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Debut of COMPAS Workshop

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011 by John Mallen

I am looking forward to the next Monday. It’s our May 16 debut trial of our COMPAS workshop - a way of giving entrepreneurs a practical approach to marketing strategies that will move their enterprise toward success. The trial takes place near our office in Kingston, N.Y. If you can participate, I urge you to apply. If you cannot, consider another date: we will be rolling out our calendar soon.

For decades me and my colleagues have helped many clients realize remarkable success using PR, promotion, advertising and other communications tools. Like thousands of others in PR and marketing communications agencies did this with sound goal definition, well-aimed affordable and executable strategies, and step-by-step execution.

For years I was frustrated seeing so many entrepreneurs with marketing program that are either stuck or waffling about spending good money and getting static, even declining results. These were often friends, definitely smart, energetic principals in start-ups, micro family businesses or even healthy small businesses.

They either could not afford a strategic agency and did the best they could on their own.  Many would rely on specialty tactics of favored suppliers year after year. What once worked was less and less effective as markets changed. Their vendors couldn’t help. Their loyal radio, TV, and newspaper sales reps, well, were stuck selling time and space.

Enough is Enough

I realized that the techniques that work for the big outfits can be put to work for small, micro businesses, as well as not-for-profit groups who in this economy are challenged as never before.

It was my frustration that led to the creation of COMPAS, an acronym for Creative Opportunity Mapping Planning and Strategy.

The name (created by friend and colleague Gretchen Reed when she was on the JMC staff ) says a lot about the depth and power of this approach. The procedures have been improved and fine tuned by another friend and business partner in COMPAS, Marjorie McCord.

Remarkable Potential

The remarkable potential of COMPAS is, in fact, embedded in the name.

* Creative - there are few personality types with the energy, resilience and raw creativity as entrepreneurs! just get into a room of entrepreneurs, and you don’t need electricity. It’s in the air.  Frankly, the best creative group in the most prestigious blue chip ad agencies cannot compare to ideas emanating from business owners around the table, working a problem.

* Opportunity Mapping - Experience has shown me that businesses often have multiple “opportunities” they can tap into and spirit forward. Too often, leaders are consumed running their businesses, schedule killing real world demands. The process of going through internal developments, external conditions in the marketplace, changing trends affecting customers, and so forth is what marketers do. With a mix of cross-functional team brainstorming and critical thinking — brought to the party by fellow entrepreneurs, any one of us can generate a bucket of opportunities.

* Planning and Strategy -   If my business friends can fill a bucket of opportunities, and then sort and prioritize the TOP opportunities, I have no doubt that with the right planning they can realize the benefits of the opportunities in front of them, one after the other.  To accomplish this takes planning and strategy. What opportunities are the low-hanging fruit? Which of them deserve to the placed in the slow cooker, nurtured a while and then brought forth? Just getting our entrepreneurs to step away from multitasking and focus is a challenge.

Thus the workshop format. We will put you at a table with a mix of non-competitive fellow entrepreneurs, get each of you to pause, think, identify and then — in an atmosphere of supportive camaraderie fine tune the opportunities and the way you will go about realizing them. Our patience is short: we are looking to 3-4 month effects. Our scope is practical: your plans must be executable. You will end having identified the steps that you will commit to going forward.

To the degree that your workshop experience needs expertise from our world of marketing, advertising, PR, promotions — whether in print, video or digital — we’ll be on hand to provide experience and guidance.

The goal is to leave with at least one great opportunity you will and can pursue in the next 90-120 days to help drive your success.

Contact Us

You can find more information about COMPAS at our Web site. Also, please feel free to contact us with any questions. We are working with a growing team of collaborators. JMC and the Hudson Valley Center for Innovation (HVCFI) will be scheduling more workshops. And sponsorship includes DragonSearch Marketing and Ryan & Ryan Insurance Brokers.

Posted in Communications, Corporate communications, Creative Solutions, Hudson Valley, Marketing Communications, News & Thinking, Uncategorized, entrepreneur | No Comments »

Timing is Everything

Friday, February 5th, 2010 by John Mallen

A colleague of mine is fond of saying “timing is everything.” Thus, when we are ready reach out and touch people who are prospective customers, some times are better than others.

