Alberta Business Marketing

Times are tough. Lots of people are competing for fewer jobs. And applying for jobs can be difficult at the best of times to begin with.

I recall when the economy was 'good' and I'd receive dozens upon dozens of qualified resumes. Ones that actually met the hiring criteria and didn't have any grammatical errors, typos or inappropriate profiles on social networks. (Yes, any employer worth their salt is going to Google candidates, check them out on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.)

But even with sufficient filtering a hiring manager will still be overwhelmed in a tsunami of resumes. So what do job seekers do? How does one differentiate themselves? How does one stand out from the crowd? What can they do that is innovative?

A friend of mine, Heidi Jackman, is the CMO at Sliderocket. The company was founded in 2007 with the simple goal of building better presentations because we all know how painful some visual presentations can be.

Heidi recently forwarded me an terrific story. Where an aspiring job seeker by the name of Hanna Phan put forward her intent of looking for position at SlideRocket. But she didn't do via resume. Take a look here or below.

Pretty impressive. As Heidi aptly commented "This is both such a great story, an amazing show of creativity and a bright spot in our tough job economy."

So I'm sure it's no surprise to you that Heidi hired Hanna. Here is an explanation in Hanna's own words of why she did something different.

My point is not that everyone should use SlideRocket although I'm sure Heidi and Hanna would love it if you did.

Figure out as a leader, marketer or job seeker (agency side or client side) what you can do in a genuine and innovative way to stand out from the crowd. Odds are you can. And odds are it's not just another campaign or resume.

Sulemaan Ahmed
Twitter @sulemaan

Tags: Branding, Human Resources, Marketing Talent, This and That
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Empowering consumers to relate to a brand in their own personal way is the new horizon of innovation. Creating imaginative product ideas that allow consumers to explore, create and share is a new extension of real time co-creation. Brands can learn from these new co-creations and deploy new vectors of growth, based on new product ideas. The opportunities are endless.

Coca-Cola tested its Freestyle vending machines in 2009 and is rolling out the machines in the US this year. The machines offer consumers a touch-screen with an incredible 100+ different beverage choices ranging from Diet Cherry Coke to Dasani waters. Customers can even create their own combinations of flavours. Already, Coke lists a portfolio of more than 3,500 beverages, from diet and regular sparkling beverages to still beverages on its website.

In today’s mature markets, a popular strategy has been to take mass customization to the next level, to create highly personalized brand experiences for existing products. Coke has launched apps for social networks that allow consumers to create and name their own drinks. In the future, it may be possible for an app to create a bar code for a customized flavour that a vending machine can create.

Customization is driving collaborative consumption

The buzz word for C2C (Consumer to Consumer) commerce is 'collaborative consumption'. An example is Airbnb. Less than four years old since launch, the website provides accommodations in nearly 11,000 cities in 180 countries. According to Inc Magazine, Airbnb’s popularity has exploded recently, growing more than 800% last year. Airbnb reports it has booked 1.6 million night stays in other people’s homes to date. Airbnb allows its members to customize their vacaction accomodations based on a number of variables.

Five steps to deploy collaborative consumption

1. Explore surprising vectors of innovation of your products.
2. Define the relevance of these vectors. Which ones delight customers?
3. Create an experiential component to the brand. How will customers create unique experiences for themselves?
4. Create communication channels to allow customers to share ideas and innovations.
5. Stay true to the brand position. Look for innovations that reinforce the brand idea.

What other examples of mass customization are working for brands?

Tags: Branding, Customer Experience, Mobile
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Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) was recently in the news because they had offered to pay celebrity Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino from the MTV reality television show Jersey Shore to not wear their products.

You read correctly. A&F offered to pay Mr. Sorrentino to not wear their product. It was their view that he portrayed a negative impact on their brand based on his demeanour and behaviour on the show. A spokesperson for A&F said "Mr. Sorrentino's association with our brand could cause significant damage to our image."

It's interesting to see how A&F doesn't want a reality-television celebrity to wear their clothes or promote their brand. There is no doubt this was a deliberate marketing publicity stunt by A&F and I'm obviously not the only one to make this observation as one friend aptly noted. Needless to say many people have been discussing this news be it via own social networks and in the news.

The last time that A&F got this kind of publicity it was for another reason. And not a good one.

