Resilience: Withstand the Hardship

One of the more important characteristics of a successful business is resilience. Without resilience, a business that suffers any setback is far more vulnerable to hardship or even complete collapse. In fact, failures frequently precede success in many people's efforts in business or otherwise. Just look at some of these examples.

Walt Disney was fired once because he "lacked imagination and had no good ideas." A recording company executive told the Beatles that he just didn't like their sound. Stories like this are accounts of people with the persistence to avoid defeatism in the face of difficulty. They had the needed resilience to keep going, to strive for future successes instead of wallowing in failure.

Another lesser known example is that of Thomas Carlisle, who took more than a year to compile his monumental history of the French Revolution. A housekeeper mistook it for trash and out it went. Carlisle dedicated himself to re-creating it, and with three more years of hard work, recalled it from memory and produced the replacement--a monumental history produced with an equally monumental reserve of resilience in the face of defeat.

One of the most familiar such stories in the business world is that of Austrian psychiatrist, Victor Frankl. Frankl survived Nazi Germany's, Auschwitz to become a leading proponent of a humanistic therapy approach for motivating more productive decision making. In Frankl's best-selling book, "Man’s Search for Meaning," he details the critical moment when he realized the objective of creating this revolutionizing form of therapy.

Frankl had fallen into self-pity over his concentration camp existence. He now saw his life as meaningless and trivial, but he suddenly realized that to survive, he would have to overcome this feeling. He would have to find some overarching purpose. He would have to have the resilience to form some positive objectives in the face of so much negativity. Frankl envisioned himself delivering a lecture after the war on the subject of the psychology surrounding a concentration camp. From this simple beginning sprang his entire school of thought, which he called, "Meaning Therapy," with a mission of recognizing and creating significance in the lives of others. With resilience, Frankl turned around not only his life, but the lives of countless others. Today, employee resilience training is common in the work place.

Frankl's resilience was born of an ability to find meaning against all odds in a horribly negative situation. Finding meaning is just one of the characteristics of those with high resilience, though. Another, perhaps strangely, is an acceptance of reality - for only from a realistic acceptance of a challenging situation can an adequate response be generated to fix it.

The investment bank, Morgan Stanley, had its offices in the World Trade center before that awful day on September 11, 2001. As it happens, Morgan Stanley had a diligent concern for preparedness, which included preparing for possible disasters requiring building evacuation. When the first tower was hit, it took them exactly one minute to begin the evacuation of their offices in the second tower. Only because of their preparedness and training were almost all of the company's 2,700 employees saved when the second plane struck its target fifteen minutes later.

Their realistic approach, accepting the reality of the existing threat of terrorism, brought about the preparedness plan that allowed Morgan Stanley to remain in business. This resilience in the face of potential disaster saved them when the danger became a reality.

Some people and some businesses break under pressure. Others succeed due to their resilience in overcoming adversity or planning for its resolution. Which one are you?


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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Buyer Personas: What They Are, Why You Need Them, and What Should You Do About It

In marketing, one of the most important terms that you need to keep in mind at all times is "focus." In order to run a successfully executed campaign, you need to remove as much of the superfluous noise from your materials as possible and boil it down to the core essentials. You can't appeal to all people all of the time, which is why focusing on creating the right message and using the right delivery channels is so important. Buyer personas are a concept that allow you to do just that in a host of different ways, all of which are beneficial to you and your team moving forward.

What is a Buyer Persona?

In marketing terminology, a buyer persona is essentially a person that doesn't exist. They're a fictional representation of the type of person who is most likely to buy your product or service after hearing your marketing message. Buyer personas are created using as much actionable information about your ideal customer as possible: How old are they? Where do they live? Do they have any children? How much money do they make? What types of products have they purchased in the past? What do they like? What do they hate?

If you knew all of the answers to those questions when talking about a real person, you'd already have a pretty vivid picture about how that person acts and what their personality is. You'd certainly have an easier time talking to that person and relating to him or her - which is what buyer personas are all about in the first place.

