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Don Moen - He Never Sleeps

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Starship Troopers 3: JoinNow

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Real Estate Prospecting

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Finding New Business | Prospecting | Sales tips | Networking

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The Descent of Finance

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The New Science of Human Capital

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Thinking Inside the Box

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Transforming Giants

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The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy

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Social Intelligence and Leadership

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Famous Failures

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Coffee in the workplace

2009-12-24T03:46:00.001-08:00

by Don Robespierre Reyes, MD
July 2007

THE workplace can be a stressful environment whether you’re an employer or an employee. Stress is simply an inevitable fact of life that must be acknowledged then subsequently managed if we expect to thrive in the modern workplace.

Don Robespierre Reyes, MD

Workplaces in various parts of the world share a common way of dealing with stress – the universal ritual called “the coffee break.”

In more ways than we realize, coffee has been our silent partner in coping with the demands of the workplace.

Apart from the ordinary stress we endure at our jobs, all of us experience “oxidative stress.” This is a natural part of breathing the oxygen we need to live. Unfortunately, oxygen is also involved in the formation of harmful substances called free radicals which can damage our body’s cells.

Oxidative stress comes from other sources aside from oxygen. Environmental pollutants and even radiation from the sun can also produce oxidative stress, encouraging the formation of more free radicals.

Once formed, these unstable molecules start a toxic chain reaction which damages our cells. This, in turn, can have varying consequences such as signs of premature aging, cardiovascular diseases, degenerative diseases, cataract, cancer, immune system decline and other health problems.

Antioxidants have been linked to a number of potential health benefits. Research has linked antioxidant-rich coffee with reduced incidence of gallstones, liver cirrhosis and Type 2 diabetes. Increasing evidence also indicates coffee to be protective in model cancer studies.

Stress in the workplace

What exactly is stress? More particularly, what is “workplace stress?”

Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary defines “stress” as "the result produced when a structure, system or organism is acted upon by forces that disrupt equilibrium or produce strain".

For the most part, a little stress can be beneficial, as when it is perceived as a “challenge" that motivates us to do our best. But when stress occurs in such amounts that we feel unable to cope, both mental and physical changes may occur.

"Workplace stress" then is the harmful physical and emotional responses that can happen when there is a conflict between the demands of the job and the amount of control an employee has over meeting these demands.

In general, the combination of high demands of our jobs and a low amount of control over the situation can lead to “workplace stress.”

Antioxidants at work

Our jobs can be a landmine of stress. Navigating the demands placed on us at work can be tricky business so it’s always best to be prepared. And while there are some things we have no control over, there are simple things we can do, such as drinking a cup or two of coffee during the workday to take charge of our lives.

For instance, our appearance plays more of a role in the workplace than you might imagine. A growing body of research supports what many have suspected all along: In the workplace, an employee's physical appearance matters and affects his success at his or her job.

Simply put, looking older than we really are is not good for business or careers. Ageing is a natural process but oxidative stress combined with garden-variety stress can compound the situation and make us look tired, haggard and unprepared to take on the responsibilities of our jobs.

At the very least, we can do what we can to minimize the effect time has on all of us by making sure we take in enough antioxidants to ward off premature wrinkles. That’s one less thing we all need to worry about.

Another key stressor in the workplace is fear of being sick and consequently perceived as not being able to perform one’s duties. A healthy lifestyle, coupled with a proper diet can do much to help us perform at our peak.

Research suggests coffee has been found to be a significant daily source of antioxidants even in highly developed countries like the United States, where all too often, workers in a rush to get back to their jobs skip meals that provide needed nutrition and antioxidants.

Antioxidants are most often found in abundant quantities in vegetables and fruits. This has led several countries to recommended daily consumption of vegetables and fruits.

Studies have shown that coffee actually contains the highest amount of one kind of antioxidants called polyphenols, in a per serving basis. Green coffee beans, in particular, contain many different types of antioxidants and have twice the amount of antioxidants found in green tea. Furthermore, the brewing process creates its own set of helpful compound which are unique to coffee alone.

Certainly, we shouldn’t look to coffee alone to dealing with stressful lives at work but it’s good to know that enjoying a coffee break can actually help us remain healthy and more productive at work.

Coffee breaks do work

Finally, let us not underestimate the value of coffee breaks in general to overall productivity. Short coffee breaks spaced at regular intervals during the workday can create a pleasant work environment that allows people to feel good about their jobs, and reducing “workplace stress” even further.

It can also facilitate much needed socialization between people at work, forging them into a more cohesive unit working towards common goals.

Some studies have also associated coffee with improved alertness and memory.
This, in addition to the social act of drinking coffee together is probably why it’s a good idea to offer coffee during meetings. Not only does the general mood lighter, but your brain becomes more receptive to new ideas.

All in all, work is still work but with coffee as a social lubricant, work tends to get done with less stress and that’s definitely good for business.

Coffee at Work in the Workplace

2009-12-24T03:44:00.001-08:00

by Chrisma C. Bangaoil
July 2008

THE workplace has become even more demanding and competitive that one has always to be on his toes to keep pace with all its demands and challenges. Definitely, you can’t do this half-awake. Studies show that work performance declines when alertness levels fall.

Many organizations measure an employee’s efficiency based on his or her productivity and accuracy. Score cards or performance metrics put emphasis on these two components. Productivity is measured based on the tasks accomplished within a work shift, while accuracy is measured based on the number of errors committed. When your alertness level drops, you are prone to commit more mistakes because concentration is also diminished. Moreover, decision-making is crippled and good judgment is blurred.

Poor performance leads to other problems. Work piles up because of inaccuracy and poor productivity. Thus, you may need to unnecessarily work overtime, get more stressed, be less focused, feel fatigue, commit more errors and miss that gig you’ve been looking forward to during the weekend.

The good news

Poor work performance due to lack of energy and vitality can be abated. Studies show that coffee can specifically help restore energy and alertness levels. Coffee contributes significantly not only to help you focus and concentrate but also to make you alert. According to research, coffee can increase the speed of information processing by 10%. It increases the processing of new stimuli, enhances analytical skills and response preparation. This translates to meeting your targets and increasing your competitive advantage without unnecessarily working long hours.

Moreover, coffee has been found to sharpen abilities that decline when we are tired or sleepy. Coffee, according to scientific studies, improves attention span, reasoning ability, memory of details and communication skills. Imagine the cost of a single mistake because of lack of focus or memory lapse. Or think of the repercussions of delayed projects or accidents because of slowed mental alertness.

Boredom and tiredness brought about by repetitive tasks can also diminish productivity. Drinking coffee at least twice a day, however, can counter these. Coffee contains natural substances that alert the consciousness and increase tolerance to exercise and muscular activity. Physical fitness and endurance are essential to mental alertness especially for tasks that require long concentration such as those doing web or creative designs, financial analysis, programming, quality monitoring, and trend analysis.

Coffee and mood

In today’s highly customer-driven organizations, mood plays a very important role. Whether you end your day feeling exhausted and depressed or feeling accomplished depends on your mood. The way you deal with your customers, internal or external, is also influenced by your mood. A toxic meeting can become even more toxic when you are not in good mood. A bad call or a difficult customer can surely ruin your day and affect all your other tasks when your mood is down.

Aside from increasing alertness, coffee has been found out to alter mood in a positive way. This effect is most obvious during low arousal situations such as during graveyard shifts or after lunch. Thus taking a cup of coffee after lunch is not only good for digestion but it also perks up your mood.

One of the usual causes of bad mood is physical discomfort like common headache. Remember how a usually amiable boss suddenly becomes cranky or how you yourself suddenly become irritable because of a simple headache? An alternative to drinking those synthetic tablets that promise to ease headache is to drink a cup of coffee. Again, scientific studies have shown that drinking coffee helps relieve headache among workers. As they say, nothing is good to someone who is in bad mood. On the other hand, things look brighter to someone who is in good mood.

Maximizing the effect of coffee on your performance and mood

Regular consumption of coffee at the start of your work day is recommended since it usually takes 15 minutes to achieve 75% of its effect and one hour to reach its maximum effect. This effect will last three to four hours just in time for the lunch break. The habit of drinking coffee after lunch is also good since a full stomach usually lowers energy levels especially when you had much carbohydrate for lunch not to mention the great temptation to nap. It is also usually difficult to get back to work mood after lunch. Since coffee has been found out to stir up the senses, it is worth having a cup or two after lunch.

It pays to serve coffee during long meetings or when tasks require long hours of mental as well as physical alertness. According to the Positively Coffee Autumn 2007 newsletter, 3 to 4 cups pf coffeeusually gives the desired effect. The amount of consumption, however, varies on each individual and on the nature and schedule of task being performed. You need to know what suits you.

Drinking coffee at work coupled with your skills and competencies enables you not just to meet your targets. This gives you a better edge not only in terms of promotion and better pay but also in terms of ensuring that you keep that well-deserved work life balance that can be too elusive when you are unproductive and when you are having a bad mood.

Sources: Postivelycoffee.org; Brice, C.F. & Smith, A.P. (2002). Effects of Caffeine on Mood and Performance: A Study of Realistic Consumption. Psychopharmacology, Vol 164, Number 2; and http://www.buildingbodies.ca/Nutrition/coffee-caffeine.shtml

The importance of coffee breaks

2009-12-24T03:43:00.001-08:00

by Chrisma C. Bangaoil
June 2009

THE body needs a break, and so does the brain. This is why it is important to get a quick time off, say a 15-minute break after two to three hours of intensive work, to give the brain a breather.

HR consultant Chrisma Bangaoil discuss the importance of Coffee Breaks

Even to non-regular coffee drinkers, the smell of coffee already offers a quick treat.

Fifteen minutes don’t look like there’s much an employee can do—maybe a quick trip to the washroom, a quick bite of sandwich, some stretching, a walk in the corridor, a short chat with a colleague or a sip of coffee.

And yes, there’s that cup of coffee—that 15-minute break popularly referred to as a “coffee break.” Drinking coffee does help a lot in relieving you from work exhaustion.

According to positivelycoffee.org, in fact, coffee helps “counter such factors as depression and boredom associated with tiredness and which impair performance.”

“A coffee break really is a breather from work. It helps clear your mind of clutter,” says Ebet Santos, an account manager from a software company.

De-cluttering is especially necessary for employees like Santos who do repetitive tasks. Studies show that performing the same tasks on extended hours can be counterproductive because it increases the occurrence of errors.

The body needs a break, and so does the brain. A 15 minute coffee break can do wonders for you

Coffee breaks give the brain (and the body) a quick break

“When you’re doing the same thing and looking at the same data for hours, you don’t see any difference—not even the mistakes”, Santos says.

According to positivelycoffee.org, repetitive work leads your attention adrift, causing you to commit mistakes—a fact that administrative assistant Bernadette Cruz has experienced.

“There was a week when I didn’t take my coffee break because we were working on a number of reports. It felt like a month’s worth of work. Worse, my boss called my attention the Monday after that week. I needed to redo a number of reports that had a lot of errors. These were mostly the ones I worked on the last two days of the previous week. Obviously, I was already exhausted by then and so physically tired that I wasn’t able to properly perform my tasks,” she relates.

It is important to get a quick time off to give the brain a breather

Drinking coffee does help a lot in relieving you from work exhaustion

Cruz adds that this the reason why she values her coffee breaks. “Coffee breaks give me a real break. I get to look at something else while enjoying my coffee. This is my everyday inexpensive treat to myself,” she says.

Even to non-regular coffee drinkers, the smell of coffee already offers a quick treat.

“I’m not really a coffee drinker,” says Joel Antonio, a reports analyst, “but I enjoy the delicious smell of my colleagues’ coffee during coffee breaks. It manages to lighten my mood.”

Indeed, that 15-minute coffee break is highly essential to anyone assigned to the office. Coffee breaks give the brain (and the body) a quick break and the senses a well-deserved treat.

Studies show a cup of coffee is rich in beneficial antioxidants

2009-12-24T03:40:00.001-08:00

ALERTNESS and focus are useful benefits of drinking coffee at work. Coffee is also rich in antioxidants that promote a healthy body.

IT IS SAID that “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” but how about a cup of coffee? As more and more international studies show that a cup of coffee is rich in health-giving antioxidants, somebody may soon come up with a new health proverb about coffee as well.

The Institute of Coffee Studies in Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA, has found that a cup of coffee is rich in antioxidants—natural substances that slow down the effects of premature ageing and may help prevent degenerative diseases.

Nutrition vs. Oxidation

What are antioxidants and how do they help us stay healthy? First we have to understand what oxidation is. Oxidation happens at the molecular level inside our cells. Essentially, it’s a process where an atom of oxygen is added to the molecules in our cells. Oxidation is a natural, unavoidable process.

It’s ironic that we all need oxygen to breathe and stay alive, but at the same time, it also causes oxidative stress oxidation--which is a result of cellular damage caused by reactive oxygen molecules called free radicals.is a toxic chemical reaction in the body that produces harmful molecules called “free radicals”.

Scientists believe that the oxidation process and the resulting free radicals may cause the symptoms of aging as well as many diseases. Since we are exposed to oxygen constantly, the process of oxidation occurs every day and may even increase with stress, excess physical activity, illness, and other factors.

COFFEE fits into your healthy lifestyle. The right diet, proper exercise and enough sleep—add to these the antioxidants in coffee to protect against illness and slow down the signs of aging.

However, there is a way to counter the negative effects of oxidation process and that is mainly through a proper, nutritious diet. This is because certain foods are naturally high in antioxidants. They are called antioxidants precisely because they fight the oxidation process and help repair damage caused by oxidation.

There are many types of antioxidants and are classified into two: micronutrients and polyphenols. Well-known micronutrient antioxidants include vitamin C (ascorbic acid), vitamin E (tocopherol), Vitamin A (carotenoid) and mineral selenium.

Polyphenols are plant-based antioxidants which are found in fruits, vegetables, soya beans, red wine, green and black tea, spices like sage and rosemary, citrus fruits, onions and olives and, yes, in coffee as well.

