Author Archive for Leo Valiquette

Making the SaaS model work for you as a vendor

smarTALK wordmark Making the SaaS model work for you as a vendorBy Leo Valiquette

“Software as a service (SaaS, typically pronounced [sæs]), sometimes referred to as ‘software on demand,’ is software that is deployed over the Internet and/or is deployed to run behind a firewall on a local area network or personal computer. With SaaS, a provider licenses an application to customers either as a service on demand, through a subscription, in a ‘pay-as-you-go’ model, or (increasingly) at no charge when there is opportunity to generate revenue from streams other than the user, such as from advertisement or user list sales.”

– Wikipedia

Offering customers this option versus the traditional model of selling boxes of CDs in shrink wrap is a “price of admission capability for software companies these days,” Rob Bell, director of service operation and corporate IT for Kinaxis, said at OCRI’s #smarTALKS event last night.

Bell was part of a panel that included Marc Brule, vice president of client services at Halogen Software, Aydin Mirzaee, co-CEO of ChideIT, and moderator Jeff Bennett, CEO and partner at ServiceVantage Corp. They discussed the transition from the industry’s traditional revenue model to a co-hosted SaaS model.

The key message? The SaaS model puts software vendors closer than ever before to the end users of their products. This is a paradigm shift that, perhaps paradoxically, creates fresh challenges and new ways to get it wrong even as it provides some distinct benefits for both users and vendors.

Here are the Top 10 takeaways from the discussion:

1. You can engage the end user at a client organization far easier than before as opposed to the traditional model, in which the client organization’s IT staff were often a barrier to entry, said Mirzaee. However, Brule added that at large corporations, the IT staff are still the gatekeepers who must be appeased, regardless of how the end users may be chomping at the bit.

2. Are you a low margin, high volume vendor? How about a high margin, low volume one? Maybe you’re somewhere in the middle. Regardless of where you fall on this spectrum, you must be prepared to meet customer’s expectations and be able to manage service and support in a way that will not kill your margins.

3. Regardless of how you respond to the previous point, the subscription model typical of SaaS has the benefit of smoothing out the peaks and valleys of revenue and cash flow. It is a far more regular and predictable model.

4. The vendor must regularly reach out to find new complimentary skill sets that will allow it to field a better SaaS product, said Brule. However, given how close the vendor is to the customer, it is better in the end to keep as much in house as possible. “No one is going to care about your customers as much as you do,” he said.

The one exception to this concerns security, said Bell. Engaging with third-party specialists is often the best way to test and ensure the integrity of your system against risk.

5. Word of mouth may represent your most powerful sales tool … and your greatest fear. This is particularly true in a high-volume, low-margin sales model, said Mirzaee.

6. Consider which model works best for your sales team. There are two sides to your sales effort — the hunters who secure new customers and the farmers who work to ensure existing customers renew or commit to an annual contract versus month to month. These two roles are better separated in a high-volume business, but may work better if combined in a low-volume business.

7. How do you maintain stickiness when it is so easy for the customer to “rip and replace” or when you are competing against giant vendors such as SAP or Oracle? Exceptional support and service is key, said Mirzaee. Another way is to maintain customer’s data, so that if they leave, they know their data is still there if they come back.

Also, add features and functionality to your product that make it an integral part of the client organization by supporting processes and departments other than its own core function, said Brule. Don’t design it to exist in a silo.

Lastly, and this comes back to the value of word of mouth, use existing customers as references to garner credibility, said Bell. Further to this, Bell emphasized the importance of staying in touch with customers and discussing the challenges they are facing. “Reach out to your customer on a regular basis,” he said. “Talking to them about what they are doing will tell if you are going to have a retention problem.”

8. Brule added that stickiness also starts at the outset of the customer relationship. At Halogen, nothing is sold without a training and implementation package to ensure full knowledge of the product is transferred to end users. This ensures the value of the product is realized by the customer and it doesn’t end up as shelfware.

9. When a customer does slip away, perform an exit interview. At Halogen, whenever a customer leaves, they get a call from the customer services group, said Brule. This can give telling insight into whether it was a shortcoming of the product that led to the loss of the customer, a shortcoming that could be addressed in future versions of the product.

10. Since the SaaS model puts the vendor so close to the customer, new iterations of the product can be implemented every few days with new features, functionality and bug fixes based on user feedback. But this also puts the onus on the vendor to be responsive and sympathize with where a customer is coming from. It is all part of the process of ensuring your product continues to evolve with the needs of the market.

“Treat every customer complaint or issue as an opportunity,” said Bell.

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Posted by: Leo Valiquette on February 25, 2011

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Posted in: Marketing strategy, Product marketing, Startups — 2 Comments

Creative, emotional, evocative: Getting the attention of overwhelmed consumers

OCRI Zone5 137K 300x48 Creative, emotional, evocative: Getting the attention of overwhelmed consumersBy Leo Valiquette

Do you remember that Knorr commercial about how it had reduced sodium in its packaged side dishes?

Global advertising agency DDB Worldwide took a clever approach to promote a relatively humdrum message by portraying the perspective of that one individual unhappy about sodium reduction. It came up with an ad that features a despondent little salt shaker neglected at the family dinner table who trudges out of the house into a cold dark world.

Such creativity, says Jeff Swystun, is the most powerful force in business, especially in today’s world where technology has fuelled social interaction between consumers and the brands they use like never before. In this new reality, advertisers and marketers can no longer afford to focus on connecting people to brands. They must instead focus on connecting people to people.

