To look for work – and look for workers – Be Social!

[A transcript of Suzanne Marks' presentation to the San Gabriel Valley Economic Outlook Conference]

Most businesses today have spent a good deal time and money branding their businesses. The have done it in their advertising, in their corporate communications, and in their corporate culture. The most successful companies created brands have made corporate image personal and attractive to consumers, investors and prospective employees.
That same branding ethic now extends to social marketing as an avenue for your company to recruit the best new hires.  In fact, some businesses have reinforced their brand’s appeal to prospective employees by creating whole new sections of their websites, or entirely separate websites, exclusively to promote the quality of their working environment. Social media components such as Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn and Twitter are also crucial pieces of marketing for recruits. It is an increasingly important way to search for new applicants. Companies that used to spend thousands on recruitment, can now run ads on Craigslist, Facebook and MySpace, and then lead their prospective employees to those ads by using Twitter.
Social Media is also a way for employers to more closely examine and applicants, especially those who may have revealed more about their personal lives than they should have. Employers can use that information to their benefit, however there may be downsides to that which you have to consider before using it indiscriminately to make hiring decisions. At first glance, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace (the top sites being screened) do appear to be a gold mine of personal applicant information. In fact, according to a recent CareerBuilder.com report, the number of companies using social networking Web sites to screen potential employees has doubled in the last year, and what they have found has killed the hire for more than a third of candidates. Currenty 1 in 5 hiring managers conduct background checks by using social media, primarily FaceBook.
Conversely, more and more network-savvy applicants have begun to use social media, blogs, and personal websites strategically to give them an advantage over other candidates.  They are branding themselves the same way companies do. They position themselves not only as someone best fit for the job, but who is also eager to work for  your company.  And the best and brightest talent also uses the Internet to review their prospective new employers with a critical eye. What does this mean for your company?
First of all, Make sure your web site makes your company attractive to new hires. This encompasses everything from: the user friendliness of your site, the quality of your products or services, your customer relations, how you do business, in other words, your brand. However, this also should include information about your internal culture, training, your hiring philosophy, benefits, and the advantages of your location.
Reinforce that with a well-maintained presence on LinkedIn, FaceBook, and Twitter that drives people to your Web site. Some new talent may think your company is old and stodgy if you don't have a presence on these social networking sites, or they just won’t notice you at all. This is especially for people in their 20s who have grown up thinking that the Internet and social media have always existed.
Develop a social media strategy to entice quality talent and to screen applicants. Be patient and stick with it. Online marketing and recruiting takes time and constant attention to see results. However, if you can position your company in your target audience’s top-of-mind awareness, you will be miles ahead of your competition in finding the highest-quality talent. It will ensure that your business will thrive well into the future.
However, as with any tool, you have to be careful how you use it. Unlike traditional hiring tools such as team interviews, calling past employers, and background checks, social networking sites exist in a legal limbo of privacy concerns. Stories from recruiters show why these sites are so enticing.
It is all to easy to search for the candidate by name and refine the search by adding the terms: Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace and there’s no telling what you might see. Depending on their privacy settings, the quality of information available on a social network site varies. But you don’t have to stop there; you can also search blog search engines, such as www.google.com/blogsearch and business sites such as Zoominfo.
One recruiter related how she had found “The Ideal Candidate” for her firm. But when, she ran the applicant’s phone number on a search engine, up popped some explicit ads for adult services she was apparently involved in. Uh oh. In another instance an intern being considered for a permanent position had demonized his firm, his boss and his coworkers in considerable detail and by name. Obviously neither of these Rhodes Scholars was “ideal” for any position these companies wanted to fill.
As valuable as this information can be, make certain you don’t rely exclusively on such sites for your information. At this point in the evolution of e-law, there are no published cases yet on point. Lawsuits take time to work their way through the courts. However, it is all but certain that some day an employer will land in court being sued on allegations of discrimination or a violation of privacy for making use of a social networking site in the hiring process.
The conventional wisdom, is that anything online is fair game because any reasonable person must understand that the whole world has access to the internet. However, younger workers, and their lawyers, may well regard invading their social network sites in the same way older worker may regard someone who crashes a private wedding party uninvited, a act that violates privacy.
That said, when used carefully, in addition to the tried-and-true traditional hiring tools – interviews, calling past employers, and background checks, social network sites can offer valuable information. Just use common sense. The bottom line is Social Media is simply being social thru new media, over the internet and mobile networks.
People are sharing their stories and experience with friends near and far. Likes and dislikes are also getting shared and businesses are just beginning to capitalize on that. There are many ways for employers, job seekers and business to use social media for their own purposes.
On a personal note, recently we were invited in to pitch a large retail company.  I was told who was going to be in that meeting and immediately started my social media search.  I found out where they lived, worked, went to school past employment etc.  I contacted people on Linked In that were in both of our networks to put in a good word for us.  I tailored our presentation to the people in that room.