Antioxidants in coffee

The most abundant antioxidant in coffee are polyphenolspolyphenol in coffee is known as chlorogenic acids or CGAs. According to Professor Peter Martin of the Institute of Coffee Studies, these chlorogenic acids in coffee have been studied results of those studies indicate potential beneficial effects on human health.

These beneficial effects include potential “positive effects on chronic degenerative diseases (24-31), cardiovascular diseases (32), and cancer (33-35)” according to the study “Chlorogenic Acids and Lactones in Regular and Water-Decaffeinated Arabica Coffees” (published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, 2006) that Martin authored with four other researchers.

RELAX! Friendly conversation over a cup of coffee lowers our stress levels. The antioxidants in coffee also strengthen the body’s resistance to the effects of stress.

The same study also mentionsed that there are indications that CGAs are observed to help improve also help the liver “burn” or use up glucose uptake (glucose is the form that sugar takes in the body after digestion). This indicates that CGAs may be beneficial among Type 2 diabetics. However, more studies need to be made to validate these findings.

Coffee has most polyphenols

A study conducted in Switzerland (“Comparison of the Antioxidant Activity of Commonly Consumed Polyphonic Beverages [Coffee, Cocoa, and Tea] Prepared per Cup Serving”, The Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, 2001) shows that in comparison to a cup of green tea, herbal teas and cocoa, a cup of coffee contains the most amount of polyphenols.

The study shows that a cup of coffee still retains a large amount of polyphenols—despite of the process of roasting the coffee beans, decaffeination, or adding milk. According to the study, a cup of coffee has up to four times more polyphenols than a cup of green tea.

According to Professor Martin, “[The] latest evidence indicates that in moderation (2-4 cups per day) not only is coffee not bad for you, it may offer some health benefits.”

While further studies on polyphenols and other antioxidants are still needed to fully understand their health benefits, present scientific findings indicate that a nutritious diet of foods and beverages—including coffee- -containing antioxidants may help in slowing down the effects of aging and prevent serious diseases.

As further studies reveal the health benefits of coffee, coffee drinkers might find themselves not keeping their doctor away--but instead inviting him or her for a cup of coffee.

Coffee and Life in the Med School

2009-12-24T03:39:00.001-08:00

I GREW up in a house of coffee lovers. Breakfast wouldn’t be complete without a hot mug of coffee into which family members would dip their pandesal. Little did I know that coffee would not simply be part of my trove of family memories—but would instead become a valuable companion when I entered college.

Coffee restores focus, concentration and mental alertness.

When I got accepted into the INTARMED program of UP. INTARMED (or iMed, the 7-year accelerated medicine program of UP), I was among the top 40 interested UPCAT qualifiers. The first two years in iMed are spent taking general education subjects while medicine proper comprises the remaining five years. So technically I’ll be in 6th year this June, and if everything goes according to plan, I’d be an MD at the age of 23.

During the first two years of iMed, we were taking classes with students from other courses. The pressure to excel and prove ourselves worthy of being iMed was immense, and our professors’ expectations were always higher compared to the others. Thus, we had to work extra hard to perform well and achieve. Coffee was there to perk us up when we had to study for exams or get reports done.

We were then joined by 120 new students (who already had their pre-med degrees) when we entered med proper. Third year was all about the normal human anatomy and physiology, while fourth year was about the pathologic or abnormal.

Our schedule for those two years was 8 am – 5pm from Mondays to Fridays; most of which we spent inside a classroom, listening to a boring lecture. Every morning, I relied on coffee to give me a kickstart and another cup after lunch to keep me from taking a siesta in the afternoon sessions. In addition, the current medical curriculum of UP was designed in such a way that evaluation is done right after each module. That meant having to take exams almost every Friday (the reason why I started dreading Fridays)!

We were supposed to study pages upon pages of lecture transcriptions and suggested readings in books that were as heavy as our heads every week. Being a born procrastinator, I could not finish all the recommended study materials in one or two nights. During this period, I learned how to budget my time and start studying at least 3 days before the exam – that is, if there’s only one exam for that particular week.

It became another story when there was a biochemistry exam sandwiched on a Wednesday, or a paper due also the morning of the exam. Throughout those two years, coffee never failed to rouse me when I needed that extra jolt of energy.

Fifth year marked the start of our exposure to the clinics. During this year, we were expected to be able to accurately diagnose common ailments of patients in the ambulatory setting. Supposedly, the first two years were enough to prepare us to deal with actual patients and be all Dr. House-ish in determining what their diseases were.

Turns out, nothing prepares you for the real thing. We had to review everything we were taught and correlate them with what we saw in the out-patient department. Nevertheless, this made it easier to remember things as we could apply our theoretical knowledge in actual situations.

It was also during fifth year that we started having 12- and 24-hour duties. Although we only had them in two departments (Pediatrics and OB-GYN), it still made an impact on us students. It primed us for the lives we were to have for the rest of our med life and beyond.

Breakfast with coffee is a great way to start the day because it warms and perks us up to face the tasks ahead.

When it was our turn to take our duty posts, my duty-mates and I made sure we had instant coffee with us in the callroom for “emergency purposes”. Coffee gave us the boost we needed to endure the grueling 24 hours alert and coherent. Whenever one of us would show signs of fatigue or drowsiness, we’d keep each other conscious by constantly talking and laughing over cups of coffee during breaktime.

By this June, we’ll already be clinical clerks. We’d be spending an exponentially longer amount of time in the hospital, particularly in the wards. Duties would come every three days, and there’s no post-duty status for most departments. That means we’d still have to stay and/or go to class the day after, extending our waking hours to 30 and more. There’d be times when exams or graded small group discussions would be scheduled right after duty and there would genuinely be no time to prepare for them.

At the wards, we take orders from everyone and perform duties which they refuse to do – paperwork, procedures such as blood extraction and IV lining, and patient history taking and physical examination. Imagine having to concentrate when you’ve been up and about, working for 20 hours straight. Next to impossible, right?

When you’re a clerk, you’re expected to know everything during the grand rounds when a consultant asks you about your patient and his/her disease condition. It’s almost certain that you’d get reprimanded if you are unable to answer – not to mention that there are some who thrive on the fear and embarrassment of students.

Most importantly, there is never a room for error. Just a minor mistake in drug administration can mean either toxicity due to overdosing or lack of therapeutic effect due to underdosing; a mix-up of laboratory results might mean dispensing the wrong treatment regimen to different patients.

An innocent and unintentional error may prove to be fatal; that is why hospital duty requires an extremely high level of focus – one thing that coffee can help provide.

Coffee increases the capacity of the human body for physical and mental labor. It enables one’s thoughts to flow smoothly and quickly, and improves general body coordination. The most important things at stake here are not the grades we would be getting, but the kind of medical care our patients would be receiving.

Aside from this, coffee also keeps us sane. My friends from upper batches said that in order to maintain a balanced life in medicine, you have to forego a couple of your sleeping hours to redeem your social life post-duty.

Coffee can serve as an energizer that we can turn to in case we need to escape and spend much needed leisurely time in the outside world. After all, there is more to life than what is inside the four walls of the hospital. Being a slave to our profession is not an option, at least for me. Eventually, I still would want to settle down and start a family of my own before it’s too late.

As I am writing this, I’m beginning to get anxious about the upcoming schoolyear. This is actually my last summer break before I get into the meat of my medical education. What did I get myself into?

Well, if this is what it would take for me to realize my dream – if this is what it would take for me to become a great doctor – then sign me up. If I could just have another cup of coffee, please – the one I drank three hours ago just wore off.

Danlen C. Masangya, 21, is on his 6th year at the College of Medicine at the University of the Philippines, Manila where he is taking up Medicine. Danlen’s story about the importance of coffee in his medical career won Third Place in the NESCAFÉ 3in1 Essay Writing Contest.

The Zen of power coffee meetings

2009-12-24T03:37:00.000-08:00

By Chris Cahilig

AS YOU enjoy your morning cup of coffee, it probably doesn’t cross your mind that you have a powerful business tool in your hands. Having presided over and attended numerous meetings—at times several of them in the course of one day—I have come to value the benefits of having coffee during such times.

In any meeting—whether it is one that requires brainstorming, strategy and decision-making, or one that’s intended to pitch a product or idea to a client—one’s mental abilities and powers of concentration can be “make or break” factors to one’s success.

But as meeting after meeting wears on, even the best of us find our thoughts slowing down; we get more easily distracted, and sometimes we even become drowsy. It’s during these times that coffee can restore us and bring back our edge.

There are very real, proven advantages to drinking coffee during a meeting. First of all, coffee elevates our mood and enhances our mental performance—and a meeting where everyone feels positive, alert and focused is a productive meeting.

Second, at least one study has shown that drinking coffee makes one more open to new ideas and new proposals. According to a study by researcher Pearl Martin of the University of Queensland in Australia, people are more open-minded and receptive to new ideas, new messages and new proposals after they’ve had a cup of coffee.

That study, titled “Caffeine, Cognition, and Persuasion: Evidence for Caffeine Increasing the Systematic Processing of Persuasive Messages” also found that coffee increases mental alertness, focus and concentration. This heightening of mental capacity allows people to open up, process and understand the ideas being discussed during a coffee meeting.

Nowadays, coffee has become more than just a beverage we imbibe for our personal pleasure and relaxation or as a way to smoothen social relations—it is now part of the way many companies and professionals do business.

While “power” lunches or breakfasts used to be occasions for presenting a proposal, pitching a sale, seeking a mentor’s advice, or picking someone’s brain for valuable ideas—meetings over coffee are becoming the trend these days.

This is not surprising. The atmosphere in a coffee shop is usually more relaxed in contrast to a busy lunch hour at a restaurant. And for small businesses on a budget, the cost of a coffee meeting is much less.

Here are some tips on how to maximize your coffee meetings:

Choose convenience. One of the first considerations in setting up a coffee meeting is to pick a coffee shop that would not be difficult to go to. It saves everyone time and energy without adding any stress from travel.

However, there is some etiquette involved here: if you’re the one requesting for a meeting, choose the place most convenient to the one you’re asking the favor from (whether to ask that person for advice, or present to him a sales pitch, a proposal, etc.). Conversely, if you’re the one being asked to a meeting—the one giving the other person your valuable time and attention--then you’re within your rights to choose a place that’s more convenient to you.

Stick to the schedule. Coffee meetings ideally should not take too long. The unwritten rule is usually for the meeting to last from 30-45 minutes. Longer than that and you might be wasting each other’s time—after all, you just agreed to meet over coffee! Don’t ruin the rapport and the relaxing coffee shop atmosphere by taking too much of the other person’s time.

Be prepared. If you need to have a laptop, some documents and other materials ready for the person you’re meeting, then make sure all of these are prepared before that person arrives. This saves time and avoids the blunder of having the person wait for you to set everything up. Also, arrive at the coffee shop earlier so you can choose the right place (at an even quieter, out of the way corner, for example) where you can meet.

Be real. Stick to an agenda. You and the other person agreed to talk about a specific matter over coffee—so stick to that agreement. Don’t promise to talk about one thing and then present another, or tack on other matters that you did not agree on beforehand.

Say “Thank You”. Always remember to thank the other person for giving you his or her time and attention. Thank him or her personally at your meeting’s conclusion and/or send an email later expressing your gratitude and what a good time you had. You and that person might end up having more coffee meetings later on, whether as business partners or as friends—but it would all depend on the first coffee meeting you’ve had, as well as the cup of warm, delicious brew you shared.

Chris Cahilig is the managing director of Chris Cahilig Consultancy, a leading public relations, advertising, and viral marketing agency. On the side, he writes poems and lyrics and produces music.

Raw Food Diet

2009-12-24T03:32:00.000-08:00

By Cathy Wong, About.com Guide

Updated: September 19, 2007

About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by our Medical Review Board

What is the Raw Food Diet?

The raw food diet is a diet based on unprocessed and uncooked plant foods, such as fresh fruit and vegetables, sprouts, seeds, nuts, grains, beans, nuts, dried fruit, and seaweed.

Heating food above 116 degrees F is believed to destroy enzymes in food that can assist in the digestion and absorption of food. Cooking is also thought to diminish the nutritional value and "life force" of food.

Typically, at least 75% of the diet must be living or raw.

What are the Benefits of the Raw Food Diet?

Proponents of the raw food diet believe it has numerous health benefits, including:

Increased energy
Improved skin appearance
Better digestion
Weight loss
Reduced risk of heart disease

The raw food diet contains fewer trans fats and saturated fat than the typical Western diet. It is also low in sodium and high in potassium, magnesium, folate, fiber and health-promoting plant chemicals called phytochemicals.

These properties are associated with a reduced risk of diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. For example, a study published in the Journal of Nutrition found that consumption of a raw food diet lowered plasma total cholesterol and triglyceride concentrations.

What are the Guidelines of the Raw Food Diet?

1. What can I eat?

Unprocessed, preferably organic, whole foods such as:

Fresh fruits and vegetables
Nuts
Seeds
Beans
Grains
Legumes
Dried fruit
Seaweed
Unprocessed organic or natural foods
Freshly juiced fruit and vegetables
Purified water
Young coconut milk

At least 75% of food consumed should not be heated over 116 degrees F.

2. What cooking techniques are used?

Specific cooking techniques make foods more digestible and add variety to the diet, including:

Sprouting seeds, grains, and beans
Juicing fruit and vegetables
Soaking nuts and dried fruit
Blending
Dehydrating food

3. What equipment can I use?

A dehydrator, a piece of equipment that blows air through food at a temperature of less than 116 degrees F.
A good-quality juice extractor for juicing fruit and vegetables
A blender, food processor, or chopper to save time
Large glass containers to soak and sprout seeds, grains, and beans
Mason jars for storing sprouts and other food

Side Effects

Some people experience a detoxification reaction when they start the raw food diet, especially if their previous diet was rich in meat, sugar, and caffeine. Mild headaches, nausea, and cravings can occur but usually last for several days.

