DMScott Says: "Lose Control of Your Marketing!"

David Meerman Scott kicked off his session at the Simmons Leadership Conference on April 30 with a story from his wildly popular e-book, The New Rules of Viral Marketing. When Cindy Gordon, VP of new media and marketing partnerships at Universal Orlando Resorts launched the "Wizarding World of Harry Potter" attraction, she didn't spend millions on ad and PR campaigns. Instead, she briefed 7 bloggers - but they were the right 7 people. They were icons in the the Potter fan base, and they in turn spread the word. Gordon estimates that within 24 hours of telling 7 people, 350 million people had heard of the new attraction.

Scott then shifted gears to ask the audience a series of questions, including this one:

In the last 12 months, privately or professionally, when researching a product or professional service:

• Has anyone answered a direct mail piece? 3% of room
• Has anyone gone to the print yellow pages? 12%
  
• Used a print publication? 42%
  
• Google - everybody!
• Tapped your private network for an opinion? 80%
• Have you watched a video online? nearly everybody

To sum up the changes in marketing, Scott shared this quote from that authoritative thinker, Yoda: "You must unlearn what you have learned."

Another example of changing the way we market: Every hotel website around the world is exactly the same. Why? Because hotels focus on the product (the pillows, the shrimp!), but they don't focus on the buyer personae. Think about the different hotel customers - the independent business traveller, the corporate travel manager for a large company (one person making decisions for hundreds), the event planners, etc. It would be so much more effective if they tailored the site for different buyer personae.

Don't market your products; market to your buyers! Scott used the example of Hubspot (full disclosure - he serves on the board), which has developed names for its typical buyers.

"Nobody cares about your products (except you). They care about themselves and their problems," Scott said.

Here's another novel idea. Scott speaks in front of 50,000 people per year. While he's doing his presentations, his laptop lid is up of course. So he's selling ads on the lid of his PC; it's covered with stickers! Century21 took him up on that.

Scott's encouraging us to think different (nod to Apple for this ungrammatical gift to the English language) and to move beyond the conventional marketing tools we grew up with. We can earn attention by publishing an e-book, a webinar, a blog, a great website, an ad on a laptop lid!

In response to a question about the dangers of blogging if you're in a regulated industry like financial services, Scott said: "That's a fear-driven myth. 'I work for a pharma company; we can't communicate that way.' They're really saying: 'I'm scared to do this.' There's no regulation that prevents you from talking with your customers. You do it all the time!"

Go to a blog called "Running a Hospital." It's by Paul Levy, who runs Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He says whatever he wants. (Of course, Levy is saying a little more than he'd probably prefer to right now about his relationship with a staffer, but he has even blogged about that.)

Another question: Do you charge for your e-books? His e-book on viral marketing has been downloaded (for free) a million times. But that drives interest in his print books, such as the bestseller, World Wide Rave.

Real-Time Marketing

Scott observed that in marketing and PR and most businesses, we have an MBA-style planning process. We plan for stuff that's really far in the future. What the Web is allowing us to do, is to work RIGHT NOW! Suppose your biggest competitor just went bankrupt? What if your CEO was just arrested? What if the U.S. Government announced that your product was suddenly tax free.

Social media is a key tool and real-time marketing is now.

Scott relayed the example of an Air Force captain who responded to a Drudge Report story citing a $1.4M door at a San Antonio Air Force Base. At first blush, it sounded like an example of excess government spending. It turns out this was the door that protects a B1 bomber that's worth millions. The captain saw the Drudge story, posted a photo on his blog of the massive, complex door, along with a story on the AF website. Because of his real-time response, he killed the story. This played out over an hour. (Scott has written pretty extensively about the Air Force's use of social media.)

Then we have the entertaining example of the hysterical "United Breaks Guitars" video series, posted by musician Dave Carroll. Carroll took a flight on United Airlines, and watched, in horror, from his seat on the plane as baggage staffers threw his guitar onto the baggage cart. Surprise - his Taylor guitar was broken when he claimed it. After a year of trying to get United to pay for it, with no luck, Carroll posted his video on YouTube. It's so sharable; on the first day it got picked up by about 15 bloggers, and then eventually by the mainstream media, Scott explained.

