The Future Looks Bright

Now I know why Tallahassee is Florida’s capitol…and it is not because it’s difficult to spell. Our visit to Florida State University this week was complimented by roads covered with canopies of live oak trees dripping with Spanish moss, blue skies, and a light breeze. The legislature is in session and people are friendly. Our friends at Catch Your Limit have an office located there and they provide strategic marketing consulting and fish cleaning services. If you don’t believe those two skills go together check out http://www.catchyourlimit.com/.

They also group teach the Creative Strategy class in the School of Communications at FSU. When they asked me if I had a client that would be good for their class project…I said in fact…I do….Vanity stores would love some new ideas. They are a cool retail apparel chain that has hundreds of stores located mainly in the mid-west and a relatively new online presence at http://www.evanity.com/.

Vanity sent us to Tallahassee to scoop up the results of the final project that they have been working on for weeks. Here’s how it worked: the class divided up into 5 ad agencies and competed for the clients business. Then we viewed the presentations and picked the winner- which let me just tell you now was a much more difficult task than I anticipated. They exceeded my expectations, which those of you who know me, know start at “high expectations.” Wow. I learned a lot. Starting with, how do you stay current in the marketing world? Teach a class and get some fresh ideas from your students.

What surprised me is that I got inspired by the students and about the future of the business. There is a new crop of energetic young people that have some innovative and big new ideas. The students are “digital natives” meaning that their world has always included technology and the internet and they don’t know a world without it. And, the way that they approach marketing reflects that reality. Now, there is no way that I can cover all the ideas in the blog today but I am delighted to say I have some exciting topics for upcoming blogs!

The winner was an “agency” called CR8 and they were victorious in a very close competition. I am so excited to deliver the results to Vanity. This was the ultimate focus group folks and it’s all on our Flip video cameras…soon to be condensed to a “Mindspot on the Spot” video report. One of the students sent me an email and asked me “When I get into the "real world" what should be more important to me: Taking the time to come up with great BIG ideas, or presenting a mediocre idea, knowing that people tend to go for the glitz and glam?”

This is a great question and here is my answer: Hard work counts, and the big idea is going to give you the hook; however, you have to keep your audience interested, and convince them you can get the job done. The competition is fierce and standing out from the other agencies is going to be an on-going challenge. The good news is that competition will make you better– so we say bring it on! At the end of the day…it all goes back to the research that can help you know and understand your customer. Your message must be relevant to your customer and it has to be communicated to the decision makers in a clear, engaging, and confident manner. Otherwise how will you reach their consumers?

There are other factors, in the “real world” everyone has budget restraints within which you must work and everyone has an opinion and you rarely know all the variables that factor into the final decision. And, you’ll notice there are a lot of “ands”.

The appropriate answer isn’t either/or, it’s Both And. You need Big Ideas AND excellent presentation.

We would like to thank the class at FSU for the privilege of being their client this semester. And, in closing…. “The real world” is closer than you might think.

The author of the Mindless Babble Blog is the President of Mindspot Research and Business Solutions. www.mindspotinc.com.

Evolution of a Blogger

Hey- you have to start somewhere and writing a blog seemed like a great idea for me and my business a couple of years ago. And, OMG have I learned a lot in the last 2 years. It is often how much I don’t know. I have learned to be humble (at least a little bit). Blogging is making me humble and slightly insecure. Does anyone read my stuff? Do they think I am a little bit loony? I am a researcher; therefore, I try not to take it too personally. Here is what I am learning:

People are not all that interested in YOU the blogger – your readers are interested in what you can teach them. It’s not about how many people read you it’s about the quality of what you have to say to them. For example, I don’t care if you Tweet what you had for breakfast – a banana and a cup of coffee. Heck you have 140 characters-why not at least use them and take us to your tiny url? Suppose you Tweet something meaningful like “I am eating a banana shake everyday for breakfast and I have lost 5 pounds in the past 2 weeks”. It works a lot like sales: You need features, advantages, and benefits to be interesting. The basics work for Twitter, Selling, and Blogging. We have become an instant-gratification- society (Now please!) and if someone can save you time and show the value it is worthwhile.

