You may have noticed that I get pretty opinionated (and occassionally a bit strident) when talking about stupid advertising decisions. Here’s my conversation with Charles Payne on Fox Business just before the recent Super Bowl self-aggrandizing, vanity-filled, crappy-investment advertising orgy:
At least Charles let me answer his questions. Here’s the video from my conversation with Neil Cavuto on Fox Business before last year’s Super Bowl: (The difference: Fox was selling Super Bowl ads last year, NBC was selling them this year.)
Follow Steve and Sally Hogshead as they debate the relative merits of Super Bowl advertising. LIVE, right now, on Twitter. It’s all good fun until someone loses an eye.
Steve’s 2009 Readiness Teleseminar was awesome! But I must say I feel bad. I received many emails from readers asking to be placed on the waitlist, disappointed that the teleseminar filled up before they could register.
Be sad no longer! We have a free download for all of those who missed the event or want to re-live it. There is an MP3 download of the hour-long teleseminar along with a PDF of the accompanying Learning Guide. Just follow the link:
And for those of you who were lucky (or prepared) enough to get one of the 100 spots during the live event… what did you think? How will you use the Six Readiness questions to help your business in the upcoming year?
Exact Target is a company who markets itself as “On-demand email marketing and one-to-one digital communication platform. ” I’ll add to that by saying that I think of Exact Target as a group of really smart, cutting-edge marketing experts.
We’re getting very excited for the 2009 Readiness Teleseminar this Friday. Thanks to everyone who has signed up so far! If you have any specific questions that you would like Steve to consider during the Q&A portion of the teleseminar, email them to me – amanda@yastrow.com
Good news for the procrastinators! There are still a few spots left to participate in Steve’s 2009 Readiness Teleseminar. It’s happening this Friday at 1:00 P.M. EST. Sign up at this link.
Bad news for the procrastinators! Official registration for Steve’s 2009 Readiness Teleseminar is full! If you didn’t get one of the 100 spots, send me an email, and I can put you on the waitlist. If we don’t have any cancellations, as least you will get the audio download link.
Remember, after the teleseminar, we will send an audio download to everyone who signed up.
Last month I wrote a newsletter article called “We are not multi-taskers.” We are really only capable of doing one conscious thing at a time, and this tendency to glance at the Blackberry or surf the web while talking with someone ensures that none of those actions will be done well. My point: One of the key ingredients of a relationhip-building encounter is being 100%, fully engaged in the moment you are sharing with your customer.
I just read this article on multi-tasking from the website of Dr. Joseph Mercola, who I always find interesting. How about this statistic Dr. Mercola quotes: Workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers.
One of the greatest challenges to creating relationship-building encounters with customers is actually just being there, fully-engaged with your customer. Attempting to multi-task doesn’t mean that you are successful doing it.
Last week I had the privilege to speak at Exact Target‘s Connections ’08 user conference. Exact Target is the provider of a leading email marketing application … but they are so much more. 1200 people attended the conference, and heard the Exact Target mantra – “Subscribers Rule.” (see subscribersrule.com for more)
Subscribers Rule is one of the tightest, clearest brand essence ideas I’ve heard in a while; Exact Target, as a group of online marketing thought leaders, encourages people not to think of email marketing and related activities only as customer acquisition tools, but as customer relationship-building tools. (This was the subject of my talk to the pre-conference “Agency Summit.” I wrote The Apple Farmer story preparing for this talk.)
Jeff Rohrs of Exact Target spoke before me, explaining the Subscribers Rule philosophy. Jeff is a leading thinker in this area, and pointed out that customers might still think of you as a spammer even if they have subscribed to your material, if they don’t think it is interesting or think you send it too frequently. Subscribers Rule is based on three major principles:
Serve the individual – Don’t focus on lists. Use technology for mass personalization.
Honor preferences – in terms of content, frequency, channel
Deliver value that meets the customer’s unique needs … they don’t care what you want, only what they want.
Read more of Jeff’s posts on subscribersrule.com. We can all learn a lot from Jeff. He “gets it.”
