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Time Change

March 13, 2010 By davidebowman Leave a Comment

First – the time change is stupid. Can’t we just move it 1/2 hour and stop the madness?

And now… the rest of the story.

The time change in Spring generally makes everyone really tired for a few days – particularly those of us who have to wake up early. It typically takes me about three or four days for me to bounce back from the big spring forward. Being tired is a problem, and great marketing ideas solve problems. Enter Caribou Coffee…

Caribou coffee has it’s own problem. It must compete with coffee giant Starbucks to get customers. Starbucks is more well known, has more locations, and has a stylish brand that many caffeine addicted people like me love. For Caribou to be successful it needs to get people to change their behavior. They need to get people to try something they don’t necessarily know about, when there is already something they love. Not an easy task.

So we have established the following two problems:

  • Problem one – The switch to daylight savings time is horrible and makes us all very tired.
  • Problem two – Caribou needs to find a way to get you to give them a try.

Here is the great marketing part. Caribou is taking advantage of the time change to try to get caffeine lovers to change where they spend their time and ultimately their money. How? They are using the time change as a reason to give away FREE ESPRESSO with purchase of a coffee on the Sunday and Monday following the change. This is smart, timely, and a great opportunity to generate positive word of mouth, make some new friends, and potentially gain some new loyal customers.

This promotion seems so obvious, yet it is creative, original, and effective. Proof that great ideas are all around us. Find a problem, develop and idea, and convince people that the time is right for a change.

Time to move the clocks ahead and get to bed. Maybe I will see you at Caribou tomorrow. I will be the tired guy chugging espresso.

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The Front Line

February 17, 2010 By davidebowman Leave a Comment

After the Superbowl I spent an hour watching the new CBS program Undercover Boss.  The show featured the CEO of the company Waste Management posing as a new hire for the company in numerous front line service jobs.  He picked up litter on a hillside, helped manage traffic at a landfill, cleaned portable toilets, and rode on a trash collection route – learning about his company and his people all along the way.

The show reminded me of my first “real job” after college, which was with the Cintas corporation.  Cintas, among other things, rents uniforms to customers and then once a week picks them up to be washed.  One of my many jobs there was to drive the big white truck, drop off clean uniforms, pick up some filthy garments, and take them back to be cleaned.   The work was hard, but I learned a great deal about the things that make a business successful.  Cintas had a similar policy very similar to the premise Undercover Boss – one that I really liked.   It mandated that every full time employee of spend one day per year out on the front lines riding along on a uniform route.  Everyone truly meant everyone.  The CEO, accountants, administrative assistants, sales, and others showed up early, put on a uniform, and hit the road.

Why was this policy important?

First, it gave everyone an understanding of the business.  All too often leaders become removed from what is happening on the front lines.  They forget about the work being done and the great people doing it.  Getting everyone out of the office built real empathy and appreciation for the hard work going on every day.  This shared understanding permeated the decision process at every level of the company.  The route drivers at Cintas took great pride in the work they did.  They appreciated the opportunity to show off how difficult the work actually was and how easy they made it look.

Second it provided new insights.  Getting a fresh set of eyes inside the operations of clients provided a great source of innovation.  People riding along were prompted to think “why do we do things this way?”  “what other problems could we solve for customers?”  “where could our service improve?” We all think differently.  Involving new people in executing old processes brings invites new perspectives.  The result was a steady stream of new ideas, business concepts, and innovations.

Third it built camaraderie.  Spending several hours riding shotgun in a box truck gave people time to get to know each other better.  Sure some of the conversation was about work or clients, but often more of it was about family, interests, and being real people.  This built trust and friendship, both of which helped things to run more smoothly.  The job of route driver was sometimes lonely, and having a converstaion with a real sidekick was a great change from silently talking back to sports radio talk shows.

Getting everyone from top to bottom out in front, even just once a year, helped to strengthen the company culture, generate new ideas, and build relationships that transcended the org chart.  I don’t know whether the TV show Undercover Boss will go on to be a success, but I do know that having first hand knowledge of the business played a huge part in the success of Cintas.