Advertising Myopia Oopsia

When I decided to write about what I call myopia in advertising and marketing, I was pretty cocky. I've been harping about this for years, and for good reason: Business owners are often so consumed with what they think their company is all about, that they neglect to question what their customer thinks. It is so common a problem, that I spend the majority of my marketing briefs describing how customer perceptions differ from those of business owners and operators. And how to capitalize on those customer's expectations.

Whereas a business might be incredibly proud of the accuracy of their wrist-mounted, certified-quartz banded chronometer, their customers don't care unless they are told why they should.  In fact customers won't be interested in the least if they don't first know that the product in question is a watch. They have to understand what the product or service means to them personally before you can tell them that it's better than all the others. Or that it is worth paying more for. It is the classic case of “What have you done for me.”

But since I'd been dealing with this issue since I first began in advertising, more than 25 years ago, I thought I'd check to see if anyone else had ever noticed this phenomenon. And (BLAST YOU GOOGLE), it turns out somebody else had.  A certain Theodore Levitt had written a paper on what he called "Marketing myopia" some 50 years ago. According to Wikipeda, "This paper was first published in 1960 in the Harvard Business Review; a journal of which he was an editor." So, I guess, I was not all that original after all.

Can you plagiarize before reading your source material... apparently...

Now, in my defense, I was not doing advertising in the 1960's. No character at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce was based on me, not even one of Don Draper's kids. In fact, little Sally Draper was proficient at mixing drinks long before I ever could. I’ll bet, other than occasionally being kookoo for Cocoa Puffs, I was completely oblivious to advertising.

I encountered myopia in advertising and marketing quite independently when I came across clients blithely ignoring their customers, because, I supposed at the time, customers were too ignorant to matter. I came to realize later that it was simple pride. Pride of ownership. Pride of authorship. Pride of invention, development, execution and superiority, all of which are attributes worth being proud of.  Just not to the exclusion of profits. Even the most ignorant customers have money.

So, thank you Mr. Levitt for validating my observations, um… before I was able to observe them. I guess (blushing) this would be a great time for me to finally read your paper.

Out of the Mouths of Ghouls

Frightfully Good Times Take Time & Talent

While I was working on yesterday’s blog about Old Pasadena’s Halloween celebration, I happened to run across a volunteer from the Old Town Haunt, which has been a tradition of Halloween for years. I love giving people credit for what they do, and certainly the staff at Old Pasadena Management District play a huge role in the success of our district. But so do the merchants, and the guides, and the police, and our loyal customers. However, when I spoke to this volunteer, I remembered that one of the most essential elements in the success of Old Pasadena over the years has been its volunteers.

Volunteers sit on the board. They sit on our committees. They appear before city council. They take time out of their days, away from their businesses, to help improve the quality of life in Old Pasadena. Obviously, they don’t do it for the money, so why? Certainly donating their time is an investment in the success of the district, so you could call that self serving and all, but why do retirees volunteer their time? And teenagers? The answer is certainly more complex than any kind of profit motive, no matter how far removed. But allow me to introduce you to a young lady who began to volunteer her time to the Halloween Haunt three years ago, when she was only fourteen.