Here’s some useful info on dates to plan around for both business-to-business and consumer campaigns from Prospects To Go:
Prospects To Go’s holiday calendar shows government holidays as well as religious and secular holidays that are recognized by enough people in the United States to be noteworthy to marketers. Our calendar has broken ground by also highlighting common vacation and travel days – periods that B-toB- marketers want to avoid and consumer marketers tend to hammer.
2010
There were a couple challenges to putting together next year’s calendar:
• There’s no consensus on dates for Spring Break, we discovered, when checking several school-district and university calendars. We still designated the time between March 29th, the night Passover starts at Sunset, and April 5th, the day after Easter, as a busy personal travel period.
• We wondered for the first time if there’s enough scar tissue on the collective memory of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that marketers can now freely deliver their messages on that day without offending anyone. We decided not. Also, since 2002, 9/11 has become a quasi-holiday called Patriot Day, with the American flag flown at half-staff at the White House, all federal buildings and many private homes.
History of the calendar
We developed this calendar in 2005 when we recognized that some clients of our list brokerage and media-buying agency were forced to advertise at poor times because they hadn’t anticipated holidays in advance. Some celebrations – like Martin Luther King Day in January and Veterans Day in November – are one-day events that you can easily work around. But we’ve seen B-to-B clients lose as much as a percentage point in response (compared to other campaigns we’ve done for them at other times) when they launched campaigns during the major vacation and travel periods around Thanksgiving and Independence Day.
Of course you need to customize this even further to meet your own business cycle. Event marketers working on city tours can refine this calendar by being sensitive to important ethnic holidays in cities with a preponderance of minorities who will be observing them.

Posted in News & Thinking, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Recollections involving the rise of integrity, remembering Peter Sewell, and saluting a new generation of PR leaders

Saturday, November 14th, 2009 by John Mallen

Fresh from the Autumn meeting of  the Public Relations Global Network (PRGN), now 40 agencies on multiple continents, it’s inspiring to experience the energy being devoted to communications that can help energize business and financial success of clients these agencies serve.

Several top-line themes emerge for me, our firm being a member and one of the host agencies here in New York City along with Adam Friedman Associates and Cooperkatz&Company.

1. Central to commercial communications today are the themes of trust, integrity, honesty and sustainability.  While always important, they have become top-line priorites as a result of the economic melt down, governments’ response, and the roaring disaffection and cynicism of consumers and citizens.

2. The responsibility for formulating trustworthiness, cultural integrity and commitments to honesty in our institutions is falling to a new generation of executive leader and communications consultant — those in their mid 40’s (the tail of the Baby Boom Generation) and the 40+ group in the Generation X tribe ( from the mid 40’s to early ’80’s).  Looking at our PRGN members, our corporate guests and speakers from Dragon Search Marketing, Coldwell Banker, Guardian insurance, Polar USA, Davis & Gilbert law firm — there is a wave of intelligent and responsible leaders coming to the bride and taking over the tiller of our institutions.

3. And point No. 3 here involves my reflection on the last meeting the PRGN held in 2005 in New York. We recalled the then president Peter Sewell, a good friend of the earier generation, who has passed away and whose firm has morped from his son Adam Sewell to a new identity (Beyond PR) and most recently new owners, then the  ”pioneering” (for PRGN) survey we conducted about the emerging importance of new media, and our own first media tour — a kind of “coming out” for the group founded in 1999.

As it 2005, it has been a rainy in New York as it moves across the threshold from fall to winter, as we in PRGN move to a new season and a strong position of leadership in a field that has become increasingly crucial in this world.  These are my recollections.

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Posted in Communications, Corporate communications, News & Thinking, Openness & Transparency, PR, PRGN, Public Relations, Uncategorized | No Comments »

When Customers are a Village

Monday, September 14th, 2009 by John Mallen

Christopher St., Greenwich Village by Beulah BettersworthI have just read a blog essay called “Finding Your Village of Customers” by Sonia Simone, senior editor at Copyblogger .  This is must reading for the micro-businesses among us.

