I’m delighted to announce the agenda for the March meeting of the Morning Forum on Emerging Media. SVAMA Presents: Twitter for Marketers: Lessons from the Enterprise We will discuss:
When: March 23 , 2010, 8:30 – 10 AM Where: NOTE NEW LOCATION UCSC Extension in Silicon Valley 2505 Augustine Drive, Suite 100 Santa Clara, CA 95054
Cost: Currently $5 SVAMA members, $15 for non-members
Speaker bios: Tatyana Kanzaveli CEO, Social CRM World , has broad experience in sales, marketing and business development, technology and professional services. She held executive roles in number of start-ups and large multinationals. She was an early adopter of social media and social networking channels, using them to build successful online and face-to-face communities. Tatyana runs strategic Social CRM and social media marketing consultancy [http://scrmworld.com <http://scrmworld.com> ]. She can be reached on Twitter: @glfceo LaSandra Brill Sr. Mgr, Digital & Social Media Marketing, Cisco Systems is a social media enthusiast, avid blogger and marketing innovator. As Senior Manager of the Service Provider Digital & Social Media Marketing group, LaSandra Brill shapes Cisco’s marketing strategy to include a mix of social media marketing techniques leveraging web 2.0 technologies. At Cisco she is known for building and executing the social media strategy of one of the top five product launches in company history.LaSandra holds a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in Management from San Jose State University. Tony “Frosty” Welch is the Lead Social Media Strategist for HP PSG, and the Community Manager for The Next Bench (www.TheNextBench.com <http://www.TheNextBench.com> ). His Twitter handle is @frostola Hope to see you there!
I’m in love with my new FlipCamera and like a little kid, am carrying it around everywhere I go.  Unleash your inner James Cameron Video is becoming a common communication tool. These inexpensive and very portable cameras have made video production a snap. But there are a lot of horrible and ineffective videos out there. Video is best suited for product demos, intensive discussion, interviews, client testimonials, or establishing thought leadership. Here are 10 tips that will help you create excellent footage – not just add to the visual clutter:
If you haven’t introduced video into your marketing activites by now, run out and buy one of these tiny gems. You may be surprised at your own creativity!
If you are a small business with a retail or at least street-facing presence you are probably already taking good advantage of Yelp, YahooLocal, Citysearch and others. But even businesses like professional services (lawyers, architects, CPA firms, ad agencies, doctors) should be sure to include these sites in their marketing mix. And now is the time to revisit them. As Social Media continues to explode, they are all introducing more SM features that will allow you to create current and fresh content and be even more “findable”.
Google Local Business Place Pages has just added a status block so you can update your page with immediate messages, links to specials, and other interest generating content in a short-form. Unfortunately, there is no way yet to link that update to Twitter or Facebook or anything else – more work for the poster, but still a great new feature. Another addition: businesses that have been “claimed” by their owners will now feature a badge indicated the credibility of the posting.
Up and comer business directory MerchantCircle has We are doing more and more marketing and media plans for local businesses using a heavy emphasis on social media where appropriate. If we can help your business, give us a holler.
I had the pleasure of being interviewed by the very smart Zoya Fallah at Cisco for their service provider blog called SP360, on the topic of the use of Social Media. Cisco continues to lead the charge in using Social Media to reach out to their customers and has multiple blogs, YouTube channels, promotional campaigns and on and on for connecting to their very diverse audiences. Hats off to Cisco — one of the earliest adopters of Social Media.
“Two of the biggest challenges for new users have been finding accounts to follow that appeal to their interests, and finding their friends and colleagues who tweet. Over time, we’ve learned that by making suggestions of who to follow, we can help users get going more easily on Twitter. In our new design, we’re taking some steps to continue to improve this process. Once a user signs up and selects what they’re interested in, we show them some accounts that relate to that interest. Next, we help them find their friends and colleagues by checking their address books, and third we give them a chance to search for anyone we or they missed in this process.” I’m all for that. Anything that helps a newbie use Twitter in a strategic and useful way is all good. But why only the new user? I’d love the benefit of their algorythmic magic to make good suggestions for me. But I’m not the only one with that thought. (love John Battelle) Twitter promised more changes to come. As a true evangelist, I can’t wait.
