a word on marketing

Accomplish...

To succeed in doing; bring to pass.

Today is my 365th consecutive post.  One year ago today, I began the word on marketing blog with the idea that just about any common word is interesting and can be related to marketing as well as to life.  Though I never stated it publicly, I had a goal to write every day for a year.  And here we are.

I blogged from home here in Cleveland, but also from Arizona, North Carolina, New Hampshire and southern Ohio.  Most people wonder if I cue up a bunch all at once and schedule their release.  With a few exceptions, I write each post every morning, typically at about 6:00 am.  Sometimes people send me words, which I appreciate.  Sometimes I find words in the news or in meetings.  Sometimes, I just crack open the dictionary and choose a word at random. 

You - the readers - are what have kept me going, so I thank you.  I'll struggle one day to crank out something with a little insight, but am unsure about it.  Then I'll get an email at the office from one of you saying it was your all-time favorite.  Paige, in Indiana, created a training program at her company based on the posts I did about my dog, Daisy.  Some of you have pushed back on points I've made and that's appreciated as well.  There's no one right answer when it comes to marketing.

Someone wrote to ask what I learned over the course of the year.  Great question.  I'm actually planning to compile many of the posts into a book and will augment them with further reflections.  But, in general, I've learned that I'm capable of doing something for a year - that's good to know.  I also realize that the blogging has forced me to distill my own philosophies down to some core beliefs.  I had an inkling of these before, but now they're in print.

In short, I believe that marketing is everything we do.  I think that marketing is about listening, watching, caring, thinking, innovating, educating, entertaining, delivering and serving.  I don't think good marketing is about working in a vacuum, screaming, forcing, outsmarting, tricking or taking.  Sure, we all need to make a profit, but it's great when we have a symbiotic relationship with our customers.  We have to show respect to get it.

My plan is to continue the blog, but I probably won't post every single day.  I may have some posts that are different from the word-definition style.  I also plan on a few video posts from time to time to mix things up.  I'd value any suggestions you might have.  I try to answer every comment or email I get, so bring 'em on.

Again, thank you.  I'm glad that the blog has become, for many of you, a regular part of your day. Knowing that has inspired me.  And, I hope that I've inspired you a bit.  I believe that each and every one of us has unique gifts and tremenous potential and together we can make a difference in the world.  But when one race finishes, another is just beginning.  Let's not sit on the sidelines.  What do you say we keep on running?  Who knows what we could bring to pass.

--Dave

Give...

To make a present of.  To deliver in exchange.  To entrust to.  To relinquish; yield.

Today is Thanksgiving.  We give thanks for what we've been given.  It's also not a bad time to think about how we give to others.

I like the definitions above.  They're all a little different, but all apply.  Sometimes we give people gifts outright.  Other times we trade.  Sometimes we give something to someone for safekeeping.  Sometimes we just give up.  None of these are signs of weakness.  In fact, they're signs of strength.

Same goes for your business and the marketing we do.  Not only should we take this day to be thankful for what we have in our personal lives, but also for what we've been given in our working lives.  We should also remember that the reason we're in business is to give.  We have a product or service that someone needs and we want to give it to folks who appreciate it.  We wouldn't mind getting something in exchange for what we give.  Actually, it's imperative.  But the thing to remember is that we give first, then we take.  Not the other way around.

Have a great day!

--Dave

Lose...

To be unable to find; mislay.  To be unable to maintain or keep.  To fail to win; be defeated.

Let's face it, we can't win 'em all.  Oh, sure, we'll have our winning streaks in life and business.  But sooner or later - regardless of how positive our spirit - the other team's bound to get one.  That's life.

Sometimes the other team gets more than just one, but a lot of them.  Chances are, we'll face that situation somewhere along the road as well.  When we get there, the question is how we're going to handle it.  This situation defines us as much, if not more, as how we respond to winning.

There are two basic routes when faced with a loss:  classy or tacky.  Classy is biting your lip, taking a deep breath, acknowledging your competitor, seeing one's own shortcomings, vowing to improve and moving on.  Tacky is not accepting defeat, but fighting it, trying to find a reason why the other guy shouldn't have won and...not moving on.