 Ghoul-age zombies. Why do they do it?

"I was first introduced to the Old Town Haunt in Old Town Pasadena by a close friend named Micheal when I was 14 years old. He had already been a volunteer for several years himself. I am currently 17, and have committed myself to volunteering at the Haunt for the past three years. I don't plan on leaving this anytime soon.

I am thrilled whenever the month of September rolls in, because that is when we all get together with Ron Rogge (Owner) and Mark (Ron's Partner) and begin to set up the Haunt.  We change it up every year, and we all work together on such things as repainting certain areas. It is such an adrenaline rush as every September day goes by, because we all know that October is just around the corner. We can't wait to scare the people who walk through and feel the excitement that comes with it.

I have tons of fun at the Old Town Haunt for various reasons, the first is that I have made some close friends there. In fact, most of the people there have known each other for years. Then of course, after we are done scaring, we are taken to either eat at Bella's Pizza, or at Barney's Beanery. Finally, we love the excitement and fear that we put into the people who come down.  We love the screams. What could be more beautiful than a whole month spent at a haunted house where every square inch is stuffed with props and people ready to inject a little fright and feat into these people's experience.

When I first started here, I didn't have many friends at all, but once I started volunteering, I scared up a whole bunch of friends and I became a more social person. I gained a lot more self esteem which was another great benefit of being in an atmosphere filled with young people who just wanted to have fun.

If the Old Town Haunt ever disappeared for whatever reason, we would all be devastated! Nothing could compare to lying in wait, ready to pounce and scare up a terrified screech. Adrenaline just rushes through our bodies because we know these people are about to scream their heads off.

We are all thankful to Ron and Mark, because they put in a lot of hard work into the Haunt, and they have shared this experience with me, and with all of us. October Old Town Haunt is a labor of love that they work practically every day of the year to make a success. I am so grateful that they have allowed me to be a part of it."

– Sandy, the eloquent Ghoul

Not for the faint of heart, but for the rest of us...  =)

From the Old Town Haunt to the Tournament of Roses. From the Old Pasadena Management District, to the Playhouse and South Lake districts, the unique character of the City of Pasadena rests in large part on the generosity and dedication of its volunteers. It starts early and lasts a lifetime. I am proud to be even a small part of this community, and prouder still of the youth already donating their time and talents to keep up the tradition.
Happy Halloween everyone, and
BOO!

Can Old Pasadena Handle Halloween? And Howl!

Yes, this year Old Pasadena is not just out to celebrate Halloween, but to make this year’s Halloween celebration the best ever. For kids of course, that’s a simple task indeed. It’s one of the highest of the high holy days in kid-dom: The day of candyCandyCANDYCANDY CANDY! But for parents, especially in this economy, it can be a bit of a trial. Especially this year when Halloween falls on a weekend. How do you handle keeping the kids entertained, for two days, on a budget? That’s where Old Pasadena comes in. First create an event that makes both days really special, then let everyone know about it – with an advertising budget that is tiny at best.

Old Pasadena Home Page featuring the Halloween Celebration

First, and most important, to make any event work you have to make it special.

Kershona Mayo, our Director of Event Marketing & Production, worked hard to organize a district wide, Halloween celebration filled with treats on both Saturday and Sunday. And it’s Free! The focus is on fun and safe, with the emphasis on fun, encompassing activities throughout Old Pasadena.

On Saturday, October 30, Old Pasadena takes over Central Park, 260 S. Raymond Avenue. There’ll be Free caramel apples for the first 200 people to arrive, then a pumpkin hunt (little pumpkins filled with candy) from 1:00-2:00 pm, and from 1:00-5:00– There’s a Halloween moon bounce accompanied by live “ghoulish” music. At the Armory Center for the Arts, just a few blocks north, they’re holding a Halloween crafts center from 1:00-5:00 pm complete with a scary animal-and-bug show and tell.

