As I look out across the ocean, savoring another sunset on Necker Island, I find myself reflecting on a busy and exciting year for myself and the Virgin Group. There were a couple of setbacks: In January, I ruptured a cruciate ligament in a ski accident, which meant that I had to travel to France and South Africa on crutches; in August, a fire here destroyed the great house. But we have ended 2011 in a much happier way, with my daughter Holly’s wedding to Fred Andrews, a shipbroker. This seems a good time to jot down a few of the year’s highlights.

I have written previously that success cannot be measured in wealth, fame or power, but by whether you have made a positive difference for others. The accomplishments of the past year of which I am most proud involve my efforts to raise awareness of and financing for Virgin Unite, along with the new philanthropic ventures we launched.

Because it is our responsibility as entrepreneurs and business leaders to tackle the issues our society faces, from climate change to poverty. To find solutions, we at Virgin have had to consciously cast aside traditional thinking, form unusual partnerships and consider unorthodox answers. Here are some of our most effective actions:

1. Taking the initiative.
The Carbon War Room is a business-focused, global NGO we set up three years ago to find profitable solutions to tackling climate change: Our society does not have to make a choice between economic growth and saving the environment. CWR is a nonprofit fixated by profit.

We made great progress over the past 12 months. Rather than waiting for governments to work out policy solutions, the CWR team launched two game-changing websites: one to promote efficiency in shipping; another to rank and chart the latest in sustainable aviation biofuels.

Earlier this year CWR launched a program to help finance energy-efficient retrofits of buildings, which was kicked off with a

$650 million investment scheme in Florida and California.

2. Reducing, reusng, recycling and planning for the future.

We must also ensure that we conserve our planet’s resources and maintain diversity. This year Virgin Unite struck up a great partnership with WildAid to campaign for the banning of shark-finning, the barbaric and wasteful act of cutting a fin off a living shark.

WildAid estimates that 73 million sharks per year are killed for this dish.

This project is in its early days but we are making great progress, thanks in part to the support of Governor Jerry Brown of California, who signed a bill banning the sale and possession of shark fins.

Already, many top restaurants and hotels no longer serve shark-fin soup.

3. Championing unconventional solutions.

Over the past 50 years, drug usage has gone up and jails have filled.

Though millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent trying to stamp out this illicit trade, the prohibitions have merely fueled organized crime. It is time that we try an alternative approach. This year I was fortunate to be part of the U.N. Global Commission on Drug Policy, which found that the costly war on drugs has backfired, producing little to no results.

A decade ago, Portugal became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs – a brave and successful policy. Jail time was replaced with offers of treatment for addiction: many critics feared this would attract “drug tourists” and exacerbate Portugal’s drug problem.

The results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute in April this year suggest otherwise. It found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infection caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

Portugal’s brave stand amounts to a decision to “Screw Business As Usual” – the title of my latest book and a mantra that should be adopted by people holding positions in company boardrooms and government cabinets the world over.

4. Building for the future.

Virgin businesses have always emphasized the need to challenge the market and do things differently – values we are keen to share with a new generation of entrepreneurs in the developing world. In 2011 we continued to expand our efforts, launching the new Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship in Jamaica and moving our center in Johannesburg to new premises, under a new CEO. Both centers are focused on helping young entrepreneurs to expand their businesses by offering practical advice and mentoring.

I brought groups of business people to South Africa and Jamaica to meet our entrepreneurs; as always, the visitors were bowled over by the young entrepreneurs’ enthusiasm and passion for their work. We hope to expand our efforts further and to find financing and maybe obtain government help in scaling up these centers.

Our society’s social, environmental and financial problems remain challenging and it looks like next year will be a tough one on many fronts. We will need to look for bold solutions, because change means opportunity. Whether you can effect small changes at the local level or try to push for sweeping cultural shifts in your industry or sector, 2012 – now – is the time to make a difference.

Article source: Entrepreneur.com

 

A group of technology start-ups is taking its cue from social gaming, in hopes of relieving companies, doctors and patients of some of the pain involved in managing health care.

The new businesses, staffed mainly by health-industry veterans, have adapted common social-gaming features to help companies motivate their employees to get fitter or to encourage doctors to keep in touch with their colleagues and patients online.

