A 'rewarding' catalogue – for customers and employees

Every so often, Glue receives a catalogue from the premiums and incentives organization 4imprint. What is commendable about this selling tool is that they not only have very clear photos and pricing info about their wares, they also subtly sell their own corporate culture.

They do this by frequently having their own employees holding or wearing the merchandise, and by naming the employees (first name only) along with their years of employment with the company.

What a great way to foster employee pride and drive engagement while helping customers see the product in a realistic setting. Bravo!

When book shopping time is short...

Despite the best efforts of customer service rep. Steve at the Chapters / Indigo store at Manulife Centre, the two copies of The Challenger Sale: Taking Control Of The Customer Conversation by Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon that their website showed as in-stock were both on customer holds and thus unavailable.

At this point, the ever-trusty AbeBooks.com digitally rides to the rescue!

Not only was I able to order the book noted above, but also Achieve Sales Excellence: The 7 Customer Rules for Becoming the New Sales Professional by Howard Stevens and Theodore Kinni.

Expected delivery time: should be less than 8 days for both books!

Filling in some holes...

Just spent some time walking down memory lane while adding a few more items to my LinkedIn profile.

One was the one (and only award) for my illustrious high-school acting career at Adam Scott (as a rural French Canadian in love with the wonderful Marie... "Marie, could you not love me a little bit?").

With my friend (but academic rival) Paul Harris in full makeup in one of the one-act plays at Adam Scott (likely Hands Across the Sea by Noel Coward)

The other was my essay about an amazing Art Deco gem (the 1937 Toronto Stock Exchange) in the commemorative book about the opening of the Design Exchange in Toronto.

Where did those wordless years go?

If you're wondering why there's a three year gap in my blog posts, it's because I've been posting on Facebook and Twitter, but not here.

Thanks to the wise counsel of www.SofieAndreou.com, I've revised my online strategy; this is the place to come for my general observations, funny items, etc.

(I'm working on upgrading my Glue and Art Deco online presence as well... Stay tuned!)

The collapsing distinction between promotion and information

Yesterday, on my favourite radio interview program (CBC Radio's show Q), host Jian Ghomeshi  intreviewed Hayley Phelan, Fashion News Editor at Fashionista.com about her online story, 'Can You Trust the Editorial Integrity of Personal Style Blogs? A Closer Look at How Bloggers Make Money.'

The segment got me thinking about the larger issues of ‘independent thought’ and the blurring of ‘promotion’ and ‘information’ in contemporary culture.

Witness the growing popularity of advertorials in reputable newspapers and magazines, in which corporations or special interest groups pay to have ‘editorially formatted copy’ written about them to surround their advertisements, all bearing such headings as ‘sponsored supplement’ or ‘special information feature.’

Count the number of well-known brands that we are exposed to in a typical Hollywood movie or TV show. Product placement is big business.

The burgeoning field of branded content, accelerated by social media, involves brands creating their own editorial or entertainment-style programming that, to a greater or lesser extent, allows them to focus attention on their own products without the clutter of competing brands.

The prevalence of celebrity endorsements for products ranging from fragrances to fast food suggests that many consumers crave reassurance or status when making purchasing decisions.

For me, the most practical way to cope these days is to carefully choose brands that you identify with and trust, whether it’s a newspaper (in my case, The Globe and Mail), a clothing retailer (L.L. Bean) or a line of haircare products (whatever my stylist at Fiorio on Bayview recommends). 

Just don’t expect that your choices will yield “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

10 ways to strengthen employee engagement

I've just completed a new whitepaper that shares my thoughts on how organizations of all kinds can take action to enhance their workplace environment and boost employee engagement. (You can download the document by visiting my LinkedIn page at Tim Morawetz.)

The 10 ways presented in the whitepaper are:

Give   inspiration
          instruction
          information
          informality
          interaction
          influence
          initiative
          input
          incentive
          intensity

I hope you'll take the time to download it and read it... I welcome your comments!

How would your employees handle a 'pop-up show'?

An organization's internal culture is one of its most important and precious assets (or liabilities, as the case may be.) 