The Old Town Haunt joins in the fun with a little kid-friendly tour.

On Sunday, October 31, Old Pasadena partners with One Colorado for free store-to-store trick-or-treating along with a special Meet-and-Greet with favorite Halloween characters from 4:00-9:00 pm.  There will be free haunted photos of the kids and free screenings of Halloween cartoons in the Courtyard from 5:00-9:00. And to make even the littlest kids feel big, there will be a special youngster-friendly tour of the popular Old Town Haunt, with all the lights on and no scary screaming from12:00-4:00pm.
Pretty impressive, huh? But now that the event is in place, how do you promote it?

First of all, it’s newsworthy. So Kershona, even with limited print and absolutely no broadcast budget whatsoever, can generate millions of dollars in free airtime on TV and radio. She also fully exploits an array of social network sites from Twitter and Facebook to Yelp to generate buzz. Partnerships with our local Pasadena City College radio station KPCC, an NPR affiliate, further magnify the reach to parents.

Every participating merchant received a poster and matching postcards to hand out to customers.

Add to that select local newspaper advertising, posters all over town and free postcards for our merchants to hand out, and you have a powerful campaign indeed. Reinforcing that effort is the OPMD website. Janet Schwartz, OMPD’s Director of PR & Destination Marketing, has put not only the Old Pasadena website to work, she follows up with regular email blasts to merchants, visitors and friends of Old Pasadena. Last year, the Halloween celebration marketing effort resulted in an additional 2000 page views in the days leading up to the event.

So that’s the secret. A great event. Enthusiastic social marketing promotion. Partnerships with merchants and media outlets. And an audience of parents hungry for fun, free and safe entertainment, and of course, kids just hungry for candyCandyCANDYCANDY CANDY!

Happy Halloween everyone.

Never use Translations in Your Advertising

And, on the other hand, ALWAYS translate your advertising.
Lemme splain.
The most effective kind of communication is idiomatic. Hence, the most effective advertising is idiomatic. Idioms are the connections that link a culture together, and they don't translate between cultures well. If you have a message that works well in English, you have to remember that it is working well in American English, not British English, Australian English or even Canadian English, eh? Or as George Bernhard Shaw so eloquently put it, "The English and the Americans are two peoples separated by a common language." What that means to an advertiser is: If you want to reach an new audience that speaks a different language, it is not enough to just translate the words of your message.  Even if you get all the words right, the message itself will suffer mightily.

A couple of idioms from another culture, Max and Moritz. Read more and see original image: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Max_und_Moritz.JPG

One of the more amusing ways to demonstrate this is to take a common expression such as, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." and use Bablefish to translate that into say German, which translates to: "Sie können einem alten Hund neue Tricks nicht unterrichten." Those words are basically correct, "hund" is dog, "underrichten" is teach, and "Tricks" is tricks. However if you try to translate that "German expression" back into English, you get, "They can an old dog new cheat not to inform." Um Gotteswillen! In fact, if you wanted to express that concept idiomatically to a German audience that grew up on Max and Moritz, you would say, "Was Hänschen nicht lernt, lernt Hans nimmermehr," which means, "What little Hans doesn't learn, grown up Hans will never learn." That might have absolutely nothing to do with dogs, but the idiom carries the same exact meaning to an entirely different culture. It is reminiscent of a tale told in intelligence circles about early attempts to use the super computers of the cold-war 60’s to translate Russian into English. When they put in “Out of sight, out of mind” using their algorithm, what they got back was: “invisible idiot.”
That said.
Always translate your product essentials (such as the NAME) into the language of your target audience to avoid embarrassment. If for instance you want to introduce your automobile into a new country south of our border, it would be instructive to know that the name NOVA is a colloquialism for “doesn’t run.” Then there’s Vicks cough drops which became popular in Germany, but before introducing them there, they had to change the name to “Wicks,” because they discovered that “vicks” is a rude name for a sex act. Much more recently Osco Drug Stores bought out Sav-On drugs in the predominantly Hispanic Southern California market. They were so proud of the name they had created for themselves over the decades, that they changed their store names, stationary, and advertising from Sav-On to Osco and watched their sales plummet, especially in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods. Osco, it turned out, was an idiom usually associated with vomiting. When you’re sick, the last place anyone wants to go is Vomit Drugs.
After all is said and done, no matter what language it is said and done in, the most basic tenant of advertising applies. Know your audience. Speak their language.  Whether your audience are juniors looking for fashion or governments looking for engineers, learn their jargon, their idioms and you can talk to them in their language, no matter what language they speak.

