The president of a local ad agency called  ZLR ignition,  asked the question in his blog  How many ways do you get information? He examined the  sources of information a  typical business executive might be exposed too.  The premise was a twist on the old notion of how we are bombarded by thousands of messages every day.  Mr. Laurent suggests that succeeding with mass media audiences was no longer the challenge. Instead managing an audience’s fingerprint on all of the channels available was the bigger challenge.

He’s right of course,  as marketers  back in-the-day, we worried about cutting through the clutter to build top of the mind awareness with a target audiences by using various mass media outlets to efficiently deliver message impressions.

While we still worry about top- of- the mind awareness, we are no longer slaves to the audiences mass media delivers as conduits for our information. We now worry about how many different channels or sources our audience uses to receive information.

I thought it was an interesting exercise to examine a snap shot of how our family and friends receive information and interact with each other to illustrate just how much audience patterns have changed and provide some insight into what exists for the audiences to whom we are trying to reach.

A typical day in our house:

Morning Routine:
1. Read the morning newspaper’s web site over on lap top with coffee while listening to and occasionally watching early morning local news on television in the background.
2. Wife watches early morning local news on television and will read newspaper’s web site when she get to the office a few minutes early.
3. College age son: checks phone for texts that came in overnight, reads headlines on-line checks from various news aggregator’s, social networks – Facebook and email.
4. High school age sons – listens to weather on television, checks phone for messages, and computer for email.

Driving to work and school
1. Local radio – oldies, classic rock, NPR, local spots talk for us while other friends depend on satellite radio choices and mp3 players for those under 25.
2. Friends are checking email on phone while driving, also, Twitter and weather.
3. Passengers – texting while in transit

Work / School Routine:
1.  Arrive at work, check email. Like Mr. Laurent, I too scan Google alerts about clients, industries, social network marketing. RSS feeds from favorite bloggers I read. Visit sites that the alerts have flagged. Check news aggregator sites like Bloomberg.com, ESPN, CNN, Fox.  I also listen to CNN Radio on the web,  Imus in the Morning or NPR morning edition.
2. Check Facebook, LinkedIn pages, and anyother  message boards I like to follow.
3. Scan iGoogle pages for RSS feed updates through out the day.
4. Access Google Analytics to check mine and client web metrics.
5. Check regular mail and scan trade publications for other industry news.
6. Check email, Twitter and Facebook from phone during meetings throughout day.

Evening at home routine:
1. Watch local television news
2. Read books and watch a few good television shows, movies, and sports
3. Under 25 crowd – text messages, and cruises social networking sites while adding music and videos to MP3 players and phones

In the morning we will attempt to follow twenty five or more channels of information again. If the marketers are lucky our choices will remain predictable. But more than likely we will in our efforts to stay informed stumble upon other interests and information…. and our fingerprints will spread.

Building trust with clients is the key to long relationships and maintaining your business.  Trust is a concept we often take for granted. We’re taught from an early age not to trust everyone we meet or believe everything we read. Trust is earned, much like having a job you need to work hard to earn someone’s trust. A simple premise to understand since we all want to be thought of as trustworthy. Individuals and business alike all want to be trusted.

In their book The Trusted Advisor authors David H. Maister, Charles H. Green and Robert M Galford discuss the value of trust in building business relationships. In fact their trust formula illustrates one of the great challenges facing businesses and individuals who want promote themselves or their products in a positive manner.

The trust formula in mathematical terms is T= (C+R+I)/S

Where

T=Trust

C= Creditability – Do you have the credentials to help your client

R= Reliability- Can you demonstrate how reliable you or your product is

I= Intimacy- Do your clients feel comfortable enough to share personal or intimate information about their business

S= Self-orientation – What degree of self absorption are you with total self absorption viewed as the extreme.

In person to person selling everything you do to build up trust is diminished (divided by) self orientation. Take a quiz on Greene’s website to test your trustworthiness

Businesses have personalities too that are projected through printed and electronic mediums. If we apply the same trustworthy formula to advertising and other forms of promotion we can improve the trust factor using new social marketing tools and the internet where users can respond and interact.

We have all been to web sites or have seen banner ads loaded with claims of how great product X is with little mention of how the product will make your situation better. And we have all fallen for headlines that on the surface appear to be the perfect solution.

The idea of positioning a business as trusted advisor solely with their advertising and web based marketing efforts is an interesting challenge. Since most business project the personality and style of the owner or the corporate culture that has formed over time it’s easy to picture how two dimensional materials can evolve into a self-promoting abyss with no intimacy or benefit for the customer’s immediate problem.

