Archive for the ‘PR & marketing tips’ Category

The Pareto Principle says that 20 percent of the effort yields 80 percent of the results. Similarly, many of my friends and clients have heard me say, “Perfect is the enemy of good enough.” I’ve seen a couple good variations on that recently.

“The Done Manifesto is a set of working rules based on a sense of urgency.” These rules aren’t for every industry – you wouldn’t want them applied to nuclear plant operations or brain surgery – but in the creative sector they can light a fire under the seats of procrastinators and perfectionists.

In my business, we used to obsess over printed materials that had to be “perfect” because they were so expensive and had to have a long shelf life. You can change web-based content immediately and infinitely. Having something up there online, however preliminary, is often better than having nothing at all.

This article about koshering the White House kitchen for a banquet appeared in the December 14, 2011 New York Times. In it, Rabbi Shemtov showed similar view of perfection: “We are very careful, we are meticulous but we are not O.C.D.,” he says. “Otherwise, no one would ever get to eat.”

If I had a nickel for every client and prospective client who went into sticker shock over the cost of graphic design, I’d retire and just spend my time writing this blog.

In a free market economy, things that are rare are expensive. Good designers have innate artistic talent, professional training and experience plus the ability to understand their clients and give them not just what they think they need but what they didn’t even realize was possible and brilliantly appropriate.

Adagio Graphics is a frequent partner for us at Douglas Communications Group. They’ve written this excellent guide to using a graphic designer. Note these important tips:

• Know yourself
• Let us be free
• Twice is not nice. Revisions that seem simple to you may be time-consuming (= expensive) to change in the graphic design software, thus the following:
• Organization = money

Attending a couple recent conferences I concluded that, rather than enhancing communication, Powerpoint impedes it in sometimes-fatal ways. When I started writing this post, it was going to have a series of tips on how to make better Powerpoints. Then I thought I was going to ask you to abandon it completely. Now, though, I just want you to stop using Powerpoint as a verb and instead use it as a noun.

The presentations have overwhelmed the content; no, they have usurped it. They have become the very purpose of the session: I Powerpoint therefore I am.

Powerpoint makes people with little artistic ability think they are artists. Hey, they chose a colorful background and a creative font! They used dissolves. They found a cute caricature; never mind the fact that they had to revise their script to rationalize the picture. They Powerpointed!

Public speaking is story telling. Your objective is to make the audience believe or feel or do something. Even if you are presenting mind-numbingly dry technical information, you still want them to at least exclaim “Aha!” at the end of your talk, if not write you a check.

Because it’s a story, a presentation needs an arc: A beginning, a crisis, a dénouement and a conclusion. Powerpoint slides trudge along at the same tedious pace, sabotaging the rhythmic changes and drama that make your story compelling. Nobody ever complained that a speaker was too entertaining.

And while we’re talking about drama, why are you standing off to the side of the room hiding behind a podium while that projection screen hogs the spotlight? You are the star. Don’t share the honor. Any actor will tell you that downstage center is the place to be.

I think the problem is that, as speakers plan their presentations, they start not from the story but from the Powerpoint. They do Powerpoint, not persuasion. If you’ll promise me that you’ll knock it off and write your story first, I might allow you to use Powerpoint as a noun: As a tool to deliver images that explain, expand and enhance your story.

You don’t need a fancy template. You don’t need a continuous stream of slides. Maybe you only need three or four images that you call up when a picture really will replace a thousand words.

That’s easier said than done, because relevant, evocative images are hard or expensive to create. If you want to take viewers’ breath away when they see the scope of your factory, you’re going to need a photo. Shot from a helicopter. If you’re going to show illustrations – maps, artists’ renderings, site plans – they have to be well-executed to begin with because, if they’re bad, they’ll be worse when they’re 10 feet tall instead of 10 inches. One dramatic pie chart is better than a dozen wishy washy ones and those created in Excel look like it. What story does the picture tell that words cannot? Is it therefore obvious that slides with words on them are equally limiting and pretty much useless?

Here’s a parenthetical reason to use Powerpoint as a noun: Murphy, who correctly said that, if anything can go wrong, it will. The projector bulb burns out, the technician shows up with an immobilizing hangover, your computer rewards your optimism with a blue screen of death, the lights in the room either can’t be dimmed enough for slides to show up or is so dim that you can’t see your notes. If you were planning to Powerpoint (verb), you’re dead. If you were planning to Powerpoint (noun) the show will go on.

For grins, here’s a site with some examples of spectacularly bad Powerpoint slides.

As comedy memoirs go, Tina Fey’s Bossypants has a ton of great management advice. Where she really excels, though, is in her essay on how improvisation can change your life and, I would add, your workplace behavior.

Here are her four rules of improvisation:

• AGREE. If your coworker says “Let’s do a news release about this,” agree, at least for starters, and see where it takes you.
• Say YES, AND. Say “let’s do a news release and share the information on social media.”
• MAKE STATEMENTS. Be a part of the solution.
• THERE ARE NO MISTAKES, only opportunities.

You can read it online at Amazon.com. It’ll take a little effort, but it’s worth it. First, go to this link. Click the “search inside this book” link below the picture of the book. Then, in the search box type

the rules of improvisation that will change your life

Enjoy!

At the Michigan Association of Planning’s October, 2011 annual conference, Midland City Manager Jon Lynch, AICP, ICMA-CM gave a great presentation on communications. One of this blog’s regular readers was also in the audience and said to me, “Hey – you should write about this!” Good idea, Eric!

Here were two of Jon’s messages.

If you’re explaining, you’re losing.

The city lost 17 percent of its revenue overnight, after a decade-long tax appeal. Angry citizens demanded explanations for a complicated process that is hard to explain in 10 words or less, Lynch said, especially when opponents had simplified THEIR sound bite down to “You mismanaged money.”