The Dangers of "Brilliants" in Advertising

I remember the day like it was yesterday. My client abruptly overruled every marketing strategy, product name, logo design, identity package and ad campaign concept that he had approved only a few days before. He had decided to do his ad campaign himself. He knew the product better than anyone, and he was the smartest person he knew.
Both of those statements were true by the way. He had single handedly come up with an invention that had revolutionized his industry. He was a brilliant chemist and practitioner, and had built up a million dollar company that he had started in his garage. The only thing wrong was his reasoning. He decided to undo an entire campaign and design strategy, because his "daughter didn’t like it." She was eighteen at the time.
In his defense, she was the one who had come up with the name for his company when she was twelve. My client therefore reasoned that advertising was so easy even a child could do it.  That said, however, she had not shown any inclination for marketing and advertising since that day. And for all his brilliance in his chosen fields, he himself had no concept of advertising, marketing, design, research, or packaging. And after all was said and done, to become known as the leader in his field, he needed to accomplish all of those in the worst way possible. By doing it himself that’s exactly what he got.
Within a few short years, every mistake he made was manipulated to its fullest by the competition. Soon he was just another player in an industry that he had almost single-handedly invented himself. And he is not alone by any stretch of the imagination.

Elisha Graves Otis, brilliant engineer, innovator and inventor. (image from biografiasyvidas.com)

Such is often the fate of "brilliants." Elisha Graves Otis, the father of the modern elevator, was a brilliant engineer and visionary. Unfortunately he neglected to trademark the name “elevator” leaving the door wide open to every competitor with a pulley system and wires, and they used it freely to take his business away. The landscape is littered with brilliant people who failed to achieve preeminence, because they tried to to something so easy a child could do it.
Advertising is in every respect like any other art form: painting, singing or playing a harmonica. If it's not easy, you can't do it. And if it's too easy, you're not doing it well enough. The Peter Principle, as first defined, is that employees will inevitably rise to their level of incompetence.  The problem for any agencies working with people who are outstanding in their field is that those people tend to believe they are outstanding in every field. And they all too often find their level of incompetence in advertising.
Advertising, in every respect, is like any other art form: painting, singing or playing a harmonica: If it's not easy, you can't do it. And if it's too easy, you're not doing it well enough. The Peter Principle, as originally defined, is that in any hierarchy, employees will inevitably rise to their level of incompetence.  The problem is Peter was an optimist. Any agency working with clients who are outstanding in their fields faces the possibility that those brilliant people will believe they are outstanding in every field. All to often, they attain their level of incompetence in advertising.
The truth is that the statement “I don’t know anything about advertising, but I know what I like,” is exactly six words too long. If you don’t know anything about advertising, then you need professional help.  The same is true for plumbing, stone masonry, brain surgery and programming your DVR. If it’s not easy, you can’t do it. Call on professional help. Save time.  Save money. Save your sanity and your business.
Or as David Ogilvy once wrote, “Why buy a dog and bark yourself,” or as it was first written by Brian Melbancke in 1583, "It is smal reason you should kepe a dog, and barke your selfe."
Apparently old David wasn't the first to say that; he was just right.

Pasadena Government Trips Over Numbskullduggery*

Where have I been for so long? Fighting City Hall. Thank you for asking.