Because culture is so intangible, it can be hard to assess – and harder still to first establish or to change. But there's little doubt that culture has an enormous influence on how successfully employees collaborate with one another and how effectively they interact with customers.

Consider the role of corporate culture in the situation recently cited by Globe and Mail columnist John Warrillow in his article about the unexpected appearance of a 'pop-up' piano performance in a retail environment. Would your staff feel right thanking the pianist with the gift card, or would they feel it necessary to quash the fun? 

Virgin's Richard Branson, in a Canadian Business column on customer service excellence, advocates 'first to know, first to handle'; empowering employees who first encounter a problem to make every effort to solve it on the spot.

In these days of greater demand for top talent, be sure to unleash the best instincts of your people by fostering and reinforcing a positive organizational culture.

  

How employees can help put the 'corner store' feeling back in retailing

In the current issue of the American Marketing Association's Marketing News magazine, columnist Don E. Schultz suggests that today's shoppers long for the intimacy and caring service once provided at their local butcher, baker or dairy deliveryman.

He contends that retailers wishing to survive in today's hyper-competitive environment must possess three attributes:

• Fast: Like Spanish clothing retailer Zara, merchants need to respond quickly to changing consumer tastes.

• Friendly: Like the Apple store where employees are taught not to sell, retailers need friendly people, friendly products, friendly atmosphere and friendly shopping.

• Focused: Here, Schultz cites online retailer Zappos as having narrowed its mission to one thing, namely making customer service their true competitive differentiator.

I believe that retail employees – as well as their managers – play a key role in delivering on these priorities:

• Fast: Employees can listen carefully to customer comments and requests on the floor of the store; pay attention to market trends on their own as consumers; then feed their insights back to the company to accelerate innovation. (For this to be successful, the company needs an easy system for collecting such feedback, and needs to build receptiveness for such employee engagement into its culture.)

• Friendly: Employees are chiefly responsible for providing customers with helpful and friendly service. Staff need to understand the products they sell, and know the store's policies on returns, exchanges and the like. (This means that management should provide adequate employee training about products and service delivery, and should consider some form of recognition program to motivate employees to deliver the best customer experience.)

• Focused: Identifying the company's focus – then communicating it to employees in a manner that they can act upon it – is a prime responsibility of management.

AMA members may read the full article by clicking here.

Why not segment restaurant customers by time?

 A while ago, I was in Trudeau International Airport in Montreal awaiting a flight home to Toronto. I had plenty of time before take-off, so I wasn't in a big hurry to get some dinner before boarding the plane. I could relax and have a relatively leisurely meal.

More recently, when returning from a business event in Victoria, my time was tighter. I asked the host of the White Spot Restaurant in the airport if I could have lunch in under a half-hour. "Of course," she said cheerfully. I wolfed-down a hamburger and salad, and got through Customs in good time.

These contrasting experiences got me thinking about how restaurants (especially those in airports) could respond to these diverse dining scenarios. Why not have two or more designated sections of the restaurant, along with differentiated menus, to effectively serve these customers with differing time parameters?

This approach would enhance the dining experience for those travellers in a hurry, since they'd have fewer but speedier menu options, and they wouldn't impatiently wonder why a server at another table was seemingly not racing to serve them.

As well, it would simplify life for restaurant servers by eliminating the need to repeatedly explain how long various menu options take to serve, and by allowing them to spend a bit more time providing friendlier and more relaxed service to those guests who aren't itching to pay and dash off to their gate.

A sad day for comedy on Canadian TV

I was saddened to hear of the passing of Roger Abbott, a mainstay in Air Farce on CBC Radio and later on CBC TV. I once went to a taping at the old studio in Cabbagetown... His imitations of Jean Chretien and Peter Mansbridge were spot-on.

Read an appreciation and profile here... Globe & Mail article

Achieving prosperity through design (and how marketing helps)

There's plenty of talk these days about the need for Canadian business to increase its productivity in order to thrive in the ruthlessly competitive 21st century. Put more bluntly, it seems that companies must either innovate or face extinction.