In another example of real-time marketing, Bob Taylor (of Taylor Guitars) quickly did a (dead serious) YouTube video of travel tips for packing and traveling with your guitar.

What should United have done? Scott noted that United's legal team likely recommended no response. But what if United's head of baggage handling had done a video on what has to happen to get baggage from point A to B? How about a suitcase-cam? United needn't have said "We were wrong."

The incident has definitely boosted Carroll's career. He's been asked to do songs for other artists. He's getting more bookings. He's making money on cases. He's speaking at customer service conferences!

Other great examples of innovative marketing:

TechWise TV from Cisco - Information you can use from Geeks you can trust.

Girls Fight Back - Founded by Erin Weed, a personal safety and self-defense expert. Weed teaches girls and women how to protect themselves. Her main marketing technique - She asks girls to put away their mobile phones at the beginning of a session. At the end she asks them to take them out to take pix and videos of girls defending themselves, practicing moves. And then those pix get posted on Facebook. That's invaluable, because that's where her audience lives. She has trained 500,000 girls to defend themselves.

CWS - Complete Washroom Solutions - A German company wanted to get out the word on its rotating toilet seat covers (the kind you see in airports). This memorable commercial certainly does the job, as only the Europeans can!

Charlayne Hunter-Gault - "Women are the Poorest of the Poor"

It’s been more than two months since I saw Charlayne Hunter-Gault speak at the Simmons Leadership Conference, but her grace, wisdom and strength still stick in my mind.

She’s had an illustrious career to date, currently serving as a foreign correspondent for NPR. Previously, she was chief national correspondent for The Newshour with Jim Lehrer on PBS from 1983 to 1997. She was the first African-American reporter for The New Yorker in 1963, and reported for the New York Times for more than ten years. She received the New York Times Publisher Award, two Emmy's, a Peabody, the Journalist of the Year Award from the National Association of Black Journalists and multiple honorary degrees.

I missed a few minutes of her speech, but I walked in just in time to hear her story of growing up in a small rural town in Georgia, attending a segregated elementary school. They got the hand-me-down books from the white schools.

Once a year, everybody in the community came together for a fundraiser for “this poor little black school,” as she described it. The child of the family who raised the most money was the school king or queen for a day.

“So the money was counted, and I heard my name called. I just couldn’t believe it. I got a Bulova watch and this little diamond tiara,” Hunter-Gault explained. “So the next day, I went to school in my bobby socks and loafers, and my little diamond tiara. I was just so proud.”

Hunter-Gault said she internalized this lesson of pride in oneself and in one’s community.

“So when I walked through those crowds at the University of Georgia, and they were yelling ‘Kill the niggers,’ I thought of that little diamond tiara,” she said. When there was a mob outside her dorm, throwing bricks, she thought of her grandmother, who’d taught her bible verses in the summers. “Yeah though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.”

She eventually got suspended, “for her safety.” This tactic had worked at another school, because then the student criticized the school and she was expelled.

But Hunter-Gault somehow endured the climate at the university, and in 1962 became the first African-American woman to graduate from the school.

Hunter-Gault's remarks then fast-forwarded to modern-day South Africa where the “born frees” registered to vote this year in record numbers. (Born frees are citizens who were born in the post-apartheid era.) Two women ran the election process; 17 million people voted in a near-flawless election. Fifty-five percent of the voters were women.

“I look to the women of Africa to bring the second wind of change to our world, the first being the era of post colonialism,” said Hunter-Gault. “If we save the women of Africa, we can save Africa. They say that if you educate a man, you educate an individual. If you educate a woman, you educate a nation.”

But even as women are making advances in some areas, it is not translating to success in others. “In South Africa, a woman is raped every 26 seconds. In Darfur, women are raped as they go out to gather wood to cook food for their children.

"I am committed to giving you some good news too. There is more to Africa than the four D’s – death, disease, disaster, despair. That’s why I wrote New News out of Africa: Uncovering Africa's Renaissance."

The number one problem in Africa is poverty, explained Hunter-Gault. “Women are the poorest of the poor."

Why should we care? "Ghana and Angola have tremendous oil reserves. And terrorism feeds off poverty," she noted.

“So beyond caring on humanitarian grounds, and I know that many of you do, we should care out of our own national interest,” Hunter-Gault closed.