Swystun, chief communications officer with DDB Worldwide, spoke at yesterday’s OCRI Zone5ive event about how changes in consumer habits, behaviour and social engagement via the Internet are driving fundamental shifts in how advertisers and marketers must approach what they do.

“Consumers and customers are getting more sophisticated, and yet we continue to treat them like children,” said Swystun.

In recent years, there has been a trend toward bombarding consumers and customers from every side, through every medium possible, with intrusive advertising. This 360-degree approach is costly and, ultimately, a big turn off for the target audience. Instead, brands today must focus on only six degrees — that is, the mere six degrees of separation that is said to exist between every individual on the planet.

The thinking behind this is, if you give people what they really want, when they really want it, and let them pass it on through their own human networks, it will drive a conversation in the marketplace that will secure substantial mind-share and provide invaluable intelligence that brand owners can use to make their product or service more appealing. This applies whether the product or service in question is for the B2B or B2C market.

“Branding will always be a democratic process that is about consumer choice,” Swystun said. “Our job is to help people make that choice without them feeling like they have been manipulated.”

But how can this be done in today’s environment, in which people have full freedom of choice to engage, or not engage, and are overwhelmed by the range of choices before them?

First:

Creativity must be aimed at changing people’s behaviour, and thinking, not just entertaining and informing. Swystun offered an excellent example of this with Volkswagen’s campaign to promote its BlueMotion Technologies intended to reduce the environmental impact of its vehicles without sacrificing performance. The challenge was to drum up consumer interest in buying vehicles with this technology. In other words, change their buying habits.

With a campaign that cost only about $120,000, DDB came up with The Fun Theory, intended to demonstrate through a series of experiments that the easiest way to change people’s behaviour is to make change fun. One of the most popular was encouraging people to use the stairs instead of the escalator by turning the steps into functional piano keys (it worked). The Youtube video for this experiment alone enjoyed more than a million views around the world.

For DDB, the campaign was a clear success, illustrated by the simple fact that this was the only marketing effort Volkswagen engaged in for BlueMotion and consumers responded in droves.

Second:

Ideas must appeal on an emotional, not a rational, level. Neuroscience studies show that rational arguments do not change people’s behaviour, emotional ones do. So tell a story that makes people smile, laugh or cry. This  applies even to B2B companies. Sure, tout the rational benefits of your product or service and its ROI, but package that message with some kind of emotional hook, such as sympathizing with the key pain points of your customers that you aim to address.

Watch this McDonald’s spot for a chuckle.

Third:

Share ideas people want to share. To promote Phillips’ new flat screen television, DDB came up with a campaign called Parallel Lines, in which five directors came up with their own short films based on the same five lines of dialogue. The premise was “There are millions of ways to tell a story. There’s only one way to watch one.” The campaign was so successful it sparked a competition for other directors to come up with a sixth film. The winner was Porcelain Unicorn.

What’s next?

Reluctant to be tagged as one of those prognosticators who make outlandish predictions for which they are seldom held accountable, Swystun nonetheless offered his thoughts on where the marketplace appears to be going in the next few years.

  • Collaboration: with the trend of six degrees, customers are playing a greater role in the marketing process to drive what marketers do next.
  • Product development: All the chatter and sharing between people through social media is adding value to the entire process of new product development and how brands should position themselves to remain relevant. What people are saying is invaluable feedback for improvement and enhancement.
  • More technological advances: In which direction technology will go way is anyone’s guess, but there is little doubt that more information will be dumped more quickly into the hands of consumers, who will struggle more and more to make sense of the onslaught.
  • Credibility, authenticity are key: With so much information coming at them, people will start to tune out those content streams and sources of content that don’t stand up as credible. Instead of following hundreds, if not thousands of people on Twitter, for example, Swystun believes consumers will scale that back to 100, 50, or even 20. It will, therefore, be vital for a brand to develop trust with its audience.
  • Choice vs. clutter: All of us will be challenged to wade through the range of choice before us. Brands that simplify people’s lives and that are perceived as credible will lead.
  • The process of creativity will have to change: This will be an inevitable result of the previous points.

Swystun finished by saying that one of the most important and powerful metrics over the next 10 years to guide advertising and marketing efforts will be how many messages consumers chose not to connect with.

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Posted by: Leo Valiquette on February 11, 2011

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Posted in: Marketing strategy, Product marketing, Social media, Technology marketing — Leave a comment

Marketing tips from that big bold brand we call Canada

By Leo Valiquette

canadian tourism commission logo 49e5ff9dbf seeklogocom Marketing tips from that big bold brand we call CanadaThe Canadian Tourism Commission (CTC) is one of Canada’s leading marketing organizations, tasked with making the most of the fact that, when it comes to having a globally recognized brand in the international tourism industry, Canada ranks number one.

CTC president and CEO Michele McKenzie spoke at the Ottawa Chamber’s monthly Eggs n’ Icons breakfast this morning about how the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver served as a platform for promoting that brand to the world and how, in the Olympics’ “afterglow,” the challenge remains on how to capitalize on all that positive press.

International tourism is a huge and growing market. According to McKenzie, emerging economies are firing shots across the bow of traditional, more established tourism destinations that must scramble to maintain market share, redefine their messaging and ensure their brand remains visible in markets such as Brazil, China and Korea. These emerging markets are experiencing dramatic growth in the volume of outbound travellers versus “traditional” sources of foreign tourists, such as France, Germany and Great Britain.