Say the word “email” and many people shudder. But email does not equal spam. Use it correctly, intelligently and strategically and you will stay in touch with clients, build your brand, and warm up prospects. Below are 7 tips for integrating an email strategy into your small business marketing efforts 1. Define your objectives (I know I always start here, and so should your company). Are you using it for CRM, prospecting, branding, information dissemination or a combination of several of these? 2. Collect email addresses ethically. Start with the email addresses of your current customers. If these aren’t already in a primary database, access all departments within the company to gather as many customer email addresses as possible. Accounting, tech support, customer services, marketing, and sales may all have email databases so collect them all and consolidate to begin. 3. Build your email database. Ask for the email address of every potential customer and prospect. Add a newsletter subscription link to your website (more on that below) and make it part of your email signature, make white papers and articles accessible from your site only with a sign-up form, make it part of the credit application. Any opportunity to ask for an email address, do so. 4. Start publishing an e-newsletter on a regular basis. Establish a look and tone, define what types of content will be included, set a schedule and stick to it. Twice a month or monthly is a good starting point. You may want to outsource copy writing and creative, or keep it internal depending on your organization’s capabilities and available time. 5. Use 3rd party deployment company for ease and to maintain list hygiene (opt-outs and unsubs must be honored if you are NOT going to be perceived as spamming). Vertical Response and Constant Contact are both excellent companies to start with if your list is under 30,000 records or so. 6. Have a registration/sign-up mechanism on your site. One do-it-yourself resource is Wufoo - a great site for online form building and registration capture. Certainly signing up for your newsletter will add email addresses to your database, but offering articles or white papers targeted to the concerns of your customers will not only build your database but add to your company’s credibility and positioning. 7. Measure results and improve. At the very least, keep track of the number of opens, click thrus and unsubscribes you get with each mailing. Is there content that had better results? Did your unsubs jump up? Be aware of the effect your email marketing is having. Ask your current customers what they think of your efforts, after 2 or 3 have gone out. You will get feedback on ways to improve and enhance. If all of this seems pretty basic…it is. But I’m amazed at how many larger organizations either do not have an email strategy, or are not doing it well. Start now.
The new year has brought a number of inquiries from smaller companies asking for help with social media marketing and marketing in general. For those of us in the marketing field, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that not all businesses see things from a marketing perspective. Example: we had an end-of-year meeting with our CPA firm and will be doing some marketing consultation for them, I’m happy to say. This is a women-owned firm, brilliant in the world of finance, tax prep and financial planning, but not big enough to warrant an in-house marketing expert. We mapped out some initial strategy, to capitalize on the lowest hanging fruit, and I thought I’d recap our discussion for the benefit of other small companies. Know who your customers are so you can find more like them. Conduct a survey to find out what industry they are in, how many employees they have, general geography (how close or far away do you want to service a customer?) Establish some initial objectives. Are you prospecting and looking for new leads? Introducing new products or services to current customers, asking for feedback on current performance? Start an ongoing conversation with your current customers. Start a monthly e-newsletter, and before that, start gathering email addresses from everyone you do business with to that end. Assuming they have a website, start a blog to post updated information about the company more frequently and to start that dialog with your customers. Social Media Marketing. If your customers and prospects are participating in social media networks, pick an objective for your social media presence, and get started with a well-thought-through SM plan and schedule. We talked a bit about using Social Media for local marketing in an earlier post. Establish the initial strategy — but make it simple. Small companies don’t have marketing departments, so be sure the objectives are manageable. Decide on tactics, the person or people who will be actually doing the work, and set a schedule. Then keep it.
Thanksgiving is coming and, as I spend more and more time in front of my computer or with my cell phone — hopping between Twitter, Facebook and what feels like millions of blogs and RSS feeds — I’m careful to be thankful and not to lose track of what’s really important (too easy to do in the race to keep up with the “media” world). A quickie compare-and-contrast…. The real purpose of social media: Connecting - I’ve made many friends, virtual and otherwise in the past year, either on Social Media sites, or around the topic of Social Media — at meetings, events, Tweetups. I’m humbled and grateful. Providing value – It’s a constant mantra — to be sure that what messages I’m sending, tweeting or posting have something to offer to someone. Intelligence on the media industry, news items, items I find quirky and worth sharing, a link to a great song or recipe (what’s life, especially online, if you don’t have a sense of humor?). Creating community - Groups, tribes, clusters, pods of like-minded people who can share. Find them, join them, create them, link to them. And then translate the above values into what my husband calls “wetware” — real live human interaction…. Connecting: Pick up the phone instead of sending an email, go OUT to lunch instead of eating it at your desk, wander down the hall and talk to a compadre if you are destined to be in the office. Flesh — press it. Providing value: Donate time to a local charity, or give a few cans to the Boy Scouts food drive this year, read to your local kindergarten class — and even if just once, explain once again to your dad what it is that you do for a living. Talk to people, talk talk talk. Creating community: Invite two new people to dinner or for a glass of wine at your house who didn’t know each other before (takeout food is OK; Martha Stewart is not taking notes). Extra points if they bring their kids (then pizza is really OK!). Happy Thanksgiving, both online and off. May the latter continue to prevail.
