Inspiration from Acts of Courage

As American actor and social icon John Wayne said, "Courage is being scared to death …and saddling up anyway." Observed acts of courage are nourishing to the spirit and inspiring to all of us. In business, this is just as true and important as it is anywhere else.

Three company leaders who went above and beyond the call with their courage, demonstrating the kind of direction that characterizes great leadership, are the CEOs of Bluebell Ice Cream, Canada's Maple Leaf Foods, and Southwest Airlines.

After many were taken ill, and three people died from a listeria bacteria contamination of Blue Bell ice cream products, the company voluntarily recalled some eight million gallons of their ice cream products from retail shelves. Once the severity of the situation was known, CEO Paul Kruse recalled the products and initiated a program of employee training and plant sanitization that would take four months to complete. Four facilities in three states had to be sanitized and thoroughly inspected and tested for the presence of the bacteria before production could resume. There was the distinct possibility that the company would be unable to financially survive this hiatus while 1,400 employees were laid off, and an equal number being partially furloughed. Kruse secured capital from an outside investor and saved the company.

A similar circumstance faced Maple Leaf Foods' CEO, Michael H. McCain, when numerous deaths were attributed to contaminated meat produced by his company. Meeting the obvious media interest, he stood resolutely in front of the cameras accepting responsibility for the problem. Not all leaders are cut out to handle this kind of pressure, or deliver a necessary and potentially disastrous response with this much courage. An old, Latin proverb tells us that fortune favors the bold, but abandons the timid. Maple Leaf Foods was saved because of McCain's bold resolve and dedication, which rested on the foundation of his courage.

The CEO of Southwest Airlines, James Parker, displayed a similar courage in the face of a different kind of threat. Deep in the shadow of the recent horrific events of 9/11, the trend for businesses was to cut workforces and pull back on expansion projects in the recognition that far less prosperous times may lay immediately ahead. But, while these fears gripped industries nationwide, and particularly the airline industry, one airline CEO made the brave choice to buck this trend. Only three days after 9/11, Parker announced that Southwest would not be cutting employees, and in fact, would be keeping them all, as well as initiating a new profit sharing program with them.

These CEOs are cut from a different cloth than some, such as those from some of the large Wall Street banks prior to the 2008 crash, as well as Enron and WorldCom, to name a few. These companies were unable to find the ethical internal compass to reject risky operating plans in the name of artificially elevated profit taking. The scandals that ensued in each case demonstrate a lack of courage and a lack of commitment to ethical standards in business. True courage in leadership is as valuable as any given asset for an organization, no matter how large or small.

Ernest Hemmingway said that courage is grace under pressure. The three CEOs of Maple Leaf, Blue Bell, and Southwest certainly had an element of grace under pressure, but they had more than that. Echoing what John Wayne said, author Arthur Koestler wrote, "Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears." These three men did not let either notions of greed, nor the fear of failure sidetrack what they knew they needed to do. They saddled up, anyway.

To contact Chuck Gherman for more information about how Printing Arts Press helps organizations with their Marketing needs through print communications please visit www.printingartspress.com.


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Daring to be Innovative

Ideas that turn the conversation on its head producing an altered perception are clearly among the most interesting. Nobel Prize winning playwright George Bernard Shaw perhaps related this concept best when he said, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." Of course, being unreasonable here is equated with being unbound by convention rather than being not guided by good sense.

Being unbound by convention is the first prerequisite for innovation, and turning arguments on their heads is one of the next important steps in the process.

In Steve McQueen's racing-themed movie "Le Mans," he answers a serious question concerning what is so important about driving faster than anyone else. His answer turns the question on its head. He says, "A lot of people go through life doing things badly. Racing is important to men who do it well. Racing is life. Anything that happens before or after …is just waiting."

Author of many books as well as the best selling business video in history, Joel Arthur Barker put it slightly differently. He said, "Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world!" Innovation is what drives the most dramatic change.

To most, innovation comes with some degree of difficulty since we are typically forced to abandon alternatives with which we have become quite familiar. After all, we have learned that not all change is good. This is why you have to be somewhat daring to be truly innovative. Daring to be innovative does involve some risk, but hesitancy in following a dream gets you no closer to that dream. Progress in business depends upon the "unreasonable" entrepreneur.

ZipDial and Xiaomi are two fine examples of truly innovative companies led by some truly "unreasonable" entrepreneurs.

 ZipDial

Have you ever used the old trick of phoning someone and allowing it to ring for only a moment before hanging up to signal your presence or arrival somewhere? This bypasses telephone company fees since there was no connection established. Valery Wagoner created ZipDial, a "missed call" marketing platform, to exploit that concept further.