While Canada has experienced steady growth in the volume of foreign visitors, 80 per cent of our tourism industry remains driven by domestic tourists. While this is a rich and valued customer base, McKenzie acknowledged, and rightly so, that it is limited, especially compared to a market such as China, which expects to have 100 million (yes, that number is correct) outbound tourists heading to international destinations by 2020.

As a big brand with a premium product to sell, we need to put ourselves on the radar of these huge new customer segments. As with any business, we can’t afford to keep most of our eggs in one basket. Market diversification is crucial to long-term sustainability.

In 2010, the CTC saw a huge opportunity with the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. The CTC didn’t set out to promote the Olympics, but to use it as a platform to showcase Canada abroad with the international media.
The challenge was to “get those three billion viewers of the Olympics to stop thinking about Canada as ‘a place I want to visit before I die,’ to ‘a place I want to visit right now,’” McKenzie said. Building a rapport with the international media was crucial.

The CTC soon found that the international media were eager to eat up anything that the CTC could provide to flesh out their coverage of the Olympics. As our own Francis Moran and Cyan Solutions’ Kathryn Schwab explored in last week’s Zone5ive event, media today are starved for resources. Providing them with pre-packaged multimedia content for easy consumption can be key to gaining top tier coverage.

It was no different for the CTC. For the first time, it found itself serving as a content provider. Never before had it given such volumes of raw b-roll to media to edit and package as they saw fit. In the past, the emphasis had always been on managing the message as much as possible. But the new approach paid off in spades with reams of international exposure for Canada as a place to visit.

Another angle the CTC took was to make the torch relay, which was the longest ever, appeal to international audiences as more than just “a bunch of Canadians running around Canada.” Foreign media personalities and celebrities, such as Bollywood star Akshay Kumar, Indian Ambassador for the Games, were invited to run in the relay. The result? High profile individuals such as Kumar became enthusiastic promoters of Canada in their home countries.

In the wake of the Olympics, the CTC is already tracking some preliminary gains from its efforts. The number of foreign visitors from the U.K. and Australia, for example, has more than doubled between 2009 and 2010.

However, much remains to be done. Now that the demand, the market appetite, has been generated, it must be fed. As with any product or service that has caught the interest of a large and lucrative customer base, the worst thing that can happen next is failing to have in place the logistics, infrastructure and processes to balance supply and demand.

On this front, Canada remains burdened by a visa system far more onerous than those found in many of the other destinations it is competing against. We also lag other markets in terms of open skies agreements that provide easy air access and one-stop flights to Canada.

McKenzie cited the example of Brazil. Last year, one million Brazilian tourists visited the U.S., but only 68,000 came to Canada. There is only one direct flight from Brazil to Canada. All other available flights must route through the U.S., which requires two visas instead of one. Faced with that headache, is it any wonder that most Brazilians favour the U.S. over Canada?

But of course, to build a healthy and sustainable business, one cannot afford to ignore whatever untapped opportunities remain in a mature market while pursuing new ones. For the CTC, that means reaching out to Canada’s youth.

According to McKenzie, most young people today “view international tourism as their birthright” thanks to the influence of their globe-trotting baby boomer parents. The marketing challenge here is to sell them on the merits of exploring their own country before they spend their tourism dollars abroad.

“Tourism is a rapidly expanding sector,” McKenzie said. “One I see as a high stakes game.”

But are the stakes any different for businesses in other sectors trying to grow and compete in today’s global marketplace? As the CTC understands, regardless of your industry, defining and executing a strategic marketing program is key.

Photo from: Seeklogo

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Posted by: Leo Valiquette on January 26, 2011

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Should Amy Chua consider any publicity good publicity?

300px amy chua 2007 235x300 Should Amy Chua consider any publicity good publicity?By Leo Valiquette

More often than not, clients of inmedia will set their sights on coverage in a flagship business publication like the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s or Fortune. Sometimes a client has a story that would appeal to such a prestigious publication, other times they do not. There is also the matter of whether such publications fit the bill as Tier One media targets for a specific client, but that’s a different post.

Regardless of the respect commanded by such publications, their writers and editors, struggling with fewer resources and tightened budgets, are as prone as anyone else to occasional inaccuracies and errors in their work. Perhaps they even, on occasion, fall prey to temptation and give their copy a little extra sensationalist spin to grab the attention of fickle readers.

You may have heard about Yale law professor Amy Chua and the firestorm of controversy that erupted in the past week with the publication in the Wall Street Journal of her ode to “Why Chinese mothers are superior.”

The article was excerpted from her new book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. The piece paints Chua as a near-sociopathic tyrant consumed by her quest to make her daughters successful overachievers, no matter how much kicking and screaming it sparks along the way.

“Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do,” Chua wrote.  “Attend a sleepover, have a playdate, be in a school play, complain about not being in a school play, watch TV or play computer games, choose their own extracurricular activities, get any grade less than an A, not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama, play any instrument other than the piano or violin, not play the piano or violin.”

There is even an incident where Chua banished her three-year-old daughter to the garden in subzero weather without a jacket for refusing to cooperate with her first piano lesson. The kid, however, proved herself every bit as stubborn as her mother and had to be coaxed back into the house with brownies and hot chocolate.

Not surprisingly, her essay provoked thousands of comments and even death threats.