One of the start-ups, Keas Inc., whose clients include Pfizer Inc. and Novartis Inc., offers a gaming platform that allows groups of employees to compete with one another at exercising, eating healthily and taking better care of themselves.

San Francisco-based Keas originally aimed to offer consumers alerts, messaging and personalized information to help them lose weight and adopt healthier habits, but that plan didn’t work out.

“We tried to give people constant feedback about their health, but for a lot of people, more bad news and negative feedback just didn’t work,” said Adam Bosworth, the company’s chief technology officer. “If you keep giving someone negative feedback, they will eventually change the channel to the game channel. One day we decided to become that game channel.”

Keas now sets up contests in which co-workers compete by walking to the office more often or eating more vegetables. It says it has 80,000 active users, more than $16 million in venture capital and a growing list of customers. Quest Diagnostics Inc. said more than 80% of its employees who participated in an employee-wellness pilot program with Keas reported improved health.

Other start-ups are pushing doctors to step up their game with features found in social games like Zynga Inc.’s Farmville or on social-networking sites like Facebook or Foursquare.

HealthTap Inc., of Palo Alto, Calif., runs a website that doctors can use to build an online profile, gaining public exposure by answering health-related questions from consumers. The more questions a doctor answers, the more points the doctor wins and the more prominently he is featured on the site, potentially attracting more patients. Patients, meanwhile, can sign up as followers of a particular doctor or of other patients on the site and can indicate if they like or dislike various bits of content.

HealthTap says more than 6,000 doctors, as well as institutions including Harvard Medical School and the Cleveland Clinic, are actively answering users’ questions on its site.

“We’re not building a game here, just adding subtle game mechanics to make it more fun for doctors,” said HealthTap Chief Executive Ron Gutman.

Audax Health Inc., a Washington-based start-up with $16.5 million in funding, said it plans to offer a gaming platform designed to enable large insurers to offer incentives to their members—such as reduced premiums—in return for adopting healthier habits.

Doximity Inc. and WellnessFX Inc., two start-ups that have gained some traction among health-care providers, are in the process of incorporating gaming features.

Doximity, based in San Mateo, Calif., provides a secure messaging platform that doctors can use to answer treatment questions from colleagues, and to become acquainted with other doctors, to whom they can refer patients. Because of strict privacy laws, doctors often discuss cases by fax, since regular email isn’t considered secure enough.

Chief Executive Jeff Tangney said Doximity has grown more quickly over the past several months since it added some game-like features. By expanding their network of friends and followers on Doximity, a doctors can earn a “Top Doctor” badge on the website, a potential magnet for referrals. Doximity soon plans to let users “follow” one another, he said, as they can on other platforms.

San Francisco-based WellnessFX, which analyzes blood and urine samples, also provides a secure online forum in which doctors can confer with their patients.

WellnessFX is considering adding game features to the mix to keep doctors and patients engaged, according to Chief Executive Jim Kean. “We’re working on badges and leaderboards,” he said.

—Timothy Hay

Article source: Wall Street Journal

 

Smaller take-home paychecks could hurt employee morale in 2012, several small-business employers say.

Sparring in Congress continues this week over how to extend the payroll tax cut. If a deal isn’t reached by years’ end, the employee payroll tax, which funds Social Security, will increase by 2 percentage points, to 6.2%.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney speaks during the daily briefing this week in front of a monitor counting down the minutes until the payroll tax cut expires.

An extension to the employer-contribution cut now is off the table. But some business owners say they’re concerned about the possibility of sinking employee spirits.

Chris Holman, who owns a business networking website in Lansing, Mich., says most workers tend to focus on their take-home pay, rather than their gross income.

“It’s taking away some capital” from employees “and it’s just not the time to do that,” he says of letting the employee payroll-tax cuts expire.

“The problem is really one of morale,” adds Mr. Holman, who has about a half dozen workers at the site.

“It’ll probably be a nightmare for business owners if, all of a sudden, come January 1st, all your employees are taking home 2% less,” says Rosina Rubin, who runs a limousine service with her husband.

Ms. Rubin’s firm, Attitude New York Inc., has found it difficult to provide raises to its 63 employees, she says. She was relieved last year when the payroll tax cuts gave her employees a little extra cash.

The cuts would give workers earning $50,000 a year before taxes— roughly the median household income in the U.S., according to Census data—an extra $1,000 in take-home pay.