We have been working on a large lead-generation campaign for a new consumer-biz client, and we were delighted that they allowed us to incorporate social media into the plan. I know, it seems counter-intuitive to use social media for a mainly commercial objective, but if it is handled delicately and with respect for both the brand and the SM audience, it can be done very well. Below are a few pointers that should be taken into consideration: – Social Media is all about creating and joining community and adding value. Keep this ahead of everything else. – First join the community – join many groups and participate, linking back to your offer every now and again. Build your network with keyword or category searches to find good prospects and interested followers. – Be strategic – your messages should vary by target audience, the landing page should echo the content of the original message or post, and the ultimate call-to-action wording should support both. – Content – Decide what issues and topics are interesting for your target audience. Invest some time to become a member of the community. First listen in, then ask questions, and only then define whatever your target group is excited about and what topics you should be addressing. Your content is about establishing a relationship with your community, not about re-purposing your sales presentation. – Be sure your posts are a combination of conversation and links to your offer. We aim for at least 50% posts providing info on relevant topics, asking questions, responding to followers, and 50% talking about our offer and providing a link to our landing page. – Standard lead-gen practices hold for Social Media – convert with the landing page. As is true with any lead-gen strategy, the landing page does the heavy lifting. It should be clear and simple, with a crystal-clear call to action. Don’t offer options or links taking the reader off the page. The registration form should appear above the fold. Assume your reader will not be scrolling down, so keep all the salient points up top. – SM offers wonderful opportunites for viral content to happen. You can’t control it, but here’s some clues on what gets shared and what doesn’t…. Rarely shared: product info, free trials, hard offers, selling posts. Often shared: New Data, trends, funny videos, reference to top-notch blog posts. We will continue this topic in future posts with more specifics on how to use Twitter, Facebook. and LinkedIn for lead-generation with specific tactics for each. The key is to be a participant in a community, and provide value to create enough interest so that your followers and readers will want to find out more about your offer. It CAN be done.
My BFF Daisy Whitney will be presenting to the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association (SVAMA) Morning Forum in September 2009. SVAMA Presents: “The Seven Secrets to Success with Online Video” Who’s watching video online? What are they watching? Where are they going to see videos? Do they watch alone or with friends and family? And, most important, do they pay attention to the ads? Learn about the new consumer behavior online, how viewers are shifting to the Web and to see what, and which kinds of ads are following consumers online. This presentation will also detail new initiatives by brands to market themselves through the Web, either in developing their own Web shows or by sponsoring existing online-video projects and TV shows. SPEAKER: DAISY WHITNEY, writer, producer, on-air correspondent WHEN: Tuesday, Sept 22, 2009; 8:30 – 10:00 am WHERE: Scott’s Seafood Restaurant and Grill, 855 El Camino Real (Town and Country Shopping Center, at Embarcadero and El Camino Real), Palo Alto, CA 94301; Tel. (650) 323-1555 COST: Currently $5 for SVAMA members, $15 for non-members NOTE: Venue requires breakfast be purchased RSVP: info@elymedia.com Don’t miss this! Daisy is a whirlwind of information — and tons of fun. — Elyse Tager
Another wonderful example of Social Media blending with hard copy is the evolution of Food52, a crowd-sourced social-media recipe/food site started by Amanda Hesser (of NY Times fame) and Merrill Stubbs freelance food-writer and recipe-tester. This site invites viewers to submit recipes — themed each week, for a contest. Amanda and Merrill test each recipe, come up with 2 finalists, and the readers will decide the winner. At the end of 52 weeks, the winning entries will be entered into a cookbook (hard copy — ink and paper!) that will be published by The HarperStudio. In the meantime, the cooks, readers, and contributors get to share recipes, chat with each other, add additional content on related issues (ingredients, cooking tools, cookbooks etc) in an ongoing collaboration. I was lucky enough to get an interview with Amanda and Merrill in between their frantic bouts of cooking. Click below and find out why Merrill’s mother is NOT, NOT, NOT allowed to submit recipes….