Such firms, like my own, may have a global band of customers who not only know those who serve them, but delight in the relationship. She is spot on. In this space you really do listen to your customers, really understand them and respond to their needs — before you’re asked!  The village is your market, the regulars who love your offerings as well as the status of being a “regular,” like the Beacon Hill bar in TV’s “Cheers.”

Simone’s post is short, so I won’t go on except to summarize the key needs (besides listening, understanding and taking action). Every village needs:

“A leader. (That’s you.)

“A purpose. (That’s your market position or winning difference.) . . .

“And a place to come together.

“You might create a membership site for your best-loved customers. Or organize special conferences, user groups, and gatherings. You might build something as simple as a private online forum where your village can share their experiences — good and bad.

“But give your village a place to get together. To know you better, and know one another better. A place where everybody knows their name.”

And that’s one powerful way to use communications to amplify success. The “place” is likely one you develop on the Social Web.

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Posted in Best Practices, Business development, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Social Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Describe Yourself!

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 by John Mallen

I have just been led to a compelling piece “How the Leading Social Sites Describe Themselves” by Steve Rubel. Steve’s piece is worth reading, but his view applies to far more than the social Web, and touches on a favorite peeve of mine.

Rubel’s blog follows his return to the City from the Bay Area where a high penetration of Digerati (I love that term) is accompanied by a parochial focus of these tech-savvy folk, as evinced by how popular social Web sites introduce themselves. It really would be difficult for someone who is not a member of the cognoscenti to make an intelligent choice from among Twitter, digg, Friendfeed and others.

I find the same condition far too often in too many places. Take trade shows, where in my experience the more high-tech the exhibitor the more undifferentiated their presentations. Glitzy to be sure. Clarity of what they are, not much. The same carries over to brochures, videos, Web sites and other marketing materials. You really need to dig to understand just what they’re about.

I’m with Steve Rubel. Describe yourself! It’s job No.1 for any customer facing activity.

Need help? Just call us or any of our 39 colleague firms in the Public Relations Global Network.

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Posted in Communications effectiveness, Marketing Communications, New Communications, PR, PRGN, Public Relations, Social Marketing, Uncategorized, differentiation | 1 Comment »

Doing

Monday, August 10th, 2009 by admin

This blog is intended to bring focus to communications as the most powerful success tool. Communications is stating, saying, articulating. Communications is also listening.  But a third powerful component of communications is simply doing – delivering, creating, serving, making – in short, performing and going about one’s daily routine.
 
Not long ago, I had the pleasure of attending an annual dinner for one of the hard-working organizations in our area, a group called Always There. They provide home health care and day care for senior citizens. The event brought more than 125 people from Ulster County, N.Y. to meet and dine at The West Park Winery.
 
A centerpiece to the evening was Always There’s first ever “Making a Difference Award,” which was bestowed on a good friend and client of ours, Steve Aaron, the managing partner and founder of Birchez Associates, LLC.  Steve was recognized for his extensive work in developing affordable housing communities for our senior citizens. He has three beautiful facilities, a fourth headed toward completion this fall, and ideas and plans for even more.
 
Steve doesn’t just throw up structures that provide safe, clean and affordable housing, but he builds facilities that go beyond the minimum specifications required by government agencies that develop the programs for making housing available to those who would otherwise be struggling. Sit in one of his team meetings, and the conversation inevitably turns to how ordinary fluorescent lighting can be enhanced with decorative sconces or how a rec room can be transformed into a community center with capabilities for cooking hot meals.
 
You will find accents like lighting, installations like wired and wireless Internet in every unit, personal training available in the workout area, full kitchens coupled to the community rooms, and more features that go beyond or add to the minimum requirements. All this is reflected in the developments themselves, with little and sometimes no fanfare.
 
Steve not only builds them better but builds them with a vision. They are communities, he says, not developments. His vision? It is to enable the residents to “age in place” with comfort, safety and dignity.
 
“You have to see this,” one of his advisors said calling me. He talked about Birches at Esopus, the latest senior community to open. “It’s like a hotel, a really fine hotel,” he said. “Unless they are living there or have family there, people have no idea what Steve is doing in these structures.”
 