Innovation can be defined as the act of applying new or different knowledge and skills in order to solve problems. And based on my early studies in architecture school, the practice of innovation is synonymous with the discipline of design.

Regrettably, many people equate design with 'styling' – the surface appearance or visual appeal of an object. But as I alluded to in an earlier blog, great design involves much more than merely visual delight.

I believe that great design involves the development of creative solutions that effectively address all the relevant needs of all the relevant constituents connected with the problem at hand. As trained problem-solvers, designers are adept at considering and balancing these often-competing needs and perspectives.

For instance, suppose a designer is developing a new smartphone. The relevant constituents  would begin with the phone's end-user(s), then its purchaser, then the retailer who sold the phone, the wholesaler who shipped and warehoused the phone, the manufacturer who built the phone, and potentially even the communities where the raw materials used to create the phone were extracted. All have a stake in the overall quality of the design solution.

More obviously, our phone designer would need to consider all the relevant needs of these diverse stakeholders. Again using our smartphone example, this involves not only how good the phone looks (its aesthetic or 'cultural' appeal) and how well it works (its functionality), but also how cost-efficiently the phone was manufactured and packaged, and how big an environmental footprint it leaves (the choice and quantity of materials used in its manufacturing, its energy consumption during operation, and the ease of its disposal at the end of its working life).

Such a broad perspective of considerations can – and should – be applied to the development of intangible services as well as the creation of tangible goods.

So where does marketing fit into all of this? As 'experts on the consumer,' marketers have the task of identifying – ideally anticipating – the needs or wants of the consumer, then translating these into a clear problem statement that designers can easily work with. Then, once the product or service has been completed, marketers lead the charge in launching and promoting it in the marketplace, helping drive consumer engagement and ultimately sales on behalf of  'the client.'


If Canada is serious about boosting our national productivity and fostering innovation, then I believe design need a stronger role in the equation. Getting corporations (and other organizations, for that matter) to recognize and appreciate the vital contribution that talented designers can make to their success is one of today's most pressing challenges.

Water-glasses with balls... a 'Real Sports' highlight!

This evening, my son and I treated ourselves to watching the Toronto Maple Leafs vs. Buffalo Sabres pre-season hockey game on a flatscreen TV from the comfort of a booth at the wonderful new Real Sports Bar and Grill, located adjacent to the Air Canada Centre – a sensitively renovated Art Deco building, by the way!

As per my family's lunchtime visit a few weeks ago, the food was excellent, the staff friendly, the service attentive and the atmosphere lively due to the presence of many groups of sports fans. These are the necessities for success in their competitive business.

But Real Sports recognizes the need for extra little surprises that help create the truly memorable customer experience.

The interior design features eerily lit decorative chandeliers made from hundreds of fanned-out hockey-stick blades. Above one of the bars is a ceiling patterned on a giant basketball net, with tabletops featuring real parquet flooring from the ACC. And your side-order of French Fries comes in a little metal basket that's a miniature copy of a real french-fryer basket!

But what was the highlight for me was discovering that the bottoms of the water-glasses contained small recesses in the form of sports balls – baseballs, golf-balls, footballs and basketballs.

Side view of 'golf-ball' water-glass held up in front of our booth's TV screen showing Leafs game.

 In my view, demonstrating such care for even the subtlest aspects of the customer experience is a sure-fire way to win the hearts of even the most demanding fans!

Duh, it's about the customer!

Kudos to Alexa Samuels for laying bare the dangers of not being customer-centric when creating your communications – Is your marketing making the customer think too much?

Begin with the mindset of: Where's my customer's head at regarding my product? and you will, at minimum, prevent customers from bypassing your message since they'll recognize themselves in your piece. At best, you will have gained new brand advocates since you've solved a problem for them and demonstrated respect for their intelligence and time.

On the other hand, if you launch your communications thinking: Hey everyone out there, lemme tell you all my detailed news!, you will likely confuse people who aren't as close to things as you, or worse, create a lasting negative impression of your brand.

Remember the old saw that it takes 100 contacts to create a good impression, but just one to break it!

A truly smart brand...