However, it turned out that she had been somewhat misrepresented. It was WSJ editors, she claimed, who gave her article that incendiary title. And her book is not in fact a how-to manual, but a memoir of her experiences in trying to blend “western” parenting practices with the demanding methods employed by her own parents. In the end, she came to realize that the “tiger mother” method was in some ways too strict and she softened her approach . . . to a certain degree.

In an interview with the BBC earlier today, Chua articulates her position quite well and paints herself as a caring, loving mother who believes that children need a firm hand and a steady push to reach their full potential and acquire the confidence and self-reliance crucial to prospering in the real world. Many readers of the WSJ article, she says, missed the obvious comedy in the battles of will that erupted on several occasions with her daughters.

“It’s about helping your children be the best they can be, which is usually better than they think,” Chua said, rather than making their lives hell for getting anything less than straight A+s. It’s not the grades that are important, but the life lessons learned along the way.

I don’t want to get sidetracked into the pros and cons of her parenting approach. What I want to focus on is how deftly Chua has responded to the negative public outcry and media coverage that followed the publication of the WSJ article. I don’t know if she has engaged with any PR professionals for a crisis communications strategy, but she has certainly taken the right approach so far.

What has she done? Let’s recap:

  • She has remained calm, cool and collected. If you listen to that BBC audio interview, there is no defensiveness in her tone. She is giving clear, thoughtful responses that state and clarify her position.
  • She is not dwelling on placing blame on the WSJ for any perceived misrepresentations. She is, at least in the BBC interview, taking the highroad. In PR and crisis communications, this is the only road to take.
  • She has a message and she is sticking to it like glue. In less than two weeks, the Amy Chua brand has become a national, even international, phenomenon. Every word she utters to the media is now in the court of public opinion. Any communication in a public forum, be it a live interview, a blog post or a Tweet, must be formulated with this in mind.

Of course, even if the WSJ editors did misrepresent Chua, thereby igniting a public outcry that wasn’t entirely warranted, it hasn’t done her any harm. In fact, it’s likely why the book climbed to sixth place in Amazon.com’s sales rankings on its first day of release and garnered her interview requests from other leading media outlets.

Is any publicity good publicity? It all depends on how well prepared you are to manage the fallout.

Photo from: Todd Pack’s Messy Desk

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Posted by: Leo Valiquette on January 17, 2011

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Facebook: ‘Irrational exuberance’ all over again?

social bubble 300x172 Facebook: ‘Irrational exuberance’ all over again?By Leo Valiquette

The verdict is still out as to whether Goldman Sachs’ investment in Facebook heralds an IPO, but the $50 billion valuation it places on the popular social media platform is nonetheless a scary portent.

While Alex blogged last week about what this deal could mean for those who use Facebook and other social media tools for work and play, I couldn’t help but think that history may be repeating itself.

Late last week, CFRA’s John Budden and Rob Snow discussed the logistics around Goldman Sachs’ “special purpose vehicle” intended to skirt around the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission’s 500-shareholder rule. Rob characterized the US$500 million being put into Facebook by Goldman Sachs and Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies as a venture capital round, for lack of a better term.

“It’s just a staggering multiple for a private company,” Budden said of the lofty valuation the investment places on Facebook. Consider that $50 billion against the hard numbers: For 2009, Facebook had revenues of around US$777 million and net income of around $200 million.

“It has the feelings of the bubble that we experienced in year 2000, but it is different in character,” Budden said.

Some pundits over the past week have argued just how different in character this situation is versus a decade ago due to how deeply Facebook has dug its hooks into the lives of its 500 million+ users. The time that users spend on the site, as well as the personal information they provide, makes for a level of targeted advertising that remains an untapped gold mine.

But weren’t the pundits just as bullish in the late ’90s on the prospects of the dot-com boom’s rising stars and for the telecommunications and photonics companies, such as Nortel Networks, Alcatel and JDS Uniphase, that would build the optical backbone for it all?

I still remember the summer of 2000. I had just come to work for the Ottawa Business Journal after a year away from Ottawa. I was thrust into the midst of the feeding frenzy, new to both the world of business journalism and the overly optimistic mood that prevailed in Silicon Valley North at the time. Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, had already made his now famous comment about the overvaluation of the stock markets, saying it was a result of ‘irrational exuberance.”

My trial by fire to come up to speed on all this was facilitated by large does of ROBTv, the precursor to BNN. While the community at large crowed about the surging share price of market darlings such as Nortel, other, more sober-minded individuals were talking on ROBTv about the growing likelihood of a significant market correction, though even they couldn’t fortell the full extent of the cataclysm to come. Most people weren’t inclined to listen, in any case.

Describing this time period as “irrationally exuberant” doesn’t even begin to do it justice.

Nothing puts this entire period in perspective better than a quick look at the highs and lows of Nortel’s stock price. Nortel shares hit an all-time high of about $1,230 on July 26, 2000, if one adjusts for the 10-to-1 stock consolidation that happened years later. It accounted for fully one-third of the total valuation of the companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. When Nortel was delisted from the TSX in June 2009, it was worth 18.5 cents a share.

For those of us in the newsroom of the OBJ in the years that followed the dot-com bust, word of mass layoffs and the closure of photonics companies that had secured hundreds of millions of dollars in VC became weekly, almost daily, occurences. The rise of anchor companies like Nortel had created entire eco-systems that imploded as the market demand for all that optical bandwidth, and dot-com services based on business plans that were sketchy at best, didn’t materialize as expected.