Companies promote a ZipDial number in their advertising. Customers then call and hang up, only to be contacted by the company to complete their transactions, enter contests, obtain coupons, or take advantage of other promotions. The innovation was using an existing idea to generate new business. In January, 2015, Wagoner turned her innovative idea into a deal with Twitter, which acquired ZipDial for an estimated $30 million.

Xiaomi

Xiaomi is a recent entry into the burgeoning smartphone market. The innovative part of their marketing model is a reliance on peripherals and software applications to build profitability. The smartphone, itself, has a paper-thin profit margin, but the apps sold to go with it are the source of much of the company's substantial revenue. That is one aspect, but the other is sheer volume. Because of their low price (and the speed of "flash sales" in an internet driven economy), one of the phone models sold out in a matter of two minutes. One hundred thousand phones in two minutes, and each of them requires software.

These two companies approached their problems with imagination and the willingness to innovate. "Unreasonable" entrepreneurs followed the advice of business commentator David O. Adeife, who said, "Never innovate to compete; innovate to change the rules of the game." Innovation does not necessarily involve reinventing the wheel. Successfully applying proven models in new contexts is every bit as innovative as coming up with the better mousetrap.

To contact Chuck Gherman for more information about how Printing Arts Press helps organizations with their Marketing needs through print communications please visit www.printingartspress.com.

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Rule-Breaker or Not: Which Type of Leader are You?

“Following all the rules leaves a completed checklist. Following your heart achieves a completed you.” This quote by author Ray A. Davis may be a bit of an oversimplification, but it carries some significance, too. Some people are attracted to breaking rules and live their lives accordingly. They are typically acknowledged as either highly successful people or scoundrels. But in any case, they are people who choose their own paths instead of following the well-beaten trails of life. Many times they are revered as leaders. However, not everyone is cut out for rule breaking.

This may be the key difference between two very different types of leaders. One is devoted to organizing procedures and processes and directing operations and the systems that make them functional. The other is primarily engaged in creativity and the positive influence of others. As such, these two types are differentiated as managers and visionaries. Some individuals are fortunate enough to have both of these capacities, but most of us, if we are leadership material at all, fall into one of these two categories more so than the other, and that is not a bad thing. The world needs both types of leadership.

Perhaps the most important difference between these two is that one of them is routinely devoted to following the rules, or at least helping to make and institute those rules. The other is largely committed to finding ways to circumvent the same rules, exploring new ground instead of restricting one's latitude to a structured set of limitations. One follows the rules; the other seeks to break them.

Looking at these two individuals we can see some very clearly defined differences. The one who seems born to be a manager is focused on technical aspects and structural adhesion. She is committed to smoothness in operation and well-practiced efficiency. Everyone usually acknowledges that she is quite good at what she does.

The other is visionary in his approach to problem solving, so his solutions are not always popular. He is, instead, a bit of a maverick. But his ideas can be so very convincing sometimes, usually due to his emotional involvement and vision. In a word, he is passionate, and his passion is contagious. He is an idea factory. 

Successful entrepreneur and co-founder of Twitter Jack Dorsey said, "Everyone has an idea. But it’s really about executing the idea and attracting other people to help you work on the idea.” The idea for Twitter was amazingly simple. It was also untried. The "idea people" attracted some management types to make it happen...and the rest is history.

Successful organizations usually require both types of leadership, the idea generators and the systems people who build and pattern the formula. Successful World War II general and U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” That, in a nutshell, is the path of the idea creator, the entrepreneurial genius, the visionary leader who starts the engine and motivates it to keep running.

The running of the engine requires the attention of those most capable of coaxing from it the power that is needed. The engine must be tuned to perfection. Systems experts keep it running and running in the right direction. Without them, the visionary's idea could easily die on the vine.

True leadership may begin with a breaking of the rules, but it can only truly succeed by virtue of learning one's real limitations and finding help in those areas of relative weakness. Break the rules to get started, but then find help covering your weaknesses from another kind of leader, and your chance of success is increased.

To contact Chuck Gherman for more information about how Printing Arts Press helps organizations with their Marketing needs through print communications please visit www.printingartspress.com.

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Guest Blogging: Fully Understanding This Marketing Best Practice

Running a marketing blog as a part of a marketing campaign is practically a requirement in today's modern world - particularly as Google changes the very foundation of what SEO stands for on a regular basis. One of the many things that Google looks for when ranking sites is how frequently they're updated. A steady stream of fresh, trustworthy and high quality content will always rank higher than a page updated once a year. This describes a blog pretty efficiently. However, you may not always have time to pen every single entry on a blog yourself. For those situations, guest blogging can certainly come in very handy for a number of reasons.

