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<title>Jan Kelley Marketing Blog - Jim Letwin</title>
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<description><![CDATA[Jan Kelley Marketing Blog - Description]]></description>
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<pubDate>Sat, 19 May 2012 18:13:06 -0400</pubDate>
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<title>Archiving Creativity to Stimulate the Future</title>
<link>http://www.jankelley.comblog.php?blogId=178</link>
<pubDate>Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:43:38 -0500</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[I recently took an active role in an historic event at McMaster University's Ron Joyce Centre. It was historic because McMaster University President and Vice-Chancellor Patrick Deane was there to officially announce the donation of a significant collection of advertising campaign materials from some of North America's most iconic brands - Molson, Coca Cola, Pepsi, McDonald's, General Motors and Budweiser among them - to McMaster University from the Pirate Group.
Anyone in the ad biz will tell you that Pirate Group is the largest advertising audio production company in Canada, co-founded in 1990 by Terry O'Reilly (host of CBC Radio's "Under the Influence" &ndash; formerly "Age of Persuasion"). For the record, Pirate partners include Tom Eymundson, Chris Tait, Tom Goudie and Vanya Drakul.
The real highlight of the night was the casual and often humourous storytelling that took place as part of the one hour "Master Class" led by Terry, Tom (Eymundson) and Chris. Terry talked about the personal insights that led to his award-winning campaign for Toronto Symphony Orchestra; Tom presented clips from Pirate's hilarious work on Bud Light Institute and Chris presented some of their ground-breaking video music work for Maynard's Candy.
As a part-time MBA instructor at McMaster for more than 20 years, and as someone who had worked with Pirate over the years as a member of the JAN Kelley Marketing team, it was my distinct pleasure to moderate a question and answer period following the Master Class. We had great discussions about the critical role of strategy in guiding the creative process &ndash; something that Mr. O'Reilly referred to as "ballet in a phone booth". We also talked about the challenge of selling unique ideas to conservative clients; Chris quipped that "it works best when we sing to them", while Tom and Terry pointed to the need for an endless stream of usable rationale so that the decision-makers can, in turn, sell their recommendations to everyone else. The evening concluded with lots of one-on-one discussions and Terry signing his book, "The Age of Persuasion; How Advertising Ate Our Culture".
So how did Pirate's unique archive - which documents the creation of some 50,000 radio and television commercials from 1981-2007 &ndash; land at Mac? Virtually every college and university in the country had expressed interest in Pirate's treasure trove, but Terry O'Reilly and his partners picked McMaster mainly because of the compelling plan put forward by the University for archive use, evolution and student access.
But here's the real back story. O'Reilly had also run into Professor Mandeep Malik &ndash; one of McMaster University's greatest ambassadors &ndash; at Canada's Next Top Ad Executive, an event that Malik had helped to personally create and develop. I have known Professor Malik for a great many years, and he had often spoken of an idea that he had for McMaster &ndash; an idea that he referred to as "The Journey of Influence". He described it as a living record of the evolution of advertising in Canada.  I imagine that Professor Malik was a bit like an anemic vampire at a blood bank when Terry O'Reilly mentioned that he had an exhaustive archive of advertising treasures in search of an academic home!&nbsp;]]></description>
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<author>jletwin@jankelley.com (JimLetwin)</author>
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<title>Psychologist Engineer Traffic Cop Cat Herder  Goodwill Ambassador</title>
<link>http://www.jankelley.comblog.php?blogId=157</link>
<pubDate>Thu, 01 Sep 2011 13:00:46 -0400</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[It&rsquo;s the job description of the San Francisco cable car &ldquo;gripman&rdquo;, a name which derives from the fact that the levers in the car control the&nbsp;"grip" of an underground cable that moves the trolley car along the tracks.