So at the end, there is a hard-copy cookbook that will have had a full year’s worth of preliminary buzz. The Food52 team is busily tweeting, uploading videos to Vimeo, linking to other food blogs. It’s a win-win for the publisher, the reader/contributor, and the Food52 team of Merrill and Amanda. Food 52 Intro from Food52 on Vimeo.
All print media are struggling these days, from the New York Times to the local newspaper. As the readers are moving online, print might seem more and more irrelevant, and publishers are struggling with ways to keep their readers. I came across a wonderful example of how to do it right. 7×7 Magazine, a San Francisco-based, glossy lifestyle pub invited their readers to submit all of the photos and much of the copy for a neighborhood review (August 2009 issue) of our beautiful city. The 7×7.com website provides far more content — videos, more pix, more reviews of each neighborhood’s strengths, and on and on. But the print magazine stands alone for its visual beauty and is definitely worth the cover (or subscription) price. The integration of the magazine with its social-media and online versions only magnifies that content and doesn’t detract from it. Job well done! Major take-aways from this? Not all brands or pubishers are so content-rich or gorgeous (I know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. and all brand managers love their children). Where can you extend your brand or publication into social media, and then involve the reader or customer with the content that is most easy to create and receive from them? If you are a publisher, initiate the dialogue in print, then move it online. Sell cat food, walking shoes, lead-gen services? On your product labels, in your print ads, on your boxes and packages, invite your customers to participate in a contest related to the topic. Have them send in videos or photos, reward the winner with something related to the brand. And then publish (well-tagged) vids and pix on your Facebook Fanpage, Tweet to direct people back to your website and/or the fan page, upload videos to video sites, along with publishing them on your site. The more you involve the reader/customer, the more engaged they become with the brand — the true definition of “dialogue”.
Elymedia is starting to work on social-media strategies to create buzz for more local companies, brands, and venues. It’s quite gratifying to plug into the local community and make a difference — not just for the client, but to share great info within the community. Brand recognition is high, and loyalty strong. It’s a good thing. Below are 7 quick tips that might help small businesses, local retailers, and restaurants and those crafty and creative food-carts:
Want more detail or help on how to build a plan, using some or all of the above? We would love to help.
Social media has taught us that it starts with the customer — engaging, listening, sharing. Done well, all marketing should start with the customer — their needs, wants, and priorities the driving force for all marketing efforts. Thorough exploration and knowledge of the customer base is where we start when working with a new client. If there isn’t solid, current information about the customer, we will propose one or all of the following techniques: - Utilize outside services to gain intelligence about the current customer base. We will source database overlays to find additional key pieces of information about each customer. For B2B companies, that might mean title, size of company, functions, installed hardware and so on. For consumer companies, having demographic profiling done will flesh out their understanding of thir customers. Hard empirical data may conflict with what a company thinks is the definition of their customer — and it’s important to get a reality check as early as possible. - Survey the customer base — we enlist one of several excellent telemarketing groups whose specialty is finding decisionmakers and probing (with a well-crafted script) for additional information about each company or contact. Or we will use an online survey tool that can go directly to the customers, and ask for their input. - Talk to your sales force or customer service people who are face-to-face (or ear-to-ear?) on a daily basis to get “behind the numbers” to find out more or corroborate what you’ve learned from the analyses. If you have multiple types of customer, careful attention must be paid to defining each one. These customer segments may be per product line (do they only have Mac hardware and software on site?); types or frequency of interaction (do they only buy sale items, or plus sizes?). Segment your customer base and marketing activities accordingly. You can’t use social media intelligently or strategically unless you know who you are addressing. Then provide prospects with resources, information, tips, ideas, and links back to landing-pages in your website that are in line with their needs.