It’s about letting what one does shine, even outshine what one says. When you see an organization like Always There saluting this entrepreneur for his service and accomplishments, or hear salutes from public leaders like Diane McCord, clerk for The Town of Esopus, Rep. Maurice Hinchey, and others who traveled across the state just to join in the recognition, you have an example of the power of communications by doing.
 
Doing, delivering, and performing are fundamental to the integrity of any brand – fundamentals that are too frequently overlooked in our hyperlinked society. Too often the attention is drawn by brands trying to outshout one another. We’re all familiar, too, with the soothing posturing from suppliers who attempt to make emotional connections with assurances of listening that far outperform what they deliver.
 
Truly, the core of every brand is the product or service. It’s leaders like Steve Aaron and his Birchez organization that not only remind us of the importance of performance as the core, but of the power of communications by doing.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

College Marketing - A Big Challenge

Monday, May 25th, 2009 by John Mallen
Sometimes there are no readily available elegant strategies for using communications to drive success.

That becomes abundantly clear in the case of college recruiting.

We have a fully empowered social-media equipped market comprising teens who shun most of the vehicles many of us think of as being new and cutting edge, like blogs and Twitter. They are deeply rooted to Facebook and texting as their preferred media.

Teens, the research tells us, don’t use mainstream media except maybe TV as background, don’t e-mail, and basically leave Twitter to adults. Their facebook activities and texting are confined to their circle of friends.

Of course parents and high-school advisors have influence — because many teas are driven to get into college — the right college. Of course they have tremendous on line resourcers including reference sites and digital match-making tools.

So how do admissions offices avoid producing messages the kids don’t pay attention to, and effectively reach out to their potential freshmen? It’s looking more and more like the answer is strategic buzz.

 

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Posted in Marketing, Marketing Communications, Social Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized | No Comments »

News Anchors Aside: Here Comes the Social Cast

Friday, May 1st, 2009 by John Mallen

An excellent  blog today scott-hanson from Scott Hanson, our friend and colleague is Phoenix, presents the social cast — new media phenomena courtesy of social media.

The social cast has:

  • – Mutual linkage of new med ia delivery and the old-media trust-building.
  • – Culture of fan loyalty
  • – Remix news  in which citizen feeds are mixed with MSM news sources.

Check out Scott’s post directly or through his firm’s site: http://www.hmapr.com/

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Posted in Social Media, Television, Uncategorized, media, trends | No Comments »

Whoosh! Blogs go mainstream. Facebook becomes ghost town?

Friday, May 1st, 2009 by John Mallen

ghost-town

Behold the rate of change in the media.  This afternoon’s breaking news from PRSA: blogs are now mainstream media (MSM). Meanwhile, Business Week this week posts a scenario projecting a possibility that Facebook.com’s  open-source move could end up siphoning its ad revenues turning the site into a ghost town.

Blogs

Blogs now reach tens of millions in this country and both readers and creators are growing, says e-marketer.comannouncing its $695 report. “Currently, 96.6 million US Internet users read a blog at least once per month, representing 48.5% of the Internet population. By 2013, 128.2 million people, or 58% of all US users, will take part.”  And bloggers, those posting at least monthly, will increase from 27.9 million to 37.6 million in the next five years, adds e-marketer.com.

Facebook

BW’s  The Tech Beat commentary suggests that in opening parts of its code to developers, the popular social marketing site could see revenues decline when the thousands of new apps allow users to tap into Facebook without going to its homepage where its ads now live.

Not so dark. “it appears that the company is planning to replace the revenues it will lose from banner ads with a new type of revenue: in-stream ads, which would appear alongside status updates and other ‘news stories’, even on third-party apps,” says BW writer Douglas MacMillan .

Banner ads on Facebook’s home page are really old fashioned “interruption marketing” whereas in-stream text ads are part of the search experience.

Both the mainlining of blogs and the possible in-stream ads in Facebook are much more than change. They’re enormous opportunity for marketers.

Photo: John Holm (foto 3116 Flickr.com)

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Posted in Advertising, Mainstream media, Social Media, Uncategorized, blogging | 1 Comment »

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