Most customers can spot self oriented and self promoting businesses driven solely by profit a mile away. So the challenge is how can you put the client’s interests first and balance the trust equation.

One approach is to focus on customers’ applications or situations where your product or service will be used. The focus of the copy and tone of the message is all directed to solving a problem the customer can identify with. In the old days we created application stories for the newsletters or for the sales staff to use. Today we have web based databases the customer or sales staff can access chocked full of anecdotes and other information about different applications or case studies.

We’re taught when writing copy for a brochure, catalog or web site that every feature has a benefit. One of the tactics most sellers use instinctively when selling face to face is to relate the benefit directly to the customer. This is a little more difficult through a screen two feet from the customer’s nose.

New social marketing tools including Facebook, Twitter Linkedin and various blogging outlets are helping us be more intimate on a personal level by adding a third dimension to a traditional two dimensional marketing presence and allowing business to become more intimate with their customers and thus balance the trust equation to become trusted advisors.

Beware of doing business with USB Depot.com, PromoPeople.com or their parent company Opie Marketing Group.

This collection of web sites and interrelated companies are owned by Jamie Opalchuk, a Canadian businessman who started Opie Marketing Group Inc. at his kitchen table a few years ago according to press releases available on their web site. Operations are based in Oakville Ontario, Canada a suburb of Toronto. The company claims to own and operate a network of over 75 niche-oriented web-based properties in select markets including consumer goods, financial services, and technology.

Before I describe my misadventures allow me be very clear. I don’t believe representatives of USB Depot.com, PromoPeople.com or their parent company Opie Marketing Group have done anything illegal by Canadian or US standards. However I did find these folks to be arrogant, ignorant and irresponsible.

The short version of a protracted story is….

I initiated a transaction to purchase 300 USB executive style pens with laser pointers. The pens were going to cost about $10 each with laser engraved logos and a 1GB USB drive  pre- loaded with the client’s presentation.

The dispute with the folks at USB-Depot.com and PromoPeople.com revolved around faulty merchandise and bad customer service.

After requesting and paying for samples to review the quality and functionality of the pens I placed an order.

The problems started with the original quote and order not being fulfilled due to a Chinese holiday interfering with the production schedule. Things got worse and went down hill from there. In one transaction I witnessed first hand just about every classic bad customer relations move there is including: bait and switch practices, missing parts, defective components, slow response from management, reluctance to address issue. and very slow to issue a refund.

The bottom line is, it took two months, numerous phone calls, emails and much extra effort on my part as the customer to complete a simple transaction. I can only imagine If I had not put forth the effort to hold these folks accountable, my client and I would have been out roughly $1,000.

If you choose to buy goods from USB-Depot.com or their parent comapny  PromoPeople.com do so with caution. The old sayings say it best  – All is not what it appears.   Buyer Beware, Shop Local, If it sounds to good to be true it probably isn’t.

My friend Julie who is a self employed graphic artist found the article below on the Huffington Post website concerning freelancers or self employed dilemma of how to meet health insurance needs.

Living in Iowa with easy access to what seems like an unending stream of political candidates tromping through our state we hear a lot of stumping about universal health care for the under-insured or working poor. But very little about the challenges facing the self employed.

Regardless of your political views I think you’ll agree Mr. Brook makes some valid points in his column.  Many who work for themselves have the option of obtaining health insurance through their spouses employer. Unfortunately my friends Julie and her husband Brent, a self employed professional photographer, don’t have that option.

I share Julie and Brent’s frustration  of  obtaining “decent” insurance coverage for my family and myself with an “affordable deductable”. It is a daunting task not to be taken lightly.

Julie said it best in her email “Here’s hoping that some day, taking the self-employment plunge doesn’t mean you can’t have decent and affordable health care.”

Freelancers Need Universal Health Care, Too

Posted November 26, 2007 | 08:00 AM (EST)

Words By Daniel Brook
Illustrations By Ted McGrath
As heartening as it is to see universal health care back on the national agenda, it’s puzzling that when the presidential candidates talk about their health-care proposals, they only talk about poor kids and Wal-Mart workers. This doesn’t square with my experience of the health-care crisis. I know plenty of people who are sweating health-care coverage. None of them are poor kids. And they don’t work at Wal-Mart.