Small-business groups argue that payroll taxes are onerous because they are deducted from workers’ wages at the same rate whether the business’s sales are up or down.

Some are making it into a jobs issue. The International Franchise Association, a Washington-based trade group, says failure to extend the cuts would jeopardize the creation of more than 160,000 projected new jobs at U.S. franchise outlets next year.

Michael Alter, the president of a Chicago-based small-business payroll firm SurePayroll, says small-business owners want certainty from policymakers. “The more certainty they have about supply, prices and costs, the more ability they have to plan ahead,” he says.

Lawmakers agree that the cuts should be extended, but there are sharp differences over how to offset an estimated $120 billion loss in federal revenue of extending the employee cuts for another year.

This week, GOP lawmakers in the House are expected to reject a Senate bill passed over the weekend that would have extended the cuts for two months, while a longer-term deal was sought. Instead, John Boehner, the House Republican leader, has called on the Senate to reopen thorny negotiations.

The White House says the extra cash will help boost consumer spending and speed up the economic recovery. Small Business Administration head Karen Mills has expressed support for extending the cuts, saying that small-business owners rely on consumer spending in their communities to stay open.

But some economists argue that any additional sums from an extension would be spread out over the course of the year in tiny amounts on weekly paychecks, and thus, may not make a big difference in the broader economy.

—Emily Maltby contributed to this story.

Write to Angus Loten at angus.loten@wsj.com

Article source: Wall Street Journal

 

The man in the five-color tie walked out of New York’s Sherry-Netherland hotel shortly before 8 a.m. one recent morning and turned left down Fifth Avenue. He was heading, I suspect, for a working breakfast at the Hyatt, the Westin, the Parker Meridien–anywhere that might send a more comforting message to a client or associate than a hotel with a $650-a-night rack rate.

Not long ago, you’d hear stories about upwardly aspiring businessmen who slept at generic chain hotels but scheduled their meetings in the lobbies of Mandarin Orientals and Ritz-Carltons. Some would go as far as to ride the elevator up so they’d be seen getting out of it when it came back down. Those days are gone. Now, executives who stay at the Ritz sneak to the Marriott for their omelets, lest a shareholder, limited partner or potential client accuse them of profligate spending. “They all got shellshocked by the AIG effect,” says Michael Ullman, the Sherry-Netherland’s COO.

He’s referring to the disastrous publicity generated by the half-million-dollar, post-bailout blowout the company threw at the sun-splashed St. Regis Monarch Beach in 2008. For two years, fear of a similar backlash sent corporate executives, owner/operators and anyone else who didn’t want to be seen living well on other people’s money a notch or more down the hospitality pecking order. “It was a panicked reaction,” says Offer Nissenbaum, managing director of the Peninsula Beverly Hills. Instead of Gulfstreams, they started flying business class, or even (gasp!) coach. Instead of limos, they hailed taxis. And instead of bunking down at the most luxurious hotels, they found out how the other 99 percent lived.

Turns out they didn’t like it. It wasn’t just the level of comfort, though there’s that. But waiting in a taxi line or scrambling to find a shoeshine takes time, let alone trying to source AV equipment. It’s fair to say, as Ritz-Carlton executives did when they started contacting former guests to woo them back, that staying in a cheaper hotel was actually costing the company money.

These days, you don’t see many properties advertising how luxurious their beds are, or how pampered their guests feel in the new, multimillion-dollar spa. Instead, the pitch is all about making smart decisions. “The buzzword with our guests today is value,” Nissenbaum says. “These are people who tried to migrate to other hotels, but for the difference in price–which really wasn’t all that much–they found that they were missing out on a lot. Now they’ve migrated back.” Even if they aren’t exactly bragging about it.

I understood what he meant after a recent one-night stay at the Sherry-Netherland, where there’s a liveried operator in each elevator and a full kitchenette in every room. I gave myself plenty of time to check out in the morning because I needed to retrieve bags I’d stored, but the whole thing was a perfectly coordinated, 30-second process. The doorman had a cab waiting before I could get from the front desk to the curb. I was tempted to stay for the eggs Benedict, which I’m told is the breakfast specialty at the famous Harry Cipriani restaurant just off the lobby, but I didn’t dare. Someone might have seen me.