What is Guest Blogging in Marketing?

As its name suggests, guest blogging involves "making a meal" out of the fact that you are not the one writing a particular blog entry. Not only do you get the benefit of being able to take a day (or week) off to catch up on your backlog, but you also get a huge amount of new attention to your blog thanks to the presence of your guest.

How Does Guest Blogging Help You in Marketing?

For starters, perhaps the biggest benefit of guest blogging is that it can help generate a whole new level of traffic for a site. This is especially true if this guest blogger already has his or her own following, so they'll be bringing their own audience to your site for the first time. While most of those new visitors will likely leave again to follow the guest blogger across the Internet, many will stay.

Another one of the major benefits of guest blogging is that it helps you build your authority in more ways than one. If the person that you're having guest blog for your site is well-respected, the very fact that they're contributing a piece to you at all only serves to lend some much-needed credibility to your enterprise. This is particularly true if you're just starting out.

Another one of the reasons why guest blogging is so beneficial, particularly in terms of marketing, is because it helps build authority where it matters most - search engines. Gone are the days where you can just stuff a site with keywords and instantly fly to the top of Google results. Google emphasizes pages that are trustworthy over all others now and guest blogging is one of the single most efficient ways to get in on some of that action for yourself. By showing that your site is not only regularly updated with high quality content but also pieces from different authentic, trustworthy voices, the general rank of your entire enterprise will only rise as a result. This means that there will naturally be more eyes on your marketing blogs, which only means increased revenue as a result.

These are just a few of the reasons why guest blogging is, and will remain, a marketing best practice moving forward. Leveraging the power of search engines is all about authority and high quality content - guest blogging is able to deliver this to you in spades.  If you're the type of person who could use a little extra time to keep that steady stream of content flowing, guest blogging also makes perfect sense from the standpoint of your own productivity and efficiency at the same time. There really is no reason why you shouldn't be exploring this with your marketing materials.

To contact Chuck Gherman for more information about how Printing Arts Press helps organizations with their Marketing needs through print communications please visit www.printingartspress.com.

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Tips for Mastering Multi-Channel Communications in Your Campaigns

You can essentially boil down the goal of any marketing campaign to one impossibly simple core concept: you're trying to connect to your target audience and communicate a message in the most natural and organic way possible. In today's modern environment, marketers tend to fall into two distinct camps: those who are sticking to the tried-and-true print technique and those who see digital as the way of the future. The fact of the matter is that these concepts do not have to be mutually exclusive. Learning how to take all of your available options and use them in tandem with one another is a large part of what multi-channel communications are all about.

Let the Customer Discover Your Message on Their Own Terms

For an example of effective multi-channel communication in action, consider what happens after you send out a print item to a customer using direct mail. Logic dictates that you should wait a week or two and send a follow-up message, right? As you've already established contact, that follow-up doesn't have to come in the form of another mailer sent to the customer's mailbox. It can easily be an e-mail sent to the address for that customer you have on file. Suddenly, you've used not one, but two, different channels effectively, allowing the customer a full range of options regarding how and why they respond and continue their journey.

That may be simplifying the situation a bit, but the benefit to the consumer of getting full control over how they're receiving and responding to your message is what multi-channel communications are all about.

Better Campaigns Mean Better Results

In order to master multi-channel marketing and really put it to good use for your organization, you'll need to keep a few key things in mind. For starters, you'll need to establish a single, unified view of your customers across all channels. Any available piece of information will need to be collated together, not only so that each channel seems like a natural extension of the next, but so each channel can allow for the deeper level of customization that attracts customers in the first place.

Another factor to consider has to do with your organization's ability to create the most consistent experience possible across all of those channels at the same time. When a customer gets an e-mail, sees a mobile ad, and receives a letter in the mail from your campaign, they all need to feel like they're coming from the same company. One can't be casual, while the other, stuffy and overly professional. Failure to grasp this basic concept can result in your organization coming across as a bit schizophrenic.

You'll also need to develop your own in-house multi-channel platform to help keep track of all of these materials. You'll need things like campaign management software, for example, giving you the ability to execute all aspects of a campaign (including both print and digital materials) all from the same unified workflow. This will also give you a better idea of tweaks that you can be making to your campaign by way of things like predictive and actionable analytics.

Multi-channel communication, in general, just goes to show you that print and digital don't have to be an "either/or" scenario for marketers. By leveraging all of the tools you have available to you instead of playing favorites, you'll put you and your team in a much better position to succeed moving forward.

To contact Chuck Gherman for more information about how Printing Arts Press helps organizations with their Marketing needs through print communications please visit www.printingartspress.com.

#print #directmailmarketing #chooseprint