Leo Valiquette

Author Archive for Leo Valiquette

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The root of all evil

By Leo Valiquette

Back in November, Peter Hanschke blogged about the need for the lean and mean startup to beware the million-dollar cheque. In that spirit, I have an anecdote to share which illustrates that the mere prospect of such a windfall can also do significant damage.

At a time when early-stage ventures, particularly those in Canada, are thirsting for capital, be it traditional VC or an angel round, it may seem counterintuitive to suggest that a startup should be wary of a nice fat cheque.

But as Peter explained, for a startup that has taken a lean and frugal approach to market that relies on iterative product development and using a Minimum Viable Product approach, a sudden windfall of cash can have all sorts of negative consequences. The most obvious of these is that the product, which has until now been developed with only those features and functions that have the strongest market pull, gets bloated with all sorts of additional bells and whistles that dilute its focus and send the sales and marketing teams running in too many directions.

My story isn’t a clear-cut example of this, but the same lessons apply. This venture, let’s call it BigContent, was developing a unique library of content which it would make available through a subscription model. It was incubated with a nest egg the founders had put together from a previous venture. In fact, it was their experience with that previous venture which provided them with the idea for BigContent, as well as the initial proof of concept. From a marketing standpoint, BigContent’s founders were doing exactly what they should to identify, define and validate a strong market opportunity which BigContent could exploit.

Executing BigContent’s business plan didn’t require external financing. The founders were wholly committed to bootstrapping the venture through to positive cash flow. BigContent proceeded to develop its library of content, a distribution model through which to deliver that content and a strong roster of subscribers. Everything was proceeding well toward a soft launch of its service.

And then a Big Name VC comes calling without an invitation.

Well, what startup on the eve of its launch is going to slam the door in a VC’s face? At the VC’s behest, launch plans were put on hold. BigContent’s founders revamped their business plan to reflect the addition of external financing. A VC round may not have been necessary to BigContent’s get-to-market strategy, but it would certainly have accelerated the process and made for a bigger, bolder launch.

Big Name VC made lofty promises, even said it would bring one of its compadres to the table. Meetings were scheduled, then cancelled. After several months of song and dance, the VCs said a polite “No thank you” and moved on.

The damage was done. BigContent’s lean and mean go-to-market strategy was in shambles. One of the principals had also resigned from the company. Months later, the team is still trying to get everything back on track for a launch, as per the original business plan.

I don’t intend this post as a knock against VCs, but this story does demonstrate that both parties to a deal must always beware. The onus is on the entrepreneur to have a clear understanding of where their business is going and what it will take to get it there. There is always more than one route to a destination and the choices which lie along the way seldom fit easily into the “right” and “wrong” columns. If there’s a moral to this story, perhaps it’s the importance of staying the course when in the midst of executing a plan in which you have confidence.

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: financing, investor, startup, entrepreneur, VC, venture capital, business launch, business plan, bootstrap, get to market, market validation, minimum viable product, MVP, product development, iterative

How I learned to stop worrying and love a blank page

By Leo Valiquette

As a student of the written word, I’ve dealt with just about everything when it comes to catering to a client, managing a team of journalists and editing the work of others.

But the greatest challenge is often found in the mocking white glare of an empty page.

As we have discussed before on this blog, writing is one of those skills that only gets better with practice. Reading examples of great writing with a critical eye, heeding the wise counsel of quality reference material and, most importantly, appreciating the value of a good editor, are all fundamental to honing your craft.

As with anything, becoming a good writer is a longer and more painful journey for some than it is for others. I often encounter people who are far more eloquent and articulate orators than I am. And yet, they run into a wall when asked to say the same thing in print. There is a certain thoughtless spontaneity with speech that is lost when confronted by a blank page. It isn’t that they don’t know what to say, they just don’t know where to begin.

But those of us who write for a living also find ourselves daunted by a blank page, or, even worse, with such a volume of material and research we’ve lost sight of the forest for the trees. Nonetheless, the job still needs to get done by deadline.

So, for what it’s worth, here are my tips for making the words move. This isn’t about writing better or even writing for a specific audience. It’s just about writing, period, whether it’s for personal, professional or journalistic purposes.