The Appearance of Value
Who profited the most from the AIG Effect? How about luxury hotels that don’t sound especially luxurious?

The Hyatt Corporation’s Park Hyatt brand is positioned as the equivalent of a Four Seasons or Ritz-Carlton, for example, but its rack rates average around $450 a night­–only slightly lower than those of super-premium chains.

Park Hyatts are the rarefied top of a pyramid that includes Hyatt Regencies and Grand Hyatts below. “We weren’t flagged as a luxury brand,” said Ernie Arias, who runs sales and marketing for Park Hyatt in North America. “It was a great opportunity for us to get the former Four Seasons, Peninsula and Ritz-Carlton customers.”

It remains to be seen whether that success will hold if hotel choice is again perceived as a measure of success, as is still the case in Asia. “Over time, successful people will want everyone to know how successful they are,” says an executive at a competing high-end chain. “Once we get back to that, you’ll see executives making their statement at traditional luxury brands. The same perception that is now seen as a weakness for those brands will again be their strength.”

This article was originally published in the December 2011 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: The AIG Effect.

Article source: Entrepreneur.com

 

By ANGUS LOTEN

Small brick-and-mortar retailers who recently may have taken Amazon.com for a new and powerful friend are likely thinking twice these days.

Last month, the online shopping giant joined these small stores in their long-running battle to force Web-based retailers to collect out-of-state sales taxes – an exemption that enables many online retailers to charge lower prices, the store owners have argued.

Amazon.com resisted collecting state taxes on remote sales for years.

But as WSJ reported this month, it has recently expressed support for federal proposals to bring order to the way online retailers collect state and local taxes.

Its willingness to get behind the proposals—combined with pressure from states for new sources of tax revenue, and bipartisan efforts in the House and Senate—has given the movement more traction this year.

Whatever warm fuzzy feeling that move may have elicited from small, independent store owners was likely short-lived.

On Dec. 10, Amazon promoted a new “Price Check” mobile phone app by offering shoppers a 5% discount—valid only for that one day—on items they found in brick-and-mortar stores, but purchased online through Amazon instead.

The app enables in-store shoppers to scan or snap a photo of a product. It then immediately compares prices with Amazon’s.

The app is prompting an outcry from small retailers, who say the site is using their independent stores as its own showroom.

By way of background, many small brick-and-mortar retailers have supported recent legislation requiring online retailers to charge state sales taxes on the grounds that customers often come into their stores to see products, but then turn around to buy the same products tax-free online.

More than 7,000 people have signed a petition against the promotion, according to Change.org. The Change.org campaign was launched by Marcus Books owner Jasmine Johnson of Oakland, Calif.

She told the Wall Street Journal in an interview Thursday that Amazon’s promotion will hurt holiday sales at small businesses at a time when they can least afford it.

“The Price Check by Amazon app is primarily intended for customers who are comparing prices in major retail chain stores,” an Amazon spokesman said Thursday. “The goal of the Price Check app is to make it as easy as possible for customers to access product information, pricing information, and customer reviews, just as they would on the Web, while shopping in a major retail chain store,” he said.

The Price Check app features prices from Amazon and its many third-party sellers, he added.

An Amazon spokesperson told the New York Times this week that the promotion was not aimed at small competitors, but rather big box stores.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R., Maine), the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, had recently likened that to “incentivizing consumers to spy on local shops,” calling it “an attack on Main Street businesses.”

She urged Amazon to cancel the promotion.

Write to Angus Loten at angus.loten@wsj.com

Article source: Wall Street Journal

 

While reading the myriad year-end wrap-ups and predictions for 2012, it occurred to me that one of the most defining phenomena impacting digital marketing today is not technology or channel-based nor shifts in consumer behaviors. Instead, the change in agency-client relationships away from retainer-based contracts toward project-based relationships has become the new normal in the last couple of years.

Many of you on the agency side of the digital marketing marketplace will be nodding along with me as you read this while brands and client-side marketers may be shrugging their shoulders in a resigned way and thinking, “Deal with it.” But we should all acknowledge the impact this shift has on the strategic outcomes and business health of both agencies and clients. It is far from a best-case scenario for anyone.

How Did We Get Here?