The people I know who are worried sick about coverage work for themselves, many in creative fields. Most of these freelancers and entrepreneurs are in the cross hairs of our health-care crisis–and you wouldn’t know it from watching the presidential campaign.

But you would know it if you bothered to look at the statistics. While the French just held an election in which one of the central issues was their anemic rate of self-employment, America acts as if all is well when in fact we’re one of the only developed countries with a rate of self-employment even lower than France’s. While surveys show that Americans are nearly twice as entrepreneurial as Europeans, we’re only half as likely to actually become self-employed.

What is holding Americans back? In two words: health care. If you’re lucky enough to be healthy, you can purchase insurance on the private market. But even then, the costs are rising out of control. As a freelance writer, I buy my own insurance. My premium went up 25 percent this year and I didn’t even get the pleasure of taking up smoking or skydiving.

There are groups for the self-employed that offer coverage, but often those who need it most can’t get it. A self-employed friend of mine gets his insurance through the local chamber of commerce. Its website explains that its insurance plan is explicitly “designed for young healthy individuals.” Even laudable attempts to get mass coverage for the self-employed are often prohibitively expensive. The least expensive coverage offered by the New York-based Freelancers Union costs more than $1,000 a year for individuals and $4,000 for families–and it comes with a $10,000 deductible. There’s only so much even well-meaning organizations can do when our government is out to lunch.

In other developed countries, where self-employment rates tend to be higher, taking the leap to working for yourself doesn’t affect your health care coverage or your family’s. In publicly funded health care systems, entrepreneurs pay less into the system during the few lean years that often accompany starting a business. Once you get off the ground, you pay more. That benefits the country’s health and its economy. But here, if you can even get coverage, you pay a flat fee regardless of whether your business had a good year or a bad one. And if you get seriously ill, your business makes less and you owe more. No surprise that half of American bankruptcies are the result of health-care bills.

The problem with our health-care debate isn’t just that it glosses over a huge portion of people who are affected by the crisis, but that by not taking them into account, we may end up achieving universal coverage without unleashing the talented and entrepreneurial. Just requiring everyone to have health insurance won’t solve the problem. That’s what Massachusetts recently did statewide and what some candidates are suggesting on a national level. But under such a system, unless you’re very poor, you still pay more if you have a family; you still have to pay a flat fee unrelated to your business income; and you still have the catch-22 of paying more when you get sick and are earning less. Without a solution funded through progressive taxation, simply requiring everyone to get insurance will still hold back our millions of would-be entre-preneurs. Health-insurance payments will continue to act as an “ambition tax.”

Lately, Americans have come to think of the governmental safety net as being not for the ambitious but for people who can’t take care of themselves–like poor kids. But the metaphor “safety net” comes from the piece of circus equipment that lets the trapeze artist attempt his or her most daring feats.

It’s time the proverbial trapeze artists among us spoke up. And time the candidates listened.

***
Read more and watch original video at GOODMagazine.com.

Brook’s writing has appeared in Harper’s, Dissent, and Metropolis. He is also the author of The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America.

My friend Joe Todd died March 4, 2007. He will be missed but not forgotten as a friend and mentor.

When I was 12  my family moved to a small acreage outside of Crawfordsville Indiana. Our neighborhood butted up against surrounding farms many of which were operated by the sons and daughters of those who first cleared and plowed the bottom ground along Sugar Creek.

The boys in the neighborhood were typically recruited by the neighboring farmers to help bale hay in the summer and occasional other labor intensive chores. My first job for one of the local farmers was shoveling manure on Marvin Swift’s farm for 50 cents an hour after school and on Saturdays. The old timers used to say it was good work if you could get it. I’m not sure I ever fully appreciated that bit of wisdom.

A few months later I was part of a group of boys who helped put up hay in an old red barn for Joe Todd. His farm was across the creek and could be seen from our deck about 2 miles away. I must have done ok because after a few days packing every square inch of that old barn tight with 70 pound bales Joe asked me if I wanted to help with some other work. Heck I was twelve and 50 cents an hour sounded pretty good although in full disclosure we did receive $1 an hour for putting up hay.

I would learn later Joe Todd had a bit of Tom Sawyer in him. He did a better job selling the virtues of stacking hay in hot dusty wasp invested barn than he paid. Nevertheless, I didn’t know any better and didn’t care.

This was all new and exciting since I was the professor’s kid. My father taught at the college in town and was raised in the big city with little exposure to life in the country. He nodded and smiled knowingly as parents do when they are clueless to what their children are telling them as I would explain the importance of getting those bales in tight and straight as you stacked row after row, otherwise that wall of hay might fall in next winter as it settles and then we would have a mess.

