Thursday, October 22, 2009

MIO/BJ: Resourcefulness - And the 3 words driving success

Many times my personal and work lives collide. That's when the best blog posts come to life. Wednesday was a standard "Jeanniey" day. Wake up at 3:30 am. Check email, workout, get showered/dressed (this is important to note). Got dressed in a nice green suit, went downstairs at the hotel and had breakfast. Went back to the room and had a conference call with Germany. Started a call with Spain while I walked to the elevator, downstairs and got in a cab. Got out of the cab at convention center- Walked upstairs; Met with a good friend and fellow presenter and spent about an hour getting ready for an upcoming presentation.

When my co-presenter got up for a few minutes I decided to plug in my pc to charge. THANK GOD I decided to do this when i did- because as i stood up and took one step- jzzzzzooooop - my suit skirt fell off! Ummmm. yeah.... in the middle of the Direct Marketing Association conference at the San Diego convention center my skirt falls down to my ankles.


How the heck can this happen? (Re-read the top section and see ALL of the things I did without my skirt falling off) It appears the zipper broke :-(

I grabbed a bag and a garbage can and recomposed myself. Not sure if there were video cameras - pretty sure this is the only documented sighting. Thankfully only 3 people were walking in the hallway. The resourceful side of me thought fast and I felt pretty good about minimal damage.

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The lesson learned for this "adventure" is that resourcefulness is the key to success many times. And when you are resourceful it makes you feel better about yourself and decisions you make.


What does this have to do with email marketing, branding or publishing? It's a perfect segway for a lesson ALL marketers should hear.


On Wednesday, after the skirt thing, Jim Taylor, PhD and I gave a great presentation to an overpacked room of people titled: "Keeping the Interest of your Online Visitors." In it, we unveiled the behaviors of consumers in the current economic climate. It was pretty eye opening.


We shared our research and case studies indicating how the days of banners and flashing buttons are over. That effective online advertising and marketing is occurring inside venues that are considered to contain, trust and reputable content. Aka: Search, emails, digital magazines and digital newspapers.


In a down economy, 76% of people surveyed in a recent Wealth study by the Harrison Group said they take pride in their shopping skills. 88% say they have done a good job in making their household more fiscally responsible.


Three keys words to keep in mind when you are planning your online marketing in this economy are: Intelligent, Loyal and Self-Sufficient - if your marketing does not come across appealing to those characteristics- it will fail.


This poses a significant opportunity for all of us in the advertising, marketing and publishing industries. The "fluff" of online marketing is finally going away and the real successful companies are breaking through with smart, resourceful efforts.


Another key topic we covered was that fact that websites are dying, standard banners are dead- and online is expanding: outside of the computer monitor and into a world of potable devices - like smartphones, web enabled TV"s, gaming devices, e-readers etc.

And finally, we shared a decision matrix showing where people turn to make decisions at each step of the buying process. Resourcefulness, again, plays a key role here.

After our presentation we received positive comments and lots of requests for some great followup conversation. We felt good about speaking to the group, and when I look back on the day I feel even better about it knowing that I was resourceful enough to fix my skirt so that the presentation could go off without a hitch.

Guess those three words really do make a difference after all.

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