And now, here we are, at the start of a whole new decade. Global Internet traffic has exploded. Not only has that dark fiber laid ahead of its time in the late 1990s been lit up, operators are trying to figure out how to boost its bandwidth capacity to meet the voracious demand that has been placed on access, metro and long-haul networks alike.

Still, have the pundits become any more adept at foretelling the future of something so fickle as consumer appetite for dot-com products and services? Is this a pointless question to ask given that the economy is subject to the will of individuals who manipulate markets and public perception for their own gain? If it’s not technology and Internet stocks, it’s subprime derivatives.

Now this isn’t to say that social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter lack practical business applications. We here at inmedia wholeheartedly believe that social media in all its various forms is an essential expansion pack for the traditional marketing toolbox. There are without doubt opportunities here to build solid, sustainable businesses. Facebook represents a paradigm shift in how people communicate no less disruptive than the widespread adoption of the telephone. This isn’t something that could happen; it is happening.

But Facebook needs hard revenue and profit numbers to justify a valuation of $50 billion. Numbers it has yet to achieve. Numbers that will have to be driven primarily by consumer, not business, activity. If it does come to market with an IPO that has such a rich multiple, what ripply effect will this have as others attempt to get in on the action with overhyped buyouts and public offerings of other social media platforms? Are we already on the express track to another boom-and-bust cycle driven by an opportunistic pump-and-dump mentality?

What do you think?

Photo from: bigmouth media

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Posted by: Leo Valiquette on January 10, 2011

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Posted in: Random thoughts, Social media, Startups, Technology marketing — Leave a comment

What do a Christmas tree farm and a mortgage broker have in common?

christmas tree farm laura tasheiko 300x202 What do a Christmas tree farm and a mortgage broker have in common?

By Leo Valiquette

First up, a very happy New Year wish from all of us here at inmedia Public Relations.

Many of you were no doubt in the same boat as my wife and me over the holidays, at home with one or more young ones to entertain for two weeks during their break from school. Santa’s leavings only keep energetic rug rats occupied for so long. With various cousins in the west end of Ottawa all six years of age and under, the challenge for the parents was to find fun activities all could enjoy that did not involve exhaustive car trips or aimless visits to toy stores and pet shops.

So, given the vast expanse of Ottawa’s Countryside, what could we do that was easy, convenient and fun in the days leading up to Christmas Eve? Answering that question yielded an interesting example of how a business can position itself in its market niche and build goodwill with potential customers.

There are a number of Christmas tree farms west of Ottawa that provide the kind of family excursion typical of this time of year where you can venture into the wood lot to select and cut your own tree. The visit is complete with wagon rides, a bonfire and copious amounts of hot chocolate.

We contacted two different farms about coming to enjoy a day out, but without having to purchase a tree. One farm was all business. Trees began at $40 and that was the price of admission to even be welcomed.

Another farm, however, Cedar Hill Berry Farm, which, incidentally, was more affordable with its tree prices, welcomed families that just wanted to come out, slide on its hill, take a wagon ride and relax around the fire. A purchase wasn’t necessary to enjoy these other amenities. (But of course, having taken advantage of such hospitality, we did feel an obligation to pick up a few jars of home-made jam before we left.)

Now, as consumers who may be in the market for a real tree next Christmas (or for berries next summer), which farm do you think left the most favourable impression with us? Which one is going to garner the most word-of-mouth referrals? (This post is already proof of that.)

This is not to say that a business should be obligated to allow potential customers to make use of its products or services for free. But this example does illustrate the importance of being aware of who your potential customers are, what they need, and what could make a lasting impression on them. Consumers may not always be looking to buy today, but what can you do to remain top of mind with them so that, when they are ready, they come back to you instead of heading to your nearest competitor?

Another outstanding example of building this kind of rapport with customers and potential customers is a fellow I have dealt with for years for my home mortgage needs, local broker Dan Faubert with Ottawa Carleton Mortgage. Dan has always been there to answer my questions and offer potential solutions to the complicated scenarios with which I have presented him.

“Ah,” you say. “If he’s your broker, then that’s what he should be doing.”

True enough. But this past summer, with the purchase of my new home, I went directly to a local bank with my new mortgage needs instead of Dan because of a special promotion between the bank and the home builder that was hard to beat. Nonetheless, I still wanted some impartial, third-party advice to ensure I was holding the bank’s toes to the fire and getting the best terms I could. That third party was Dan.

Did he ignore my phone calls because I wasn’t giving him my business in this particular transaction? Not at all. He freely gave his perspective on the current state of the market, which allowed me to squeeze even better terms from the bank.

The result? Dan continues to command my trust and respect. If I hear of anyone in need of a mortgage, I immediately point them in his direction.

If there is a New Year’s Resolution to be found here, it is this: Don’t focus on just trying to close sales in 2011, consider how you can build relationships that will pay future dividends, too.

Photo from: Fine Art America

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Posted by: Leo Valiquette on January 3, 2011

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How to avoid becoming a pork belly writer in Topeka, KS

so you want tobe a journalist 300x220 How to avoid becoming a pork belly writer in Topeka, KS

By Leo Valiquette

Regular readers of this blog will recall that a few weeks ago I wrote about the U.K. court case of Meltwater vs. the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA), an ongoing story that spotlights the challenges of traditional media outlets to maintain control of, and monetize, their content in the age of Web 2.0 and news aggregation/media monitoring services such as Meltwater.