1. Don’t think about it, just do it

Write down the first thing that comes to your head, followed by the second, and the third. Before you know it, you’ll have written a few paragraphs that will have dimmed the glare of that empty page. Is it great writing? Who cares? As Ernest Hemmingway said, “The first draft of anything is shit.” It’s a start and that’s what matters. It’s easier to revise than it is to draft.

2. Don’t try to write the beginning first

Now I’ll let you in on a little secret. If you wrote the first thing that came into your head, you probably didn’t write what should be the beginning of your work. I write 3,000-word magazine features all the time by banging out the first 800 words in a rush. Next day I’ll come back, rip what I’ve done to pieces and then get down to the good stuff. It’s a creative enema that often needs to be part of the process.

3. Give yourself time to play around

That means you can’t leave things to the last minute. Whenever possible, bang out a rough draft of your work and let it lie fallow for at least a couple of days before coming back to it. The outcome will always be better than if you tried to go from zero to final finished product in one go, or even in one day. (Of course, I’m breaking this rule myself right now with this post.)

4. Start with somebody else’s words

It could be a quote from a source, an anecdote or an interesting statistic. These are all icebreakers that give you a place to start. Follow that first line up with an explanation of what it means and why it is significant.

5. Start with an outline

This is particularly useful for those situations where you may feel overwhelmed by your volume of material. An outline helps you to organize your thoughts as well as your material and distinguish the useful from the irrelevant.

6. A full belly and an empty bowel

Seriously. Nothing is more distracting than snack time rumbles or the outcome of last night’s dinner overstaying its welcome. Bob Bailly wrote a great piece for us a while back on how our systems tick on ultradian rhythms and the need for regular pit stops and refuelling.

7. The value of idle distraction

Maybe it’s toying with a stress ball, clicking a pen or listening to the soundtrack for Lord of the Rings. We all have those things we do that help put us in that almost meditative creative state. The key thing is that is something you can do without getting up from the computer. Otherwise, you risk falling prey to all those other external distractions that will sap your productivity.

8. Change the scene

Sometimes, nothing gets the creative juices flowing faster than a change of scenery. Grab the laptop, get up and take a walk to a local coffee shop or a branch of the public library.

9. Start fresh

The morning, when you are fresh and alert, is often the best time to tackle a writing project. Try to ignore the inbox and the voicemail and focus. From a productivity standpoint, it is often better to keep to the desk in the morning and save meetings and conference calls for the afternoon.

10. Know when to walk way

And by the same token, sometimes you should leave to tomorrow what you could do today. I’ve often found myself late in the day or in the evening trying to get a head start on something when the creative drive just isn’t there anymore. Often, I’ve produced far better material and in a far shorter time by leaving it to the following morning.

What would you add to this list?

Image: Cindy Thomas

Technorati Tags: writing, editing, writer’s block, ultradian, Ernest Hemmingway, Bob Bailly

Check your baggage at the door

By Leo Valiquette

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been speaking with a number of entrepreneurs, executives and others with a stake in Ottawa’s economy on topics ranging from international trade and building an export-oriented business to financing. The common theme has been what business owners must do to get out of their own backyards and make things happen.

There are, no doubt, those who take miserable comfort in pining away for the old days of high-volume VC and the glory that was Nortel. They would rather spend more time complaining about what’s lacking in the commercialization ecosystem than engage in a more productive exercise to find a workaround. I really wasn’t interested in getting mired in those perspectives. The world is what it is – deal with it.

Our focus must be on how we (define “we” in whatever way works for you) learn to operate in the new normal or in the absence of any normal. We must be focused on the future with an appreciation for the fact that big changes can’t happen overnight. It requires a long-term effort that is consistent and, most importantly, collaborative.

I found myself thinking these weighty thoughts following a chat with Walt Hutchings, one of the new guard at the Economic Development Agency Formerly Known as OCRI – Invest Ottawa.

Hutchings worked at EDC for almost 30 years in various senior roles that were largely focused around building bridges between Canadian companies and foreign markets. As Invest Ottawa’s managing director of investment and trade, he is now tasked with building a team that will have the domain expertise and contacts to help Ottawa companies expand overseas and attract foreign interests to consider Ottawa their foothold in the Canadian and North American markets.

In our discussion, he outlined a focused and strategic game plan to fulfill his mandate. On the investment side, the emphasis is not just on helping local startups secure capital, but also to help local firms invest in some fashion overseas.

