; no input. And I certainly cannot change the 150-year-old institution of Canadian democracy. So I relished the opportunity to do what I and many others witnessing a travesty that I am unable to change would do: I whined about it.

Fortunately, I recently read the book “Mistakes Were Made (but not by me), Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts” and was reminded of the quote by Ken Low, “despair is not an option”. I could blame others and wallow, or I could look within myself and see what I could change.

I am not the mayor, premier or prime minister, so tackling one of those institutions is ludicrous. But I am the president of another governance system: my community association. Upon quick inspection of that organization I found we – despite having an active membership, being well respected by the community, and being in excellent financial shape – exhibited the same things I wanted to rail against. We had a board of 14 elected officials who were charged with doing all the work of the association. But who cares what we thought most needs doing? We’re just 14 people who happened to have some time or caring to sit on a board. That doesn’t make us any smarter or more capable than any other group of 14 people from the community. It just means we were willing to make the commitment. But how did we make our decisions? Where did our information come from? How did we ensure the really good ideas that lay outside our institutional model were invited in?

The answer is: we didn’t. We did what almost every government does; we made decisions based on the best information available. We went with our gut and our experience; we talked to our neighbours, did the odd bit of research, and made decisions at a boardroom table. All of this put the onus on the 14 people and never once invited the public to be part of the decision making process (aside from that one annual vote or having the ability to complain). We also never invited them to be part of the implementation process either.

I was lucky enough at this point to make a connection to something that happened several months earlier. Following the second CivicCamp I had a discussion with someone had the general tone of which was: ‘Having these kind of un-conference meetings where we talk about things that matter most to the participants is great. I wish there was more of this in other places.’ The ‘open spaces technology’ format discussions used by CivicCamp I found immensely useful because the agenda for the day was never based on someone’s unintentional bias, it was the group bias that set the agenda. And being the sum of our parts almost always proves to be better than that of one person, or a smaller group of people. (Hence my trouble with 14 people at a boardroom table making all the decisions.)

So how could we engage our community to get the best ideas out of them? And do so in a format that is not just a ‘town hall’ style event featuring general discussions, Q & A sessions, and the same 14 people responsible for implementing things at the end of the day anyway?

To do this, the Winston Heights-Mountview Community Association partnered with CivicCamp to create “CivicCamp in a Box”. A sort of ‘kit’ that anyone can use, which asks members of the community to come forward and say what they believe most needs doing in the community. It does not end here however. If we are truly going to invite them into the decision making process, we also have to involve them heavily in the implementation process. After all a small army of people working only on the specific project that interests them the most, affords much more possibility for getting ‘stuff’ done than a group of 14 board members working on things they may only be casually interested in.

Take for instance what I mention in my 2009/10 presidents report on how things often work at a community association: You as an interested community member want to plan a Stampede BBQ (for example) and you come to the board and tell us you want to plan a Stampede BBQ. More often than not, because you are a warm body who is interested, the community association will promptly make you a board director. The problem is now the majority of the work you will do has nothing to do with planning a Stampede BBQ. This has been a major focus of my time on the Winston Heights-Mountview board, lowering the bar of involvement and eliminating these kinds of barriers. You want to plan a Stampede BBQ? We’ll let you do that. Do you want to join a board? It is our responsibility to provide that opportunity too. Government should be about empowering the people, not getting in there way.

And so that is the second half of “CivicCamp in a Box”. Once participants have listed the ideas they have to make the neighbourhood a better place, they will each be given the chance to select one idea that they ‘think most needs doing’ from their perspective and to work on making that idea a reality. We will provide whatever resources we can to help them – starting from lunch and coffee at the event, through to any funds the association might be able to give to their project, to our contacts with neighbours, local businesses and all three levels of government.

I’m confident the ideas coming out of this event being held tomorrow will be better and more robustly thought out than anything our dedicated and whip smart board of 14 people could have done on their own. It will even have the added benefit of creating more engaged residents who will be illustrating their commitment to a better neighbourhood, which of course comes with many unintended side benefits from Block Watches to cleaner streets to more friendly ‘over the fence’ conversations.

I’m excited about this event even though I’m not sure what any of the outcomes might be, but I’m willing to take a risk and see if it will work. Cherie McCauley and Sarah Arthurs – who I’ve been working with on the logistics of creating “CivicCamp in a Box” – and I have floated the concept to other community associations and many are interested in how this might be used in their neighbourhood.

But why stop there? If this process works, why could we not see the Province or the City apply this kind of citizen engagement to, for example, budget deliberations? When an alderman says something is what their constituents want, what process did they go through to ensure it’s not just what they think and that had received little negative criticism? A process like this can eliminate their unintentional bias created by an institutional decision making model. Heck you could go the other way with it too and use it at the local elementary school, senior’s centre or baseball team. The possibilities are endless, really. And I believe by taking our time to do public engagement in a way like this (let’s not kid ourselves, this will slow down the current institutional decision making process) we can see added benefit of increased caring and decreased expenses.

Someone just needs to be willing to try it to see if it works. So, I’m happy to volunteer to take the risk. I’ll let you know how it goes.

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Tags: "Mistakes Were Made", Calgary, Civic Camp, Ken Low, Leadership Calgary, Politics, technology, Winston Heights/Mountview
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