Precautions

The raw food diet may not be appropriate for certain people, such as:

Children
Pregnant or nursing women
People with anemia
People at risk for osteoporosis - A Washington University study found that people following a raw food diet had lower bone mass. Bone turnover rates, however, were similar to the group that ate a standard American diet.

Considerable time, energy, and commitment is needed to be healthy on the raw food diet. Many of the foods are made from scratch. Some ingredients may be hard to find, such as Rejuvelac (the fermented liquid drained from sprouted grains), sprouted flour, date sugar, young coconut milk, carob powder and Celtic sea salt.

People must be aware that certain nutritional deficiencies can occur on the raw food diet, including:

Calcium
Iron
B12 – The Journal of Nutrition study found that a raw food diet increased levels of homocysteine due to vitamin B-12 deficiency.
Protein
Calories

Critics of the raw food diet say while it’s true that some enzymes are inactivated when food is heated, it doesn’t matter because the body uses its own enzymes for digestion. In addition, cooking makes certain phytochemicals easier to absorb, such as beta-carotene in carrots.

Another critique is that the human body has changed in response to eating cooked foods. Some of these changes are that are jaws and teeth have become smaller, our stomachs have shrunk, and our small intestines have grown longer, lengthening the digestive surface area.

According to other alternative diet theories, such as macrobiotics, Ayurveda, and traditional Chinese medicine, a raw-only diet may not be appropriate for people living in colder climates or for people with certain constitutional types.

_{Sources:
Fontana L, Shew JL, Holloszy JO, Villareal DT. Low bone mass in subjects on a long-term raw vegetarian diet. Arch Intern Med. 2005 Mar 28;165(6):684-9.

Koebnick C, Garcia AL, Dagnelie PC, Strassner C, Lindemans J, Katz N, Leitzmann C, Hoffmann I. Long-term consumption of a raw food diet is associated with favorable serum LDL cholesterol and triglycerides but also with elevated plasma homocysteine and low serum HDL cholesterol in humans. J Nutr. 2005 Oct;135(10):2372-8.

"The Living and Raw Foods F.A.Q." 1998. Living and Raw Foods. 31 03 2006.}

HOW TO START THE RAW FOOD DIET (HOW TO TRANSITION TO RAW)

2009-12-24T03:24:00.000-08:00

Lo mejor del Ambient y Guerrilla Marketing

2009-12-23T22:11:00.000-08:00

Ideas creativas que SI queremos en la publicidad de hoy!

2009-12-23T22:07:00.000-08:00

Cambios dramáticos en la realidad del marketing

2009-12-23T22:05:00.000-08:00

51 ideas de publicidad y de marketing que SI atraen a la gente!

2009-12-23T21:57:00.000-08:00

Memorize These 12 Words Then Live By Them

2009-12-23T21:47:00.000-08:00

by Jay Conrad LevinsonI'm giving you a memory crutch so that you'll never forget these words। All 12 words end in the letters "ENT." Run your business by the guerrilla concepts they represent and you'll be in marketing heaven.

1. COMMITMENT: You should know that a mediocre marketing program with commitment will always prove more profitable than a brilliant marketing program without commitment. Commitment makes it happen.

2. INVESTMENT: Marketing is not an expense, but an investment -- the best investment available in America today -- if you do it right. With guerrilla marketing to guide you, you'll be doing it right.

3. CONSISTENT: It takes a while for prospects to trust you and if you change your marketing, media, and identity, you're hard to trust. Restraint is a great ally of the guerrilla. Repetition is another.

4. CONFIDENT: In a nationwide test to determine why people buy, price came in fifth, selection fourth, service third, quality second, and, in first place -- people said they patronize businesses in which they are confident.

5. PATIENT: Unless the person running your marketing is patient, it will be difficult to practice commitment, view marketing as an investment, be consistent, and make prospects confident. Patience is a guerrilla virtue.

6. ASSORTMENT: Guerrillas know that individual marketing weapons rarely work on their own. But marketing combinations do work. A wide assortment of marketing tools are required to woo and win customers.

7. CONVENIENT: People now know that time is not money, but is far more valuable. Respect this by being easy to do business with and running your company for the convenience of your customers, not yourself.

8. SUBSEQUENT: The real profits come after you've made the sale, in the form of repeat and referral business. Non-guerrillas think marketing ends when they've made the sale. Guerrillas know that's when marketing begins.

9. AMAZEMENT: There are elements of your business that you take for granted, but prospects would be amazed if they knew the details. Be sure all of your marketing always reflects that amazement. It's always there.

10. MEASUREMENT: You can actually double your profits by measuring the results of your marketing. Some weapons hit bulls-eyes. Others miss the target. Unless you measure, you won't know which is which.

11. INVOLVEMENT: This describes the relationlship between you and your customers -- and it is a relationship. You prove your involvement by following up; they prove theirs by patronizing and recommending you.

12. DEPENDENT: The guerrilla's job is not to compete but to cooperate with other businesses. Market them in return for them marketing you. Set up tie-ins with others. Become dependent to market more, spend less.

100 Marketing Weapons

2009-12-23T21:41:00.000-08:00

by Jay Conrad Levinson

These guerrilla marketing weapons should all be considered for promoting your product, service or website offline. Notice how more than half of them are free.

1. Marketing plan
2. Marketing calendar
3. Niche/positioning
4. Name of company
5. Identity
6. Logo
7. Theme
8. Stationery
9. Business card
10. Signs inside
11. Signs outside
12. Hours of operation
13. Days of operation
14. Window display
15. Flexibility
16. Word-of-mouth
17. Community involvement
18. Barter
19. Club/Association memberships
20. Partial payment plans
21. Cause-related marketing
22. Telephone demeanor
23. Toll free phone number
24. Free consultations
25. Free seminars and clinics
26. Free demonstrations
27. Free samples
28. Giver vs taker stance
29. Fusion marketing
30. Marketing on telephone hold
31. Success stories
32. Employee attire
33. Service
34. Follow-up
35. Yourself and your employees
36. Gifts and ad specialities
37. Catalog
38. Yellow Pages ads
39. Column in a publication
40. Article in a publication
41. Speaker at any club
42. Newsletter
43. All your audiences
44. Benefits list
45. Computer
46. Selection
47. Contact time with customer
48. How you say hello/goodbye
49. Public relations
50. Media contacts

51. Neatness
52. Referral program
53. Sharing with peers
54. Guarantee
55. Telemarketing
56. Gift certificates
57. Brochures
58. Electronic brochures
59. Location
60. Advertising
61. Sales training
62. Networking
63. Quality
64. Reprints and blow-ups
65. Flipcharts
66. Opportunities to upgrade
67. Contests/sweepstakes
68. Online marketing
69. Classified advertising
70. Newspaper ads
71. Magazine ads
72. Radio spots
73. TV spots
74. Infomercials
75. Movie ads
76. Direct mail letters
77. Direct mail postcards
78. Postcard decks
79. Posters
80. Fax-on-demand
81. Special events
82.Show display
83. Audio-visual aids
84. Spare time
85. Prospect mailing lists
86. Research studies
87. Competitive advantages
88. Marketing insight
89. Speed
90. Testimonials
91. Reputation
92. Enthusiasm & passion
93. Credibility
94. Spying on yourself and others
95. Being easy to do business with
96. Brand name awareness
97. Designated guerrilla
98. Customer mailing list
99. Competitiveness
100. Satisfied customers

Tales From the Front Line

2009-12-23T21:17:00.000-08:00

Make customers a birthday card!

Guerrilla Ray Fisher of Keylock Mini Storage in Pinellas Park, Florida celebrates his tenants' birthdays with a card he creates himself. He prints a poem on the card and gets four cards out of each piece of 8 1/2 x 11 card stock. He goes to Kinkos to have the cards printed and cut.

Since sending the cards, Fisher has received a very positive response. One tenant even dropped by office just to say he really appreciated the card. Fisher started a file organized by month to pre-address the cards to make it easy to mail within a week of upcoming birthdays.

Any service business can profit from this personal touch.

A Sticky Success Story

Guerrilla Mike Cohen informs us that no one ignores coupons from Captain Tony's Pizza in Cleveland, Ohio. That's because they are printed on Post-it notes and placed each month on every door in their delivery area. The typical response rate is 30%.

Cohen honors us by calling this promotional concept, Guerrilla Mail. He attributes the program's success to both the look and the feel of the coupon. It resembles the familiar UPS delivery notice and because it is sticky, recipients tend to post it on the fridge or by the phone where it acts as a constant reminder.

The Ice Cream Incentive

Marketing Consultant and Coach Bob Janet e-mailed us after reading about a real estate agent who sent prospects home with a quart of ice cream on hot days. Janet's company used a variation on the old ice cream ploy. His sales staff would find out where customers lived and give them just enough time to get home with the melting ice cream. The representative would call them with an added incentive to buy from them (extra discount, special price on add on items, special financing, etc.)

The extra incentive always had a time limit of closing time that day. Janet reports that they made a lot of sales with that technique.

Beach Party Bingo

Dusty Simmons owns a retail store in the Central Florida offering surf, skateboard, and beach suppies. Due to few exclusives and similar inventory among his competition, he had trouble differentiating his business. Simmons realized that he needed to implement Guerrilla tactics in order to get an edge.

Simmons created a Christmas Wish List of store items for kids of all ages to send to loved ones. Simmons also mailed out blank copies of the Wish List to folks on their mailing list who came in during the sign-up. Adult customers were invited to a special event: an after hours shopping spree with live music, snacks and drinks. Simmons reported a record sales day in those three hours.

Since the promotion, there has been much talk about that night, with customers who did not attend asking if Simmons is going to do it next year. His reply? "Of course, only better."

Talking House Speaks for Itself

Guerrilla Scott Matthew, president of Realty Electronics Inc. of Fond du Lac, WI wrote to tell us about his Talking House(R). It's a small radio Transmitter that sits inside a location (such as residential real estate that is for sale). Prospects just tune in on their ordinary car radio, while parked out front, and hear a customized marketing message.

Besides real estate, Talking House can be used by restaurants announcing their specials of the day, banks promoting their CD rates at a drive-up window, or automobile dealers explaining low-interest leases. You name it, Talking House can say it.

For more infgormation, call 800-444-8255, fax 920-923-6222 or visit the Web site at http://www.TalkingHouse.com.

Marketing to the Disabled

Guerrilla Kimberley Barreda runs Cripmedia, an organization offering marketing and advertising services to firms targeting the disabled community. Barreda reports that the disabled community is responsible for over $700,000,000 per year in consumer spending.

Barreda, a former professional actor, started the company when she was refused a commercial audition because she used a wheelchair. She realized that the disabled community was being ignored by advertisers. She created the 1998 Consumer With a Disability profile survey. Through a fusion marketing arrangement, Barreda obtained the authoring software from Questionmark Corporation in exchange for full credit.

The results will be published yearly and an on-going product war page will be featured on their site: http://www.cripworld.com.

Free Domain Name Registration

Guerrilla Pat Messick of Bronxville, NY has cost saving suggestion for other online Guerrillas.

Messick found an advertiser supported web site offering free registration of domain names. Messick's ISP was going to charge $50.00 for the domain registration. The web address is www.register.com.

Messick has already referred a dozen friends to this site and is happy to spread the word.

Business card as pocket-sized bulletin board

We hear many stories on using your business card as a marketing tool. Guerrilla Scott Miller of Aurora, Colorado has been paying attention.

Miller reports on the success of his new business cards. On the front cover of the folded card, Miller placed a catchy slogan. Inside he briefly lists his products and the method of sales (internet, home parties, mail order, by private consultation) on one side. On the other side he offers contact information including his web site and email address.

Miller noticed some blank space on the back of the card, and for the next card run he may add his vendors.

Add Memos to Your Marketing

Frank Pipia, Jr. of Pipia-Graphics & Advertising, Inc. of Wauwatosa, WI has a timely reminder for all you busy Guerrillas.

Pipia suggests writing a brief personal note to each of your clients and prospects on a post-it or 1/4 page memo pad. Attach it to your business card and mail it off. Keep the message short and personal. Ask them how things are going. Thank them for their business or their interest. Mention any new products or services you are offering and how they might benefit. Finally, ask them to give you a call or offer to call them in order to chat soon.

Pipia claims that people will be gratified that you took the time to jot down a few personal lines. If you do this once a month you'll maintain a high profile. Even if they don't need your services presently, you'll be more likely to get their business in the future.

IMEDIAFAX is right on target

Guerrilla Paul J. Krupin of Kennewick WA, has introduced an online news distribution service which faxes your business message to the media. Users create a proprietary media list from a vast selection of magazines, newspapers, syndicates, and broadcast stations. The service, IMEDIAFAX -- Internet to Media Fax on-line custom news distribution service, can be found at www.imediafax.com<.

Here's how it works:. Make your selection by clicking your mouse on the industry and classification, key editors, states, market area, or circulation. Then enter your news release and click to send. IMEDIAFAX news releases can contain graphics, letterheads, logos or pictures. The cost is 25 cents per faxed page.

According to Krupin, "media receiving news releases from IMEDIAFAX will be happy that the news releases are better targeted. This will result in less over-broadcasting." Another bonus is that there are no international phone or fax charges.

A Delicious Sales Ploy

Guerrilla Walt Gibson of Dracut, MA passes along some wisdom from his days as a real estate agent.

A seasoned pro once advised him to keep an ice chest packed with quarts of ice cream on hot summer days. When qualified customers viewed the homes the agent would give them a quart of ice cream. According to Gibson, this gave the customer two alternatives: 1) Eat it and think about the house. or 2) Go home and put it in the freezer and think about the house. Either way the prospects probably wouldn't be viewing the competition's houses that day and would certainly remember the broker that gave them ice cream!

We wonder if the old pro kept hot chocolate on hand for snowy Winter days?

A tale of holiday cheer

Guerrilla Dane Colby of Magical Landscapes in Whidbey Island, WA has a unique approach to competition. Because he lives in a tight and supportive community, Colby doesn't want to demean his competitors, believing that it removes all the joy from his work and gives a the industry a bad name. He points out that when encouraging customers to devote time and money to landscaping, his main competition is holidays, movies, sports, and television.