On a recent trip to Fog City I made it a point to stand on the side runner and cling on to the pole of a San Francisco cable car as it hurdled up and down those amazing hills from downtown Union Square to Fisherman&rsquo;s Wharf. I&rsquo;m glad I did - it was a riot. My first thought was &ldquo;they&rsquo;d never allow this in Ontario &ndash; at least not without a government-approved helmet&rdquo;.
Although I was entertained and amazed by the old cable technology and the ride it delivered, the real power of the experience was watching the cable car operator or&nbsp;gripman in action. He was a confident, well-spoken man who looked to be in his 30&rsquo;s. He operated those levers and brakes with authority and navigated the busy streets and crowded environment with the kind of focus that made me feel like I was in good hands.
But his obvious operating experience was only half the story. His rider management techniques were the real entertainment. As he pulled up to a stop he would shout out to awaiting would-be riders comments such as &ldquo;How many in your party? Three? I have room for three stand up pole riders on the other side of the car&rdquo;. As the three made their way around the cable car other passengers attempted to board and he shouted &ldquo;Whoa &ndash; and where are you going? I said I had room for three and the three were in front of you right?&rdquo; The stunned passengers would stop and look at each other and then slowly agree before nodding to the gripman. &ldquo;OK, how many are you? Two? Let&rsquo;s see if we can make room in the back for you&rdquo;.
Those seated in the back were asked to shuffle around to make room when much to my surprise I heard the&nbsp;gripman say &ldquo;Sir, you&rsquo;re going to have to move out of the way to let those people beside you get seated &hellip; come on now, you&rsquo;re going to have to do better than that!&rdquo;
He was humorous, assertive and highly directive, but never rude. He was a great study in managing complexity. His customers were distracted people of all ages, riding experience, shapes and levels of mental and physical capabilities. And he was managing them all while operating what seemed to me to be a fairly complex piece of moving machinery.
As someone who is not easily impressed, I found myself pleased to be so. And all the things that I have read and learned about the great impact that we can have on the world by simply doing our job really well rang true. It occurred to me that all the advertising and coupon books promoting San Francisco had much less impact on my opinion of the city than one well-trained, thoughtful and engaging gripman on the iconic cable car.
What a great marketing and branding lesson!]]></description>
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<author>jletwin@jankelley.com (JimLetwin)</author>
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<title>Time to Bring in the Experts</title>
<link>http://www.jankelley.comblog.php?blogId=99</link>
<pubDate>Fri, 15 Oct 2010 12:15:20 -0400</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[At JAN Kelley, we&rsquo;ve learned that there&rsquo;s always so much more to learn. Even though we&rsquo;ve been working very closely with dealer, franchise and sales networks for more than 20 years now, our work requires us to get to the next level of thinking, capability and marketing know-how. And there&rsquo;s always another level.
We believe we&rsquo;ve earned the right to say that we have specialized knowledge in marketing to and through dealer, franchise and sales networks. We have helped home offices establish dealer and franchisee advisory councils; we&rsquo;ve taken&nbsp;the lead role in recommending and establishing new and exciting financial models. We&rsquo;ve attended countless meetings designed to help establish and shape integrated national and local marketing campaigns. We even developed a web-based application that gives dealers and franchisees the freedom to customize nationally branded marketing materials to suit their local market needs. By today&rsquo;s standards, the 90&rsquo;s version of our first iteration of that platform was a bit clunky, but today&rsquo;s version is extremely easy and very fast to use. It works because we&rsquo;re not a software company trying to sell our latest technology into a business environment we don&rsquo;t understand; we&rsquo;re a marketing company working closely enough with dealer and franchise based organizations to understand exactly what the software has to do.
But getting to the next level begins with thinking at a higher level.
That&rsquo;s why I invited a panel of experts together to share common experiences, challenges and opportunities associated with networked environments.