Blogging is an ego-buster. I recently read an article in CopyBlogger (one of my favorite blogs) that suggests if you blog you should check your ego at the door. It’s true. It’s whatcha got for me -your reader and if you don’t have something good I am going to tell you or even worse – I am not going to say a word!

I share my technology insights and half the time I am stumbling along figuring out how to use the latest stuff…you may recall my Blogs on Delicious and my slight addiction to Facebook and trying to figure out what was going on in the social networking world. Now because things change and evolve quickly I am working my way through Discus and Tweet Deck. I have joined Third Tribe a blogging community but only because I have a not-so-secret crush on Seth Godin and I am pretty sure that Chris Brodan is going to teach me something – I just have no idea what it is yet.

It’s like what I had for breakfast versus the killer shake recipe. Give me something I can use! Your readers choose what you provide if you are listening. Are you listening? When I first started writing my blog I wanted everyone to like it and read it. However, then I remembered I am in Marketing! And, Marketing 101 can be summed up with these simple words from David Ogilvy, “You can’t be everything to everybody” and funny enough, it’s the same with blogging.

What have you learned about blogging? Let me hear from you. I’m listening.

How can 1.3 Billion Chinese People be wrong?

I am “spot-on” with my New Year’s Resolutions this year. How you doin’? It’s not what you think. The only reason I am on track is that I don’t make any resolutions for the New Year. If you make them on the very first day of the year, your probability of success is pretty low and many people abandon the calling a couple weeks into the New Year. How do I know this? It’s empirical. It’s observational research. How many of you have done this or know people that 2-3 weeks into the year are saying, “well there is always next year”?

How about you break from your norm and try something different? If you want to make a change you have to change something. The date is a variable (see lots of research terms). You can change one variable and see if you have a different outcome.

Marketing Research, which is the process of getting the information that you need, dictates that you measure results in a quantifiable manner. If you change multiple variables it is often difficult to measure the results. For example, we conduct a lot of advertising copy testing at Mindspot. If we test a TV commercial with customers age 18-24 and test a different TV commercial with customers age 25-34 it is possible that we could obtain different results for the overall appeal of the ad because we have changed 2 variables.

We would not know if the difference was due to the age group or the different commercials. If we show both age groups the same ad then we can measure the overall appeal of each ad. Or if we show the same ad to both age groups we can tell if there is a difference in perception between the age groups on overall appeal for that ad. Of course, we can design one test to accommodate both variables. But, I’m not going to do that in the blog today because I am really talking about just changing one variable which is the day that you celebrate the New Year (and who doesn’t need a “mulligan”)!

The date of the Chinese New Year changes every year. We are nearing the end of The Year of the Ox and entering The Year of the Tiger on February 14. Oddly, it falls this year on Valentine’s Day. No disrespect to St. V but I am going to celebrate the coming of the New Year instead. How can 1.3 billion Chinese people be wrong?

At least in the US there does not seem to be a lot of societal or peer pressure to adopt making a list of resolutions for the Chinese New Year. So, change one variable (when you make your resolution) and see if it has any impact on your success. Here’s to the Year of the Tiger – bring it on!

The author of the Mindless Babble Blog is the President of Mindspot Research and Business Solutions. www.mindspotinc.com.

London Bridges Falling Down

I just returned from London and it seems like when I travel or do something that gets me out of my normal routine I get inspired. And, we all need a little inspiration. London is inspiring to me on a grand scale. In my mind it is most like an older wiser more polite version of New York. It’s not like “Jack the Ripper” is still running through the streets but it seems like there is history around every corner…or at least a pub.