In that post I made passing reference to the dire straits of the overworked journalist, faced with staff cuts and diminished resources, who slogs away day after day trying to produce relevant and insightful news content that digs deeper than the headline and the news release. For these folks, the fiscal challenges of their corporate overlords have translated into longer hours, poor job security and loss of benefits.

Gawker.com recently published a hilarious animated short in which a seasoned journalist crushes the idealistic ambitions of a naive wannabe who wants to work for the New York Times, do important journalism and make a difference, oh, and meet the President, too.

Our world-weary veteran replies to these lofty goals with comebacks like:

  • “Would you like to write about pork belly futures for a trade magazine in Topeka, KS?”
  • “Would you like to live in your parent’s basement and work for the local weekly on a contract basis without benefits?”
  • “How about covering the financial services industry for a website, until the website is bought by another website and they move all the writing jobs to Bangalore, India, and then you get fired.”

It’s funny because it’s true. And one has to focus on the humour because it would otherwise be far too depressing to reflect on how the Fourth Estate has been eroded.

The Gawker Guide to a Journalism Career, 2010 edition, is no less damning. Granted, Gawker’s take on the current state of affairs is an exercise in the cup always being half empty. Nonetheless, it is a fair reflection of the overarching trends right across the media and communications spectrum, from mainstream newspapers, trade press and broadcast media, to online media ventures and, dare I say it, public relations. There is no denying that the media marketplace is undergoing a paradigm shift that makes for a rough labour market.

Nonetheless, I remain stubbornly optimistic. I believe that the more inundated the consumer becomes with sources of information, the more valuable great writing will be to help put the chaos in context and find meaning. The challenge for all of us is to find a steady paycheque until this paradigm shift shakes itself out.

It all comes to what one defines as “great writing.”

There is a world of difference between a great writer and a skilled cut-and-paste artist, or a self-deluded hack who, blinded by their own brilliance, can’t step back and regard their work with the objectivity that is required to understand, and overcome, their weaknesses. Great writing is about much more than proper grammar and good syntax; it’s a union of analytical thought, thorough research, penetrating interviews, confident creativity and an ability to distil resource material into something fresh and new that both conveys and deepens understanding of the subject matter.

Great writing is the product of a great writer supported by a great editor. Raw talent is certainly a key ingredient, but this must be combined with humility. By humility I mean a writer must be a thick-skinned individual who appreciates, and can up their game with, constructive criticism. They are coachable. They appreciate that being a great writer means being a lifelong student. They are flexible and adaptive in terms of being able to tailor their creative output to serve a specific objective and speak to a specific audience.

So as someone who has worked as a journalist, editor, PR consultant and marketing writer for a multinational publicly traded company, I offer one key bit of advice, for what it’s worth.

Don’t pigeonhole yourself as a “journalist.” You are a writer, a specialist in communicating through the written word. A wordsmith. This is a transferable skill that can be applied in a host of ways. In the age of social media, organizations with a brand image to define, promote and protect need your skills now more than ever, even if many of them have not yet come to appreciate this fact.

If your true ambition is to one day be on the staff of the New York Times, don’t give up on that. But take advantage of whatever opportunities that exist now, journalistic and otherwise, to hone your craft and build an impressive resume. If those opportunities fall into the purview of “public relations” or “marketing,” think twice before dismissing them out of hand.

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Posted by: Leo Valiquette on December 20, 2010

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Posted in: Public and media relations, Random thoughts — Leave a comment

In a tough economy, don’t let the need for austerity cripple future prosperity

choppingblock1 300x225 In a tough economy, don’t let the need for austerity cripple future prosperity

By Leo Valiquette

For those of you who may have missed it, London has been a battlefield between police and tens of thousands of hostile student protesters over the past week as Britain’s coalition government targets higher education with its austerity measures intended to help with economic recovery.

Now, I don’t claim any deep knowledge of British politics, or more than a layman’s understanding of economics, but I couldn’t look at this powder keg situation without thinking that it is a sterling example of focusing too much on a short-term fix at the expense of long-term gain, a trap that can snare the management team of a company as easily as a government in power.

Despite campaign promises to the contrary, both Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in Britain’s coalition government are voting through legislation that will allow university tuition to be as much as tripled and other support programs, such as teaching grants, to be canceled.

While this may put money in government coffers in the near term, I find it difficult to understand how making it more difficult to obtain an education serves the best long-term interests of the British economy, or any industrialized economy. I tend to agree with the general sentiments that Ian Parkinson, president of the Bolton branch of Britain’s National Union of Teachers, expressed in an article last week. Talented youth will be priced out of higher education, making it that much more difficult to find gainful employment in a tight job market, he said. And if the next generation of workers cannot secure well-paying jobs and are saddled with huge student debts, what impact will this have on overall consumer spending?

While the immediate economic pressures cannot be ignored, what happens five, 10 and 15 years from now, as baby boomers retire and shortages of skilled labour in key sectors of the economy become more acute? How can a nation innovate and be competitive on the global stage if its young people can’t afford the education that will prepare them to take up the torch?

It is an approach that attempts to fix an immediate problem without giving sufficient consideration to the future. Janice Calnan, a specialist in organizational change with whom I have worked, asserts that any organization in need of change, regardless of whether it is a government, a publicly traded company, or a startup trying to bring technology to market, must focus on a vision of where it wants to be, rather than on the immediate problems it faces. Focusing on the problems, she says, only begets more problems.

My interpretation of this is that focusing too much on your immediate challenges and how to resolve them will cause you to lose sight of the big picture. It is tactics in the absence, and at the expense, of strategy.