Why Are Buyer Personas Important?

By creating a fictional representation of the person who makes up your ideal customer, you always have something to refer to when crafting your marketing materials. Say your business' buyer persona is Jane - she's a 35-year-old mother of two with a combined household income of $150,000. Instead of "throwing everything and anything at the wall and seeing what sticks" in terms of your marketing campaigns, you have something to compare your techniques to. How does your product or service fit into Jane's life? How does it solve a problem that she has? How does it align with past purchases she's made? The answers to these questions will drive your marketing decisions moving forward.

Crafting Buyer Personas

Creating a buyer persona requires you to be two things at all times: detailed and accurate. After you've been in business for an extended period of time, you have access to huge volumes of data regarding things like market research and even your past customers that you can draw from. To a certain degree, all of this data should dictate the buyer personas you create, which in turn should dictate the direction of your marketing. Are a significantly large number of your past satisfied customers men between the ages of 18 and 34 who have no kids? Congratulations - you have the basic framework to begin building a buyer persona. Any marketing technique that isn't directly appealing to that specific type of person is one that you now need to re-think.

It's important to not go "too far" when creating buyer personas, however. If buyer personas are all about focus, going out of your way to have too many personas is a great way to instantly undo all of the benefits that you've just worked so hard to build for yourself. Focus on a few core types of customers and craft buyer personas for each, and then compare every marketing move that you make against the information you've compiled for guidance on what to do next.

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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Avoid These Common Print Marketing Mistakes

We tend to talk a great deal about all of the things that you should do in your print marketing campaign for maximum effectiveness. You always want to make sure that your message is clear and concise, for example, and make sure that your pages are designed in a way where you can naturally control the flow of how people are taking in your important information. As a change of pace, we thought it would be fun to talk about some of the things you SHOULDN'T do if you want to unlock the maximum value of your campaign. A good piece of print marketing material is an incredible investment, but a bad one will quickly have the exact opposite reaction that you intended.

Remember the End Product - Particularly Its Size

Unlike the old days, most print marketing materials today are designed on a computer. After all, it's never been easier to get the exact look that you want with just a few, quick clicks of your mouse. One of the most important things to keep in mind, however, is that the way a material looks on a crystal clear HD computer screen can be quite a bit different from the way it looks in real life if you're not careful.

More specifically, pay attention to the font size that you choose to use - particularly if your print material is something that you'll be blowing up to a much larger size later. Even small printing looks perfectly legible when you're sitting a few inches away from a 1080p computer monitor. When you print out the banner or other item that you've just designed and blow it up to its intended size, though, you may find out that the small font size you chose to fit as many words on the page as possible is suddenly impossible to read unless you move closer. You can pretty much guarantee people who are just going about their busy lives are not going to take the time to slow down and move in closer to your marketing.

Forgetting to Account for Light

Any print marketer will spend a huge amount of time making sure that their materials look and feel just right. You'll go over everything with a fine-toothed comb and may even spring for that extra glossy paper to really sell the look of professionalism you're trying to get across. If your print material is going to be hanging in a well lit area like a store window, however, you may want to skip the glossy paper for a very important reason.

Forgetting to account for the lighting in the environment where the material will be viewed is a disaster you want to avoid at all costs. At worst, the shine from something like the sun on a glossy window banner will make it difficult to read. At just the right angle, it can actually create a dangerous situation for drivers who suddenly have the full force of the sun beaming directly into their eyes. Always remember where your material will be viewed and under what conditions when designing.

These are just a few of the things that we think you need to keep in mind when designing your print marketing materials for maximum effect. Remember, it isn't just your message that is important - it is ultimately who will be viewing those materials, how they'll be exposed to them, and under what conditions this will happen that you also have to focus on for the best results.


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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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.

#print #directmailmarketing #chooseprint