I liked what I heard in our discussion, but we can’t expect results to materialize overnight. As we explored with CEO Bruce Lazenby several moons ago, Invest Ottawa has a lot of hard work ahead of it, not the least of which is distancing itself from the tarnished brand that was OCRI.

But this is not to suggest that there isn’t a need to show progress in the near term. Progress is best demonstrated by examples of how traditional divides in this town are being broken. Mayor Jim Watson and other stakeholders in the local economy have made plenty of noise about the need for collaboration instead of competition. There is no place in the new Ottawa, we have been told, for the silos, even egos, that traditionally kept the local chambers, city hall, our post-secondary institutions and the old OCRI working at cross purposes, often duplicating each other’s efforts.

In my recent travels, I have spoken with a number of the senior individuals across town who need to be talking to each other. It seems that this collaborative dialogue is starting to happen. On the other hand, I still pick up the odd grumble – it will take some time for the old mindset of “us vs. them” to fade away, but fade it must.

‘Innovation’ has never been at issue

While OCRI’s name change is symbolic, it is nonetheless important. I can only shake my head when I see on local LinkedIn Groups bittersweet longings for the good ol’ days of OCRI under certain of its former head honchos and nitpicking over the fact that the new name “Invest Ottawa” falls short because it doesn’t contain the word “innovation.” This is the one word, some people insist, that somehow conveys everything that Ottawa was.

I couldn’t agree more. Under the wing of Nortel, Ottawa was a hotbed of innovation. Innovation has never been our problem.

But as we have said repeatedly on this blog, innovation matters less than commercialization. A great idea is, well, great, but in the absence of a strong plan to build a sustainable business around that idea, the idea itself is style without substance. Investment is what it is all about – investing in new ideas, new markets and new industries to build great companies with the chutzpah, global market awareness and business chops for investors of whatever stripe to see them as a worthwhile risk.

I even still receive emails from people who I haven’t spoken with since my time as editor of the Ottawa Business Journal, people who are eager to revisit topics tied to the telecom meltdown. I did and still do empathize with anyone who has been disenfranchised by job cuts – been there! But we need to be focused on where we are and where we need to go. The only preoccupation we should have with what happened more than decade ago is keeping sight of the hard lessons that were learned about irrational exuberance and the need for economic diversification.

Only time will tell if Invest Ottawa will live up to its bold ambitions. But it does appear to be off to a good start with a new mindset and the welcome addition of new faces like Walt Hutchings. The onus for Ottawa’s economic future, however, rests with everyone who is part of the local value chain for getting tech to market, not just the team at 80 Aberdeen St. It’s hard to move forward if we keep looking back.

Technorati Tags: Invest Ottawa, OCRI, EDC, Walt Hutchings, Bruce Lazenby, economic development, startup, entrepreneur, executive, commercialization, VC, financing, Jim Watson, Ottawa Business Journal

What an entrepreneur can learn from a literary conference

By Leo Valiquette

Back in March I blogged about the striking similarities between an entrepreneur who is trying to bring technology to market and a writer who is attempting to publish a novel. I referenced the fact that I would soon be attending a literary conference, Ad Astra, as part of my business development and self-improvement efforts.

Ad Astra was in fact this past weekend and it is timely to write about the lessons learned from that experience in light of Alex’s post yesterday about the value of face-to-face contact in the age of social media.

Writers, like engineers, programmers and other creative types, often toil away in seclusion. We think we are staying in touch with the world, and the industries or markets in which we hope to sell our products, by using those ubiquitous social media tools. We can follow and contribute to Twitter streams, discussion threads, post comments on walls and read curated newsfeeds. But this is still akin to drifting over the landscape in a hot air balloon and shouting down at the masses below “how’s it going?” when what you really need to do is drop anchor and go see for yourself.

Attending local networking and industry events can only take you so far. It is the nature of such events to be limited to the local community, to the peers, support and resources with which you are already familiar. But if your intent is to bring your product to markets outside of your own backyard, this is likely not exposing you to the full range of resources and insight you need to do so successfully.

Which brings us back to Ad Astra, or, more appropriately, industry conferences in general, which provide that valuable opportunity to get face time with influencers, investors and potential partners from a variety of geographies and backgrounds.