Amazingly, social technology offers us many of these same benefits.  Certainly these materialize in different ways, but the similarities are obvious.  Whether it is riding shotgun in a box truck, cleaning portable toilets, writing a blog, or conversing on Facebook – the closer you can get to the front lines, the better.  I continue to believe that today distance matters more than ever.  What are you doing to get closer to those you serve?

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Knock, Knock, Knock!

January 15, 2010 By davidebowman 27 Comments

When you hear that bang on the door of life, it is important to check it out. Sure there are a fair share of times when you pull the door open to find nobody on the porch, but every now and again something special is waiting on the other side of the door. Why am I talking about doors? Well that is my not so subtle way of announcing that I am making a career change.

A few weeks ago, opportunity came knocking – actually it called my iphone. It was a call from a Walter Ohlmann, President and CEO of Penny / Ohlmann / Neiman, Inc. – an advertising agency based here in Dayton, Ohio. Turns out that Walter has been looking for someone to help him bring a more modern approach to their service offering. In particular, while the firm has a great depth of traditional public relations, strategic marketing and creative resources, they were looking for someone with experience in developing marketing strategies that incorporate the use new media and social technology. He had been given my name by a mutual friend, and out of the blue, gave me a call. (Knock, Knock, Knock)

After a few conversations, an offer was made, and I said yes. So, starting February 1st, 2010, I will take on the role of Chief Marketing Strategist at Penny / Ohlmann / Neiman, inc.

There are a number of reasons why I am excited about this opportunity. First, I am going to get to share my creativity, knowledge of marketing strategy, and passion for social technology with businesses in Dayton, Ohio and beyond. I have been exploring this area for some time now, and really look forward to delivering these services with the capabilities of an agency behind me.

Second, the fact that this will be a new service offering for Penny / Ohlmann / Neiman means that I will get to build the practice from the ground up. Make no mistake, this is going to be a big challenge. I realize that success will involve a great deal of work both internally and externally, but I know that I am up to the task. It is going be very rewarding to see this come to life over the coming year in the form of happy clients and a reinvigorated agency. We will practice what we preach, and our results will be testament to our understanding of what modern marketing is all about. We will face the same challenges our Clients face, and ultimately we will use passion, time, dedication and talent to steadily evolve into something remarkable.

Third, it is exciting to be a part of a company with such a rich history. Penny / Ohlmann / Neiman has been around for a long time. My job is to make sure the company is around a long time from now. The agency has a good reputation, exceptionally nice people, and has worked with just about every business in the Miami Valley at some point in time. The primary weakness that I heard when asking people about the firm was that they really needed to update their service offering. My hiring should send a strong signal of the intention to do just that. I plan to make the firm far more progressive in what it can offer to clients, while not losing site of the fundamental services that have made it successful. It is not about just slapping on some social media, but rather taking a modern view of what a marketing services firm can offer to Clients. Hopefully, my hiring is merely the first of many, as the agency adds Clients, services, and ultimately more people in the years to come.

I am also excited to be back with a company based in Dayton, Ohio. This is the place where I was born. Most of the professional connections and personal relationships I have are in this community. While I have done my best to maintain these relationships since departing for Cincinnati two years ago, it will be great to once again call Dayton my professional home. Cincinnati is amazing, but there is no place like home. It will be great to once again be able to get involved with projects, programs, and organizations that are working hard to make Dayton prosperous.

I am also looking forward to giving my friends at Hafenbrack, the talented folks at RealArt, my friend David at The Next Wave, and others around the city some friendly competition. They have set the bar pretty high, so I know I am going to need to bring my “A game” in order to succeed. Ultimately competition helps to drive innovation, so hopefully we all engage in what I like to call “coopetition.” I look forward to taking part in our collective success, and the collective success of our clients – the businesses and people of the Miami Valley.

There are a bunch of other reasons I could list, but you get the idea. It is a big change, and one that I am very excited about making.

As for my former employer, LÛCRUM, I want to thank the company for giving me so many opportunities to succeed. I have enjoyed my time with the firm, and was given the freedom to explore a lot of new marketing territory. I made so many friends, accomplished some great things, and enjoyed the ride thoroughly. With the new direction of the company focusing on delivering Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Data Visualization, and Data Strategy Services, I anticipate much success for the firm in the years ahead. I learned so much about the transformative capabilities of technology while at LÛCRUM, and I hope to apply that knowledge to drive success for Clients in my new role.