Economic necessity mostly. When business collapsed in 2008, marketing budgets were slashed to the bone. Like everyone else, brand shepherds were asked to do more with less. As media and production budgets got chopped, brand marketers couldn’t justify or afford agency retainers. Brand marketers instead started to use agency partners where for rare discreet projects they could not execute with internal resources. Agencies were happy to maintain the connection to the client and feed the work to their teams in those troubled times but it was the start of the end of the committed two-way relationship between marketer and agency.

Emphasis on testing. As more marketers became attuned to the test-and-assess mentality that is so much a part of digital marketing, it bred confidence to take baby steps into both established and new digital channels like mobile and social. A test is by definition a short-term trial approach – a project by any other name.

The rise of social media. Almost everyone is still trying to figure out this channel and to quantify its impact. As new paid-earned-owned opportunities sprout almost daily, it requires regular testing. When you see an entity that has put a long-term stake into social media and has made a similar commitment to its internal or agency social media partners, it has usually evolved beyond projects and incorporated testing into a regular, planned approach to optimize social media results.

The Impact on Agencies

Provides no incentive for strategic planning or thinking. If the only commitment you have from the client is for this next project, you are less likely to think long-term and invest in specific talent, industry knowledge, or competitive tracking. The project approach institutionalizes short-term thinking.

Loss of dedicated staff. Having dedicated staff that wake up every day thinking about the client’s business brings positive results. If agencies only can plan for projects, that is how they must staff.

Loss of margin. Every project needs to be sold in. This leads to spec work and an outsized investment in business development. Agency staff spends way more time selling and doing spec work than they ever did before. This puts expensive talent on non-billable work for a good chunk of their day. Client lead times to get projects approved has lengthened considerably, further magnifying the impact as layered approvals and multiple presentations stretch the decision over many months. If an agency is lucky enough to win the project, it may not even recoup its investment. That may sound like a bargain for marketers but you want your agencies to have healthy businesses to continue to reinvest in talent, technology, and think time on your behalf.

The Impact on Clients

Supports short-term thinking. Discreet projects may or may not be connected in a common strategy thread that helps to move the business forward over time. It’s also harder to take the learning from one project to the next if different teams or people are working on the projects or doing the planning.

Loss of continuity. Customers are always on – why aren’t you? If you are only messaging, responding to, or communicating with your customer base inconsistently, you may be missing opportunities to maintain a valuable presence, dialogue, or listening post.

Clients lose valuable partner perspective. Agencies used to have a unique perspective on the business that added significant value. They had enough insider knowledge and enough investment to be informed, but yet enough distance to avoid group think and could question/prod/move the business in ways not possible from the inside. If agencies have only a partial mandate and partial information, they cannot offer that perspective reliably or effectively.

The Impact on the Industry

New hiring realities. Full-time jobs are harder to come by in agency land. Agencies have to staff in a way that mirrors the commitment they get from their clients. That means lots more freelancers and more virtual workers today. On the one hand, it allows talented specialists to stay busy working for lots of different agencies. Before it may have been a lifestyle choice for some freelancers, but now it is a necessity. For those who might have flourished in a team environment, this is a shame.

New management challenges. Ad hoc teams impose their own challenges and require more intense project management to keep any kind of order, results, or profit margins in the picture.

It should be recognized, of course, that there is a legitimate place for project-based digital work. They include: trying out a new partner; having a distinct need that your current partners can’t meet; having sudden budget infusions; or encountering a new digital opportunity. In a best-case scenario, that project would go to your long-term agency partners because they have the background and insights to help you integrate, succeed, and learn from that one-off effort.

As we continue to climb slowly out of the recession, it behooves marketers to advocate for the return of one of their most effective support structures – their agency partners. But agencies can only really be partners if they are empowered as such. It is time for us all to stop thinking short-term and fuel all our businesses with the commitment and strategic thinking that bring true results.

Build-A-Bear vs. eBay? Bacardi vs. Betty Crocker? Converse vs. Xbox? ATT vs. Best Buy? Which brands will come out on top in the second round of ClickZ’s Holiday Social Showdown? Vote now!

Article source: ClickZ

 

Ever wonder why so many children of entrepreneurs become entrepreneurs themselves?