This was my third time at a literary conference and it became quite evident that there is an incremental and cumulative benefit from the effort. In many instances, I was engaging with specific authors and publishers for the third time. I am becoming a familiar face. In a few short hours, I strengthened relationships in a way that I never could, and haven’t, by relying on social media alone. Authors, publishers and agents, like seasoned entrepreneurs, successful executives and big name investors, all have their followings as well as their inner circle entourages. In both instances, sitting back and letting your fingers do all the talking through social media is likely to leave you lost among the great unwashed masses.

If you want to be more than follower #1,358 in someone’s Twitter stream, you need to put yourself in front of them. But with any effort to build a professional relationship through networking, you have to be respectful of their time. You also need to treat the other individual as a person and chat them up a bit – have your elevator pitch ready, but don’t breathlessly blurt it out as soon as you make eye contact.

And while a strong pitch is key (and a subject for another time) don’t worry if it isn’t poem perfect and you trip over your tongue. It’s better for your passion to shine through than to come across like a slick used car salesman.

Have realistic expectations about who you should talk to and how the six degrees of separation can come into play. This is an opportunity to expand your peer group as well as forge relationships with individuals who can open other doors for you. Don’t forget that, while you are looking for people who can provide some measure of value, you should also be looking for ways that you can reciprocate.

Most importantly, if you are serious about your business and getting that ____________ to market, this is a commitment of time, effort and money that you must be willing to make. It may not be feasible to head to a conference once a month, but, regardless of your market segment, there are no doubt a couple of events a year that can give you bang for your buck. You just have to do your research ahead of time to know whose path you would like to cross.

Image: Event now

Technorati Tags: networking, tradeshow, conference, six degrees, Ad Astra, entrepreneur, pitch, author, writer, social media, face time, face to face, social interaction, meetup, impact of in-person meetings, publishing

Yeah, I am trying to get a product to market

By Leo Valiquette

For 12 years I have worked as a business journalist and marketing and public relations professional. In these roles I have engaged with a horde of entrepreneurs, executives, investors and other ink-stained wretches who would rather write about corporate stars than movie stars.

I could write a book or two from what I have learned about what it takes to get a product to market and succeed as an entrepreneur. But attempting to do such a thing without having actually lived that roller coaster ride for myself seems like presumption of the worst kind.

On the other hand, I have been tinkering away for decades on a variety of ideas that I thought could have commercial potential. They’ve kept me up at night. They’ve led me to beg off on Sunday dinners with the in-laws. They have even led me to take a personal health day or two back when I had a J.O.B.

Last year was a bit soft for a freelance word smith, so I took advantage of the opportunity to get serious about whipping one of these ideas into a reasonable prototype. I pulled in a couple of beta testers who provided invaluable feedback that helped me to fix the glitches. I attended a couple of industry conferences where I could engage with potential business partners and investors to understand what they were looking for in an attractive opportunity.

I’ve even researched the pros and cons of various go-to market strategies, such as bootstrapping. The world has changed a lot in recent years with the rise of social media as a toolkit for marketing, customer engagement and business development. My industry, like many others, has been transformed, providing new opportunities for nimble newcomers to get to market without having to win the support of those old-school investors.

However, I’ve decided to hedge my bets. Last month, I pitched my concept at both an investor and potential business partner, even as I continue to weigh the pros and cons of going it alone. Next month, I will once again be attending a notable industry conference in Toronto called Ad Astra, hopefully wiser and better prepared than I was when I first went a year ago.

This has been my dream since high school and I have certainly been going at it with serious gusto over the past year-and-a-half. Nonetheless, it’s taken me a long time to consider this effort an exercise in entrepreneurship – which is rather odd, considering that it is a process to develop and bring to market a compelling product that will drive sufficient revenue to sustain a business.

My product is, of course, a novel. Or, more accurately, a manuscript that I hope will become the first of many novels. By investors and business partners I mean publishers and agents. And you’ve probably already figured out that “bootstrapped” is a ringer for “self-published.”

To achieve commercial success as an author is a victory in brand-building to rival anything done by the Apples of the world. Just ask J.K. Rowling, Stephen King or George R. R. Martin. Their names have become tickets to print money. They can even get away with ignoring their editors and publishing tomes the size of cinder blocks.