A&F is definitely going against the norm by asking a celebrity not to use their products. In most cases, companies would be desperate to get that kind of free publicity. It's no secret many companies pay millions of dollars for product placement in television shows and movies. Regardless of your opinion of "The Situation", there is no denying that A&F gets an incredible amount of free exposure from him that would otherwise cost a ton of ad dollars if A&F tried to run an equivalent ad campaign.

All of this is tongue in cheek of course because if A&F's request was serious about protecting their brand, their legal department would simply have to contact MTV (the producer of Jersey Shore) and told them to cease and desist. Subsequently their logos and brand would then have to be 'blurred' out in future episodes.

MTV of course wisely played along with the whole thing and didn't get their nose out of joint. So both A&F and Jersey Shore got a lot of free publicity from this move especially during the critical 'Back-to-School' phase of the calendar. Although it must be said the financial markets didn't quite respond positively to the recent fiscal results of A&F.

So perhaps we shouldn't quite yet conclude that paying celebrities to not promote a product is the new black.

Sulemaan Ahmed
Twitter @sulemaan

Tags: Branding, PR, This and That
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Consider it to be the opposite of greenwashing.

While some companies get a lot of mileage from limited but well-publicized sustainability activities, others do good works but don't get the credit they deserve.

A number of leading global brands are making respectable investments in greening their operations, bringing sustainable products to market and supporting local communities. Yet without the support of a global brand banner or advertising campaign, their sustainability efforts go unnoticed by consumers and other stakeholders.

It seems unlikely that major brands would miss an opportunity to broadcast their sustainability achievements to the marketplace. However, this is precisely the situation of companies like HP, Hyundai, Danone, IBM and HSBC, according to Interbrand's Best Global Green Brands 2011 report. They are all noted for being environmental leaders whose green activities are under-communicated and are therefore under-appreciated by the public.

While it may be admirable to pursue a sustainability agenda without needing public recognition, these companies are actually doing a disservice to their brand.

A company's stance and actions on sustainability have become important components of its brand architecture. Corporations are increasingly held accountable by consumers and other stakeholders for a growing list of issues, as noted in Landor's 2011 Trends Forecast. This includes how they operate, where inputs are sourced, how products are made, and how employees and constituent communities are treated. Social media channels guarantee that missteps are broadcast widely and in real time.

Just as a poor performance against sustainability measures can harm a corporate reputation, strong performance can bolster a brand - as long as those successes are effectively communicated.

When there is a gap between sustainability performance and public perception -when companies are doing more good than they share - they miss out on important gains to their brand value.

Importantly, the market is still in a position where sustainability is a differentiator - for now.

While consumers don't want to pay a premium for green products, the majority across all countries say it is important to buy from environmentally-friendly companies, as found by the Cohn & Wolfe Green Brands survey.

Backlash over green washing, or the overstating of sustainability credentials or benefits, remains a risk. Still, those brands with credible stories shouldn't wait too long to tell them. Otherwise their careful investments in sustainability will have become table stakes in an increasingly environmentally and socially conscious marketplace.

Stephanie Myers

Tags: Branding, corporate social responsibility
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The reality in most organizations is that most market research is commissioned by the marketing department, giving them special access to rich data on customers, competitors and the category. Yet the insights gleaned from this research has implications outside of just the marketing department, making the sharing of this information an important role for marketers.

This had never occurred to me until I had a conversation with a friend who is one of the top sales reps at his company. We were discussing his company’s brand and I asked what they did to track the satisfaction of their customers. Although the company was religious in sending out csat surveys, I was shocked to discover that my friend had never seen the results.

While marketers are often responsible for developing the brand strategy, this is an unfortunate example of ignoring the rest of the business system in the development and execution of that strategy.

A few ways that this customer data could be used outside of marketing:
• Sales reps could learn about the biggest pain points so they could proactively address them on sales calls
• Operations could learn about – and fix! - an aspect of product delivery that customers don’t like
• Design could adjust the product delivery to make it more intuitive for their customers

But if market research data isn’t shared by marketing then your business will be prevented from reaching their full potential. With first access to market research data comes great responsibility. In addition to promoting the brand externally, marketing must promote customers internally so that the rest of the people in the business system can help build the company’s brand as well.

Here are some simple ways to improve sharing:
• Hold cross-functional meetings to review research results when they are available, and better yet, include these groups in the survey development process
• Create a wiki for different groups to share and collaborate based on research
• Post research result presentations on the corporate intranet

Sharing shouldn’t be that difficult. A shame that it doesn’t happen more often.

Ben Wise

Tags: Branding, Integration, Research
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