Colby works with his colleagues to insure that landscaping has a great reputation for service, fun and value. He sees marketing as a creative challenge to see who can bring clients the most value.

Colby reports that his approach is extremely fruitful in the friends, success and fun it generates, stating, "it is more enjoyable than being a solitary guerrilla. The success of my island and industry are prerequisites to my own success. We prosper together."

Ask and you shall receive

San Antonio private investigator and Guerrilla marketer, Venetia Flowers publishes a newsletter called the "Tricky Marketing Ploy" handbook. She provides techniques like the following to drum up business and make invaluable contacts.

Flowers was interested in subletting space in a downtown building containing more than 100 law firms. After two years on the waiting list, she called all of the attorneys she had previously done business with or had met in the courthouse. She asked them if they knew if any of the firms might have space to sublet. Each lawyer offered four or five names. She made a contact list and starting calling. If the lawyers appeared busy, Flowers was brief but if they had the time, she spoke at length. Every single lawyer inquired about her business and many invited her to lunch or asked her to visit their office or send marketing materials. Eventually, Flowers acquired the names and numbers of 65 people in this building and 40 more prospects in other downtown office buildings. She now has a growing database of the most powerful attorneys in her city.

Flowers found that people were both willing to help and interested in her business. Can you think of a way to engage prospective customers in helping you?

Business Card Does Double Duty

Carol Parenzan Smalley, owner of Small Business Consulting Services in Palmyra, PA has a great suggestion for a variation on the old business card. She's created a bookmark that folds to the size of a standard business card. The front of the card contains her business information. and the back of the card lists her services as well as free resource information with phone numbers, library sections, government agencies, and web sites (such as Guerrilla Marketing Online).

Smalley 's stationery letterhead compliments the bookmark, with her services listed down the left margin -- subtly advertising all of her services with each and every correspondence.

Finally, Smalley reduced her costs by utilizing a great guerrilla tool: bartering. A client designed her stationery package in exchange for a marketing plan that Smalley wrote. Good going!

Finding the Upside of Downsizing

By keeping her ear to the fluctuations in her business community, Guerrilla Diane Ernsberger of Ree Design in Columbus, Ohio is able to drum up business.

Ernsberger runs a resume consulting and design business. She found that an effective way to initiate business was to offer her services to the human resources department of companies that are downsizing.

Many companies will pick up the costs of these services in order to help the obtain a new position and advance their careers.

Autoresponder or URL?

When Guerrilla Jim Daniels of Smithfield, RI created his Web site, he made some changes to his classified ads. He replaced the autoresponders--which had allowed his prospects to receive sales letters almost instantly--with his URL in his classified ads. He assumed that people would prefer to visit the site and view the color, sound, and graphics.

When his response dropped, he realized that there are literally millions of people who use email but don't surf the web. So out went the URL address in favor of the autoresponders. Daniels also had an email newsletter so he decided to do a little more experimenting. There, his newsletter ads contained both the autoresponder address and the URL.

Finally he had the perfect mix. His total inquiries (autoresponders
plus page hits) went up by about 20% and remained there as
long as his ad contained both contact methods. Along with
these increased prospects came increased profits.

A valuable lesson learned.

Credits not Coupons

Competition is fierce in Guerrilla Jack Barth's community of Orangeville, Southern Ontario. As proprietor of of Barth's Cleaning Centre, Barth takes precautions against competitive intereference when marketing to his customers.

Barth maintains his Guerrilla stance by opting to give customers a credit on their account rather than a coupon, which might be accepted by a competitor.

Barth sends customers and prospects personalized letters which can't be monitored by the competition. Even if a competitor intercepts a few letters they won't be able to estimate how many similar letters went out and when the letter's content was revised.

Cat Shoot captures community's concern

Guerrilla Jim Valovic of Gloversville, N.Y. concocted a controversial but effective event that earned Van's Harley-Davidson a tremendous amount of publicity.

Van's advertisement for a "Cat Shoot" to be held at the store on June 1, brought calls from the media, Humane Society, SPCA, local police chief and even the Mayor, wanting to know what was going on. To all callers, they replied "show up on the first and find out."
The media jumped on it. Van's was on front pages of three major newspapers ("Cat Shoot for real or hoax?" blared the titles).What everyone saw on the day of the event was a six-foot high cartoon cat that they could shoot--with a paint ball gun at three shots for a dollar. Signs announced that all proceeds would go to the Humane Society.

Reporters and crews from print, radio and TV showed up and Van's got even more coverage.

Become a Marketing Matchmaker

Guerrilla Dana Burke of Mind Your Business, has a terrific idea that can be used by anyone with a box of labels and some ingenuity.

Burke maintains a supply of her clients' and associates' business cards in her office and distributes them to likely customers. Using return address labels, she's created a sticker that says "Referred by Mind Your Business." Placed on the back of other people's business cards, the stickers remind the recipied his Web site, he made some changes to his classified ads. He replaced the autoresponders--which had allowed his prospects to receive sales letters almost instantly--with his URL in his classified ads. He assumed that people would prefer to visit the site and view the color, sound, and graphics.

A valuable lesson learned.

WHAT IS A GUERRILLA ENTREPRENEUR?

2009-12-23T21:04:00.000-08:00

by:Jay Conrad Levinson
Guerrilla Marketing International
© 2009 Guerrilla Marketing International. All Rights रेसेर्वेद

The goals of the 21st century guerrilla entrepreneur: work that is satisfying,
enough money to enjoy freedom from worry, health good enough to take
for granted, a bonding with others where you give and receive love and support,
fun that is not pursued but is in the essence of daily living and longevity to
appreciate with wisdom that which you have achieved.

(Please note: for the purposes of this report... "he" refers equally to male and female
genders).

WHAT IS A GUERRILLA ENTREPRENEUR?

1)The guerrilla entrepreneur knows that the journey is the goal।
He also realizes that he is in control of his enterprise, not the other way around,
and that if he is dissatisfied with his journey, he is missing the point of the journey
itself. Unlike old-fashioned enterprises, which often required gigantic sacrifices
for the sake of the goal, guerrilla enterprises place the goal of a pleasant journey
ahead of the mere notion of sacrifices.

2)The guerrilla entrepreneur achieves balance from the very start.
He builds free time into his work schedule so that balance is part of his
enterprise. He respects his leisure time as much as his work time, never
allowing too much of one to interfere with the other. Traditional entrepreneurs
always placed work ahead of leisure and showed no respect for their own
personal freedom. Guerrillas cherish their freedom as much as their work.

3) The guerrilla entrepreneur is not in a hurry.
A false need for speed frequently undermines even the best-conceived
strategies. Haste makes waste and sacrifices quality. The guerrilla is fully aware
that patience is his ally, and he has planned intelligently to eliminate most
emergencies that call for moving fast. His pace is always steady but never
rushed.

4)The guerrilla entrepreneur uses stress as a benchmark.
If he feels any stress, he knows he must be going about things in the wrong way.
Guerrilla entrepreneurs do not accept stress as part of doing business and
recognize any stress as a warning sign that something's the matter -- in the work
plan of the guerrilla or in the business itself. Adjustments are made to eliminate
the cause of the stress rather than the stress itself.

5) The guerrilla entrepreneur looks forward to work.
He has a love affair with his work and considers himself blessed to be paid for
doing the work he does. He is good at his work, energizing his passion for it in a
quest to learn more about it and improve his understanding of it, thereby
increasing his skills. The guerrilla entrepreneur doesn't think about retirement, for
never would he want to stop doing work the loves.

6) The guerrilla entrepreneur has no weaknesses.
He is effective in every aspect of his enterprise because he has filled in the gaps
between his strengths and talents with people who abound in the prowess he
lacks. He is very much the team player and teams up with guerrillas like himself
who share the team spirit and possess complementary skills. He values his
teammates as much as old-fashioned entrepreneurs valued their independence.

7) The guerrilla entrepreneur is fusion-oriented.
He is always on the alert to fuse his business with other enterprises in town, in
America, in the world. He is willing to combine marketing efforts, production
skills, information, leads, mailing lists and anything else to increase his
effectiveness and marketing reach while reducing the cost of achieving those
goals. His fusion efforts are intentionally short-term and rarely permanent. In his
business relationships, instead of thinking marriage, he thinks fling.

8) The guerrilla entrepreneur does not kid himself.
He knows that if he overestimates his own abilities, he runs the risk of skimping
on the quality he represents to his customers, employees, investors, suppliers
and fusion partners. He forces himself to face reality on a daily basis and realizes
that all of his business practices must always be evaluated in the glaring light of
what is really happening, instead of what should be happening.

9) The guerrilla entrepreneur lives in the present.
He is well-aware of the past, very enticed by the future, but the here and now is
where he resides, embracing the technologies of the present, leaving future
technologies on the horizon right where they belong -- on the horizon until later,
when they are ripe and ready. He is alert to the new, wary of the avant-garde,
and only wooed from the old by improvement, not merely change.

10) The guerrilla entrepreneur understands the precious nature of time.
He doesn't buy into the old lie that time is money and knows in his heart that time
is far more important than money. He knows that instead, time is life. He is
aware that his customers and prospects feel the same way about time, so he
respects theirs and wouldn't dare waste it. As a practicing guerrilla, he is the
epitome of efficiency but never lets it interfere with his effectiveness.

11) The guerrilla entrepreneur always operates according to a plan.
He knows who he is, where he is going, and how he will get there. He is
prepared, knows that anything can and will happen, and can deal with the
barriers to entrepreneurial success because his plan has foreseen them and
shown exactly how to surmount them. The guerrilla reevaluates his plan
regularly and does not hesitate to make changes in it, though commitment to the
plan is part of his very being.

12) The guerrilla entrepreneur is flexible.
He is guided by a strategy for success, and knows the difference between a
guide and a master. When it is necessary for change, the guerrilla changes,
accepting change as part of the status quo, not ignoring or battling it. He is able
to adapt to new situations, realizes that service is whatever his customers want it
to be, and knows that inflexible things become brittle and break.

13) The guerrilla aims for results more than growth.
He is focused upon profitability and balance, vitality and improvement, value and
quality more than size and growth. His plan calls for steadily increasing profits
without a sacrifice of personal time, so his actions are oriented to hitting those
targets instead of growing for the sake of growth alone. He is wary of becoming
large and does not equate hugeness with excellence.

14) The guerrilla entrepreneur is dependent upon many people.
He knows that the age of the lone wolf entrepreneur, independent and proud of it,
has passed. The guerrilla is very dependent upon his fusion business partners,
his employees, his customers, his suppliers, and his mentors. He got where he
is with his own wings, his own determination, his own smarts, and, as a guerrilla,
with a little help from a lot of friends.

15) The guerrilla entrepreneur is constantly learning.
A seagull flies in circles in the sky, looking for food in an endless quest. When it
finally finds the food, the seagull lands, then eats its fill. When it has completed
the meal, the seagull returns to the sky, only to fly in circles again, searching for
food although it has eaten. Humans have only one instinct that compares: the
need for constant learning. Guerrilla entrepreneurs have this need in spades.

16) The guerrilla entrepreneur is passionate about work.
He has an enthusiasm for what he does that is apparent to everyone who sees
his work. This enthusiasm spreads to everyone who works with him, even to his
customers. In its purest form, this enthusiasm is best expressed as the word
passion -- an intense feeling that burns within him and is manifested in the
devotion he demonstrates towards his business.

17) The guerrilla entrepreneur is focused on the goal.
He knows that balance does not come easily, and that he must rid himself of the
values and expectations of his ancestors. To do this, he must remain focused
upon his journey, seeing the future clearly, at the same time concentrating upon
the present. He is aware that the minutiae of life and business can distract him,
so does what is necessary to make those distractions only momentary.

18) The guerrilla entrepreneur is disciplined about the tasks at hand.
He is keenly aware that every time he writes a task on his daily calendar, it is a
promise he is making to himself. As a guerrilla who does not kid himself, he
keeps those promises, knowing that the achievement of his goals will be more
than an adequate reward for his discipline. He finds it easy to be disciplined
because of the payback offered by the leisure that follows.

19) The guerrilla entrepreneur is well-organized at home and at work.
He does not waste valuable time looking for items that have been misplaced, so he organizes as he works and as new work comes to him. His sense of organization is fueled by the efficiency that results from it. While he is always organized, the guerrilla never squanders precious time by over organizing.

20) The guerrilla entrepreneur has an upbeat attitude.
Because he knows that life is unfair, problems arise, to err is human, and the
cool shall inherit the Earth, he manages to take obstacles in stride, keeping his
perspective and his sense of humor. His ever-present optimism is grounded in an
ability to perceive the positive side of things, recognizing the negative, but never
dwelling there. His positively is contagious.

Here's to your continued success as a guerrilla...

Jay Conrad Levinson
The Father of Guerrilla Marketing,
Google me! Author, "Guerrilla Marketing" series of books The best known marketing brand in history
Named one of the 100 best business books ever written Over 20 million sold; now in 62 languages www.gmarketing.com www.guerrillamarketingassociation.com

Entrepreneurial Thinking

2009-12-23T21:01:00.000-08:00

by Jonathan R. अस्पतोरे

There has never been a better time to start your own business। Major consolidation continues by large corporations in many industries creating profitable niches for new businesses to fill। The advances being made in technology and the Internet have created entirely new industries for business products and services, which are still relatively untapped. Even companies in the automobile and insurance industries are finding their way to the Web to capitalize on this rapidly growing medium. These developments represent dynamic changes for businesses in every industry and create the perfect chance for you to build a profitable company in your area of interest or expertise.

Entrepreneurial thinking is about recognizing opportunities in the marketplace and understanding how and when to capitalize on them. Becoming an entrepreneur is not necessarily an inherent trait. It takes time to train yourself to use your talents and experience to see opportunities where others do not. Each individual possesses a different perspective on products they would find useful and services they would like to see perform differently. It can often be just as profitable to improve upon an existing business. The advantage here is that you can learn from the mistakes of competing companies while still borrowing the positive aspects of their business for your own. Whether starting a completely new type of business or expanding on current ideas already in the marketplace, the key is learning to use your unique perspective to produce a product or service that provides increased value to potential customers.