When shopping in-person at Indigo yesterday, I bought the latest in my series of (insert topic here) For Dummies books.

This one is iPad For Dummies, purchased to help me get the most out of my new 'essential business tool / really cool toy' – it really depends on who in my family you ask!

In the early days of Glue, I bought several of the books to help me learn about and run the business: Consulting for Dummies, Accounting for Dummies and Managing Business Change for Dummies. Since then, I've picked up several others – iPod & iTunes for Dummies and iMovie '09 & iDVD '09 for Dummies – to help me exploit specific new technological tools.

What really impresses me about 'For Dummies' books are their consistency:

• Packaging – the books are easy to spot on the store's shelf (helps me buy 'em), and each one is to distinguish from another on my bookshelf (helps me use 'em).
• Organization – each book follows a standard format (e.g., Contents at a Glance, Table of Contents, 'The Part of Tens', road-sign icons, detailed index), so I know what to expect and where to find stuff.
• Tonality – all the Dummies books I own have the same folksy language that's occasionally laced with gentle puns, but always very clear in delivering its message, making me feel comfortable when learning.

In writing this post, I've just discovered that there's a FREE For Dummies online reference library of articles and instructional videos on a vast number of topics, ranging from the six-step 'How to Unclog a Drain with a Plunger' (illustrated with still photos!), to 'How to Create Smart CD Playlists in iTunes' that includes helpful screen shots. Heck, you don't even have to buy this company's stuff to learn things!

Overall, I believe For Dummies books exemplify effective branding: they make a clear and relevant promise ('A Reference for the Rest of Us', now apparently updated to 'Making Everything Easier') and then repeatedly deliver on that promise.

Now that's smart business!

My new iPad: The thrill, the disappointment and a delightful surprise

My first Apple computer!

As a nearly 30-year user of Apple technology (remember the Apple II Plus anyone?), the time finally arrived when I was able to purchase an iPad. (Being the prudent person I am, I also bought an ICON screen protector, and after being nearly overwhelmed by choice at my Best Buy store, a padded black nylon Brenthaven carrying case.)

Naturally, there was enormous excitement when I unpacked the silent, shining black-and-chrome iPad.

The designer side of me relishes the simplicity of the all-white Apple box with its vacuum-formed insert and clear cellophane wrappers (that even have micro-sized dots on the flaps to tell you where to pull to remove).

Cardboard stiffener = cupholder tray!

But the eco-consumer side of me – disappointed by the lack of recycle-ability of much of the iPad packaging – was thrilled that the cardboard stiffener inside the Brenthaven case (which itself was packed inside a simple, recycled paper sleeve) was designed to be reused as a cup-holder tray! Its instructions read: "In our efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle, please punch out cup holders and recycle the rest. Thanks. Brenthaven."

So while I've (predictably) extended my engagement and passion for the Apple brand, I have become an instant convert to the eco-friendly Brenthaven brand and its Zero Impact commitment to the environment.

Do you think the time will come when Apple's commitment to user experience will catch up with today's ground-swell of eco-consciousness, and will lead the company to evolve its distinctive packaging into something less polished and sleek?

How to judge the quality of your constituent communications

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Back in the late 1970s, when I was studying architecture at Carleton University in Ottawa, I was introduced to the phrase: "Well building hath three conditions: firmness, commodity, and delight," which was co-authored by English author and diplomat Sir Henry Wotton (1568 – 1639), in his work The Elements of Architecture (1624; a free translation of Vitruvius' de Architectura).

In essence, the phrase "commodity, firmness and delight" means that an excellent work of architecture is functional (the size and arrangement of its spaces meet the practical needs of its users); well built (it uses materials and technology wisely and efficiently); and pleasing to the eye (it is beautiful or meets the intangible needs of its users).

Since my career has transitioned away from architecture, I've become convinced that  all marketing-communications 'artefacts' (whether in print, digital or live media) can also be judged by these same three, time-tested criteria.