It is striking that you can be very anonymous in both New York and London. Big cities are that way. The difference is in culture….eventually some out-spoken New Yorkers will yell at you or talk to you for no reason. In London that has not happened – at least not yet. One time I fell in the middle of the street in London. Not one of my prouder moments. It was a few years ago and it was combination of very high heels, a cell phone, pouring rain, and a less than visible pothole. I truly expected someone to immediately come to my aid and at least help me get up and collect my belongings. That did not happen. As a matter of fact, my perceived polite Londoners started honking and yelling for me to get out of the road. It was alarming.

My point is that it is better to dismiss your preconceptions because you don’t often really know the outcome. Ya, maybe in New York there would have been a better chance of someone offering aid...maybe not. Is that good enough for you? I get asked a lot of questions about research and my blog goal this year is to focus more on that core competency. And, today’s blog is about research (really!) and how leaving your ideas, preconceived notions, and social bias at the door will serve you well. Start with a blank page and let your customers fill in the blanks. Sure it is OK to have a hypothesis but it better not get in the way of finding the truth.

Research quite simply is finding information that you need to know, that you don’t have yet. And, why add your two cents – it doesn’t matter and it may cloud your vision and cause you to make a critical mistake.

Getting back to the story, fortunately, once the initial shock that Londoners were actually yelling at me wore off, I was able to get up and yell “alright already” at the honking taxis “as if” Miss Montana was a native New Yorker.

People’s reactions, even your own reactions to various situations, questions, and events can surprise us all. Cheers~

If You’re Not Making Mistakes, How Are You Learning?

The stakes in the high tech sector are high. When you screw up on the Internet your mistakes hang around and haunt you forever.

The Regional SVP of Facebook Mike Haines spoke last Wednesday in Orlando to members of the American Marketing Association of Central Florida (AMA-CFL). Did you know that 1 million people a day join Facebook? But I’m not going to talk about Facebook…Mike said something that resonated with me and it was a great term that I have not heard in a while…and it was like hearing from an old friend. He said “Fail Forward”.

People are afraid of failure. I say bring it on! Failure is often seen as a step backward but failing teaches us to be resilient. We have all heard the expression “What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.” Usually when you hear that it is at a point when you don’t want to be reminded. Right? Later you know you are made of steel. When Thomas Edison invented the light bulb he tried over 2,000 times to get it to work. He said, “I never failed once. I invented the light bulb. It just happened to be a 2000-step process!” It’s about attitude. It’s about learning being a process.

And, when you work in the online space every day you know it is moving at the speed of light and you have to innovate or you WILL die online. The way that we differentiate our business is by innovating and creating new ideas, products, and ways of engaging people in real time. Mike at Facebook said that they make mistakes…their members even set up groups to tell them about their mistakes. How many of you have joined a Facebook group to protest Facebook? However, they are glad to hear it so they can learn. The thing about failure and being willing to fail is it will make you stop and think. You think about the process and you “Fail Forward.” It’s more like one step back…two steps forward when you are in the virtual world.

Remember, the sooner we find out this idea doesn’t work; the sooner we can get onto one that might. And if this idea does work, hallelujah, we may have a new light bulb on our hands.

BTW, as Mario Andretti said, “If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.”

Taking Care of People, Taking Care of Business, Taking Care of the Planet

I recently attended a conference for female entrepreneurs, and I talked about the conference offered by Count Me In (CMI) in my last blog. Office Depot volunteered their corporate Headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida for the 3 day conference. I didn’t think much about Office Depot before this…other than it’s a place to pick up printing paper and ink when I run out. The title of the blog “Taking Care of People, Taking Care of Business, Taking Care of the Planet” is their motto. So big deal; lots of corporations have mottos, but do they all live by them? Well here is what I didn’t know: Office Depot does. Read on because I’m going to talk about a really cool program and some FREE (ya FREE) business tools (and lots of them) that are available to you!