But for every icon such as this, there are thousands who fail to make the grade. Their products never get to market because they remain unfinished, untested, or are rejected by publishers and agents who believe that the product, as solid as it may be, is simply not unique or distinctive enough to provide them with an adequate ROI.

Then there is the majority who do get to market, but achieve only a moderate volume of sales. Their product sells well enough to remain in stock and warrant a contract for more, but the entrepreneur (I mean, author) isn’t getting rich by any measure. This is called the midlist, and, like many other product categories in the world today, has benefited from the long tail effect of online retailing.

So based on consideration of some of these facts, yes, I guess you could call me a start-up entrepreneur working on getting his first product to market. As with just about any entrepreneur, my road is long, mostly uphill and there is no guarantee what I will find at the end.

So why do I bother when I can make a living doing all of this other non-fiction writing and communication work?

Because I enjoy it and I have a passion for it. There is a certain, self-affirming, emotional high that comes of it. To have the fortitude to keep going through all the personal, professional and technical challenges involved with getting a product to market, an entrepreneur must be driven by more than just the promise of a pay day. They have a vision greater than the sum of product features and specs.

I’m sure if we locked a group of successful authors and entrepreneurs together in a room, they would say the same thing – you do it because you love it. The money is a fringe benefit.

Image: WorkFlowWriting.com

Technorati Tags: entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, writing, author, novel, novelist, publishing, self-publishing, long tail, J. K.Rowling, Stephen King, George R. R. Martin, midlist, Ad Astra, brand, branding

The value of shooting the breeze

This is the next entry in our “Best of” series, in which we venture deep into the vault to replay blog opinion and insight that has withstood the test of time. Today’s post hails from January, 2009. We welcome your feedback.

By Danny Sullivan

At inmedia, we frequently position ourselves against those whose perspective is that PR is “all about relationships.” And, while I wholeheartedly stand by our mantra that it is the ability to convey a story and not the relationship that dictates PR success, it cannot be denied that relationships are still important. They are even more relevant from the perspective of a PR firm’s clients than for the PR firm itself. PR firms come and go but, assuming a company sticks around, its relationship with its target media will last forever.

This week, one of my clients traveled to New York to meet face to face with a group of editors from a key trade publication that covers his company’s market. Was this meeting at the request of the editors? No, we brokered it from our end. Was it for an article they were working on? No. So why was this meeting happening? Simple. It was for the relationship.

While our client had some exposure to the publication, the relationship was very much the domain of inmedia, the PR firm. This is, of course, perfectly understandable – the very reason you have a PR firm is to maintain your relationship with the media, and this remains a core part of our business – but huge value can be gained on all sides from extending the media relationship to include the client at a deeper level.

So what happened in this meeting in New York? Well, they shot the breeze. Discussed the state of the industry, talked a bit about the company and what was going on with it, but no hard pitches for stories, no Q&A, no pressure to come up with the goods.

So where was the value in this meeting, you might ask. Why not ask my client, who left the meeting full of enthusiasm for the people he had just met, and excited about the future prospects for working with them. Or why not ask the editors, who expressed delight at the meeting and a desire to do so again at some point in the near future. Value was seen on all sides from a meeting that accomplished little in hard results.

Sure, inmedia could have handled this meeting ourselves, but our preoccupation with achieving results for clients would no doubt have created a different atmosphere. Sometimes stepping back from the day-to-day hard selling of stories and constant attempts to generate coverage can result in a far more rewarding result – a blooming relationship.

Technorati Tags: public relations, media relations, pitching, networking

How stale is your contact list?

This is the next entry in our “Best of” series, in which we venture deep into the vault to replay blog opinion and insight that has withstood the test of time. Today’s post hails from February, 2009. We welcome your feedback.

By Leo Valiquette

There is no question that we PR types are often taken to task for blitzing the world with news of little relevance or importance or, at least, for failing to ensure that the news is relevant and important to the hapless targets in range of our scatter guns.

In an ongoing series of posts chronicling his study of the pitches that flood his inbox, research analyst Josh Bernoff has been examining why three quarters of the PR email he receives is irrelevant. He makes the point of saying, “I really like working with PR people, I just don’t like all of their tactics.” After working for 14 years as an analyst and being barraged by tens of thousands of emails during that time, he believes his exercise in navel-gazing is well justified.