Along with writing advertising, I am currently the chair of the Old Pasadena Management District.  As a matter of fact, I have been a part of this district since before there even was a district. Back in the late 80’s, a core group of merchants and building owners met in our freshly renovated Chamber building to figure out how to make our dream of “Old Pasadena” actually come alive. Of course, first we had to chase out the burglars and addicts hiding in the stairwells. At that time, the district was still rife with boarded up buildings and popularly referred to as Pasadena’s slum.
Through extraordinary efforts, we managed to turn the tide, building by building and block by block. In 2000, we voted to tax ourselves to clean up our streets and sidewalks, and improve the safety and security in our part of town. We formed the Old Pasadena Management District (OPMD). 
In 2003, we partnered with the City to bring the district's three garages up to the same clean and safe standards that we demanded of the rest of our district. Before we took over, the districts parking structures, Schoolhouse, DeLacey and Marriott, were unsightly, unsafe, and unprofitable – not to mention the overpowering smell of vagrant excrement.

The look and smell of today’s city garages are unchanged since 2003.

Today the story of our accomplishments has brought recognition and representatives from cities and Business Improvement Districts nationwide to Pasadena to find ways to learn from our success. The story of the garage management in particular has inspired changes across the country. Yet suddenly and inexplicably, Fred Dock, the City’s Director of Transportation, recently announced they are going to take away management of the garages that have played such a vital role in our success. A management that has profited the city enormously.

OPMD Schoolhouse parking structure, Raymond Ave. entrance.

When OPMD took over management of the garages in 2003, their average net income (in the economic good times of 1996 – 2003) was $5,001.  In 2003, the net revenue was an embarrassing $135,675 loss. City staff warned OPMD that the existing rates had to increase, and our 90-minute free parking program had to be eliminated. But we value our customers, so instead, we maintained the rates, and continued the free parking. Then we cleaned, painted, installed extra security, replaced worn and dangerous stair safety strips, and fully renovated the shabby facilities. Since 2005, the garages’ average annual net income has been over a hundred times theirs. After all expenses and debt service, our average net income has been over $500,000.  For 2009, not a banner year for the economy, it was $1.8 million! Where did we go right?

City garage landscaping vs landscaping maintained by OPMD

It's simple really. Garages are a business, and OPMD is run by business people. The difference is evident to anyone who cares to look (or smell).  In the two years that Mr. Dock has overseen city’s other parking structures, the sad and shabby condition he inherited has remained largely unchanged. Complaints about the city structures outside of our district pour into OPMD every month. Why?  Because the Department of Transportation has given them our phone number, to answer complaints about their structures, even though they are clearly not our responsibility. Yet inexplicably, when OPMD President Steve Mulheim went to the department to get the answers those people were demanding, he was rudely informed that that information was NONE of his BUSINESS!
On the contrary, when it comes to the garages, it seems we are the only ones who do know the business. In addition to garage revenue, our 22 blocks are consistently one of the top providers tax revenue to the City.  OPMD’s management of these garages has been a key component in the success and viability of this area.  Yet the City of Pasadena is seriously considering allow others with an incredibly consistent, demonstrated lack of competence, cooperation and commitment to threaten the welfare of our entire district, not to mention the financial well being of the City as a whole.

City garage interiors vs OPMD's maintained with regular washing and painting.

UPDATE: At a City Council meeting last night, Monday, September 13, we learned that even members of the City Council were unaware of the ill-conceived plans of their Department of Transportation. The representative they sent in place of Fred Dock, who was conspicuous by his absence, didn’t even know how many garages the city had or how many of them were in Old Pasadena. At that meeting, City Council Members decided to examine the issue more thoroughly in two separate committees, make recommendations, and invite the entire city to comment.
Should be an interesting evening. One thing for sure, any attempt to steamroll this *numbskullduggery through the city without anyone being the wiser has run out of gas. There might actually be a possibility that we might be able to help reverse the sorry state of the rest of the garages city-wide.
Weeeeeelll seeeee.

*Yes. That is Numbskull Skullduggery =)