Simmons Leadership Conference - Team Building

One of the sessions I missed at the conference a few weeks back was by Alison Levine, who is the founder and president of Daredevil Strategies. Levine was team captain for the first American Women's Everest Expedition, and has climbed Mount McKinley and other storied summits. Levine is a former Goldman Sachs exec, and shares leadership lessons from her work and adventure experiences with business audiences.

Happily Liz O'Donnell has summarized the Simmons session here for The Glass Hammer.

For more on Levine, check out this San Francisco Chronicle article from last year.

Simmons Leadership Conference - We Can Change the World...

...one teddy bear hug at at time." Maxine Clark

"Retailing is entertainment, and the store is a stage. When the customer has fun, they spend money."
Stanley Goodman, former chairman of the May Company

Maxine Clark, CEO of Build-a-Bear Workshop, opened the Simmons School of Management Leadership Conference yesterday with a high goosebump quotient.

There's a reason why Clark and her company have won of string of awards for innovation and leadership. She talks the talk eloquently, but she also walks the walk.

It's hard to not love a leader who has built a company on phrases like, "It's not just about building revenue, it's about building empires of character and value." And she's so genuine that you know it's totally sincere. She's not posturing.

Through its foundation, Build-a-Bear has donated more than $20 million to various kids' nonprofits. The company also has launched wonderful campaigns such as its Huggable Heroes, which is in its sixth year. This project recognizes kids who volunteer their time in a broad range of community service projects - in underserved schools, hospitals, nursing homes and disadvantaged neighborhoods. The nomination process (which is now closed) will culminate in the selection of ten noteworthy young people from the U.S. and two from Canada. Each will receive a prize worth $10,000 ($7,500 in scholarship funds and $2,500 from the Build-A-Bear Workshop Foundation to be donated to the charity of their choice).

Clark has had a long career in retailing, starting out at May and Company. In her third week on the job, she heard the chairman, Stanley Goodman, speak (see above) and she knew she'd found her professional calling. She held a series of increasingly successful positions, culminating in CEO of Payless Shoes. For a long time, she loved the job so much she felt she should be paying her employer, but eventually, she felt she was earning that paycheck. At that point, she knew it was time to leave.

She had a light bulb moment when shopping with a 10-year-old friend. It was 12 years ago, at the height of the Beanie Baby craze, and her young friend said, "These are so easy; we could make these."

Build-a-Bear started with one store in St. Louis (still the headquarters) and now has 400 stores worldwide, having sold 75 million bears to date ($470 million in revenues). The company is the tenth largest toy retailer in the U.S.

Clark set out to build a business with a heart. That sounds like a catchphrase, but in this case, she meant it literally. When kids build a bear in one of her stores, they get to pick out a heart for the bear when stuffing it. During the "heart ceremony," kids make a wish on the heart, and the wish stays with the bear for the rest of its life. You can touch the heart to your left or right elbow to make the bear left or right handed. Touch the bear to your head, and it will be smarter than the average bear.

It's little wonder that one of Clark's favorite lines is this one from Lauren Bacall: "Imagination is the highest kite you can fly."

It's tough to capture Clark in a short post, so I'll let Clark's words speak for her:

• "What it takes to engage and retain a customer hasn't changed. It's still entertainment."
• "It's one of my strengths - I know what I don't know. Some people may think that's a weakness, but it's a strength."
• "A business is about passion, legacy, imagination, creation."
• "We're about creating an environment so that great things can happen."
• "When people have fun at their job, they work harder."
• "It takes a village to raise a bear."
• "If you're true to who you are and what you believe, that will endure."

Words to live by.

Simmons Leadership Conference - This Saturday

Last year, we attended this marvelous event for the first time. It was a memorable day, leaving us contemplating the unusual life of anthropologist Louise Leakey and the miraculous survival of Gloria Estefan.

The conference is built on a carefully crafted agenda that blends a bit of entertainment with a lot of education. It's a day of girl power, inspiration and best of all - recharging the professional batteries.

This year's lineup will not disappoint. The headliner is the legendary Diane Keaton. Much-honored business executive Maxine Clark, CEO of Build-a-Bear Workshop, is the opening keynote. Last year, Clark was named one of The 25 Most Influential People in Retailing by Chain Store Age. In 2008, her company sold more than $470 million bears and gave away thousands more to charity.