So in the coming days, I have a lot of loose ends to tie up, a lot of calls and emails to answer, a lot of updating to do, and a lot of preparation work to accomplish so that I can hit the ground running. Come February 1st, if you are looking for an innovative approach to marketing strategy, please contact me.

Finally thank you to my family and friends who have supported me over the years. Life is an adventure. Your love, kindness, and generosity have helped me to realize great success. Without such support this opportunity would not be possible. I hope to make you proud to be a part of it all.

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Snow Job

January 5, 2010 By davidebowman 2 Comments

I heard a great story by Jeff Brady on NPR while on the way home yesterday.  It was about the work of two researchers from Dartmouth who found it odd that ski resorts seemed to report more snowfall than surrounding areas and and steeper increases in snow amounts on weekends.  They also found that resorts close to major population centers exaggerated figures even more.  These scientists were skeptical about this “weekend snow” effect, and started collecting data about it.  Turns out that ski resorts were in fact inflating the snow fall amounts quite a bit, falsely using extra snowflakes as a marketing tactic to get people to come out and hit the slopes.

Michael Berry, President of the National Ski Areas Association, said that ski resorts had often been “optimistic” with their past reports.  However, he went on to say that this practice is quickly dying.  Why?  Two reasons  – the iphone (or any mobile device) and social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.  These tools and technologies are rendering snow reports obsolete, as users report conditions to their friends in real time.  The researchers stated that the number of exaggerated snow actually reports dropped off sharply with the release of numerous iphone apps enabling users to document conditions.  Mobile and social technologies are growing fast and empowering people to better understand the world.  Many of the techniques and tactics that “optimistic” marketers could get away with in the past, are now becoming problematic.  If you are not working on building trust as a core part of building your business, you are simply lying to yourself about your future prospects.

Berry had a great quote in the piece – one that transcends skiing.  “If you try and create a reality that you perceive to be the truth, it had better be consistent with the reality on the ground, because the consumer will remind you of it instantly.”

Service truly is the new marketing.  Every consumer is a researcher.  Every customer is a journalist.  Everyone is now what Mike Wallace or Consumer Reports once was – armed with flip cams, iphones, and 24 x 7 communication networks.  People trust the advice of their friends. so work hard to make friends, earn trust, and dazzle your customers.  Real people and their tweets, posts, and updates either represent your next great new ad campaign or a damaging expose on the truth about your company.

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Dead Cat Marketing

November 19, 2009 By davidebowman 3 Comments

Suppose your business sells something to a customer.  Following the sale, you gather no information about them.  Instead you send the customer out the door and off into the universe, hoping they will come back again someday.  In the time that follows, you make no direct or indirect attempt to determine if the customer is happy with the level of service provided, feels good about the purchase, would be inclined to come back or will tell others about good things about you.  In this scenario you have a customer that potentially exists in multiple states.  Happy? Angry? Loyal? Profitable? Vocal? Dissatisfied? Disgusted? Disengaged completely?  You can theorize about it, but you don’t really know until they come back again.  In this scenario, you are engaging in dead cat marketing.

“Dead cat?”  “What the heck are you talking about dead cats for?”  To answer that, we travel back to 1935, where Austrian physicist Erwin Schroedinger created a hypothetical experiment now known as Schroedinger’s Cat.  It used the following construct:

“A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following diabolical device (which must be secured against interference from the cat) : in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of one hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none [will decay]; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrochloric acid.  If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed.  The first atomic decay would have poisoned it”

In short if  the device triggered the hammer, the cat is dead.  If the device did not yet trigger the hammer, the cat is alive.  To the outside observer, the cat exists in multiple states.  The cat can be considered to both alive and dead.  You can not know until you open the box.  Schroedinger was using this experiment as a way to debate quantum physics.  Since I  know nothing about quantum physics, I will instead use analogy to share what I think this means to Marketing.   Here goes…

deadcatboxIn the box, the cat was either very alive or very dead.  The observer’s uncertainty did not truly dictate that outcome.  It simply prevented the observer from knowing.  The same holds true of your customers.  Whether you choose to ask them or not, they have an opinion.  They may hate you, they may love you.  You can speculate all you want, but until you listen you can not be certain.  Until you are certain, or at least have some probability of certainty, you can’t do much to improve.