No one could ever have imagined the impact the Internet would have on the global economy. New industries have developed in the last few years to support the advanced communications capabilities of this medium. Many of the entrepreneurs that had the foresight and skills to capitalize on these opportunities became millionaires almost overnight. In fact, the Internet is such a dynamic medium that there is still amazing wealth being generated from the creation of new companies, and this trend shows no signs of slowing. The development of dynamic new products and services in any industry naturally creates the need for complimentary types of businesses. By learning to think as an entrepreneur you will position yourself to be ready to capitalize on these opportunities as they develop.

Entrepreneurial thinking is relatively easy to learn. It involves training your mind to look at products and services in a different way and understanding how to improve upon them. How would you change the way a company you are familiar with is currently conducting business? Are there complimentary products or services that you feel would be of value to the same target market? Train yourself to be continuously learning about and evaluating other types of businesses. This is how to create ideas of your own and gain valuable insight into an industry. Project your understanding of a given industry into the future to get an idea for what types of products and services will be desired down the road. The marketplace of every industry is continuously changing, and those that have the foresight, ingenuity, and desire have the potential to capitalize on the opportunities that develop.

Although starting a business is never a sure thing in terms of success and prosperity, entrepreneurial thinking teaches you to capitalize on opportunities in your current job and other areas of your life as well. All of this does not mean that you should quit your job today. However, you should begin trying to lay the seeds for a type of business that interests you. What is it that you enjoy doing or have experience with? What demands are currently not being met in the marketplace? Why are companies not already doing this? The marketplace is full of opportunities and those that choose to take on the challenge give themselves the chance to create a type of wealth, happiness, and security that can be achieved by starting your own business.

Companies such as Yahoo, Amazon.com, and eBay were founded only a few short years ago and have enjoyed enormous success in their industry by generating significant value for their customers. These companies and many others often start in someone’s basement, garage, or dormitory. Being an entrepreneur has nothing to do with age, gender, race or education. Everyone must start somewhere, and those that have the drive and ambition to build their idea into a reality give themselves the chance for unparalleled success.

Starting a business is not something that happens overnight. However, it is probably not as difficult as you might imagine. The Internet has brought a wealth of information to your fingertips, if you know where to look for it. You can access information on almost every topic of interest to an entrepreneur by simply performing a search on any of the search engines. Speak with other individuals who have started their own business. They will provide you with a wealth of insight and possibly some useful contacts.

It is never too soon to begin contemplating starting your own business. This will only encourage your development as an entrepreneur and help open your eyes to opportunities in the marketplace that you never knew existed. The key is to believe in yourself, the idea, and have the desire to make it into a reality.

The Process of Marketing

2009-12-23T20:56:00.000-08:00

by Jay Conrad Levinson
Marketing is not an event, but a process। How long does the process last?

An insight for you to embrace is that a guerrilla marketing attack is neverending. It has a beginning, a middle but never an end, for it is a process. You improve it, perfect it, change it, even pause in it. But you never stop it completely.

Of all the steps in succeeding with a guerrilla marketing attack, maintaining it takes the most time. You spend a relatively brief time developing the attack and inaugurating it, but you spend the life of your business maintaining, monitoring and improving your attack. At no point should you ever take anything for granted. At no point should you fall into the pit of self-satisfaction because your attack is working. Never forget that others, very smart and motivated competitors, are studying you and doing their utmost to surpass you in the marketing arena.

Guerrillas thrive and prosper because they understand the deeper meanings of the phrases "customer base" and "long term commitment." This enables them to reinvent their marketing -- just as long as they are firm in their commitment to their existing customers and prospects. An attack without flexibility is in danger of failing. But that flexibility does not allow you to take your eyes off the needs of your customers.

Keep alert for new niches at which you can aim your attack. Large companies don’t have the luxury of profiting from a narrow niche. No matter how successful your attack, never lose contact with your customers. If you do, you lose your competitive advantage over huge companies that have too many layers of bureaucracy for personal contact. Guerrilla marketing is always authentic marketing and never acts or feels to be impersonal, by-the-number marketing. It never feels like selling.

"Marketing Management" author Philip Kotler, says "Authentic marketing
is not the art of selling what you make but knowing what to make. It is the art of identifying and understanding customer needs and creating solutions that deliver satisfaction to the customers, profits to the producers and benefits for the stakeholders. Market innovation is gained by creating customer satisfaction through product innovation, product quality and customer service. It these are absent, no amount of advertising, sales promotion or salesmanship can compensate."

Your attack must be characterized by a very strong tie with your own target audience. You know them. You serve them. They know it. Guerrilla attacks do not suffer from your lack of resources, but instead prosper because lack of capital makes them more willing to try new and innovative ideas, concepts ripe for guerrillas but not for huge companies.

Your attack will succeed in direct relationship to how narrow-minded you can be. Guerrillas have the insight that precision strengthens an attack. They know the enormous difference between their prospects and their prime prospects. They are aware of the gigantic chasm separating their customers from their best customers. This perspective enables them to narrow their aim only to the best prospects that marketing money can buy and the finest customers ever to grace their customer list.

They are fully cognizant that it doesn’t take much more work to sell a subscription to a magazine than to sell a single issue. That’s why their marketing attack is devoted to motivating people to subscribe to their businesses mentally.

Once they have a customer, they do all they can to intensify the relationship, and they do not treat all customers and prospects equally. Consider the menswear chain with a database of 47,000 names. Mailings are never more than 3,000 at a time. Who receives the mail? Says the owner, "Only the people appropriate to mail to." When he received trousers of a specific style, he mailed only to those customers to whom he was certain they’d appeal -- and enjoyed a 30% response rate.

The cost of his mailing was a tiny fraction of the size of his profits. There’s not a chance of reveling in a healthy response like that unless you’re targeting your mailing with absolute precision. It’s something you’re going to have to do in a world where postal charges and paper prices are both slated to increase. Unless you’re hitting the bullseye, you’re wasting your marketing investment. And unless you’re treating your marketing as a continuing process, you’re wasting everybody’s time, including your own.

Where And When To Begin Marketing

2009-12-23T20:48:00.000-08:00

by Jay Conrad Levinson
Guerrillas are never stopped by analysis paralysis। Don’t let it stop you।

Many business owners realize the simplicity of marketing, but just don’t know where they should begin. Analysis paralysis stops them in their tracks. So many tasks. Where to start? So they don’t start. They know what they must do, but don’t really have a plan, so they make disconnected efforts to achieve a hazy goal. When they don’t see encouraging results right off the bat, they lose confidence, if any existed in the first place.

If there’s any correct time to start, it’s right now. If there’s any proper place, it’s right where you are. You’ll never feel you are completely ready, so you may as well begin immediately.

If there’s any secret to be learned, it’s the secret of taking action and never stopping. You’ve heard Diana Ross sing when she was a member of The Supremes. Hear now what she says about taking action: "You can’t just sit there and wait for people to give you that golden dream; you’ve got to get out there and make it happen for yourself."

Guerrillas have learned that the best time to market is when they don’t need any more business. They know that the best source of new clients is old clients and that the best marketing is characterized by quality and not quantity. They realize that their best marketing vehicle, and least expensive, is a satisfied customer. And they know that the two best ways to measure their marketing are by customer retention and by profits, both a part of each other.

It’s wise to think of your marketing the same as you think about your rent. You pay it and never think twice. It’s also wise to think of your marketing as breathing. You couldn’t exist with only one breath, or even two or three. Don’t think you’re going to attract a new customer with only one effort, or even two or three. You keep breathing and stay alive. You keep marketing and stay profitable.

Every part of your success is dependent upon one individual. You are that individual. You’re in charge. You say when to begin. You’ve got the insight to make the right decisions now. To succeed, you’re going to need that insight, along with courage and conscientiousness. If you’re frightened of making mistakes, you’re sunk. Accept that you’ll make mistakes. Each one has a lesson to be learned.

Michael Eisner, chairman and CEO of Disney, and the man who propelled it to undreamt of success, says, "At a certain level, what we do at Disney is very simple. We set our goals, aim for perfection, inevitably fall short, try to learn from our mistakes, and hope that our successes will continue to outnumber our failures." There’s nothing Mickey Mouse about that kind of philosophy -- because it embraces mistakes as part of the process.

There is no need to hit a home run the first time you’re at bat. A single will do, then another single, then another, one following each other, none grandiose, but all bringing you closer to your goal.

As small business grows, so does the need for mastering guerrilla marketing. And small business is growing faster than ever. As entrepreneurs arise all over the globe, so does the need for mastering guerrilla marketing. Just a new kid on the block as the 20th century headed towards its completion, guerrilla marketing is now a powerful and proven force worldwide. It must be reckoned with and best yet, utilized. Some would say it's mandatory for small business survival.

Ask any small business owner: It's far easier to employ guerrilla marketing than hope to defend yourself against it.

A whale of a lot has changed since I wrote the first guerrilla marketing book in l984. And almost all of it favors small business. Marketing itself has changed dramatically and interactively, not to mention electronically. So has the array of weapons available to guerrillas -- more powerful than ever, yet half of them completely free. That's why so many guerrillas are smiling so broadly. They also know that many things have not changed and that those things are as important as the things that have.

I'm referring to the soul and essence of guerrilla marketing which remain as always -- achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods, such as investing energy instead of money. I'm also referring to humanity which is relatively unchanged since the first book, indeed, since the first human.

It's not possible to ignore the fact that we're in a new century, even though if you look out the window, you can't see much that has changed. If you look into the hearts and minds of your prospects, you'll see that very little has changed there, too. Certainly, there's a growing awareness of the precious and elusive nature of time, perhaps even a bit more humanity, made possible by, of all things, technology.

The marketing world has changed because it has shrunk rather than expanded. Again, credit technology for the shrink job, accomplished not as much by the jet as the net. Marketing has also become a lot more technical. But that doesn't mean you have to be technical -- because technology has met you more than halfway by becoming much easier to use and even easier to pay for.

Guerrillas welcome the changes as much as they welcome the status quos. They are fully alert to what has changed and what must never change. They know well the difference between change and improvement. Analysis paralysis is a condition that has been eliminated in their world.

What Guerrillas Know About Email

2009-12-23T20:29:00.000-08:00

by Jay Conrad लेविंसों

Guerrillas are well aware that free marketing exists in its most free state as email, which is far more than merely letters with free postage.

Mark Twain said he never let his schooling interfere with his education. Regardless of your schooling, there’s little chance it covered what technology makes possible today. If you took a course in how computers can aid your marketing, the first insight you would have gained would be into the profitability for you if you become savvy about email.

When you think of email, don’t compare it with snail mail because it’s considerably different. In fact, it is such an improvement on old-fashioned mail delivery that the U.S. Postal service now uses it, and today there is a lot more email being sent daily than snail mail. Soon, half of all bills and payments will be sent electronically. Two-thirds of Social Security checks, tax refunds and other federal payments sent in l999 went electronically.

In fact, the U.S. Postal Service is now in serious trouble because of the vast amount of information transmitted via the Internet. For much of this, guerrillas owe a tip of their propeller beanie to Ray Tomlinson who invented email in l971.

You can use email in your marketing in ways that will make your customers delighted to be doing business with you. Guerrillas love email but hate junk email, known as spamming. Their affinity to email is because they can deliver their messages instantly and to anywhere in the world if the recipients are online, as more and more of them are with each word I type. That means email saves you time in communicating and money that you used to spend on postage. It can also help save trees on the planet because it is so delightfully paperless.

Each recipient can read your email on screen or print and save it just as with a standard letter, which does use paper. But you don’t have to print and save your email, saving you the cost of paper and the convenience of space. Save it in your computer. Make copies as you need them. All your files and memos can be kept in one convenient location. Each one is dated and timed. Many experts feel that for all the great things about being online, email is the most valuable of all computer applications.

Email also helps you save on the cost of courier service and faxing. You can use it to send brief messages or long documents, to send black and white communications or colorful, beautifully-designed materials. It’s easy for you and easy for the person who receives your email.

Who should that be? People who want to receive it, that’s who. Find their names on your customer list, in the newsgroups to which you belong, in chatrooms where they’re talking about your industry, possibly even your company. Although email isn’t free, because you need a computer and internet connection, it’s far less expensive than telephoning, mailing or faxing. When using it, keep your message as brief as possible because people read computer screens differently than letters. They know being online saves time, so they don’t want to waste time reading long things. As Thomas Jefferson said, "Never use two words when one word will do."

You’re aware, as all guerrillas are, of how technology such as email can strengthen your marketing. You’ve also got to be aware of its limitations and of the new advancements that are taking place at breakneck speed. Don’t let those advancements overwhelm you. Very little becomes obsolete, but nearly everything becomes improved.

Technology, for all the wondrous things about it, can also be a major distraction and a drain on your time if you focus on the technology itself rather than on the benefits it can bring to your business.

As "Net Benefits" author Kim Elton reminds us, "Business is life and life is messy. Like a kitchen sink full of dirty dishes, you know that when you’ve finally cleaned them up, someone will burn a tuna casserole and you’ll be back in sudsy water up to your elbows with a Brillo pad in no time. But if the kids are growing up healthy and strong -- and helping out with the dishes now and then -- it’s all worth the effort. Soon you’ll get a dishwasher and you can shift the mess from the sink to the dishwasher. The dishes still have to be cleaned. The technology eases the labor and takes away some of the pain, but it doesn’t relieve the duty."

That’s the insight that I want you to take from this column. Technology helps with the job but doesn’t do the job. That’s your task. In order for you to understand how technology can help you, it’s not necessary for you to learn the technical jargon, the nerdy part of technology. But you must comprehend the impact of technology and the ways it can transform a squirt gun into a cannon.