One reason is that our genes influence the decision to start a business. I don’t mean that figuratively; I mean it scientifically. With colleagues at Kings College in London and the University of Cyprus, I have been investigating how genes affect entrepreneurship for more than five years. Through studies of twins, and more recently, through molecular genetics laboratory research, we have found that genes influence whether people start businesses, are self-employed, or have owned their own companies. Our research shows that the same genetic factors influence the tendency both to see business opportunities and to start companies, as well as how much money self-employed people earn.

At this point you may be wondering how researchers could determine that there’s a genetic component to entrepreneurship. It’s actually pretty straightforward.

With twins, it’s a matter of comparing the choices of the two siblings. Identical twins share the same genetic composition, while fraternal twins have half in common. If pairs of identical twins make more similar choices, such as starting a business, than pairs of fraternal twins, then genetics must affect the choices, as long as a few scientific assumptions hold. In the molecular genetics research, we examine the different versions of genes people have and see if entrepreneurs are statistically more likely to have one version over another.

There are probably many ways genes influence whether or not we become entrepreneurs, but in the twins research, we have found initial evidence that one route clearly is through our personalities. The same genes that affect whether we are extroverted, open to experience, disagreeable and sensation seeking also influence our decision to start our own business. Furthermore, the same genes that influence the tendency to be open to experience also affect the tendency to identify new business opportunities.

Before you start worrying that this research will usher in the world portrayed in the science- fiction thriller Gattaca, we are a long, long way from any practical application of these findings. That will come only after many years of replicating the findings.

Moreover, there’s no single gene or even set of genes for entrepreneurship. Our genes influence broader categories of behavior, such as whether we do things that involve a great deal or small amount of novelty. While entrepreneurship might involve pursuing novelty, so do many other human activities.

Further complicating the issue, hundreds of genes probably influence whether or not we become entrepreneurs. Thus far in the molecular genetics research, we’ve found initial evidence for just one of them–a version of a gene for a receptor for the brain chemical dopamine.

Geneticists have speculated that sensation-seeking people have versions of dopamine receptor genes that require more stimulating experiences in order to produce a given amount of dopamine in the brain. To get the higher level of stimulation, those people are more likely to engage in sensation seeking activities, including starting businesses.

While your genes influence whether or not you become an entrepreneur, experience matters, too. Genes don’t determine anything you do; they merely influence what you do in the same way your life experiences do. Just as receiving a financial windfall increases your odds of starting a business, so too does having a particular genetic makeup. But just as some people without a penny to their name start companies, so too can people without the genetic make-up associated with entrepreneurship.

While the research so far is limited, it does mean that when you describe someone as a born entrepreneur, you really are onto something.

Article source: Entrepreneur.com

 

I recently came upon a job listing for a Groupon copywriter. Of course, no one who has received a Groupon email can have missed the unusual way the company sells its deals – well, except maybe one kind of person, which I will discuss later.

Groupon has experienced incredible growth in its short lifetime, going public on November 4, just three years after its founding. It raised $700 million and is valued at almost $17 billion at the time of this writing. Groupon wasn’t the first deals business, so what is fueling its success? Is it the deals, or the way it sells the deals? Can we duplicate what Groupon does right in our businesses?

Designing the All-Important Email

The key to Groupon’s success is the daily email. I’ve always said that any business can send an email every day if the content is valuable enough. Groupon’s deals are occasionally valuable, typically offering half off of the things we buy every month. But, consider that a person may receive dozens of deal emails that they aren’t interested in for each deal they purchase.

What keeps them on the list for those irrelevant emails? We get some clues from the Groupon copywriter job description:

Each day’s Groupon features a write-up describing the deal with thoroughly researched, informative selling points that range from the straightforward to the whimsical and bizarre. We strive to avoid marketing clichés, shooting instead for vivid description rooted in complete transparency and embellished with well-crafted absurdities.

The New York Times asserts that “Groupon’s Fate Hinges on Words.” I agree.

Waking Up the Brain

Why are “well-crafted absurdities” powerful? Because they wake up the brain. In his intriguing book “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain,” David Eagleman makes the point that our minds only notice things that don’t fit; that our brain’s CEO, consciousness, only wakes up when we sense that something doesn’t fit. Case in point: the Groupon email for “Texas Lawn Services” that I received earlier this year provides a pretty standard presentation of a discount offer. But, when you begin to read further, the copy wakes up your mental CEO.