“As municipal leaders, we WANT to explain,” Lynch said. “We strive to be open and transparent and provide information; that’s the right way to do business.  People take advantage of that. The message gets lost: ‘If you’re explaining, there’s something wrong.’”

The city turned its part of the conversation into “Tell us what you want.” They conducted a community-wide visioning process that succeeded in part, according to Lynch, because “People understand when you ask what’s important to them.”

In a world of 15-second commercials and USA Today McStories, you must be concise.

“The information is the same.  It’s how you explain it and how you deliver it,” said Lynch.

If you don’t tell your story, someone else will gladly do it for you.

A Midland child with severe allergies wanted a pet. His parents discovered that a miniature pig was the best solution, but Midland’s ordinances prohibit pigs as pets. The city wanted to accommodate them but, as in the previous example, had to go through several time-consuming municipal processes to do so. The Midland Daily News covered the story accurately; not so the blogosphere. The further away the story got from Midland the less accurate it became.

“We learned the hard way that there are thousands of opportunities for anybody with an interest in a particular subject to offer their opinions,” Lynch said.  “People opined on what was happening in our community — sometimes accurately sometimes inaccurately – and we weren’t even aware that they were talking about us.”

The city’s communications staffer spent two weeks doing almost nothing except responding to the resulting blizzard of emails.

“People didn’t understand the need for a regulatory foundation,” he said. “They weren’t interested in being informed.”

The city ultimately found a solution that would allow miniature pigs as pets. They also began more closely monitoring social media mentions, using tools like Google Analytics and SocialMention.com.

Here’s yet another strong article from American Express’s Open Forum, this one reminding us that prospective customers have to experience your message between three and seven times for it to register. Ideally they should experience it in several different ways: They get three direct mailings from you, read an article about your product in the newspaper, meet you at a networking event and see your donation mentioned by an influential charity.

The author also riffs a little on branding:

“We recently asked 51 CEOs in one industry whether ‘customer service’ was the reason they were a better choice than their competitors. And 51 out of 51 said yes.

“At the risk of sounding obvious: Nobody will believe it if everyone is saying it. In that industry, the customer-service pigeonhole is already full—and no doubt it’s full in yours, too.”

I, too, meet many business owners who say that their customer service distinguishes them from the competitors. Uh uh. Bad service will drive them away, but good service just keeps you even. Unless you’re committed to legendary levels – think Nordstrom and Ritz Carlton hotels – you should look at other qualities of your product or company for the characteristics that define your brand.

Don’t be overwhelmed by this list of 30 tasks to “improve” your social media profile (and smartphone use).  I did three of them and am positively giddy with self-congratulation. Here are my accomplishments:

Day 8: Start segmenting your Facebook friends. This series was published in 2010, so some of it is a bit outdated; however this piece of advice presages Facebook’s recent grouping improvements and the advent of Google Groups. I do want to connect with clients and journalists who are my friends on Facebook but I don’t want them to know everything. There are updates I only share with the theatrical community. Only my women friends would be interested in that new mascara (OK, some of the men, too. You know who you are.)

Day 10: Lock your phone already. I didn’t even need a separate app on my Android phone. Go to home screen/menu/settings/security/change screen lock. A refinement: Clean your screen regularly, because the swipe path is a visible smudged line.

Day 23: Switch to Firefox or Chrome. Firefox offers supreme customizability. Chrome is clean and fast: Type a URL into the address bar and it’ll take you there or enter words or a phrase and it will initiate a Google search.

Here’s my additional tip, for Android users: Move as many of your applications as possible onto the SD card. Go to home screen/settings/applications/manage applications (be sure you click “all” at the top of the screen). When you click on each app, you may see a button that says “Move to SD card.” If you don’t see that option, it’s because that app must run in the phone’s memory.

 Got tips? Share them as a comment on this post!

According to this article in Mashable, StumbleUpon has 12 million users compared to Facebook’s 750 million, but it generates 50.27% of all referral traffic from the top 10 social sites.  (I found this link in the useful enewsletter published by Lori Williams at Your Legal Resource.  Thanks, Lori!)

 I recently judged marketing materials – print and digital — in a Michigan Economic Developers Association competition.  They encouraged the panel of judges to provide constructive comments.  Following are my most frequent suggestions for print publications:

•  Spend money on a good graphic designer
• Focus; be strategic.  A document that strives to be all things to all people is frequently nothing to anyone.
• Have a professional edit your copy.  (There are rules about capitalization.  Obey them.)
• Use testimonials
• Use a couple of strong photos instead of a lot of little ones and use pictures of people.
• Show your character.  Don’t be afraid to be colorful or quirky.

Two economic development websites caught my eye.  The top-level navigation on the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation’s site is designed to speak to their likeliest or most desirable customers.  On each of those main pages, the right-hand navigation is customized to that subject.

I know that the Eastpointe DDA didn’t go through an extensive or expensive branding process, yet its website looks like what Eastpointe IS.  The site is rich in social media, even Foursquare and Gowalla, and makes clever use of free web technologies, like a customized Google map.

For our client The First Tee of Southeast Michigan, we combined traditional media relations with a social media strategy. The First Tee teaches children nine core values, within the framework of the game of golf We asked TV, radio and print media personalities to come to one of the The First Tee’s classes and talk about how one or more of the nine core values shaped their lives. While we’d have been happy if they mentioned the program, we knew we could generate social media mentions, as parents snapped photos and shared them. Fox Sports’ Trevor Thomspon spoke to a class, as did Lisa Grou, who wrote about the program on her blog, as seen here:

Clipped from: oaklandcountymoms.com (share this clip)