To cash in on the transformation, you must be in close touch with your needs. Technology will help you meet them. You must know how best to utilize the technology in which you’ve invested to get the maximum benefit for the money you’ve put forth. You’ve got to recognize hype for just what it is and solid science for just what it is.

You wouldn’t dream of running a business without using a telephone. The computer will be just as endemic as phones. Using technology will be as easy as making a phone call. It’s already well in its way. Investment research company Robertson Stephens stated it this way:

"Communicating is becoming the primary role of computers after four decades of number crunching. We stand at a technology crossroads and are witnessing a technological metamorphosis....In our opinion, computers, originally designed for number crunching and applied to computing tasks for nearly 50 years, will be used in the future primarily for communicating." The future is now the present.

Daring to do more than expected

2009-12-23T20:24:00.000-08:00

Marketing

Written by AdMix / Marjorie Teresa R. Perez / joyetteperez@yahoo.com

Monday, 07 September 2009 20:04

Immense downsizing (actually the right term is “right-sizing”), saw corporate companies conserve their resources—except for those huge and wealthy corporations that paid millions for celebrity endorsements, especially for those who could slam dunk—and small businesses began to employ marketing techniques to combat the high cost of advertising. This means an integrated marketing approach where advertising is an important part, but not the only part, of a multiweapon marketing program.

The best publicity is the kind that ties in with advertising and is part of the marketing strategy. When this is the case, the business opens its doors, addresses any unforeseen operational problems and trains its staff thoroughly. “You have to have a mindset that differs from the corporate frame of mind and with the commonsense attitude. Advertising may be used for force and precision, but realize it’s only part of the marketing process and can’t do the whole job by itself. This perception enables your advertising to contribute to the success of your other marketing vehicles,” Europa Public Relations Inc. president Sylvia Europa-Pinca told this columnist in an interview.

Advertising and public relations complement each other. Advertising comes out with all these creative work that catches people’s attention and it builds interest. “PR, on the other hand, completes the picture as it can delve into other information that the consumer would need to know to really push him to buy. Advertising and PR can be likened to a brochure. Advertising is the attractive cover with its title, and artwork and the kickers, PR would be the detailed description of the product,” Pinca added.

The ads will not have done the work all by themselves. The PR gets the credit here for directing the public’s attention to the campaign concept, making it a newsworthy item, something worth remembering. Long after the PR has taken place, the echo of its bangs will continue to reverberate through the advertising.

Established in April 2003, Europa’s senior officers have more than 30 years’ experience in corporate and government public relations. “Our areas of expertise are corporate communications, corporate citizenship and CSR projects, promoting awareness of clients’ products and services, enhancing clients’ public image and nurturing their corporate entity and issues management,” she added.

When asked why marketers are now adding CSR as an attribute of the brand, Pinca furthered that CSR is now on top of the agenda. Doing good is a way of telling consumers that a company is not only interested in profit but also in the welfare and well-being of people. “Big corporations are now into sustainability efforts—they try to help in such matters as maintaining the environment, preserving water and energy and lessening their carbon footprints. They also go the extra mile to take care of persons with disabilities, breastfeeding, taking care of children and the elderly and even overseas Filipinos when these people are in their business turf. Consumers generally appreciate these things and patronize companies who lend a hand to giving people a better quality of life.”

Europa’s fame has gotten client acceptance of the practice. Examples are AIDEA, UCC Café, Sakae Sushi, Crepes & Cream, Suntrak Corporation, Whirlpool Philippines, Sydenham Laboratories Inc., Philippine Association of Feed Millers and Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines.

Marketing gurus to speak in 21st PAC breakout session

The 21st PAC shall examine distinctive perspectives coming from different sectors of advertising: marketing, creative and media/digital. Breakout sessions on November 19 and 20 for each of the three areas of expertise feature seminars by the advertising industry’s international experts.

Four marketing gurus are set to speak in the breakout session for marketing: Jeremy Carr, Turner Entertainment Networks Asia Inc. vice president; Andrew Kingham, The Marketing Store managing director; Linda Kovarik, Coca-Cola Asia-Pacific regional creative director; and Mike Schalit, Network BBDO-South Africa chief creative officer.

Carr runs the TV and interactive advertising sales of 14 channels belonging to the Turner group. His particular focus in regional entertainment advertising sales is Cartoon Network and HBO channels in Asian and Australian/New Zealand territories. Based in Hong Kong and with 16 years’ experience in broadcast and digital media sales, Carr will share Cartoon Network’s insights on marketing to kids with “Stay Cool: Cartoon Network’s Creative Solutions to Connect to Kids.”

Kovarik was named among the “Women to Watch” in 2004 by Advertising Age, the leading industry magazine for advertising, marketing and media published in North America, Europe and Asia. Kovarik’s colorful career has made the Asia-Pacific region her home for the last 20 years. Drawing from her experiences as documentary producer, strategic planner and creative director, Kovarik will talk about the “Art of Storytelling.”

Schalit, one of the founding partners of Network BBDO, is a highly respected leader in international advertising. Having been voted top creative mind by peers for 10 consecutive years, Schalit believes spirit and passion are key elements in successful leadership. His drive to make a difference, however, commands the most respect in his work—especially his CSR efforts in South Africa. In the 21st PAC, Schalit will discuss “The Argument for CSR in a Down Economy.”

Managing director of The Marketing Store, Hong Kong, Kingham leads the development of McDonald’s family marketing program across 37 countries. Among the focus of his marketing work is the children’s beloved Happy Meal from McDonald’s. With his wide-ranging knowledge on marketing trends in children, Kingham presents “Marketing to Kids.”

Change is the winner

2009-12-23T20:22:00.000-08:00

Marketing

Written by AdMix / Marjorie Teresa R. Perez / joyetteperez@yahoo.com

Monday, 21 September 2009 18:22

THE PRSP, led by its president Butch Raquel, APR (left), recently conferred on (from left) Rosan Cruz, AVP, group PR, Benpres Holdings Corp.; John Jojo, VP, corporate brand and communication, Bayan Telecommunications; and Carla Paras-Sison, senior manager, corporate communications, Benpress Holdings Corp., the status of accredited public-relations professionals during the recent 16th National Public Relations Congress at the Centennial Hall of the Manila Hotel.

In spite of the overwhelming acceptance by the advertising community, it’s possible that positioning will come to play an even greater role in public relations. The reason is obvious. Positioning is essentially an “against” strategy. That is, you normally position your company or brand against another. In this mass-communication society, if you don’t exist in media, for all practical purposes you don’t exist. Publicity is like eating. Nothing kills the appetite quite as much as a hearty meal. And nothing kills the PR potential of a product quite as much as a premature feature story. Or a misdirected television placement.

Change in PR has become an ever-increasing factor in today’s high-speed and complex world. The Public Relations Society of the Philippines (PRSP) sought to give new meaning to PR during its 16th National Public Relations Congress on September 10 and 11 at the Manila Hotel—that is, pursuing reforms—and as such, to highlight the role of PR practitioners as catalysts of change. The congress is a major initiative of the PRSP this September, which is Public Relations Month by virtue of Presidential Proclamation 1357.

“All social change needs good communication,” Ateneo de Manila University president Fr. Bienvenido Nebres, SJ, pointed out in his keynote address. Culling insights from the Ateneo experience, Father Nebres said meaningful social reforms may be achieved by educating potential leaders who will be able to eventually institutionalize structures that will initiate concrete changes while encouraging and engaging people who will benefit most from such reforms. “And public relations—with its expertise in communication and relationship management—plays a key role in effecting social change.”

“PR people are change champions,” stressed Dante M. Velasco, chairman and CEO of Creative Point International Inc. In addition to expediting communications, PR, in essence, is not under the marketing or the advertising department but an entirely different and prestigious position that reports directly to the CEO. With the prospect of even greater expansion of public relations, it is important for management to understand its potential and limitations. “PR people deserve to be up there,” he stressed.

In many cases, when you ask the chief officer of a company, “What is it that your PR department is trying to do?” you get a vague answer such as “We want people to think well of us” or “We would like to have a good image.” These are nice words. But unfortunately, they don’t translate easily into a meaningful objective. The result is that the public-relations man’s efforts are all almost dissipated; the end result is not much of anything and certainly cannot be measured.

Vic F. Garcia, president and CEO of Unleash International Corp., tackled on how change starts and ends with oneself. CEOs Nandu Nandkishore of Nestlé Philippines Inc., Tunde Fafunwa of Bayan Telecommunications Inc. and Lorenzo Chan of Pioneer Life Insurance Phils. Inc. talked about unconventional strategies such as blending profit with social responsibility and how they challenged the corporate status quo. All told, the amount of real-world involvement is a far cry from the passive communication with consumers usually found in “make-believe” brand advertising. All this fits in very well with those branded-product companies strategy—from the first conception of how they wanted to present the product, they have taken into account the consumer’s wishes and interests.

“If the strategy is correct and you’re following [your] mission and vision, then it’s worth taking the risk,” said Fafunwa.

Nandkishore furthered: “PR has a fundamental strategic role in creating shared values.”

Chan noted that a good PR effort is to educate the public, and performance must be good in any area of corporate endeavor if the company is to win and retain public regard in that area.

A panel-sharing and reflection on the need for change from the perspectives of students and young professionals included Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila professor Rosario Taylo, Miriam College student Joanne Balangat and University of Santo Tomas student leader Leandro Santos II.

In the past, however, many PR programs haven’t been effective from a marketing point of view. And it’s easy to understand why. In PR, your inherent lack of control over what is being printed or said about you often leads to a lack of direction. As one grizzled PR veteran defines things: “Advertising is what you pay for. PR is what you pray for.” The discipline that positioning can bring to a publicity program can make an enormous difference in terms of results. To make positioning in PR, however, the emphasis has to shift from “getting your name in the paper” to achieving marketing objectives.

While PR is essential to creating awareness, the story doesn’t stop there. Participatory media have changed how people relate to each other, to marketers and to the traditional media. PR people must look beyond awareness to consider how the public dialogue in digital channels influences people. News today zips around the world, spreading though countless social networks at light speed. Therefore, it’s impossible to manage the digital discussion in the same way PR used to manage through traditional channels. Speakers for the new IT tools for PR and the new media included Yehey! CEO Donald Lim and Havoc Digital general manager Mike Palacios.

The second-day session had Unilever RFM Ice Cream Inc. CEO John Concepcion, who shared highlights of the Bayan Anihan Food Sustainability Project of Gawad Kalinga. Media personalities Jessica Soho of GMA Network and Maria Ressa of ABS-CBN presented their respective views on the needed change in PR as media sees it. Controversial artist/model BB Gandanghari also shared her personal journey as she mustered the courage to change. Sens. Francis Escudero, Loren Legarda and Richard Gordon talked on how tomorrow’s leaders see change. PR consultants Milen Sison-de Quiros of Full Circle Communications, Joel Lacsamana of TruNorth PR Consultants and Ramon CM Bermeo of Reach Communications imparted valuable insights on shifting careers from corporate PR to consultancy PR.

The congress ended with a sharing of The Real Bank (A Thrift Bank) Inc. chairman Jose G. Araullo on building and managing trust. The Real Bank was a major Anvil winner, an annual recognition of PRSP, which cites exemplary PR programs and tools.

The congress covered the need for PR practitioners to bring a new mentality and flexibility to the profession. In particular, they noted the need to be willing to take risks, to try something new. “For it is truly foolish to expect results other than what we have always had in the past, if we do things simply the way we always have,” concluded Barbie Atienza, congress chairman.

Credibility with the main market

2009-12-23T20:13:00.000-08:00

Marketing

Written by Marjorie Teresa Perez / Admix

Monday, 28 September 2009 18:43

The concept of brands acting as cultural creators—doing more than just participating in or representing the culture but actually helping create it—began when Bill Bernbach from DDB proposed the idea that products should be culturally authentic. To achieve this goal, brands had first to disengage from a company’s economic agenda. DDB’s solution was to give products an iconic brand persona.

Its campaign for Volkswagen’s Beetle is a great example. Instead of speaking to people in the paternal, condescending voice that much of the era’s advertising used, DDB created the voice of an honest friend by poking fun at the Beetle in classic ads such as “Think Small.”

The power of the streets and the credibility gained from capturing it have changed the way brands are communicated. Brands now try to emulate the personalities of those found in cultural epicenters. As brands strive for authenticity, a new “real” style of advertising has developed, as illustrated in the marketing-communications campaigns by DDB Group Philippines to clients, which include Smart, PLDT, McDonald’s, Pepsi, J&J, Swift, Unilab and Banco de Oro.

Gil Chua, local group president and CEO, has a dynamic principle: “Better ideas, Better results.” Find the simple story in the product, and present it in an articulate and intelligent, persuasive way. This means that your marketing must now reach all the way back to the innermost levels of your business.

The new era is not just the Web; it is people talking to each other and sharing information. For marketers, this represents a sea change—changing their relationship with customers from monologue to dialogue to conversation, “and the goal for us is to become part of that conversation.”

Guerrillas were springing up all over the agency’s office. They function independently, turning a school of fish within a medium of a high-intensity, creative workplace. Supporting Chua are Roy Santiago as senior vice president and chief operating officer of DDB Philippines; Susan Dimacali as the group’s chief marketing officer and president and CEO for Tribal DDB, Touch DDB and DDB Media; Judd Balayan as group CFO; and Merlee Jayme as chief creative officer of DM9-JS.

The third-largest in the industry, DDB Group Philippines is comprised of 190 talents from independent agencies with specializations in various communication disciplines: DDB Philippines, Tribal DDB, DDB Media, Touch DDB, DM9-Syfu, Adverb PR and Lava Communications. DDB Group Philippines is one among DDB Worldwide’s 200 offices serving 90 markets globally, under the holding company OMNICOM. Its vision: to become the most admired and respected marketing-communications group in the Philippines on the basis of talent resource, creative service and business results.