Taking Care of People:
Office Depot has donated over $20 million dollars to help people, but I am not going to talk about all of that…I am going to talk about one program that I thought was unique and insightful. The National Backpack Program, now in its seventh year, places new backpacks into the hands of children who might not otherwise have the proper tools for success. Office Depot has donated nearly 1.8 million backpacks full of school suppliers since 2001.

Why is this so important?

Let me use a real-life example. As many of you already know, I’m from Montana, (and you are probably sick of hearing about fishing), and during a recent trip home I had the opportunity to visit with a woman whose experience with this program was more personal. Ok, so she’s my Mom, and she is the current Executive Director of The Boys and Girls Clubs Endowment Foundation in Billings, Montana and the former Development Director of Family Service, Inc., a nonprofit organization there, and she said the community involvement of Office Depot made a difference in the lives of many in a Montana community of just over 100,000.

She told me the people, who use the services of Family Service, are truly the most at-risk and vulnerable in their community. Any extra expense puts these families in crisis. Back to school expenses were one of the financial stressors of the low to very low income families served. I was told each year the wonderful associates at the local Office Depot came forward to make certain hundreds of young people had backpacks and the needed school supplies to fill them. She would watch as the families, parents and children, stood in line for hours waiting their turn to receive these generous gifts. She could see the excitement of the kids and the relief of their parents, who now had one less thing to worry about! Without the involvement of Office Depot, many children would have returned to school without the tools their peers took for granted. She assured me that having the right tools set the tone for the entire school year and that the first couple of days at school are critical.

Taking Care of Business:
Did you know that there are a lot of FREE business resources on the Office Depot’s website? It makes sense – business people are their customers! They offered WebCafe’ (their version of webinars before webinars were even heard of!) WebCafe’ was launched in 2002 as part of the Company's online Business Resource Center. These free web-based seminars provide small business owners and other professionals with the opportunity to learn from industry experts on a variety of topics ranging from marketing and sales tools to finance and technology trends.

The workshops, which are held on select Tuesdays at 4PM EST, consist of a 40-minute presentation followed by an interactive question-and-answer session.
They have what seems like hundreds of business form templates (from sample equipment leases to IRS tax forms), and provide a small business handbook that tells you everything you need to know to run your business from equity to employees. It’s amazing and I wish I had known about it a few years ago!

I know about them now because they stand behind women in business and are committed to identifying the growing global needs of today's businesswoman. I am posting a picture of me with Monica Luechtefeld, who is the EVP of E-Commerce and Direct Marketing for Office Depot. Since I own a business (www.mindspotinc.com) that utilizes the online space – I feel qualified enough to say that her team is doing a great job and I learned a few things from them while I was there! Monica is also tasked by the organization to leverage her relationships with women’s business organizations to expand their marketing efforts towards business owners. I can’t speak for all of the women who attended the conference last month, but I can say thank you to Monica and her organization for supporting us. And, Monica-I think you are awesome! This is why I had to have my picture taken with her (photo attached to blog)! Hey…we all need role models.

Taking Care of the Planet:
Office Depot thinks green. They try and buy and supply green products. Okay, there are a few companies on that band wagon. But Office Depot seems to be not only talking the talk but walking the walk. Their environmental strategy can be summed up in a simple statement; they are committed to increasingly buy green, be green and sell green. It’s pretty simple.

Yep, seems like good business to me.

Need a Job? I Have One.

I spent the last couple of days in Boca Raton, Florida with some of the most amazing people that I have ever met. I am not one to go to a conference for women or women business owners but I needed to get inspired. I know the economy is bad. We hear it ever day and that sucks. But, you know what, our business is growing and we are grateful. A trip to South Florida was fine with me and I got more inspiration than I expected.

Count Me In is an organization whose mission is to promote economic independence and the growth of women owned businesses. You know how I found out about them? I was going through a stack of catalogs deciding which ones to read and which ones to recycle and I saw the Costco Connection. Now I love Costco. I just do. I saw Theresa Alfaro Daytner, owner of Daytner Construction Group on the cover. I read the article and you can read it too http://www.costcoconnection.com/connection/200909/#pg1 . I signed up for the 3 day event. What the heck.