I worked for Joe for about seven years starting in seventh grade after school, weekends, and summers. I helped with various feeding chores, bailing hay, shoveling manure, clearing brush, building fence and other endless odd jobs. Eventually over the years I learned how to operate and take care of about every piece of machinery we used from tractors to planters, combines, trucks and more.

I did manage to learn a little about the technical aspects of farming while working for Joe but truthfully most of my experiences involved an investment of labor not intellect. Although one summer when I was sixteen I learned how much thinking was involved in every aspect of farming. That was the summer I heard the phrase “Boy, are you thinking” repeated for what seem like a thousand times after multiple mishaps. At first I thought it was Joe speak for “What are you thinking?” but later I learned in fact he was yelling “Are you thinking?” I heard this phrase so often that summer that I fell compelled to write it with a permanent marker on a scrap of wood and nail it up on the wall in the shop where I believe it still hangs today as a reminder.

Joe Todd was a farmer his entire life, husband for almost 60 years, A loving and devoted father, a school bus driver, mentor and friend. He grew up in a large farming family during the depression. Thrift and independence were hallmarks of his being. The extended families of Joe’s dad Carl and his Uncle Oscar owned, rented and farmed most of an area a couple miles west of Crawfordsville along and around what is known as Black Creek Valley Road. I’m not sure of the total acreage farmed by Joe, his brother Lloyd his Dad Carl, Uncle Oscar his cousin Paul and other members of the extended Todd family but it seemed like a lot and they all helped each other often when needed.

Some of the lessons I learned working with Joe proved to be valuable life long skills, like how to drive through a muddy feedlot without getting stuck. Or how to balance on the edge of a hay wagon with one foot and the other propped on the shoot of the bailer while you threw the last bail over your head to finish off the tie row.

Other lessons were more cerebral. Joe liked to say when mixing up buckets of corn, oats and supplement; They didn’t have to be perfect, just right. You learned to judge just the right amount of grain, supplement and sometimes water mixed together to make it just right. Working smart was always better than working hard  and you make hay when the sun shines were a few of  his mantra’s. You learned to pay attention to your work like the time I was plowing bottom ground and hit a sandy stretch and didn’t pull the plow up quick enough only to find myself buried and was allowed to walk two miles back to the barn to get help and another tractor to pull myself out.

Joe only knew two ways of doing things, his way, and the wrong way. Fortunately for me he was also a mostly patient teacher. He was a genuinely kind man who always had a joke, story, or opinion ready to share. 

When I heard the news Joe had died I was in my office at the small publishing company where I work. I couldn’t shut my door and kept shooing people out while my Mom on the other end of the phone told me about the funeral arrangements. On the way back from lunch I stopped at a Bakers Square Restaurant next door to our office building and bought a peach pie to take back. I gathered our small staff around to explain why I kept shooing them away and told them we’re going to have a piece of pie in honor of Joe.

You see, most days when I worked for him we would drive about 10 miles for lunch at the Wayne Café in Waynetown, Indiana. Joe always rationalized this bit of extravagance of going out to lunch every day by saying one of his farms was in Wayne Township and he was trying to support the local economy. But the real truth was the Wayne Café was known for its pies baked by the pie ladies who started early each morning making pies from scratch. They would use fresh or home canned fruits to make pies daily that, as my friend Dick Shapiro used to say, were-to-die for. So we had piece of warm peach pie from Bakers Square in Des Moines in remembrance of Joe – It wasn’t a Wayne Café pie – but it was pretty good and I told a few stories to my co-workers about Joe Todd who wasn’t perfect, just right, just like the pie.

My friend Tom called the other day to tell me he recently left his position as a national sales manager for a manufacturer of electronic components. He told me he was tired of being caught once again in the middle of top level reorganization and was going off on his own as a consultant.I first met Tom when he worked as a marketing director for a client of mine. He came in with big ideas and big company pedigree all of which quickly became his albatross and too much for a medium sized, small town, and close-knit corporate culture to handle.

It wasn’t Tom’s fault and probably not the company’s fault either; the two parted ways after a couple of years. Tom tried to simplify the sales and marketing message targeted to a diverse customer base. The company sold multiple products to original equipment manufactures and more broadly through industrial supply channels. Both markets presented unique marketing and selling challenges. The biggest challenge was dealing with a category that had become a commodity. Price and availability predominantly drove the sales process. Product quality, service and application support were secondary motivators.