At inmedia, we have seen numerous companies fall into the same trap. When times are tough and key stakeholders, such as shareholders and investors, want to see results to improve fiscal performance, out comes the axe. Unfortunately, PR and marketing activities are often viewed as areas of business that don’t have enough impact on the bottom line and take the first hit.

But when the volume of leads filling your pipeline is in decline, the marketing machine must become that much more aggressive. We have consistently advocated that companies that maintain — or even increase — their marketing presence during a downturn emerge from the downturn stronger than their competitors since they are in a position to springboard into the new opportunities as they arise.

One way to prime the pump and differentiate your brand from competitors is to employ a highly consultative approach, rather than market yourself based on cost and features. In this way, you develop a thorough understanding of the prospect’s pain and the willingness of the prospect to address that pain. They will come to see you as a trusted partner who is eager to serve their best interests. Having established this kind of relationship, where do you think they will turn when they are ready to spend again?

While reducing cash burn and improving cash flow are, of course, paramount when times are tough, austerity measures must be implemented as part of a long-term strategy. Don’t axe those activities that are vital to your ability to act when opportunity comes knocking. Without such vision, your organization may find itself too weak and forgotten by the market to take advantage of the recovery when it comes.

Picture: The executioner’s, or “heading,” axe on display at the Tower of London.

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Posted by: Leo Valiquette on December 13, 2010

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Posted in: Marketing strategy, Product marketing, Technology marketing, inmedia Public Relations — Leave a comment

Are you ready for the WikiLeaks of the world?

wikileaks logo1 199x300 Are you ready for the WikiLeaks of the world?

By Leo Valiquette

There has been no shortage of commentary on the ethics and relevance of WikiLeaks’ recent dump of politically embarrassing diplomatic cables and its threat to target Corporate America next.

To which I say, who cares?

Now don’t get me wrong. This is without a doubt a serious matter that warrants grave consideration by anyone with secrets, or a brand, to protect. But philosophical discussion around the “ethics” and “relevance” of such unauthorized disclosures is missing the point.

Bernie Charland at Public Relations Rogue wrote a great post last week about why WikiLeaks’ actions have “little in common with the ethos of Web 2.0, and it certainly doesn’t represent the best of social media.” He concludes his post with the valid point that the question to consider isn’t whether WikiLeaks can make this kind of information public, but whether it should.

However, I contend that the real crux of the matter is that, barring some heavy-handed government or court intervention, WikiLeaks will. And even if the Powers That Be were able to shut WikiLeaks down tomorrow, the path has been laid for others to follow. WikiLeaks, like Napster, will be paid that greatest of compliments – others will attempt to duplicate, or even improve upon, its model for disrupting the status quo.

Which means that for anyone who is sensitive about how they are perceived by the public, partners, associates and other stakeholders, the best defence is a proactive, rather than reactive one.

Here at inmedia, we regularly preach the merits of being engaged with the online community as a means to build brand awareness, engage with customers, and keep tabs on what is being said about your products and services and those of your competitors. (See Alex’s Part 1 and Part 2 on the subject from the perspective of the B2B revenue cycle.)

For everyone out there who remains leery, skeptical or scornful of social media, I have only one thing to say. WikiLeaks demonstrates that the decision whether or not to engage with the online community may be made for you by a third party who is external to your organization, a third party who may not be acting with your best interests in mind. In essence, Web 2.0 and social media are of vital importance to you whether you want them to be or not.

It therefore behooves any brand to have in place a strategy for crisis communications, a key part of which is building a vibrant online community that allows for interactive engagement with key stakeholder groups. Far too few organizations, however, have taken this proactive step.

In an article last week, E.B. Boyd at Fast Company cited a Harris Interactive poll in which only nine percent of respondents said they have crisis protocols in place.

Boyd spoke to several crisis communications experts who agreed that disclosures of the WikiLeaks sort are more likely to hit an organization’s reputation rather than reveal confidential corporate information. However, this can be just as damaging. Boyd pointed to the example of Bank of America, rumored to be on the radar as WikiLeaks’ first Corporate America target. Just the rumor of this hitting mainstream media was enough to cut three percent from the bank’s stock price in a single day.

At one time, the best defence against seeing anything embarrassing about yourself or your organization in print, on TV, or on the radio was to live by this simple rule of thumb – if you don’t want it out there, don’t write it down and don’t say it. “Burn the tapes!” But today, with disgruntled employees able to so easily hit “send” on a damning email, or walk out the door with a whole encyclopedia of embarrassments on a thumb drive that can suddenly appear on a Facebook page, this is no longer enough. You have to accept that dirty laundry of one sort or another is going to get out there, sooner or later. Just because your organization or brand isn’t big enough to warrant the dubious honor of a WikiLeak, that doesn’t mean there isn’t someone else out there, empowered by Web 2.0, with the means and the intent to do some serious damage.

In today’s Web 2.0 world, you can no longer rely on simply keeping the leak in the dike plugged with your finger. You have to develop a strategy for crisis communications that levers all of the tools at your disposal, including social media, against that inevitable day when the dike breaks.

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Posted by: Leo Valiquette on December 6, 2010

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Posted in: Marketing strategy, Public and media relations, Social media — Leave a comment

If you read this headline, perhaps you should pay me a licensing fee

online news 300x225 If you read this headline, perhaps you should pay me a licensing fee

By Leo Valiquette

As a journalist and newspaper and magazine editor (and I still serve in these capacities from time to time), I’ve written my fair share of headlines. Thousands of them, in fact. But I would never have thought to label such creations, no matter how long I spent trying to come up with something catchy and engaging that would break nicely over two decks, as a “separate literary work.”