We're also looking forward to hearing Charlayne Hunter-Gault, who is currently reporting for NPR from South Africa. She served as chief national correspondent for "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," and earlier had an award-winning stint at the New York Times.

Other legendary journalists presenting and moderating at the conference include NPR's Michel Martin and CNBC's Sharon Epperson.

Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, is another bright light on the agenda. Beyond her work serving her country, she's been a vocal human rights advocate for years. She is the founder of The Ethical Globalization Initiative.

A business ethics panel, "Return on Integriy: The New Bottom Line," promises to be fascinating. It features three whistleblowers: Lynn Brewer and Cindy Olson from Enron and Cynthia Cooper from Worldcom.

Celebrating its 30th year, the conference is the preeminent women's leadership forum in the country and annually attracts a global audience of business and professional women.

You can still register here.

Simmons: From Fossils to Women's Health

I had the pleasure of attending two of the sessions at the Simmons Leadership Conference.

Dr. Louise Leakey is a paleoanthropologist, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence, a pilot, the mother of two and the head of the Koobi Fora Research Project at Lake Turkana, East Africa. She’s also the granddaughter of the renowned Louis Leakey, who through his tireless efforts with his wife Mary unearthed the secrets of our very beginnings in Africa. Louise and her family continue the quest and have found remains that date back 3 million years.

At the Simmons Leadership Conference, Dr. Leakey shared her passion for continuing to explore and discover the evolution of human ancestors, especially in the period between 2 million and 1.5 million years ago. The work done by her team is vital to finding answers to questions raised about human evolution. As she stated, “We are one species and we all came from the same place,” making the global conflicts over religion, race, ethnic backgrounds all the more absurd.

Dr. Leakey is involved in transforming the Koobi Fora Research Camp into a year-round research station at Lake Turkana to be run by Africans. She shared her concern that more Africans need to be educated and to take ownership for the care of their country in the future – the time to invest in Africa is now as there is an incredible “brain drain” out of the country.

~~~~~~~

Dr. Nancy Snyderman is the chief medical editor for NBC News, a staff member of the Department of Otorhinolaryngology (surgical and medical specialty concentrating on disorders and diseases involving the head and neck) at the University of Pennsylvania and the mother of three. An engaging speaker, Dr. Snyderman spoke about women needing to take charge of their health and well-being for their own good and for the good of their families. Pointing out that women are usually the last ones to worry about their own health as family caregivers, Dr. Snyderman peppered her talk with humorous stories about growing up as the daughter of a surgeon in Indiana.

With her mother as a role model (a common theme for many of the speakers), she stressed how important a life balance can be to staying healthy. As an example, she shared a story about having lunch with Julia Child in Paris (we all love Julia). At lunch when asked if she wanted white or red wine, Julia said, “Why can’t we have both?”

Julia’s approach to life was everything in moderation, and be open to new experiences. Stress and an unbalanced life can make us sick and Dr. Snyderman advocated good health practices, including exercise, regular check ups and healthy life balances as a way to “live life between the 40 yard lines.”

Simmons School of Management Leadership Conference: Simply the Best

We've had the pleasure this year of promoting the Simmons Leadership Conference, which is in its 29th year. It is deservedly described as the pre-eminent women's leadership event in the country.

The conference has built a terrific reputation, and has featured such noteworthy women as Madeleine Albright, Maya Angelou, Jane Fonda, Toni Morrison, Queen Noor, Cokie Roberts, Jehan Sadat, Lily Tomlin and Oprah Winfrey, to name just a few. This year's event was dedicated to the late Benazir Bhutto, who had twice spoken at the conference.

The keynotes this year were Mireille Guiliano, former CEO of Clicquot and author of French Women Don't Get Fat; Louise Leakey, noted paleoanthropologist; and Dr. Nancy Snyderman, chief medical editor for NBC News. The incomparable Gloria Estefan -- five-time Grammy winner, entrepreneur, philanthropist and children's book author, presented the closing keynote.

Several of us attended the conference, so over a series of posts, we'll summarize some of the terrific women who took the stage. Here are a few highlights of the conference coverage:

Boston Globe's Names column and a conference preview story

Boston Globe Magazine "First Person" Q&A with Ms. Estefan

Boston Herald preview story

Fox 25 interview with Ms. Estefan