Where I live in Cleveland, we saw an embarrassing example of how not to lose, thanks to our tacky NFL Football coach.  The Browns lost to the Lions last Sunday after time had expired on the clock.  It was truly a heart-breaker since the team had been way ahead in the first quarter.  Yet in the end, we couldn't do it.  Then, instead of accepting it, Eric Mangini wanted to talk about all the ways we got picked on, like bad calls by the officials.  But the creme de la creme was his accusation that Lions players were faking injuries on the field in order to slow down our no-huddle offense.  Accusing the opponent of cheating.  Really?

Two routes:  classy or tacky.  This is all up to us as we move through our lives.  Nobody forces us to be one or the other.  We can't win 'em all.  But we sure can act like we've won 'em all. When faced with defeat, let's just make sure we don't lose our composure, too.

--Dave

Mayo...

Slang/Abbreviation:  mayonnaise.

What could anyone have against Mayo?  After all, it's the name of two respected surgeons who started a well known clinic in Minnesota.  It's a county in Ireland.  And, it just happens to be my middle name (true).

Still, when you've been hired to promote one brand within Kraft, why not do it at the expense of another?  Here's what I'm talking about...

One of my old friends, Mike Straznickas, who is now at an advertising agency called McGarry Bowen in Chicago, was assigned to make Miracle Whip hip.  His approach?  Make mayo dull and boring.  The tagline:  don't be so mayo.  Personally, I can't help it, but we can blame that on my parents.

The reaction might have been tame had it not been for Stephen Colbert taking issue with the ads and creating some parody ads in favor of Mayo.  The Miracle Whip ads are great - you'd think they were ads for Red Bull - and Colbert's ads are hilarious.  You can see them all well compiled and described in this blog link.

This is what we're all shooting for in advertising, isn't it?  Attention.  In a strange way, we don't really care what kind of attention it is.  We want to make a splash.  An impact.  Break through the clutter.  If it means starting a war between Miracle Whip and Mayo, all the better.

So how do we do this?  It starts with having the guts to do something totally different.  And, being able to sell the concept to conservative executives who'd rather protect the status quo.  Then it has to be creative and good.  Starts with the guts, though.  Just thought I'd spread the word on this one.

--Dave

Home...

The place where one resides.  To the center or heart of something.

As this Thanksgiving week begins, I'm reminded that the same principles that apply to our families and friends and this holiday should apply to our companies and customers.  Here's what I mean:

We should give thanks for our customers...to our customers.  What better time to let them know how much they mean to us? If it's not too late, invite a customer to dine with you and tell them how you feel about the importance of their business.

And perhaps most important, work even harder this year to make your customers feel at home.  When you invite people into your home for Thanksgiving, you clean up, deck out the house, put a fire in the fireplace (if you live somewhere cold) and do everything you can to be hospitable to your guests.  Make them feel comfortable. 

We should be shooting for the same thing with our customers.  They should feel comfortable doing business with us.  Relaxed in our house...whether it's a store, office, factory, workshop or website.  They say home is where the heart is.  But we often forget that our business is where the heart should be, too.  Why not try to put it there this Thanksgiving.

--Dave

Marathon....

A long distance race, especially one on foot.  A contest of endurance.

I've never run a marathon.  Ran a 1/2 marathon once, though, through the streets of Chicago.  That was fun but my knees were killing me afterward.  I did a full triathlon, also in Chicago, which was also fun.

I'm actually nearing the end of different type of marathon.  Last Thanksgiving, in 2008, a started this blog and vowed to write a post every day for a year.  I thought I might not stick with it unless I set an extreme goal for myself.  Well, this week I'll reach that goal.  Like the athletic contests in which I've competed, this too has been fun.

As we come up on the year, I'd ask for any feedback you have on the blog.  Have you enjoyed reading it?  What do you like about it?  What can be improved?  I'm not sure whether I'll continue to post every single day, but the blog's not going away.  I may throw in a video blog or two now and then to mix things up.

So, still chugging away here as I approach the finish line.  Thanks for coming along on this race with me.  I've appreciated your comments and words of encouragement along the way.  Keep 'em coming!

--Dave

Urbane...

Having the refined manners of polite society;  suave.