I had the privilege of meeting Nell Merlino, the creator of Take our Daughters to Work Day, author of “Stepping Out of Line”, and the leader of The Count me In Women’s organization http://www.countmein.org/. (That's her in the picture with me)

I want to focus on one of the many outstanding things that Nell said. And, I am taking liberty in paraphrasing. The biggest issue in the United States today is the unemployment rate. What is wrong with the country is that people are not working. Fear is stalling the growth.

Even the female business owners in this conference were hesitant to hire employees, which means as the leaders of our companies we are taking on more and more work. I looked this up and it’s real according to The Bureau of Labor Statistics released September 23, 2009: The national unemployment rate was 9.7 percent in August 2009, seasonally ad-justed, up from 9.4 per-cent the prior month and up from 6.2 percent a year earlier. Yep, that means 1 out of ten people in the United States is out of work.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/mmls.nr0.htm

She went on to talk about this being a very tough year. And, I agree, and it does seem like everyone is waiting for someone to fix this or the government will throw enough of our money at it to make an impact. Then she said something amazing. I wrote it down. “What if we could?” And, I thought what if we could what, Nell? Are you actually suggesting that the 100 female small business owners in this room fix the economy? Really.

She told a story about women and war. No, not about a cultural icon, Rosie the Riveter – we have all heard it; she talked about how during World War I, even though very few women worked outside the home they took the place of the men who had gone off to war and worked in factories and on the farms. Teddy Roosevelt even provided uniforms with pants (very few women wore pants back then) and women ended the food riots by harvesting the crops and planting Victory Gardens. Women in the U.S. and Britain brought in the crops (see Farmettes and Land Girls).

Women get it done when the chips are down.

Back to “What if we could?” She said, “What if everyone in this room hired one person when they got back to their business?” It’s about personal responsibility and accountability and the belief that the show goes on (according to me) and again, I think she is right. That would put 100 people to work and the family, community, and economic impact of that does matter. There is a ripple effect. However, is it significant? Well, there are millions of female and minority owned businesses and if everyone hired one person we would put millions of people back to work. Yes, it is significant.

· 10.5 million businesses are owned by women in the United States*
· Women-owned businesses employ approximately 27 million people
· Women own 48% of all businesses in the United States
· Women business owners contribute more than $3.6 trillion to the marketplace each year
· Women account for more than 70% of consumer spending
· 55% of women provide half or more of their household's income, yet 48 million women -- that is 80% of all women in the workforce -- earn less than $25,000 a year**

*”Stepping out of Line” and **Facts from "The National Foundation for Women Business Owners"

What if every corporation or business regardless of the gender of the owner (who cares!) added one employee this month or next month? Why wait for our government to get it right? Why not do what we do and get down to business. Every woman that I met this past week was a woman that meant business. And, many of these women run multi-million dollar businesses.

One of my favorite comments of the day was from one of the few men in attendance. An executive from Office Depot (a sponsor of Count Me In and the wonderful folks at Office Depot are the topic of my next Blog) had supported, attended and listened to the comments from women for 3 days. And, he said, “If the women in this room are representative of other businesses run by women then I feel comfortable in saying we’re good. The U.S. is good.” Everyone applauded because he is right. We are good. We are an amazing country with people that have a can-do attitude. Turn off CNN (Constant Negative News) before you spiral into a depression and think about what you can do to chip in.

I am proud that Mindspot Inc, is a state of Florida certified Female/Minority owned business enterprise and I am proud to belong to Count Me In, an outstanding organization that helps women build their lives and their business.

So in closing, what are you going to do? I would love to hear your feedback. Post a comment because I know you have something to say. I have a job opening. Email us for the job description at info@mindspotinc.com.