Known for being a maverick in the industry, Chua pioneered the concept of “media agency of record” in the Philippines in 1989, when his team won and handled media planning and planning for the relaunch of Cosmos Bottling Co. (Sarsi, Pop Cola, Cheers), although the company was a client of another agency. Under Chua’s leadership, DDB’s business in the market grew exponentially, with strategic expansions from advertising to new services in related disciplines. He is also known for his ability to build the kind of unshakeable client relationships that his counterparts only dream of.

The agency’s advertising campaigns for Smart bagged three awards during the Tambuli Awards 2009. These awards reaffirm the company’s commitment to practicing accountable marketing communications that upholds the ideals of excellence, nobility of purpose and social responsibility. Smart Buddy’s “Me na Me” advertisement, which stresses the empowerment of subscribers towards self-expression, and Smart Uzzap’s “Bring Me Along” ad, which illustrates the value of communication to friends and loved ones through innovative services, each won a bronze in the Best Established Service Brand category. The Smart Bro Prepaid advertisement, which underscores the value of providing broadband for everyone through high-speed, affordable and portable broadband connection, also picked up a bronze in the Best Innovative and Integrated Media category.

For Smart, the Tambuli recognition is more than enough impetus for the company to continue bringing excellent and responsive wireless services to Filipinos, while delivering messages that build values not only for itself and the market, but for Philippine society, as well. Espousing values has always been a corporate practice in Smart and other companies run by PLDT and Smart chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan, who has always believed that success is founded on strong values.

From there, DDB’s marketing and PR campaigns took to the streets, both literally and virtually. Smart Sandbox, Grand Boomerang Best Integrated Campaign during the recent IMMAP Boomerang Awards, spread the message to get people closer to the Sandbox web site throughout the digital universe almost instantly.

“Ultimately, this mobile category for Smart had 100,000 sign-ups in just six months with 4 million visits, and the results keep getting better and better,” enthused Dimacali.

The era of digital connectivity is moving beyond the concept of selling things over and over and toward building communities that flock toward Smart, multiplying quickly and making the brand part of the rhythm of our lives.

The first event of its kind in the country’s wireless-broadband industry, the recent B Free Day, which was in store for students of member-schools of the UAAP and NCAA, was a mega-university blowout of Smart Bro as the collegiate sports season reaches its peak during the final playoffs in the coming weekends.

“When we conceptualized this event, we wanted the youth to associate Smart Bro with things they most enjoy that start with the letter ‘B’ in order to connect it with the word ‘Bro.’ And so the games and activities outside included such ‘B’ things as balloon darts, where you pop different-colored balloons using darts to reveal your prize; the ball toss where you try to make your ball land on especially marked dots to win; the ‘bait the Bro freebies’ where, using a small crane, you try to pick up Smart Bro bear and bunnies inside a glass box; the bailout that’s similar to your typical school-fair jail booth; back massages; plus burgers, beverages and freebies from other sponsors,” said Smart marketing group head Annie Naval.

Three more Smart campaigns that are soon to be launched are on the pipeline, noted Santiago. He not only has a great creative track record handling accounts such as SMB (“Iba ang may pinagsamahan”) and Smart’s “Simply Amazing,” but he is also passionate about music and architectural design.

“We have always been tightly integrated with our clients, and a closer relationship with the digital world as well,” said Santiago, who has 25 years in advertising tucked under his belt and four years as marketing director for United Distillers.

DDB thinks beyond traditional marketing notions like brand persistence and market share. It all starts with widening their vision from the consumer level to the community level, and how they interact with people at this level. McDonald’s “Burger Burger” promotion collaborated with its customers in an even more personal way. McDonald’s ultimate cheeseburger campaign became the popular tagline “Pa-cheeseburger ka naman”—48-percent eyeballs higher on YouTube.

What has changed is that our audience is now in digitally linked masses, not just small cocoons in their living rooms, pointed out executive director Teeny Gonzales. Gonzales handled the McDo “Burger Burger” campaign and McDo “First Love” TVC.

McDonald’s “Burger Burger” earned a silver in the Tambuli Awards as the most effective teen-brand-oriented campaign and finalist for best in market-performance leadership and community service. International awards, likewise, paved the way for this campaign as finalist in the AME Advertising Marketing Effectiveness and bronze (in the outdoor category) for McDonald’s “Clock” in Spikes Asia.

The DDB Group constantly devotes time and talent to support social causes, notably women’s rights and youth empowerment. Among these are the now world-renowned award-winning advocacy campaigns for Gabriela and Ako Mismo.

“The idea was to start a movement. Ako Mismo drives social awareness. The campaign had 87,000 comments in just a week with more than 15,000 media values and 18,000 digital values earned. Numbers kept on growing,” said executive creative director Teeny Gonzales.

Recently honored at the Agency of the Year Awards, which aims to recognize the practice of advertising in the country and identify the benchmarks of excellence among 4As member-agencies, DDB’s stay at the top is buoyed by these elements: delivering business through creativity, aggressive think tanks, propeople philosophy, and that extra push.

“[What is important is that] the opportunity is there because we have a great body of work that we can showcase our clients. But even with those awards, we still don’t forget our client’s business [because] it is a priority,” Chua stressed.

In other words, the higher purpose of marketing and advertising is to understand human nature, and then engage and attract it. Today, in an increasingly interconnected world, these words are truer than ever before.

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In photo: (Standing) DDB Philippines Group president and CEO Gil Chua, executive creative director Teeny Gonzales, Touch DDB managing director Dimples Cruz, SVP and COO Roy Santiago, and (seated) chief marketing officer and president and CEO for Tribal DDB, Touch DDB and DDB Media Susan Dimacali.

Go for the biggest catchment

2009-12-23T20:09:00.000-08:00

Marketing

Written by AdMix / Marjorie Teresa R. Perez / joyetteperez@yahoo.com

Monday, 12 October 2009 19:34

Gatuslao: “We aim for a distinctive way to attract the interest of thousands of potential clients and deliver a higher customer recall.”

There are still people who either do not use or cannot afford to use the current market offerings because they find the offerings unacceptable or beyond their means. An untapped demand waiting to be released, their needs are either dealt with by other means or ignored. Typically, these unexplored markets have not been targeted or thought of as potential customers by any player in the industry. That’s because their needs and the business opportunities associated with them have somehow always been associated to belong to other markets.

Consider how Rotaboard, a vendor of automated rotating billboards, pulled the mass of an untapped market into a new concept in outdoor advertising. Rotaboard is an innovation of the traditional billboard—a first in the Philippines—making it very exceptional and one of a kind in the field of outdoor. It deviates from the usual billboards that are stationary and can cater to a wider range of advertisements. Rotaboard is an enhancement of the conventional billboard, with similar features, giving the ads maximum and effective exposure the other media cannot deliver.

Some companies said outdoor advertising was not a popular campaign because it was viewed only in a transitory way. Especially for lesser-known companies, such advertising media were ineffective because they could not carry the comprehensive messages needed to introduce new names and products. Hence, many such companies refused to use such low-value-added outdoor advertising because it was either unacceptable or a luxury they could not afford. Billboards typically were located on city outskirts and along roads where traffic quickly pass by; transport advertisement comprised panels on mobile advertising, which again people caught sight of only as they whizzed by.

In this way, Glenn Gatuslao, president and CEO of Rotaboard and Adworld Advertising Corp., created a breakthrough when he received a guru’s commendation for the development of Rotaboard.

“It was a divine inspiration due to intense pressure to graduate,” he chuckled, during an interview. Gatuslao earned a degree program in Master in Entrepreneurship at the Asian Institute of Management. “One of the conditions [for graduation] was to find a new product that when you bring it to the existing market, [your market] automatically becomes a blue ocean rule. [It means that] you have done the uniqueness and [you have] a novelty of being able to supply all the needs of the market because you’re unique,” he furthered.

This gave the idea to evolve as a powerful alternative to traditional media and would be able to offer innovative solutions to its clients. According to Gatuslao, customers are commonly overwhelmed with so many advertisements as they go through their daily routines. Television and print ads, advertisements in the Internet and public transportation seem to be monotonous and predictable, thus making many advertising campaigns futile or ineffective. “Rarely do we see ads that get our attention and this is the driving force that led us to revolutionizing the way customers view out-of-home advertisements.”

In a traditional media plan, billboards would be included to create awareness and possibly generate some response. Marketers might prefer to have interactive billboards, not a static image. Depending on the location of that rotating billboard, the media plan would need to anticipate what video content is most appropriate to serve to that screen. One agency executive commented that traditional media planning needs to be multidimensional. The new media plan now needs to integrate direct response planning and activation planning, not just image building. Also, the plan needs to reflect the connection of media and devices—in this example, the interactive billboard.

By making ads available in key areas, Rotaboard increased the average exposure time, improving recall capabilities of this advertising medium. The increase in exposure time also permitted richer content and more complex messages. Moreover, the structure is reusable and transportable, thus, it is cost efficient and practical for advertisers. Rotaboard occupies a smaller area for foundation purposes than traditional billboards. It can easily be assembled and disassembled, maximizes its four sides and it is highly visible on both traffic directions. It can also advertise four different products at the same time.

With this business model, Gatuslao was able to capture a leap in value for itself in return for a leap in value created for its clients. Accordingly, Rotaboard was created that would call for a more and powerful and magnetic, ecologically friendly yet highly effective form of advertising. “If there’s a typhoon, the frame could either [just] move left to right or clockwise and counter-clockwise. Even if there’s a velocity of a strong wind, [the frame] gets free-wheeling basis, as opposed to the traditional billboards.”

Although this might be a good way to gain a focused competitive advantage and increase share of the existing market space, the point here is not to argue that it’s wrong to focus on existing billboards but rather to challenge these existing, strategic orientations and opportunities for advertisers when they formulate future strategies, and create a sustainable win-win outcome.

“We, as advertisers, saw the great necessity to make our ads more captivating to the public and at the same time being cost saving and practical. We aim for a distinctive way to attract the interest of thousands of potential clients and deliver a higher customer recall. It will be good for those who are just starting to expose themselves in outdoor advertising,” he said.

Gatuslao earned long-term exclusive rights to display Rotaboard having its patent registered in 2008 and has likewise filed for a Patent Cooperation Treaty International Registration. The Rotaboard was recently given a Pioneering Award of Recognition by the Outdoor Advertising Association of the Philippines, a proof that Rotaboard can move well in the marketplace.

Creating a marketing outbreak

2009-12-23T20:05:00.000-08:00

Marketing

Written by AdMix / Marjorie Teresa R. Perez / joyetteperez@yahoo.com

Monday, 05 October 2009 20:21

Gustilo: “In the future, our success will hinge less on just getting people’s attention, and more on the collaborative process of inspiring people with great creative work.”

Like the tale of the blind men and the elephant, different people see the role of marketing differently. Some feel that it revolves around things like good advertising, media exposure and influence. Others feel it revolves around creating word-of-mouth among customers. Still others feel that the higher purpose of these interactions are powerful brand building tools for creating marketing activities that engage these customers—if shaped, influenced and managed with purpose.

Rather than simply creating advertising campaigns, Lowe Manila uses multiple channels that go beyond disseminating an organization’s brand message to make sure the organization is living this message in its interaction with its customers. These interactions are conceptual, sensory, experiential or virtual in nature. Lowe Manila shapes interactions through high-value ideas and context planning, as well as influences conceptual interactions through advertising that captures the imagination.

“A good manager is transitioning [an organization] from doing traditional to expanding other channels, to include nontraditional. If you’ve been creative in one, you can also be creative in the other but you have to change the perspective. You might miss out reaching other people if you’re [just] focusing on one,” pointed out Ma. Elizabeth “Mariles” L. Gustilo, president and CEO of Lowe Inc., a member of Lowe Worldwide, in an interview.

A seasoned advertising professional, Gustilo joined Lowe (then known as Lintas) in 1985. She handled many brands across product categories and has extensive experience in handling multinational accounts such as Unilever and Johnson & Johnson. She has led the agency in significant new business acquisitions of blue-chip local accounts such as Ayala Corp., PLDT, Ginebra San Miguel, Enervon, Red Ribbon and Alaska. Other brands the agency handle include Selecta, Johnson’s Baby, Rexona, Surf, Carefree, Go Nuts Donuts, FederaLand, One White Tea, Clear, Holcim, Cornetto, Tekki, BPI and Far Eastern University.

Today, we see brand positioning becoming an increasingly collaborative process involving the brand’s consumers. In much the same way, learning to speak to your community means communicating at their level, and not just with a corporate communications press release.

“The challenge is, how do you make it more responsive to the realities?” Gustilo asked. She added that “for some of our clients, the world does not revolve around Metro Manila. Business is in the provinces. So they invest in activation [in the provinces] and we have seen very clearly that when we use activation in the provinces, consumer response is immediate.”

Lowe influences experiential interaction through consumer activation that leverages local and cultural nuances of the country’s emerging markets. “We manage these interactions through to completion via the scientific discipline of project management, using in-house capabilities and/or working with strategic partners,” Gustilo said. The agency likewise influences virtual interaction through digital media that deepens consumer involvement with the brand.

Mounting activation became the agency’s strength. The key is to build value—faster, better and continued success. “We like to consider ourselves as a brand interaction agency because we figure the consumer interacts with the brand now in many spaces which was generally used by advertising. To pull these things together—above the line, activation, design and digital—obviously will come from a very solid idea. [You still need an idea] then you decide which avenues of communications are they most open to receive your idea. Then it becomes interesting,” she furthered.

Marketing needs to change its thinking around this paradigm shift toward activation, and creativity will be at the center of this change.

When Gustilo began her advertising career 27 years ago, she has seen more change in the last five years than in the 20 preceding it. The biggest item on her to-do list is not just to market to communities, but to evolve along with them. “No one is being led, but everyone is moving. You cannot just say, ‘do this’ anymore, but you can influence your peers. In the future, our success will hinge less on just getting people’s attention, and more on the collaborative process of inspiring people with great creative work.”