Tom understood he needed to simplify the message and distinguish his company from competitors in order to survive. His ideas for branding and response to vertical market demands were based on solid marketing and advertising principles. He implemented “one look” and “one voice” standards throughout the organization.

 His advertising and marketing materials sported a central message and recognizable look and feel. Magazine ads, product literature, specification manuals, trade show booths even PowerPoint presentations all carried the branded message.  What he could not control was a corporate culture addicted to last month’s sales results and the willingness to abandon fresh and focused ideas for knee jerk approaches driven solely by the loudest customer squealing.

Tom’s story is certainly not unique and is often repeated time and time again across different business sectors. What is interesting is not how many companies like Tom’s exhibit bad marketing behavior and for that matter, how many companies swing to the other side of the pendulum in an effort to do good marketing by analyzing every event and transaction to demonstrate 200% gains with .02% of their customer base.

What is interesting is how much hasn’t changed over the years. Technology has certainly changed and empowered us to be better and informed buyers. Fortunatly the fact, that a clear and focused message will prevail every time hasn’t changed is a good thing.

While growing up in central Indiana in the 60’s and early 70’s I would see a local television commercial for Bob Catterson Buick where ol’ Bob himself would stand center stage with cigarette in hand and extol the benefits of buying a new Buick in a deep whisky and nicotine flavored bass voice… because Nobody but Nobody will sell you a new Buick for less money than Bob Catterson Buick. Nobody!  

You knew immediately upon hearing the distinctly gravely voice and seeing Bob standing on stage voicing the often repeated tag line that you were listening to a Bob Catterson commercial. The slickest part of the commercial was splitting the screen between ol’ Bob and a picture of a new Buick or his logo. It was simple, direct and memorable. By today’s standards it was pretty raw. But it worked, and it worked for years. Bob Catterson got it right; my friend Tom has it right. Good marketing and advertising approaches don’t need to be over done to be good just focused and to the point.

We have all heard business presentations that were amply bejeweled with the latest corporate jargon and buzzwords. One has to wonder if anyone – including the speaker, truly understands the dialect. The other day I became increasingly frustrated while reading materials from a website for a business run by an acquaintance. The description of their business took about 3-4 minutes to read, not because it was that long but because it was laced with jargon and corporate buzzwords to the point that I couldn’t figure out what they were saying. We’ve all experienced reading or listening to presentations from people who throw out words and phrases that sound important or, more accurately, words and phrases designed to make the user feel important. In fact and in full disclosure, I may be guilty of occasionally crafting a phrase that might be mistaken for corporate buzz speak. As hard as I try to avoid clichés like the plague, the words just seem to fly onto the paper out of nowhere.

A while back I watched a public televison documentary about telling stories. The premis suggested we all have stories to tell and share. The host setup a small table in a public areas with a small sign that read “Stories,  50 cents”. People would come up ask what the sign meant and what was the host doing. They would question if they paid or did the host  pay them, to which the host replied , “depends on how good the story is, If its a good story I’ll pay you. If it’s not then I’ll tell you a stroy and you pay me.”

Most people had pretty good stories. Many were predictable tales of daily struggle.  Others rose above the ordinary with ancedotes  worthy of classic country ballad status.

Good advertising and marketing starts with telling a good story. Stories help get people’s attention, connect with their emotions, and more effectively communicate an idea or message.

As marketers working in world of Pocket PC’s, instant messaging and what seems like a zillion ways to communicate and capitalize with over the top personalization, I believe it’s still very important to tell a story to help sell the products and services.

Claude Hopkins, one of advertising’s great pioneers, wrote  in 1923 “Tell Your Full Story.” Mr. Hopkins says, “Whatever claim you use to gain attention, the advertisement should tell a story.” Admittedly, much of what Mr. Hopkins wrote seems terribly out dated, but many of his fundamental guidelines are just as relevant today.

Even Seth Godin, one of today’s most prominent marketing experts, In his book All Marketers are Liars — offers The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-trust World, Godin says successful marketers don’t talk about features or benefits. They tell stories. Stories that readers want to read. And believe.

It’s a different world than the one Hopkins lived in. Faster paced. Shorter attention spans. But in many ways that makes the ability to tell an entertaining and interesting story all the more critical to effective communication. People still appreciate a good story — as long as it is entertaining, personal, and relevant.