Among the points he makes is that far too much of the email he receives is related to research areas he covered years before, but is not relevant to what he is doing now. Obviously, too little research is done to ensure information in a contact database is up to date.

The simple fact is, things change. Publications fold and people move on to new jobs or assume new responsibilities. When it comes to those media contact and editorial calendar databases to which many of us subscribe, their accuracy and timeliness is often dependent on media outlets voluntarily responding to requests to update their information. I can say from previous experience as a business journal editor bombarded by irrelevant pitches that such requests often go unanswered.

In the end, the most effective way to verify if a particular journalist or editor is an appropriate target for the news you have to pitch is to visit their publication’s website.

Case in point. We recently re-engaged with a client after a two-year hiatus. It had been a long time since we created their target media list and we emphasized the value of budgeting into the project the time and cost necessary to go through the list one name at a time to verify and update the information.

They saw our point, and thankfully so. Forty to 50 per cent of the contacts we had were no longer accurate for reasons that included staff turnover, defunct publications, and changes to the email addresses and phone numbers of those contacts who were still appropriate targets for this particular client’s news. If we hadn’t undertaken this process, up to half of our outreach on this client’s behalf would have been a misfire.

Not all media outlets are forthcoming on their “Contact Us” or “About Us” pages with individual staff bios, beats covered and contact information, but most are. It can be tedious to visit dozens of websites to dig up and verify this kind of information, but without a doubt, it is the only assured way to get your client’s story where it needs to go.

Technorati Tags: pitching, media relations, public relations, contact database, contact us, about us, Josh Bernoff

Make like a duck: Paddle hard, paddle often

This is the next entry in our “Best of” series, in which we venture deep into the vault to replay blog opinion and insight that has withstood the test of time. Today’s post hails from May 2009. We welcome your feedback.

By Leo Valiquette

Recently, Francis fielded a question on LinkedIn about the value of running a survey to generate media coverage.

Surveys can be used effectively to position a company, but not if the company is perceived simply as a sponsor of an external survey. Francis cited the example of one IT consultancy that, on inmedia‘s counsel, did away with its external survey of CIOs and instead realized much better media traction from publishing the results of an internal census of its own IT experts. The spotlight was shifted from a group of faceless CIOs to the consultancy’s own knowledge keepers, positioning the consultancy as an authoritative subject matter expert rather than a mere survey sponsor.

As the editor of a business publication, I saw almost daily news releases plugging a survey that, on the surface at least, provided profound insights into one issue or another of relevance to the Ottawa business community. However, the appeal factor quickly evaporated when, upon closer inspection, it was revealed that said survey was sponsored by a major credit card company or software vendor.

This made the objectivity of the data presented, and the conclusions drawn from it, immediately suspect to me. After all, the sponsoring organization would not go to the time and effort to promote survey results that didn’t support its own sales and marketing efforts, now would it? It was this obvious vested interest that made me reluctant to devote even a couple of hundred words of coverage with an online news brief.

When trying to come up with ingenious and cunning ways to engage with the media, there is, once again, simply no substitute for taking the time and effort to understand:

1. Who are the media that are relevant to your organization? Which ones have the clout to move your market and a focus that includes the products and services that you offer?

2. Who on staff specifically covers your offering or the specific markets that you target?

3. What kind of content is the publication looking for and how can you provide it? When you pursue potential customers, you position your product or service as a solution to a problem. Attracting the interest of the media is no different. In Francis’s example above, by putting the spotlight on its own internal thought leaders, this IT consultancy was conveying the value it could provide to a publication in search of expert opinion and insight on pertinent issues and topics.

Answering these questions takes research and the patience and persistence to secure that all-important first conversation with an editor. This is relationship building based upon your ability to offer something that is relevant and valuable. Prove that you’re useful, and your foot is firmly wedged in the door. It is not about flogging today’s news release, though that does present a good excuse to pick up the phone.

Don’t operate under the false assumption that following this process faithfully is a magic bullet that guarantees results, or that great things will happen overnight. It still takes time.

For one client, I have been working to place a leadership piece with a key publication since February. The editor held on to the draft we submitted for almost two months before coming back with requested revisions that essentially gut much of the article’s original focus and content. But he’s still interested. With another magazine that lies at the pinnacle of this client’s wish list, I have been touching base with the editor every few weeks for the past three months and finally hope to garner a firm commitment in June when work commences on a signature fall issue.