But that is exactly what has occurred in Britain in the latest ruling to come out of a legal battle between the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA), which is owned by the U.K.’s eight largest newspaper groups, and Meltwater News.

Meltwater is a media monitoring, news aggregator and clipping service that we subscribe to at inmedia. It is one of many such services available that constantly scour the web for mentions of our clients or of subject matter in which they have an interest. While such services are not 100 per cent effective, they are much more comprehensive and feature-rich than free monitoring services such as Google Alerts.

As a Meltwater client, we of course pay a subscription fee for regular reports on media coverage of our clients and their respective industries. It is this fee-for-service model that has raised the hackles of the NLA and led to the current dispute. A U.K. court has agreed with the NLA’s assertion that the act of copying an article’s headline and a short extraction of the text, and submitting this in the form of a report to a Meltwater client is a form of copying that infringes copyright. The most damning part of this judgment is that an article’s headline has been deemed a “separate literary work” on the basis of the time and creative effort that often goes into crafting it.

The NLA therefore expects Meltwater and its kind to pay licensing fees to copy headlines and submit them as part of a report to its clients. This is not in dispute.  Most services already pay licensing fees to the NLA. The issue is that the NLA also wants the clients of Meltwater and similar services to pay additional licensing fees for receiving and viewing a media monitoring report.

It should be noted that the NLA’s claims do not apply to free services such as Google Alerts, but only to the Meltwaters of the world that charge money for their services.

In an article published by the New Statesmen, David Pugh, managing director of the NLA, welcomed the ruling.

“We hope this ruling will help ensure a fair share of web monitoring revenue for publishers and a fair media monitoring market,” he said. “Creating news content for the web is a substantial investment for publishers – it is therefore only right that they take a share when others are profiting from it.”

For Meltwater CEO Jorn Lyseggen, however, this sets a dangerous precedent that undermines the basic principles of the operation and use of the Internet. In theory, it means that users of the Internet must obtain a license from the NLA to view copyrighted material, even if that copyrighted material can be viewed freely on a newspaper’s website without having to pay a subscription. The other irritant is the amount of the licensing fee that the NLA wants to charge to end users, relative to the small amount of material included in a Meltwater report.

“We will appeal this verdict, we think this verdict is a misinterpretation of copyright law,” Lyseggen told the New Statesman. “If this ruling stands it will be a significant step back for the U.K. Internet ecosystem. … If the court upholds this decision then we think the courts need to take a closer look at copyright law and see if it needs to be more up-to-date for today’s world.”

Who is right and who is wrong here?

This isn’t the first incident of “Big Newspaper vs. The News Aggregator.” Earlier this year, Rupert Murdoch’s News International blocked web aggregation service NewsNow from linking to stories on Times Online on the grounds that such services make money from journalism without contributing anything in return.

However, as the New Statesman’s Jason Stampers observed in his story on the subject, “newspapers don’t have to pay anything to brand owners when they write about them, of course. Which means Nike may have to pay to see where its name is used in newspapers, while newspapers can use Nike’s brand for free to help drive readers, web traffic and hence advertising revenues.”

Take it from the guy who has written his share of headlines and edited other journalists’ work to achieve maximum reader eyeball traction – the creative process of not only writing an enticing headline but also crafting the top paragraphs of a story to suck the reader in, is an unapologetically exploitative process. Newspapers try to profit from what could be someone else’s “copyrighted” material all the time, without paying any licensing fee or even obtaining permission. If there is a big name involved in a particular story, we are going to take advantage of that in any way we can if we think it will increase the story’s appeal.

And let’s look at this through the PR lens, since PR shops are the common end-users of Meltwater’s service faced with the prospect of paying these new licensing fees. I challenge anyone who would claim that there is any less creative effort involved to develop a strong headline and lead paragraph for a news release than for a news article. Does that mean that a designation of “separate literary work” and a licensing fee should also apply here?

Let’s not hold to any illusion that Meltwater is anything but a for-profit business trying to achieve a healthy margin with a fee structure of its own. But what is the NLA’s true motivation here at a time when traditional daily media continues to struggle to remain relevant in the age of social media and citizen journalism? And what of the overworked journalists who create all this content in this first place? Somehow I doubt that any additional licensing revenue charged by their corporate overlords will find its way to their pockets.

An online presence opens up a far larger advertising and reader base for a newspaper than was ever possible through print alone, without the costly overhead of newsprint and ink. No matter how much the world has changed, one fundamental thing remains the same — newspapers still need strong circulation numbers and click-through rates with which to impress potential advertisers.

So one would think that it behooves the industry to make it as easy as possible to drive more eyeballs to a newspaper’s website. And yet, newspapers by the score have put up paywalls around their content that require readers to pay a subscription for access in an effort boost flagging revenues. And if the NLA has its way, it will set a precedent where readers can be charged to be linked to content they may not otherwise been aware of, even if that content is available for free on a newspaper’s website.

The dispute between the NLA and Meltwater is the latest example of how newspapers are desperate to find new ways to monetize online content. The question, however, is whether or not they will ultimately end up stabbing themselves in the foot.

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Posted by: Leo Valiquette on November 29, 2010

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Posted in: Public and media relations — Leave a comment