At the same time, some parts of the future are very clear to Gustilo, just like the historical beginnings of the 15-percent ad agency commission, which has been the object of some attention in some parts of the world, largely due to attempts in innovating other schemes and arrangements for agency compensation.”[At a time] when our compensation schemes have changed, the traditional 15-percent commission no longer holds true. We have options to go into fee compensation schemes with clients, retainer’s or even paid man-hours. The client is now open to discuss different kinds of compensation schemes. Long before the creative and media split, the creative agency made money [out of the commission] of media. But if you’re no longer doing media, how will you then be compensated? So for the past 10 years, [people have been trying to find ways] how do you rightfully compensate a creative agency?”

Beyond its value in defining compensation for an ad agency, the 15-percent commission, in this columnist’s view, also defines the nature of the ad agency’s relationship with client and media and suppliers as a professional partner in business rather than as a merchant or vendor of goods and services. This is why an ad agency’s revenue constitutes and comes from a share of these sectors’ volume of business or expenditure and not as a factor of “pricing.” In a sense, to generate income, an ad agency does not make a sale but rather earns a share.

“[And now] that there are different channels of communication such as digital, activation, design that must be paid in a different form, not based on purely commission, since there’s no component of a media aspect. So there’s still a lot of challenge. The strategy has also changed because of the nature of the changes happening in the industry and the way clients view it. All the multichannel they can use to communicate on behalf of their brands, we noticed, a lot of pitches are now on a project basis,” she explained.

This was the case where the agency’s efforts did not look like traditional marketing, although it was still a lot of hard work. But by shifting the focus from advertising response to engaging a community, they get a response that is far out of proportions to their efforts. “To be a 21st-century agency, you almost necessarily have to go digital and on activation. And as far as how it works in our profits, it presents alternative revenue streams for the agency,” Gustilo added. Lowe Manila is among the country’s top five agencies in the industry and top four international agency group.

Reaching people with these ideas is not just about specific technique. It’s not even about social networks or viral. It is about continually finding new ways to connect with consumers, increasingly by offering them things of value that attract them. This means that the product-centric view of selling things is giving way to the centric view of providing information and building communities. This columnist believes there is no profession better suited to this kind of creativity than the one Lowe Manila is part of.

Gustilo’s style has always been to push the frontier. “I’m like a helicopter. I don’t want to be removed from what the agency does. I like to know what we’re doing. My staff show me most of the agency’s work and try to keep my pulse [of what’s going on]. I talk to clients so I also hear what they have to say [about what we do].” What’s required is a better alignment of the people who are tasked and to act upon insights in order to make efficiency improvements and thereby drive better return on the client’s investment.

Truth in ads goes online

2009-12-23T20:01:00.000-08:00

Marketing

Written by James Rainey / Los Angeles Times

Monday, 19 October 2009 19:21

Does a moment pass when Kim Kardashian isn’t selling? If she’s not hyping her workout video, she’s touting her online shoe club, her new book or her sisters’ “reality” TV spinoff, a gripping look inside their high-end Miami boutique.

Shameless self-promotion is the stock in trade among the famous-for-being-famous crowd. But should the self-described “Armenian Princess” have to tell the world if she’s getting paid for the endless stream of products—Famous Cupcakes, Balenciaga shoes, Quick Trim weight loss capsules—she touts seemingly round the clock as one of the most popular users of the microblog site Twitter?

The Federal Trade Commission would almost certainly answer “yes.” Making its first pronouncement on testimonials and endorsements in nearly 30 years, the federal agency said Monday that bloggers and other new media types who tout products must disclose if they are getting cash or gifts in exchange for their kind words.

That has set off a furious reaction in the blogosphere, where many commentators decried what they called a government assault on free speech, to less common rebuttals from those who praised the government for applying truth-in-advertising standards to the Internet.

Although the exact enforcement targets and tactics that will be employed by the feds remain fuzzy, I think it’s about time that someone tried to force greater transparency about the Web’s often murky quid pro quos.

If nothing else, this moment allows us to remind the public what should be obvious—that history’s greatest vehicle for sharing information also provides the ultimate Trojan horse for all sorts of hucksterism.

Anyone who talks or e-mails regularly with the public knows that many otherwise semi-rational citizens all too readily gobble up bon mots from the most rancid corners of the Web.

So, as of December 1, the overly credulous will get a hand from the FTC, which will require bloggers and users of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to make it clear when they are offering their opinions in exchange for some kind of payoff.

Richard Cleland, assistant director of the division of advertising practices at the FTC, stressed that the agency initially hopes to encourage greater transparency through education, not enforcement.

The feds made clear only that disclosures should be “clear and conspicuous” without setting specific guidelines.

The rules arrive at a time of mushrooming “sponsored” posts on the Internet. Businesses such as Orlando-based IZEA help advertisers plant their pitches with dozens, even thousands, of bloggers and Twitterers, who get paid for their comments.

Mom Central Consulting is just one of several outfits that put national brands in the hands of “mommy bloggers,” who then post their own reviews, seldom negative, in exchange for gifts as small as a few coupons or as extravagant as a new dishwasher.

Mom Central Consulting’s founder and chief executive, Stacy DeBroff, said she asks bloggers listed on her site to reveal any compensation. She doesn’t have a problem, in concept, with the FTC guidelines.

But she worries how deep disclosure will have to go for mommy bloggers, whom she said have been somewhat “vilified” in the media despite the relatively modest compensation they receive.

“You don’t see celebrities who appear in People magazine disclosing that they got the new, $5,000 dress they are wearing for free,” DeBroff complains.

No you don’t see that. But the new FTC rules will at least attempt to force such disclosures from celebrities, too—one of several revelations that should dispose of some of the red herrings that have been raised about the guidelines.

Not that the federal enforcers didn’t exacerbate some of the initial anxiety over the announcement, particularly when one blog reported that Cleland made the silly suggestion that book critics might have to return every volume they received from a publisher. The regulator imagined a reviewer tainted by the big money earned reselling the free books.

Web champions such as Jeff Jarvis conjured other troubling scenarios. Would a blogger have to disclose, for example, if a company placed an advertisement adjacent a positive review, even if the author had no idea the ad was coming? “That’s the level of absurdity this can reach,” Jarvis said.

But those railing about the worst-case scenarios, and potential fines of up to $11,000, didn’t pay much attention to the FTC’s cautious ambitions for the guidelines.

Cleland made it clear that the agency will aim not at bedroom bloggers who’ve gotten a few free bottles of sports drink but at advertisers who shroud their true relationships with the reviewers.

Perhaps I underestimate government’s capacity for stupidity. But not as much as I think others overestimate the self-regulating powers of the Internet.

Jarvis, for one, suggested that Google and its all-powerful algorithms should sift out the “boring, sycophantic drivel” that hidden business deals have wrought on the Internet.

When I messaged Google to find out if that’s a responsibility the company wants to shoulder, I got no response.

But Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team, seemed in no hurry to take on that job single-handedly when he responded to Jarvis: “As a Google engineer who has seen the damage done by fake blogs, sock puppets, and endless scams on the Internet... I think the FTC guidelines will make the web more useful and more trustworthy for consumers.”

Shouldn’t some of Kardashian’s 2.5 million Twitter followers be able to find out whether those online air kisses she blew toward Ungaro and Christian Louboutin for her Emmy wardrobe were pure love or partly commerce?

(I sent a message to her rep for an answer but got no response.)

Twitter users signal that they are writing on an important theme by applying a “hashtag.” A word, phrase or acronym marked by a # sign can help others find tweets on a single theme.

Maybe Kardashian would like to try #itfc, for “I tweet for cash”? Or #bapf. That would be a bit more expansive, as in “bought and paid for.”

I’m assuming, of course, that she isn’t doing it all for #love.

Targeting everyman

2009-12-23T19:55:00.000-08:00

Marketing

Written by AdMix / Marjorie Teresa R. Perez / joyetteperez@yahoo.com

Monday, 19 October 2009 19:25

Paolo Pangan, Serve Digital managing director: “Candidates must believe in new media.”

Imagine that you’ve hired one of the most powerful advertising agencies on the planet, and spared no expense for advertising and marketing expenses. Then a student posts a video on YouTube about what a terrible experience she had with your product or service. Or a blogger records a phone call with an indifferent agent in one of your call centers, and his entry gets linked so far and wide throughout the blogosphere. Or someone even devotes a website to how terrible your company is, and it gets ranked right up there with your own website in search engine rankings.

For example, Barack Obama’s online hub “It’s All About You” has 2 million profiles, 200,000 offline events, approximately 400,000 blogposts written, 35,000 volunteer groups created and 70,000 people raised $30 million on their personal fundraising pages. His strategy? Integrate the Internet into the entire political campaign—websites, social networks, blogs/microblogging, online videos, interactive advertising, mobile and search. Obama went into 16 different social networking sites, has 3.3 million friends in Facebook and 5 million contacts in other social sites. More than 1 million people signed up for text alerts. On election day, text messages were used to coordinate with campaign headquarters.

“Obama’s strategy was different. He moved away from traditional advertising but maximized the Internet as a most efficient tool in conveying change that was rooted in innovation itself,” said managing director of Serve Digital Paolo Pangan, who shares with this columnist how marketing to digitally linked communities is fundamentally changing the way we view and practice marketing. Pangan has built and consulted on digital strategy for a gamut of clients, including the Philippine Department of Tourism, P&G, San Miguel Brewery and Mead Johnson. He has created digital campaigns for various political candidates last year and earlier this year.

“YouTube was a primary media platform. It has become the destination for online video. Take this: 139,000 different Obama-related video clips were downloaded; 180,000 were officially uploaded by the campaign and more than 14.7 million hours of Obama-related video clips were consumed,” Pangan added.

This was a sudden eruption of swarm activity that spreads quickly across social networks. It’s like a virus: You sneeze, two people catch a cold, then they sneeze and infect four people, and so on.

Obama’s campaign may have had the lowest ad spend expenditure but got the highest mileage with turnouts pegged at $14,037,426. “He didn’t just campaign online; he communicated, empowered and convinced, taking advantage as the new-generation leader who could change things in America,” Pangan furthered.

Obama’s campaign slogan, “I’m asking you to believe,” as we say in marketing, had to do something to the product to get people’s attention. What was called for was a “new and improved” strategy—one that signaled change. In this historic race, Obama dominated the digital elections.

There are, at last count, more than 100 million blogs in cyberspace. More than 100,000 new ones are being added as I write this. So at first glance starting a blog might seem like planting a tree in the middle of a very deep forest, where no one will find it. But it isn’t. The difference lies in what we call a “feed,” or a social network that surrounds the person’s blog. While early web pages just sat there waiting for people to visit them, feeds turn blogs into living organisms. Most blogs and social networking sites can be set up so that whenever a blogger adds or changes something, it sends an update to everyone who has signed on to it.

What about the Philippines’ political setting?

“Our local candidates are starting to learn,” Pangan said. The first thing they want is to not to be “marketed” in the traditional sense. Social networks are looking for things that interest, entertain and engage them, not just self-brand political advertising. This means that the world has moved from a mass market to a collection of micromarkets, which can be scaled up or down to any level. In this columnist’s view, this in turn intensifies the viral potential of specific groups and takes on a new meaning.

“Candidates must believe in new media and that it delivers sales,” Pangan said. The metrics for following effective online marketing have evolved considerably these days, growing from measuring clicks to looking at broader measures of [brand] interaction. Far be it from me to bash things like click-through rates, blog hits, or podcast subscribers—they are important measures of one kind of influence. But in my mind there is little difference between, say, what percentage of people click an online banner ad and how many people watch a television ad. You are still measuring what percentage of eyeballs responds to a promotional message.

“There are 18.2 potential voters online, 65 percent of 28 million Filipinos are potential voters. Candidates must start thinking about building communities who seek them out. Social networks humanize the candidates. It should be embedded in all their campaign efforts. But they must hire a strong and competent backbone, have a good creative director and great programmer. Another tip is to think young or work with a lot of young people,” Pangan stressed.

“Your target audience is online,” Aileen Apolo, Philippine country consultant of Google, pointed out. While search is the statement of consumer intent or interest, it’s the digital equivalent of “hand raising” to show when the consumer is interested in something. Once that intent is known, by virtue of a person’s search, relevant marketing material can be instantly matched to that individual.

“According to UK Media Consumption [where users are spending time], 21 percent surf the Internet, 42 percent watch TV, 25 percent listen to radio and 12 percent read newspapers and magazines. There are 192 million online searches in the US. Others e-mail and chat,” Apolo explained. This number is set to grow even further.

There are a number of reasons for this. First, Apolo noted, there is simply more and more digital content that people want to search through to find what they want. Second, search is rapidly extending to all types of digital material, including photographs and video. Third, search is moving beyond the desktop to localized search conducted on mobile phones. The in-market use of search will make it even more of a workhorse in everyday life.

“Consumers are becoming multitaskers. Researchers estimate that 25 to 30 percent of total media is spent on multitasking: 33 percent read newspapers, 38 percent read magazines while 60 percent have laptops in their living rooms,” she said.

People now talk in terms of “friending” your brand in the same way that people “friend” each other on social networking sites. Much of this is coming to pass already; for example, embedded advertising is a key part of the revenue model for sites such as Facebook, and the targeted ads that come when you do a Google search reflects a marketing approach that partners with what people are looking for. “It’s not just about getting consumers to a website, you have to integrate media for a full effect [TV and other media online search],” Apolo added.

Today, as consumers turn into communities, they have new sets of needs. The lowest level of these needs is to have a voice, the next level is to co-create with you, and perhaps the highest level is to find each other. Just like [those] presidential wannabes, we cannot fix the image that some people thought of otherwise by just creating a press release or making a media buy. It will take a dialogue and understanding through social networks that will help them accomplish more of their brand images, and connect emotionally with individuals as they work closely with highly engaged, active communities.

“I’m asking you to believe,” so goes Obama’s political campaign, go spend an evening on MySpace and Facebook profiles and see how many friends people have—or visit YouTube and see how many people are viewing, commenting on and spreading viral videos. More important, look at how your own relationship to brands has changed over the past decade. We are watching a real revolution in the way people think and socialize. These and many other principles are becoming the new currency of marketing.