Since I was speaking to a room full of people immersed in Internet marketing and social media, I have some special opportunities to share the content of my talk with you. First, welcome to the world of instant blogging. Soon after leaving the stage, I started getting Google Alert emails, telling me about blog posts about my speech.
Tom Dressler of Marketer Insight wrote this wonderful post as I was speaking, giving a complete recap of the talk.
Bill Powell of The Serif Group shared these insights on The Orange Juice blog, focusing on my jabs at “Brute Force Branding.”
Exact Target’s marketing group posted this “live blog” giving a play-by-play of what I was saying.
Jeff Rohrs also wrote this post called “Zen Mail Marketing” on the Subscribers Rule blog about the “Not Two” concept I use to explain the idea of a We relationship. (This is an idea inspired by friend David Gottlieb, co-author of Letters to a Buddhist Jew. David is one of the smartest, most interesting people any of us has ever met, in addition to rooting for the wrong Chicago baseball team. Write me if you want more information on “Not Two.”)
Jeff also interviewed me, and published this short video of our conversation:
Finally, if you’d like my slides, please see them here. Yes, looking at slides by themselves is (should be) cryptic, so get in touch if you have questions.
I have facilitated workshops for the past five days in a row, from Sunday through yesterday, Thursday. Each forum enabled me to engage the audience in the exchange of ideas.
This is one of the most rewarding parts of my work. I show up for the workshop, well-prepared, and with a clear idea of the content I want to cover. But, at the start, I do not know what will happen in the workshop, because I have not yet heard the participants’ contributions.
When I meet people as they come in the room, they are always friendly, but all I can learn about them as we greet each other is what is written on their name tag and in the few words we can exchange. But, with each person, I am am confident that there is a depth that I have not yet uncovered.
Once a workshop starts, I begin to solicit contributions from the attendees. As I provoke them and prod them, ideas begin to surface. One person’s thoughts encourage another to speak, sometimes to agree, sometimes to amend, often to debate.
As I stand in front of a group, the vision I have is that there is a well of intelligence seated before me, and my job is tap into that well, using my ideas and concepts to bring forth new, stimulating thoughts. Every group I work with is different, because each well of intelligence has its own strengths and personality.
Presentations are not about presenting. They are about being present enough to engage a group of people, in a way that creates new ideas that none of us could have created without the collaboration of each other.
Are customer relationships as important to non-profit organizations as they are to for-profit organizations?
I addressed this question today in a speech to 160 non-profit executives in Jerusalem. The speech was titled, “Creating We Relationships: Turning Donors Into Partners,” and was sponsored by the most “We” bank I’ve ever seen – Bank of Jerusalem.
My answer to this question is an unequivocal “Yes.” The difference between, “I support Organization X, they do great things,” and “I am involved with Organization X, we do great things” is significant. When a donor stops thinking of a charitable organization as “Them,” and begins to think of himself and the organization as “We,” magic happens. Donations go up, involvement goes up, and the donor will be more likely to introduce friends to the organization.
The same can be said for the non-profit organization’s other customers, such as funding agencies and foundations, volunteers, board members, and recipients of aid. A We relationship leads to actions that drive results.
It’s always important, when working with non-profit organizations, to recognize where they are different from for-profit organizations. When it comes to customer relationships, they are, fundamentally, the same.
"When Steve Yastrow writes, I pay close attention" - Tom Peters
"I had to buy two copies. The first one is so dog-eared and underlined I couldn't read it any longer." - Seth Godin
Steve is the author of Brand Harmony and the newly published We:
The Ideal Customer Relationship. Learn more and order direct from our Products
page, or from Amazon.
In addition to writing, I spend most of my work time helping companies unleash their potential by creating better connections with their customers. This happens through my speaking events and through Yastrow & Company consulting engagements, where my team and I help companies figure out who they intend to be in the future, and then engage the entire company in creating that future through strong "We" customer relationships.
Before starting Yastrow & Company in the mid-90s I was vice-president of resort marketing for Hyatt Hotels. My experiences in the hotel business showed me clearly that most marketing doesn’t happen in the marketing department. Customers are paying attention to all interactions with a company, not just the promises made in traditional "marketing communications."
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