Neglected lawns and gardens quickly overgrow into jungly briars that attract deadly predators such as pumas, tigers, and the Predator riding a tiger. Chop, snip, and mow your way to an orderly and alien-free yard with today’s Groupon…

“Jungly briars”? The “Predator riding a tiger”? For a lawn service? Good morning brain!

Roy H. Williams, the “Wizard of Ads,” does an amusing and enlightening presentation in which he asks for five absurdities from the audience and pairs these at random with five businesses from the audience. He then creates an ad that starts with the absurdity and ends with an offer for the business. His point is this (and Groupon proves it): that you can begin an ad, landing page, email, or other communication with anything that will wake up the brain and successfully bring it to a rousing call to action.

Designing for Different Kinds of Readers

There is more going on here than interesting copy. Fellow ClickZ author Bryan Eisenberg and his brother Jeffrey defined four “Modes of Persuasion” in their book “Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?” These four modes define the primary ways readers want to get information and the way they research a problem.

Groupon designs its emails and deal pages with these four modes in mind.

The Competitive type must see a payoff statement immediately before they will spend any time on the page. The nature of the Groupon deal generally satisfies this need. Similarly, the Spontaneous type is driven by action. They generally scan for “bright shiny objects,” looking for something to grab them. The use of images high on the page “Today’s Side Deal” are the things that appeal to them.

The copy is written for a Humanist visitor. The whimsical nature of Groupon’s copy says, “We wrote this for you. Enjoy.” This appeals to Humanist sentiments, which value relationships. Humanists will scroll to discover more about the company, and will consume the page with more patience than the Competitive and Spontaneous readers.

Methodical readers are the fourth mode. They too will scroll, looking for details and information to support the offer. They don’t like the “human touch,” however, and may chafe at the copy. I believe that Groupon offers enough detail in its copy to satisfy many of these readers.

Sign Up for the Deals, Stay for the Entertainment

All of these elements work well together, and I would argue that without them all, Groupon’s growth would not have been so astronomical. These emails and their sister landing pages keep 50 million subscribers on Groupon’s list day after day. Subscribers sign up for the deals, and stay on the list to see what these Groupon copywriters are going to come up with next.

Making the Recipe Work for Your Business

We can use these methods as well. We can design our emails, pages, and social network content with these concepts squarely in mind:

1. Design headlines that answer the question “What’s in it for me (WIIFM)?”
2. Use images and high-contrast calls to action that draw the eyes of scanners.
3. Wake up the brain with something unexpected in your copy.
4. Provide enough meaty detail for methodical decision makers.

These principles apply to consumer marketing as well as B2B communications. After all, you can’t spell “business person” without “person.”

Article source: ClickZ

 

The recent news that Costco Wholesale CEO Jim Sinegal plans to retire next year brought back a flood of memories for me. I covered the company for nearly 7 years as part of a full-time retail beat at Seattle’s regional weekly business paper.

For me, Sinegal always seemed like one of the good guys — an outstanding example of how to be a CEO. He played a major role in building Costco into the third-largest retailer in the country, creating a model that rewards workers handsomely even while competitors cut benefits.

Here are five CEO traits Sinegal has that I wish more business leaders would acquire:

1. Use your products. Sinegal is often clad in one of Costco’s $17 dress shirts, long a staple of the company’s apparel department. He proudly wears them to company annual meetings, too.
2. Be accessible. The thing that blew me away about Sinegal was that his office is in the hallway at Costco’s Issaquah headquarters. That’s right, not even a door that shut. Not even a glass wall between him and the rest of the staff. Anybody can wander by and chat him up, anytime. He also gave me his cellphone number once, where most execs would make you call in through one of those conference bridges or have a secretary patch you through. There are no layers of handlers around Sinegal.
3. Treat your employees great. Costco is well-known for offering above-average pay for warehouse-store workers. The result is low turnover, low training costs and a family feeling to the company. They don’t have to do much recruiting, as current employees are happy to put out the word to family and friends.
4. Stay humble. Despite commanding a $76 billion retail empire, Sinegal is still honest, straightforward and down-to-earth. His desk on my last visit was a cheap, Formica-topped folding table — I think it had been a Costco sale item — and behind him sat an aged, fabric-covered message board. No burnished hardwood executive desk and fancy whiteboards for him.
5. Listen. If there was a store opening across the globe from Seattle, Sinegal was there. He wanted to talk to customers and employees, so he could learn more about how to serve them.