To whom it may concern,

This word was suggested by my daughter, Emily.  I believe it must have been one of her vocabulary words this week.  She, indeed, knew the proper definition.

However, Emily does not always display the qualities reflected in the word.  For the most part, she is quite well mannered.  But she strays now and again as most teenagers will.

And what about the rest of us?  How does our behavior stack up?  As people.  As companies.  Do we always show respect and act in an upstanding manner?  Do we follow Emily...I mean Emily Post?  Or Roget's Rules?  If not, why not?

Well, we move fast in this day and age.  Good manners take time, don't they?  But perhaps we should hearken back to the days when things were slower and people were nicer.  Did those days exist or are they just myth?  Never matter.  We can try anyway.  I'll try.  And if I fail?  Then, pardon me.

Most sincerely,

Dave

Psychokinesis...

The purported ability to move inanimate objects through mental processes.

Well, it looks like Mr. Webster's going to have to remove the word purported from the definition of this word.  Consumer Eyes writes this month about several new products - games actually - that allow players to control objects using only their thoughts. 

In the case of Mattel's Mindflex, players wear a headset that uses the same technology as an EKG.  A player can increase or decrease the speed of a fan using their brainwaves, which moves around a suspended ping pong ball. 

The company that produces the technology, NeuroSky, hopes to apply the approach to help people with attention deficit disorder learn to focus or assist handicapped individuals with certain activities to allow them to be more independent.

Michio Kaku actually talks about this technology in his book, The Physics of the Impossible.  He also explains the potential for things like Star Trek's teleportation transporter.  Yes, that's possible, too.  In fact, small particles have successfully been relocated using this technique.

This all reminds me that the world moves as fast as the imagination.  So don't sell yourself short.  You might think some of your ideas are crazy.  But who knows?  You might be able to move mountains after all.  Just think about it.

--Dave   

Taxonomy...

The science or technique of classification; systematics.  Division into ordered groups or categories.

I referred to this word in my post yesterday.  I explained how taxonomy has come to refer to the classification of content on websites.  This process is becoming more and more important.

I doubt that the father of taxonomy would understand this new usage of the word since they didn't have computers in the 1700's.  Carl Linnaeus was a Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist.  He created the word taxonomy from two Greek words, taxis (arrangement) and nomia (method).  Among other things, Linnaeus invented the convention to name living organisms:  kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species.  When he classified homo sapiens, one rank was called Monstrosus, which included the Dwarf of the Alps, the Patagonian Giant and the Monorchid Hottentot.  Strange.

But we really should be thankful for classification systems.  They enable us to make order out of chaos.  Organizing the masses into smaller groups is one of the first steps to deeper understanding.  Think market segmentation. 

So, I suggest doing more taxonomy and using this word when you can.  Somebody might reply "I already have enough tax on me" at which point you can explain the origin and meaning.  Then you can classify that person as either humorous, hearing impaired...or both.

--Dave 

Persnickety...

Overparticular; fussy. Snobbish.  Requiring painstaking care.

Yesterday I attended a little seminar sponsored by Paragon Consulting, an IT firm in Cleveland.  The topic was Content Management Systems, better known as CMS.  If it has an acronym, you know it's popular.  The producer of one of the top CMS, Sitecore, provided an impressive demo of their system.

There's a reason why the CMS has become so important.  Used to be that the webmaster in companies had to make all the changes to the website.  Now, companies have multiple websites that require updating on a continuous basis.  CMS allows users, like marketing departments, to update web content as easily as typing something into Word or changing the format in PowerPoint.

During the session yesterday, one of the panelists was a leader of IT at the Cleveland Clinic.  In talking about CMS, he used the word persnickety.  I hadn't heard the word since my grandmother used it, so I took note.  He used it in explaining how particular companies should be when setting up their CMS and defining the taxonomy.  Taxonomy is the relationship between different types of content on your site.  Ultimately, the taxonomy can allow you to show certain information to some users of a website and different information to others.  Done right, it can have a huge impact on marketing.

Having just completed a website overhaul of my own for Le Gourmet Chef, I understand the need for persnicketiness (yes, it's really a word) and the value of a CMS.  The process may be painstaking, but it's not the devil that's in the details, it's the profit. And that's what we're after.  Take the time to get what you want.

--Dave