E-mail is enjoying a resurgence in these difficult times. Many bloggers are adding email to their mix of content distribution, and many companies are rediscovering the importance of an ongoing email strategy to enhance their brand, re-connect with customers, and drive leads or sales. Whether you are using email to prospect for new leads or customers, or as a vehicle to communicate with (and gain incremental revenue from) your current customer base, it would be wise to be sure they are as productive as possible. Here are a few tricks of the trade: • Prospecting • - Be sure you are using outside email lists that are reputable — opted-in, double opted-in. If the price for a list seems too good to be true, it is…. Don’t use it. - Clearly identify your target — the sweet spot may not be achievable in the data world but start the search there, and then tweak “selects” based on availability. - Explore pricing models — can you find CPC or CPL deals? More and more email list providers are willing to move to a CPL basis. • Creative • - Use a strong subject line — short and addressing a “pain point” will get the best open rates. - Put a personal note above your banner or header to get recipients reading immediately — either in their mail-reader preview pane or when they open the e-mail. - Personalize the message (IF your email database is reliable enough and you’re sure that most records have a first or first-and-last name) - Include a sidebar. Highlight your call to action there with a photo, headline, caption, and action button. - Pace your copy. Opening paragraph should be the most engaging, but short, 2 or 3 lines at most. The rest of the paragraphs should be no more than three sentences each. Intersperse longer paragraphs with short, snappy one-sentence paragraphs for emphasis. Use bold type and underlining (for links) to guide the eye to your most important points. Use bullets to break up the copy and move the reader along. Every third paragraph should have an action link to your desired call to action. Most click-thrus happen at the very end of the copy, Be sure you end with a link AND include a “P.S.” — that old standard from Direct Marketing 101. • Landing Page • - Whole books are written about landing pages, but at the very least include a very strong call to action — hopefully only one. - Keep it clean and crisp. The creative design should have the same look and feel (and company logo etc) as the email so the reader doesn’t think they have gone to a different website or offer. • Video? • - If it’s in the body of the email itself, it may have delivery problems, or be blocked as potential spam attachment. If the video is on the landing page, it will probably get good viewership — but will it distract from the main call to action? Put some brief text and a call-to-action link above the video, or maybe the video can include a constantly visible and even clickable Web-address URL. • Got Strategy? • - If you are using email to contact your customer base, it’s best to have a schedule and stick to it. - Decide on an email frequency — once a week, or once a month may be fine for some companies, too frequent or not enough for others. If you have a large enough mail-list file to test and measure response rates for different frequencies, do so. The last thing you want to do is irritate your own customer. They should perceive your emails as value-added, not intrusive. - Segment your own email database if it makes sense. For leads, use different offers depending upon how far down the sales funnel the prospect is. For current clients, segment by product category, for example. - Think BIG. A large-scale email campaign may not always be as efficient per dollar as a timid campaign, but well-crafted email can quickly build up your in-house customer list for further testing or offers. It’s an investment. - Tracking is critical. Be sure you can measure open rates, click-thru rates, and conversions at least for each blast. And maintain historical reports over time to see both successes and weaknesses in your campaigns. Need help? Want the best list broker? Thought you’d never ask. Call us.
I keep searching for new/more/different methods of measuring activity in Web social media. I just starting using Bit.ly to shorten all of the links that I include in posts that don’t feed back to Elymedia so I can track results.
Twitter itself now uses bit.ly and it has taken a lead in the url shortening market over Tinyrul and others. It’s still a bit wonky — some stats are inaccurate, but their blog clearly states that they are hammering out bugs. The analytics are the fun part — if you put a simple “+” on the end of any bit.ly link, you will see, in real time, the pace at which that link is getting shared and clicked on as it moves around social-media networks. Bit.ly has growth plans and will provide more features rapidly. Techcrunch did a great post on the future plans for the company and details the sophistication and intelligence it will bring to the user regarding overall use of links, their popularity, and distribution. For now, I’m just happy to watch how much traction my links are getting and knowing that people are enjoying my content. Good stuff.
This past week, two ethics issues caught my attention in the media. The Washington Post apologized to the paper’s readers for their plans to organize sponsored “salons” that would be attended by Washington-DC lobbyists, governent officials, and the paper’s own journalists. In short — anyone who might be influential in our nation’s capitol. The sponsorships, with fees ranging from $25,000 for one session to $250,000 for an entire series, seemed to imply that attendees would get paid access to these elite movers and shakers. The controversy erupted last Thursday after the website Politico.com disclosed the contents of a promotional brochure from the Post that solicited corporate sponsorships for the dinners, with fees ranging from $25,000 for one session to $250,000 for an entire series. Writing on his blog last week, the paper’s ombudsman Andrew Alexander called the disclosure “pretty close to a public relations disaster.” The first salon dinner, focusing on health care, was scheduled for July 21. The Post publisher Katharine Weymouth stated that it was all a misunderstanding but has called for an external review. The Post has said a marketing employee, Charles Pelton, sent out the brochure without vetting from either Ms. Weymouth or Marcus Brauchli, the paper’s executive editor. The brochure suggested that a single corporation could sponsor the dinners. Ms. Weymouth, in her letter to readers, said the brochure “was not approved by me or newsroom editors, and it did not reflect what we had in mind.” If a paper as revered as the Washington Post can behave with dubious ethics, what’s a reader to think? And where do readers go these days for credible, unbiased news and reporting? Who do you read/listen/watch for accurate reporting? Where does Social Media fit in? Do you still read “treeware” (print newspapers and magazines)? Have you given up on CBS, ABC, NBC, even PBS TV news? Do you sip a blend of Internet news-blogs and user-generated videos and completely ignore TV? Do we trust any major news organizations any longer?