In other words, I suggest we should ask ourselves the following questions when assessing 'creative' work:

1. Does it accomplish its business objectives – whether that means simply informing, persuading or striving to change behaviour?
2. Is it crafted intelligently – completed in a reasonable time, without excessive expenditure, and in a suitably durable yet environmentally friendly manner?
3. Does it connect with people and touch their hearts – or at least speak to them as human beings rather than as 'automatons' programmed only to consume?

I just discovered that there's a toolkit called the Design Quality Indicator, first developed in the UK, devoted to assessing the quality of buildings according to Wotton's big-three. The DQI toolkit is solely distributed in North America by DQI USA, LLC, which even has a YouTube commercial promoting the toolkit!

Perhaps it's time to approach internal stakeholder communications with this same broad yet disciplined perspective? If so, let's talk...

'Engaged' employees aren't enough

Until yesterday, I thought that having 'engaged' employees was sufficient as the first step in making customers – and 'shareholders' – happy (i.e., enduring organizational success).

But then I began reading Hundred Percenters: Challenge your employees to give it their all, and they'll give you even more, by Mark Murphy.

In the book, he argues that the real goal of leaders is not simply to create a workplace where employees are happy or satisfied (i.e., engaged), but rather to make work "fulfilling and enriching and ultimately to position people to achieve great results."

Murphy, who is chairman and CEO of consulting company Leadership IQ, says the two differentiating factors that result in 100% Leadership are 'connection' and 'challenge.' Connection is the strength of the emotional connection that leaders build with their employees, while challenge is how far leaders push their people to achieve greatness.

If you construct a matrix of this factors, you get Avoider leaders (low emotional connection, low challenge); Intimidators  (low connection, high challenge); Appeasers (high connection, low challenge); and 100% leaders (high connection, high challenge).

He suggests that Appeasers are satisfied with employee engagement, but that 100% leaders "...push us hard. But when they do, they teach us something about ourselves. They help us achieve extraordinary things. And they give us real opportunities for deep and lasting fulfillment." 

To me, most employees indeed want to work in an organization where they can make a tangible contribution, and where they can feel excited and proud about this contribution.

So, I'm going to think about 'energized employees' instead of simply 'engaged employees' as the real objective, with 'being energized' meaning being personally connected to the challenge of achieving great things on the job.

Farewell 'target audiences,' hello 'constituents'

For decades, the conventional approach in planning marketing communications was to define your 'target audiences' – the groups at whom your messages were aimed.

Marcom was essentially one-way: I the marketer have an ad that I want you the consumer to see / read / hear so I can persuade you to buy my product or service. It all made sense.

But in today's real-time, non-stop, fully interactive (online and offline) environment, I believe the notion of a 'target audience' has become outdated. With your customers or clients (I prefer to use those terms instead of consumers; here's why) now being able to find out a great deal about your product or service on their own, being able to comment on your product through user reviews or blogs, and even able to customize their own version of your offering in some cases, the relationship is less about persuasion (one-way) and now more about collaboration (two-way; deliving mutual value and achieving mutual benefit). 

Hence, I'm going to use a new term – constituents – to describe the various players (both inside and outside the organization) involved in 'transactions' around products and services, as well as programs and ideas.

The Oxford Canadian Dictionary includes the following elements in its definition:

con-stitu-ent 

adjective – composing or helping to make up a whole.

noun – 1 a member of a constituency (a body of voters in a specified area who elect a representative member to a legislative body; the area represented in this way; a body of customers, supporters, etc.). 2 a component part.

As you can see, implicit in this definition are notions of collaboration, participation and having a choice or voice, which strike me as being very appropriate for today's marketplace.

What do you think?

Why traditional advertising struggles with social media

Always wise columnist Don E. Schultz, writing in Marketing News's July 30, 2010 issue, p. 11 (getting this biweekly mag free is another reason to join AMA Toronto!), notes that traditional advertising is about persuasion – getting consumers "to accept the value of our products and to agree with our arguments."

He contrasts this with the Chinese view of marketing communications – "as a tool for negotiation: to create situations to be considered, thought about, bargained for and haggled over... One might call it reciprocity, which, at the end, provides equal value to the buyer and the seller."