What are the best traits for a CEO? Leave a comment and give us your take.

Article source: Entrepreneur.com

 

The holidays are a good reminder of many things, including the importance of family and the essential human need to reconnect in person rather than just through Facebook or other digital means. This Thanksgiving I got my annual stark reminder that not only do my relatives not understand what I do in digital marketing, they do not speak the same language or have the same nonchalance about the potentially intrusive technology that both fuels and follows their online activity.

People outside the digital industry don’t know the nuts and bolts of how it all comes together. And that’s completely understandable. Hey, I drive a car but barely know where the oil goes. I don’t intend to learn about engine mechanics or even maintenance beyond scheduling the right tune-ups at the right intervals with professionals who know this stuff. My automotive ignorance is a matter of choice and convenience. To me, the car is a tool; it’s a means to an end, possibly many ends encompassing transportation, entertainment, communication, and even ego validation if I am being truly honest.

Most of the digital content consuming population is also ignorant about how their chosen content is supplied, delivered, and supported. They don’t have a view under the hood, so to speak. The smartphone, tablet, or computer and the corresponding Internet access are a means to an end for them. They call up their social network or their game, email, video, or other content and expect immediate, seamless access, connections, and an ever-ready supply of new content. If they peeked under the hood, they would find a complex ecosystem that relies on buyers, sellers, and consumers and some pretty intimidating technology. They would see that consumer behaviors and preferences dictate the flow of content and that all that free or mostly free content depends on the efficacy of the advertising that supports the Internet.

I bet most of you in the industry had some or all of the following conversations around your holiday table.

“What is it you do again – something with computers, right?”

My holiday learnings: Grandmom will never understand what I do. I keep it simple and explain that I help our clients reach their customers or potential customers with brand or promotional messaging when they are online, wherever they are online.

“Do you do those pop-up ads?”

My holiday learnings: Uncle Tom, Dick, or Harry do not understand that ads are never the reason that people surf online and are almost always unwanted and intrusive – even if they are polite. These same people strangely never seem to hold the same animosity toward television ads and don’t even acknowledge the inconsistency in their stance.

“Can they really tell where I am or what I looked at?”

My holiday learnings: this is a hot button issue for almost everyone. The personal nature of content preferences and the mystery of the technology behind online ad delivery combine to fuel a paranoia that is not going away. Explaining what PII is or how consumers can to some degree control their information sharing does no good. Consumers (at least the ones around my Thanksgiving table) want to be able to view and share and interact with others without any trails, public or private. They do not value “smart ads,” reduced ad volume, or increased relevancy. Nor do they recognize the role of ad targeting in the reduced cost or free content that is a consequence of efficient advertising – at least they do not value it over their perceived privacy invasion. They may change their mind when simplified and naïve regulation forces advertising to dumb down, driving costs up and putting the content they have come to rely on behind a paywall.

While I may not understand the technology that makes my car go, I trust it to perform without intruding on other aspects of my life. Because our online lives are so interwoven with so many aspects of our real lives, the opportunity for crossover can be scary if consumers don’t know what is happening or the options to control it. Choosing where and how we allow online sharing or connections is about personal responsibility IMHO, but you have to first understand the system to adjust it favorably for your comfort thresholds. If I had to understand combustion engines before I turned the key I would probably be taking the bus. I think a lot of us would. If my other choice was to somehow make it the auto industry’s problem to make cars understandable or adjustable for my wants and needs that would sure sound like an attractive option on the surface. That is until the price of cars went up and the technology improvements were limited by new requirements.

We, in the industry, must find a way to ensure that Grandmom and every uncle understand their choices and the consequences of those choices. Consumers are not going to give up their online lives and they are not going to take the time to sift through a tangle of technology they don’t understand how to take control of their online data. If we don’t find a way to make the technology understandable, flexible, and less scary, then regulation is going to win and consumers will support it – to their ultimate disadvantage even if they don’t understand what they give up in the process.

Need a solid foundation in digital marketing – whether it’s SEO, paid search, social, or email marketing? Learn how you can remain competitive and develop your career via ClickZ Academy‘s e-learning classes.

Article source: ClickZ