Invariably, great results are the result of this kind of furious paddling below the waterline, rather than something like a sponsored survey that can fall into the category of gimmickry. The sooner you take to the water and get to work, the sooner those media clippings will begin to add up.

Technorati Tags: public relations, marketing, media relations, pitching

On the hunt for the ‘unambiguous value statement’

This is the next entry in our “Best of” series, in which we venture deep into the vault to replay blog opinion and insight that has withstood the test of time. Today’s post hails from September 2009. We welcome your feedback.

By Leo Valiquette

It’s been a while since I have expounded on the subject of reference customers. (OK, it’s been a while since I’ve expounded on any subject on this blog, but here I am, back in form.)

In our work at inmedia, where we strive to engage with the editors of specific trade and industry titles to sell them on the merits of a client’s story, enthusiastic reference customers who can articulate the pain points that were addressed by our clients’ products will, more often than not, make the editor sit up and take notice.

Customers who have actually opened their wallets for a vendor’s product or service provide validation and demonstrate uptake in the market. They can speak in dollars-and-cents terms about why they adopted a particular product and the benefits and return on investment they have derived from it.

Please note the emphasis on that last part. A customer testimonial along the lines of “we thought this was a great product and we highly recommend it” is so utterly void of tangible value that it’s better to not have it at all.

When developing an in-depth article such as a white paper or case study with an agreeable reference customer who scrutinizes the worth of every expenditure, it’s easy to delve deep and get beyond such a vapid endorsement.

In my freelance work, however, I have found myself working on a number of projects for clients who have taken the other approach to getting their name in a desired industry publication–they’ve paid their way by purchasing advertising space for a corporate profile. Which is all well and good, but to ensure those dollars have been well spent and the potential for lead generation is maximized, the copy must sing with the same unambiguous value statements expected of a case study that has passed muster with a competent editor dedicated to providing his or her readers with the information and opinion they need to run their businesses more effectively.

Too often, however, I see paid profiles, or advertorials, that come across as brochure-ware, produced either by writers who do not have the benefit of a journalism background, or worse, by a committee of the organization’s marketing staff and senior management.

It’s not that these profiles are poorly written (well, not always), or fail to convey core messaging, but they have often been developed with a lack of appreciation for three key points:

This is an ad. That means the odds of actually engaging with a reader have just taken a nosedive, considering that the publication’s editorial content is also vying for their attention.
We are all busy and pressed for time. We often don’t read, we skim. We take only a couple of seconds to decide if something is of value to us before flipping past it.
People don’t want to read a bunch of quotes attributed to stakeholders in the organization. Flagrant self-promotion is a dish best served as an appetizer, not as a main course.

What does this mean?

It means a 900-word profile that fills more than half of a full-page ad with grey text has little chance of being read.
It means that you don’t have the luxury of wowing readers with colourful prose which details the rich and successful history of the organization before getting down to the nitty gritty of why your products and services are relevant to them.
It means that an unambiguous value statement from an enthusiastic customer eager to put their name beside what they have to say is not only essential, it should probably lead the piece.

And on that last point, don’t try to micro-manage the process and put the words you want to hear in the mouth of your reference customer for their rubber-stamped approval. Yes, some degree of polishing and massaging will no doubt be necessary, but let the customer express the value points that mattered most to them in their own words. They are, after all, representative of the people you are trying to reach. To have relevance and resonance, this value statement should come across as sincere and true. This is also worth keeping in mind when developing an effective news release.

Technorati Tags: advertorial, marketing, promotion, public relations, PR, references, value statement, reference customer

QNX’s customer-centric culture pays dividends

By Leo Valiquette

It has been a thirty-year journey for Ottawa’s QNX Software Systems, largely under what has jokingly been referred to as “stealth mode.” Last year, the company saw its brand boosted through its acquisition by Research in Motion as the mobile device maker sought out QNX’s expertise in realtime operating systems (RTOS) to help make its Playbook a reality.

But though it remained relatively unknown in its own backyard, QNX had already cemented its market position before RIM came knocking thanks to its own unique customer-centric approach and the support of its previous owner, Harman International. Derek Kuhn, vice-president of sales and marketing, and Sebastien Marineau-Mes, vice-president of engineering, spoke this morning at OCRI’s execTALKS breakfast about how their company has evolved over the years.