He notes that we in North America "increasingly live in a negotiated marketplace, one in which negotiated media forms such as social media, blogs, the Internet and interactivity are increasingly important... The persuasion approach doesn't fit [here] and it's unlikely it ever will... Negotiated media brings people together, not just for purposes of selling something to someone, but to create sharing, conversations and relationships."

To me, the article neatly explains why advertising is struggling today, and how the shifting balance of power between marketer and consumer will create a fairer exchange of value for all. Ideally, this trend will enable marketers to feel prouder of our profession and of our key contribution to society!

Leadership insights for not-for-profit executive directors

Ideas for maximizing the contribution of your board of directors

I had the pleasure of serving as ‘scribe’ for a recent kitchen-table dialogue workshop, entitled ‘The NFP Executive Director: Their Leadership and the Role of the Board,’ that was organized and moderated by Alan Kay of The Glasgow Group. The July 6 session was attended by 10 people, most of whom are seasoned not-for-profit (NFP) executive directors (EDs).

The following are some of the key insights and observations for EDs arising from the workshop:

• Primary board role is strategic – The board’s fundamental role is to help guide the strategic direction of the NFP. This is frequently initiated by a strategic planning session. “A key ED challenge is avoiding ‘pernicious micro-control’ on the part of the board.” “The board should be ‘nose in, fingers out’ regarding the work of the ED and staff.”
• Board member qualifications – Simply possessing an understanding of, or passion for, the cause is no longer sufficient. Board members today should bring solid skills in such areas as finance, marketing, communications, governance to be considered. Willingness to fundraise on behalf of the organization (cash or in-kind) should be expected.
• Ensure role clarity – One ED described his stakeholders as a triangle, involving his association’s staff, its membership, and its board. Having clearly defined roles enables these three groups to work together. Another said, “My organization can flourish if I’ve been able to forge a relationship with my board chair that’s grounded in trust and discipline.” Another ED prepared a formal governance manual documenting relevant roles, responsibilities and processes.
• Handling board meetings – Recognizing that the ED doesn’t lead or control board meetings, you should still try to be the ‘air traffic controller’ in plotting with the board chair each meeting’s agenda to avoid nasty surprises. Maybe even write the chair’s speaking notes.
• Relationship with board chair – Beware of having too strong a relationship with the board chair, as it can undermine the relationship or commitment of other board members.
• Board training – Initial training only is inadequate. Ongoing education about the board’s role and governance process is essential for boards to keep on delivering value to the NFP. If you’re having difficulty selling this idea, find another NFP that’s doing it and get them to sell its value to your board leaders.
• Staff / board interaction – Consider bringing key staff members to early board meetings to introduce them and help foster trust, role ownership and engagement. But be careful to avoid allowing board members to make direct requests of staff without going through you.
• Permanent board committees – They may not always be necessary; consider striking ad hoc committees driven by specific requirements, which can help reduce the size of your board and lead to faster and better decision-making.
• Be seen in the field – As an ED, you have a ceremonial role to visibly demonstrate leadership and support for the cause by attending local events and activities. Remember to thanks volunteers and staff for their commitment. “People will see what you’re doing more than hear what you say.”
• Who’s the best leader – Question whether the NFP’s founder is still the right person to lead the organization today. Is their passion for the cause impeding current effectiveness now that the NFP has grown and matured? If it is, consider succession planning to get the most appropriate leadership in place.
• Consider alliances or beyond – As the need for NFPs to ‘do more with less’ intensifies, seek out other NFPs with complementary missions with whom you can share resources. If your mandates substantially duplicate one another, even contemplate one NFP acquiring the other to create a stronger organization that’s better able to achieve the mission. Try to look beyond the natural imperative of protecting turf in favour of the greater good. 

Suggested reading:
Alan Kay’s blog: 8 ways to enhance your Executive Director leadership skills using Solutions Focus;
The 13 commandments of better leadership in NFP organizations; 8 ways to merge your not-for-profit organization and become stronger
Book: The Truth About What Nonprofit Boards Want: The Nine Little Things That Matter Most, by June J. Bradham