We are developing a free Web-browser plug-in called “BOZO BLOCKER,” with the ability to filter ANY Web page, preventing user-specified unwanted content from being displayed. Unlike mere “porn” filters and the like, BOZO BLOCKER will allow you to create and save “blocklists” of any names (for example, any instant celebrities you never heard of or heard too much about already, and don’t want to hear about ever again) and banish them to permanent obscurity. Also under development is a service which will allow users of the plug-in to connect to our BOZO BLOCKER server in Rachel, Nevada, and query our free “Stupid” or “Clueless” name-lists, or the paid/premium “Clue-Repellent” master name-list which puts the kybosh on the usual objectionable celebrities, plus Web instant-wealth gurus, famous political wingnuts, SEO Magic Oil vendors, and many more. This is similar to the anti-spam email “blocklists” offered free and commercially by wonderful companies such as SPAMHAUS.ORG. BOZO BLOCKER will follow in the tradition of many other Web-content blockers that filter out annoying pop-up windows, porn, blinking banners, and so on. The programmer who conceived this project has asked to remain anonymous, claiming that his trailer was repeatedly vandalized “by men with black sunglasses” when he released a free advertising-blocker a few years ago. See also “Browser makers warned against ad-blocking.“
I’m thrilled to be presenting a webinar on LinkedIn and FaceBook for Business respresenting the SVAMA at the Inbound Marketing University. Inbound Marketing University (IMU) is a free marketing retraining program for marketing professionals — as well as marketers between jobs — looking to gain new skills to get ahead in the competitive workforce.
With all the “downsizing” and layoffs and outsourcing going on in the business world, I thought it helpful to provide some best practices for losing your corporation’s Marketing Director. This is the person who, after great effort in academia and experience gained at previous jobs, has been given the responsibility and authority to lead your company’s marketing team to success — without guidance or (ahem) interference from higher management. The techniques described here could just as easily be used to cook a marketing “manager,” or Vice President, supervisor, and so on. In a volatile economy, marketing directors are routinely hired and then suddenly, mysteriously allowed to “pursue other opportunities” (not “fired”). They serve as ritual sacrificial pigs (goats if you prefer) in lieu of companies’ top executives, so that any lack of quarterly profit or loss of market share can quickly be blamed on the outgoing marketeers. Don’t take it personally, it’s just that you’re here to make ME look good. First, the ingredients. Keep it simple. No veggies or garnish. Also, without exception, marketing management is considered “savory,” not sweet. So the usual salt and spices for meat are enough. Don’t overdo it, spending money improving the flavor of something you’ll only throw out, eh? Now some thoughts about your cooking method. Roasting is good, requiring only a sad Friday-afternoon announcement in the conference-room that “our favorite marketing queen” is leaving, followed by cheap snacks and lite beer for everybody. Stewing is a bad idea, since it gives the Marketing Department staff too much time to remember all the great ideas and cautionary advice the outgoing marketing executive tried without success to “sell upstairs”…. Where were we? Oh yes, cooking methods. For maximum entertainment value, many CEOs slowly spin the departing marketeer in a rotisserie, hoping that such highly visible “enhanced interrogation” will dissuade potential insurgents and motivate the troops. Like all cruelties-formerly-known-as-torture, this treatment merely inflames the remnants of your demoralized Marketing Department (who may then target the CEO’s Humvee in the parking-lot). Which brings us to “flambé” — traditionally the fastest, most fear-inspiring method for dispatching a Marketing Director. Not pretty, but one can make this look like an accident. So be nice to the heads of Marketing. They work hard spreading good news about your company, but guess whose heads will roll if there’s even a whiff of bad news. – Bruce Mewhinney at ELYMEDIA.COM
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