QNX’s RTOS products have been applied in a broad variety of embedded applications, from the Space Shuttle program to Cisco routers and military radios. With Harman, QNX broke into the automotive market for infotainment and telematics platforms. Today its technology is found in 20 million vehicles worldwide, from GM’s Onstar to high end systems in luxury cars in which the dash is a fully customizable digital display.

In fact, one could wonder, and rightly so, how QNX has become so many things to so many verticals, without stretching itself too thin. But Kuhn said it all comes back to focusing on one specific strength.

“Even though we are applicable to many different industries, we are focused on one thing, a rock solid platform,” he said, adding that addressing the specific needs of a particular market forces the company to be more innovative and competitive. And innovations for one industry often lead to product improvements that allow QNX to better serve customers in other verticals.

An RTOS by its very definition is one that provides 100 per cent reliability. There is little patience among end users for slow boot up times or the “blue screen of death.” But it is about more than just the technology. Here are some of the key ingredients Kuhn and Marineau-Mes cited for QNX’s success.

Being one with the customer …

QNX’s customers are invariably working on large and complex projects where failure to meet a delivery deadline is always a risk but not an option, such as bringing a new automobile to market. Its people will “embed” themselves (their pun, not mine) inside the customer’s organization to work in partnership and take responsibility for getting the job done on time.

… means being where the customers are …

Having a strong presence on the ground in Europe and Asia has been fundamental to QNX’s success. Kuhn said the company absolutely had to be in the same time zone as the big systems integrators and electronics manufacturers with which it has worked.

… and building an open relationship.

It isn’t just about building the deliverable to spec and coming in on time and on budget. It is about adding value. Often, this means challenging the conventional wisdom and making the case to the customer when you believe there is a better way than what they had in mind.

“It’s extremely important to be a part of what your customers are involved in,” Kuhn said. “We don’t want to be seen just as a vendor.” Often, this means working the relationship to get past the procurement people to the decision makers at the top in order to engage in a meaningful dialogue about their vision and how you can work together to make it happen.

A lot has changed in 30 years

QNX has what Marineau-Mes described as a “very strong technical culture” in that it doesn’t make promises to its market that it isn’t reasonably confident it can deliver on over the long term. Constant reinvention has been crucial to QNX remaining on the leading edge of its technology. For me, this tied in with what we have blogged about before about the need for a technology company to have a clear product migration strategy.

It’s all about your team

Being able to offer such a broad variety of projects has been a big draw to get good people in the door, Kuhn said. However, the challenge has been how far afield the company has had to shop to find the niche expertise it needs and how it has had to market Ottawa as a desirable place in which to work and live as part of its recruitment efforts. And to retain those hires, the company has come to realize the value of providing opportunities for professional and personal development.

The Apples of the world are not impregnable

With the Playbook squaring off against Apple’s iPad, QNX and the larger RIM organization certainly have a challenge before them. But fortune favours the bold. The key is to take stock of the strengths and weaknesses of both yourself and your competitors. In this instance, part of the strategy for the Playbook is to position it in the enterprise market, which remains Apple’s soft spot, by levering the expertise RIM has garnered in this arena with the Blackberry.

“It’s very motivating and exciting,” Marineau-Mes said.

Technorati Tags: QNX, RTOS, realtime operating system, Playbook, RIM, Research in Motion, Playbook, Blackberry, Apple, iPad, Harman, infotainment, telematics, Onstar, OCRI, execTALKS, marketing, marketing strategy, customer engagement

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Nick Stamoulis : Communication throughout the process is essential. You can't outsource social media and expect that you no longer are involved. In order for the campaign t...

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Alexandra Reid : Thanks Brier! Glad you found it helpful :)

Brier Dodge : Great post Alex! I was at the social media breakfast and I think you did a great job summarizing Joi's points and information.

Colleen Wolak : Does anyone know of any good tools, free or paid, for gathering reviews on Yelp, Google, Yahoo, etc? We have 24 locations, so it's definitely time-consuming ...

Easymarketing : Entrepreneurship has become a way of life for those who creatively and innovatively make good use of informative research and ideas that are offered in the i...

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Author Archive for Leo Valiquette

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QNX’s customer-centric culture pays dividends

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