Networking is a waste of time…

Yes, networking is a waste of time…

…if you can’t answer the question, “So, what do you do?”

This is a common networking question that everyone should be able to answer. Interestingly, however, few actually answer it. Like a good politician or crisis management firm, most people answer the question they wish they had been asked, the easier one to answer. Instead of answering the question “So, what do you do?”, they’ll tend to answer a different question. “So, what do you do?” becomes “What is your title?” or “What can you do?”. Answer those two questions instead and you are just wasting your time by networking.

Instead, “So, what do you do?” is best accepted as a marketing question, as if someone rang up your office and said, ‘let me speak to a salesperson’. Treat the question this way and you’ll immediately focus on the value you provide – not a laundry list of capabilities or a corporate title earned that may or may not suggest anything about what value you or your company can offer others.

And if you aren’t certain of the value you offer others, how do you expect anyone else be expected to figure it out? 

It's good. Really good. It's TOO good.

Dear Nancy Brinker:

I'm a fan. What you've done for research is amazing. No one is a bigger supporter of the cause than I am. My mother herself was a victim of breast cancer so I say this with love, respect, and admiration:

Consider me 'aware'. I'm full of 'awareness'. I'm up to my eyeballs in 'awareness'. But like a pop song heard too many times, the pink thing has gone from helpfully ubiquitous to having the effect of the vandalism you'd expect from a Barbie-obsessed eight year old girl. It's too much of a good thing.

Your marketing - specifically, your brand communication - urgently needs a refresher because I can't be alone when I say I'm starting to tune it out like I do omnipresent graffiti in Queens.

To make a donation: http://ww5.komen.org/

Pepsi for Obama?

Here's the new look for Pepsi. I know I'm not alone in recognizing the logo as something strikingly familiar to a select number of yard signs around town this time of year. Pepsi and Obama - are both the choice of a new generation?

Frankly, the design does nothing for me, as I'm old enough to recognize the type design as something retro from the time when my college roommate was experimenting with 'Flock of Seagulls' hair, and my sister wrote her 'e's like that back in the late 70s. Alternatively, there is something modern and Anglo/European about the look, so the ads for this sugar water may eventually feature sublime smiles, pastel dress shirts and objectionable ties.

In an interesting use of new(est) media, to get the word out Pepsi released the design to thought leaders in social media. So the fact that now I'm blogging about it means the new look is viral. I'm officially a marketing virus.

(Photo courtesy Peter Shankman)

...dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria!

Along with this post's title, one of my favorite movie quips, offered in deadpan delivery by Howard Ramis in Ghostbusters, is "Sorry, Venkman, I'm terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought."

Yet this is a lot of what we've been hearing lately from colleagues and pundits. But this isn't the End Of Days brought about by the Sta-Puft marshmallow man, but rather it is a long overdue reminder to focus, work hard, live within our means, and reprioritize.

While things will change over the next days and weeks, and some of it may perhaps eventually change my tone in this post, right now I'm not seeing a lot of bad news so much as a lot of fear and uncertainty, and opportunity always arrives with uncertainty. Buy into the fear and sell into the optimism. It's Warren Buffett's approach for the markets and should be all marketers' as well. Our response to a difficult situation changes our ability to handle it.

No doubt, things are going to stink in the near term, because marketers have by and large never properly positioned themselves or the function for the key role it should assume during a market slowdown, opting instead to stammer defensively and nervously paint lambs blood above our office doors. Still, a ten trillion dollar debt should worry us. The potential for a nuclear Iran is disurbing. Climate change has me checking under the bed for the bogeyman and Al Gore.

But this? Nothing that a little ingenuity and informed strategic thinking can't overcome. Now is not the time for marketers to be running for the exits. Companies that spend this time looking for greater efficiencies and new approaches will maintain in a slowdown and position themselves for exceptional share growth when the money starts flowing again.

There are a number of studies to support this. Download a few. Discover specific ideas. Seek knowledgeable advice. Recalibrate.

Smile.

Supercomm Returns

Remember Supercomm?

'Back in the day', as I catch myself using phrases my father once did, Supercomm was the 'it' event of the telecom industry. It was the type of event where if you were in the business you had to launch something, or close a deal, or both, and then come back year after year with a bigger, better display - this show sucked the life out of many annual marketing budgets. And like car shows and builder shows, long before American Idol it was a haven for singer-dancers to take a break from waiting tables and be discovered in an exhibitors booth – by showcasing their unique talent of staying in key while rhyming "Motorola".

Sponsors TIA and USTelecom had split the event years ago, each claiming the mantle of Supercomm to fair to middlin' success, but in recent years their shows came together again as NXTcomm. Now, realizing that even years on from its heyday the name Supercomm has cachet, and with the June 09 Chicago event Supercomm is once again Supercomm.

According to the news release, TIA and USTelecom say the name change reflects recent developments in communications. That's a political statement in a political year. It's clear to me and other observers that the Supercomm cachet means a return to old style 'if you aren't here, you're not anywhere' power the organizers would like to regain. The demise of Supercomm was followed by confusion, weakness in both events, and general dissatisfaction with trade shows in telecom. I count myself among many irritated exhibitors who wanted TIA and USTelecom to reunite – which they did as NXTcom, then, now, properly, again as SuperComm.

Bring out the rented ficus and double padded orange carpet. I've clients to call.