Good marketing requires you to “open the box.”   Unlike the cat experiment, chances are that the outcome with customers is not an absolute.  Rather than dead cat or living cat, customers are likely on more of a continuum – from very happy to very unhappy customers.  You need to ask, observe, measure, and… then actually do something to alter the outcome where appropriate and able.   The beauty of the social web, search, rss, email, online surveys and other tools we now have, are they make the box very easy to open.  People are already out there talking, you just need to make the effort to listen.

While Schroedinger’s cat, if found dead, could not come back to life, opening the box and listening to your customers can bring new life to your business.

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Trick or Treat

October 30, 2009 By davidebowman Leave a Comment

photoWith Halloween just one day away, Trick or Treat is definitely on the brain.  So in the spirit of the season ask yourself this question.  Metaphorically speaking, what are you giving your customers these days? Tricks or Treats?  If you are offering treats, are they like those old, stale, home-made popcorn balls or are they delicious, sugary surprises.  Do you know who is allergic to what?  Do you know who likes chocolate and who likes sweet-tarts?  Technology combined with a little inquiry and a lot of listening can enable you to have the ability to hand out precisely the candy your customers want.  Don’t let your business be remembered for handing out junk that nobody wants, be that house that everyone talks about.  Know your customers and give them what they want – word will spread and the people will beat a path to your door.  Happy Halloween.

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Summing Up SummitUp

October 21, 2009 By davidebowman 6 Comments

Two Thumbs UpYesterday I got to celebrate my birthday by having my very own social media conference – SummitUp.  I highly recommend this as a way to celebrate your next birthday.  (actually this was purely coincidence, but a nice one none the less.)  The day was simply amazing.  To give you an idea of how well things went, at least from my perspective, my biggest gripe for the day was that the coffee cups were roughly the size of shot glasses.  Now, 15 years ago shot glasses would have been a big part of my celebration at the very same Wright State University where the event was held, but now I am older, wiser, and much more dependent on caffeine.  Next year I am voting for 64 oz tumblers for the coffee.  Still, the fact that I am yammering about something as trivial as small coffee cups is a great sign that the important parts of the day went very well.  What was so great about it you ask?  Well here is my little highlight reel from the day:

  • Kevin Dugan – This guy is a pro.  His great intro video did not load, no problem.  I have seen more than one presenter implode from such an event.  Not Kevin.  He simply laughed it off and went on to deliver an amazing presentation on the importance of story-telling in our digitally enabled world.  He covered topics like the role of earned and paid media, the importance combining fact with emotion, and the important role that stories play to humanity.   He went on to provide specific examples of companies doing this, including Union Terminal in Cincinnati, Sharpie, Starbucks, The United Way, and Best Buy.  He then closed with 12 action steps that anyone could use to apply the concept of story telling to social media.  This was a perfect lead in for the stories that would be told throughout the remainder of the day.
  • Artie Isaac -  Following Kevin Dugan is not an easy task, but one that Artie Isaac did masterfully.  In fact, Artie customized his opening slide on the fly to incorporate Kevin’s presentation as a set up for his own.  (They both cited Charles Dickens as well, which I did not know until today after viewing Kevin’s video.)  The presentations dove-tailed into one another perfectly with Kevin articulating the importance of story-telling and Artie then talking about how to use creativity to tell those stories.  Artie may have stolen the show for the whole day.  He addressed the need for us produce higher quality content by more frequently exercising our creativity.  His presentation had the audience laughing out loud and thinking deeply at the same time.  He is simply a masterful presenter – using a combination of great timing, compelling use of visuals, wonderful humor, simple advice, and rich wisdom to captivate 275 people for an hour of time.    Among Artie’s suggestions were, get sleep, breathe, feed the “creative pet”, make a to-don’t list to go with your to-do list, turn off the television, explore new domains of knowledge, know the difference between message and medium, understand generosity yields creativity, and make time for the things that are important to you.
  • Breakout Sessions – Because I was only able to attend part of one breakout due to emceeing and presenting duties, I have less to offer in the way of reviews in this area.  I saw about 1/2 of Brian LeCount’s presentation on blogging, and loved it.  He spoke of the important role that blogs play relative to search, and backed it up with tons of data points.  Well done Brian. That said, I would love to have some reviews of the break-outs.  If you attended SummitUp and went to the break-outs, share your reviews in the comments section.  From the feedback I got, people really loved all of them.  Thank you to Lara Kretler, Roger Bora & Kerianne Acra, Brian LeCount, David Esrati, Debba Haupert, Kendra Ramirez,  Ali Margello, Jennifer McClure, & Steve Phillips for offering up your time and talent.
  • Bob Garfield – Bob was provocative, insightful, snarky, and funny.  Admittedly I am not someone who is easily offended.  I did hear people express some dislike with some of the verbiage Bob used and slides he presented, but to me, it was spot on, funny, and relevant.  It wasn’t as if he was on stage doing an Andrew Dice Clay routine.  He was simply pushing the envelope a little to make a point – like putting a little Tabasco on eggs.  Overall, I felt he did a great job of framing up the dilemma facing marketing professionals today as a result of the collapse of old media channels.  They say that no one wants to be the bearer of bad news, but I thought Bob did a nice job filling such a role.  I also agreed with his prescription for solving the problem, which was rooted in doing a better job of listening to customers.   I am excited to read his book, The Chaos Scenario, and will be happy to accept his challenge to talk more about it in the future.
  • Lewis Howes – Lewis had fun presenting, and I had fun watching him.  He started his presentation by telling a story about his experience pole-vaulting in the decathlon in college for the chance to become an All American athelete.  He was totally into the story, and used it as a way to set up the idea of pushing yourself to do what it takes to realize your dreams.  He then went on to offer up some great suggestions on how to maximize the results you get through using LinkedIn.  He spent a good amount of time speaking about the ability to be found when someone searches for keywords or topics on the site – an SEO style approach that I have not heard before with regard to LinkedIn.  He offered up some very useful information in a very entertaining way – and did so coming off of a  wicked illness.  I picked up a number of tactical tips that I am going to incorporate into improving my LinkedIn profile.
  • Chris Brogan – Awesome!  Just Awesome!  In the same way that Kevin and Artie worked so well together, Bob Garfield and Chris Brogan seemed to be perfectly paired.  Bob’s presentation on the demise of the old way of doing business was the perfect lead in to Chris’ advice about the new way.  It was sort of like boot camp.  Bob broke us down, and then Chris built us back up anew.  Chris did not use any slides, but rather just hit go, started in, and occasionally referred to a little moleskine cahier notebook with “6 point font” scribblings to guide the show.  He opened with a story about a Japanese swordsman (whose name I will not attempt) and the need for experimentation and change relative to survival.  He spoke passionately from the heart about the importance of trust in a digitally networked world.  He talked about making your own game, and not waiting around for someone to save you.  He went on to discuss the fallacy of security, the resistance people have about change, and the difference between an audience and a community.  Chris was captivating throughout.  I must have written down 15 pages of notes and ideas from his presentation, all of which will likely surface here and elsewhere in the coming weeks.  I can’t imagine a better way to complete the day, than with Chris just bringing it for 90 minutes.  My thanks to him for closing the day out strong.

I can’t say enough about the many people who helped put SummitUp together and make the day run so smoothly.  It seemed like I got a lot of credit for work that a whole lot of other people did, so let me pass that on with my sincere thanks to planners, volunteers, promoters, sponsors, speakers and attendees.  You had everything to do with the event being so much fun.  I was just along for the ride.

Even better than SummitUp, was the fact that when I got home shortly afterward, I was greeted by my loving family who surprised me with a great dinner and the gift of a brand new bass guitar for my birthday.  Not only did SummitUp rock, but now I am more enabled to do the same.  (Condolences in advance to my neighbors.)

Again, thank you to all who made yesterday so much fun.  The happy birthday song was the icing on the cupcake.

What did you think of the event?

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