Happy holidays
From all of us here at Francis Moran and Associates, happy holidays and the very best for 2014. We will resume our regular blog postings on January 2.
Case Study: MapSherpa
"We have been fortunate enough to have worked over the past nine months with Francis Moran and Associates to deliver virtual CMO services for our company, and so far it has been highly effective. With this relationship, we get access to a level of experience and expertise which would be unaffordable to us if we were to hire a full-time equivalent." Dave McIlhagga, Founder and CEO
Case Study: Singletouch
"When I hired Francis Moran to lead our marketing efforts in 2011, I had very high expectations. We needed to completely rebuild our marketing from the ground up. Francis and his team not only met those high expectations but exceeded them. He brought a very high level of strategic thinking, professionalism and creativity to our organization that will be felt for many years to come in our quest to build a successful IT company." Marty Hilsenteger, Founder and CEO
From all of us here at Francis Moran and Associates, happy holidays and the very best for 2014. We will resume our regular blog postings on January 2.
I was recently sitting at a hotel bar and overheard a circle of businessmen talking at a nearby table. I couldn’t help listening in. What I heard spaced over about an hour was strangely familiar:
It’s Friday and so time again for our weekly roundup. This one happens to be the last of 2013. Over the week, we’ve read great content from Social Media Explorer, Marketing Sherpa and Startup Professional Musings.
All I want for Christmas is…for the 80/20 rule to be abided by
All Tracey Parsons wants for Christmas is for marketers to be better marketers. More specifically, all she really wants is for the 80/20 rule to be followed and abided by. Sure, social media platforms can be a marketer’s dream, but there’s no reason to push your brand’s greatness over and over again. Be smart and provide value. That’s all Tracey asks for.
It didn’t take long after music megastar Beyoncé dropped her latest release onto Apple iTunes with no advance warning or usual hype-fest for the armchair pundits and marketing deniers to trumpet that marketing was now dead. It’s a variation on a theme I excoriated a few weeks back where the same know-nothings tell young companies they don’t need to do marketing, they just need to go to SXSW.
In fairness to the NBC article linked above, it does go on to acknowledge that Beyoncé is a never-ending marketing machine who has spent the better part of 25 years building one of the most forceful brands in the entire global cultural marketplace. And in fairness to Kevin Roberts, the Saatchi & Saatchi CEO who was ever-so-briefly quoted in that article, his point was much less about what Beyoncé did and more about the new power consumers enjoy in the marketing equation that obliges brands to build relationships with consumers rather than just bark at them. “She delivered intimacy. She delivered social connectivity. She delivered a transaction you can buy,” Roberts said in the original Bloomberg news piece from which the NBC article took a single provocative snippet.
The good news: 2013 was a good year for most businesses.
The bad news: Most business presentations delivered in 2013 still sucked.
Whether it’s an investor pitch, an elevator pitch, a customer update or an important sales presentation, here are five ideas to help make your presentations remarkable in 2014:
1. Engagement – Most presenters are content experts. Great presenters focus on engagement as much as they focus on content. Your audience wants more than just good content. They want you to be interesting. They want more than the same old boring business presentation. Interactivity, stories, examples and anecdotes are all engagement tools that will enhance your presentations.
2. Better slides – Not more slides, not more stuff on your slides, just better slides. Effective slides have limited text on them and can be consumed in seven seconds or less. Your presentation should not be an attention-seeking competition between you and your slides. It’s often said that many presenters are at their best during the Q&A because they’re not handcuffed by a slide. Think about that the next time you’re trying to get your slides to work for you, not against you.
December 17, 2013 by Leo Valiquette
It’s that time of year again, when pundits and armchair quarterbacks of every stripe offer up their insights on the year past and their predictions for the year to come. This isn’t one of those posts […]
Read more... -December 16, 2013 by Francis Moran
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 December 2011. We welcome your feedback […]
Read more... -December 13, 2013 by Daylin Mantyka
It’s officially the end of the working week, which means that it’s time for the Friday roundup where we’ve compiled a short list of the top articles we read and loved […]
Read more... -December 12, 2013 by Francis Moran
When I moved to Ottawa in the late 1980s to head up the national capital office of what was then Canada’s largest public relations firm, the Internet was not yet even a gleam in Al Gore’s eye […]
Read more... -December 11, 2013 by Bob Bailly
Over a number of my previous posts, I’ve written a lot about the concepts of Neuromarketing – a predictive model that uses findings from the sciences concerning the brain (neuroscience and psychology) to improve sales and communication skills […]
Read more... -December 10, 2013 by Leo Valiquette
Fish tanks, fishing boats and Fisher Price toys for the baby’s crib. Even jobs as sushi chefs. There’s no shortage to what you can find on Kijiji, Used Ottawa, Craigslist and the like […]
Read more... -December 09, 2013 by David French
Recent events in the news regarding “Runaway Trains” have provided an opportunity to highlight one of the realities of the invention and patenting process: It is not always the original invention that is most important for commercialization […]
Read more... -December 06, 2013 by Daylin Mantyka
It’s Friday — which means that it’s time for the weekly roundup. This week. we have informative content from Fast Company, socialnomics and Spin Sucks […]
Read more... -
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