The panel consists of Wade Bryanton, a multi-unit Apple Auto Glass Franchisee from PEI; Ron Baugh, Senior Vice President of Wendy's Restaurants of Canada; Duncan Reith, Senior Vice President, Merchandising for Canadian Tire; Glen Steeves, a multi-unit McDonald&rsquo;s franchisee and former Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for McDonald&rsquo;s Restaurants; and Christian Collucci COO of Instant Imprints, a relatively young and growing North American franchise network. To round out the panel, I also invited Professor Mandeep Malik, an innovative and highly respected Professor within the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University.&nbsp; As a long time instructor within the MBA program at DeGroote, I have been impressed with Professor Malik&rsquo;s inventive approach to business problem solving.
The goal of our expert panel is to share experiences and information, to pursue common areas of interest and to identify areas of need and opportunity for innovation. Marketers selling to, through and from within dealer and franchise networks within Canada generate more than $90 billion in annual revenue, and represent 10% of our GDP.&nbsp; We should have lots to talk about &hellip;. Stay tuned!]]></description>
<author>jletwin@jankelley.com (JimLetwin)</author>
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<title>India Rising</title>
<link>http://www.jankelley.comblog.php?blogId=98</link>
<pubDate>Fri, 15 Oct 2010 12:05:03 -0400</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[I recently attended the Canada-India Business Council's 7th Annual Diwali Gala dinner and came away both impressed and amazed.
Diwali (pronounced de-voll-ee) is a "Festival of Lights" and celebrates the triumph of good over evil. It is about hope. As I understand it, the most important day of the Festival is actually November 5th, but the Canada-India Business Council launched the celebration early given the schedule of keynote speaker Ms. Chanda Kochhar, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of ICICI Bank. I attended the event as a guest of our client, USC Educational Savings Plans Inc.
I was impressed with the people I met and heard speak at this prestigious event. Mesaages from the podium were delivered with passion - not from carefully crafted words read from a piece of paper or a teleprompter, but from the heart.
I was amazed with what was said - facts about the Indian economy and population and the opportunities that were now being realized. John Stackhouse, Editor in Chief of the Globe &amp; Mail, spoke directly and personally about the time he had spent in India and the great progress that he had witnessed, even if he had to wait 5 years just to get a land line.
Ms. Chanda Kochar acknowledged the challenges that India will continue to face as it works to build its economy but presented compelling facts regarding India's tremendous potential. Ms. Kachar spoke of the "demographic dividend" that India will deliver, given that 400 million people there are under the age of 18. She pointed out that this very young population represents a ratio of working to dependent people which will be much stronger than any other country in the world, especially China. She also reported trends on Canadian investment in India which were most encouraging - a reflection of the business community's belief in the value and sustainablity of the projects now underway.
Navistar Inc., a long-time client of JAN Kelley has recognized India's great potential through its partnership with Mahindra, having opened two major truck &amp; bus&nbsp;dealer locations&nbsp;(Hyderabad and Bangalore). The plan is to open 100 dealerships, thereby enhancing India's growing ability to deliver reliable and fuel efficient vehicles "made for India, made in India".
India is indeed rising!
&nbsp;
&nbsp;]]></description>
<author>jletwin@jankelley.com (JimLetwin)</author>
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<title>Social Media and B2B</title>
<link>http://www.jankelley.comblog.php?blogId=97</link>
<pubDate>Thu, 14 Oct 2010 13:40:28 -0400</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[I recently joined Paul Gillin and Manish Mehta, Vice President, Global Online for Dell Online in a webinar panel discussion of the role of Social Media in B2B. Here are some of the points that I covered during that very interesting and lively panel discussion.
Business to business marketing has always been about relationships. These have traditionally been created, built and sustained through face to face contact via personal selling, with secondary support from inside sales, trade shows, direct mail and advertising.
But technology has been a significant disruptive force within that traditional relationship building model, resulting in &ldquo;disintermediation&rdquo;. The dictionary says that disintermediation is the elimination of an intermediary in the transaction between two parties. In our case, can anyone guess who the intermediary is? If you were thinking the sales force, it is exactly that. The difference in our case is that they aren&rsquo;t being eliminated, but their influence and effectiveness is being reduced, and in some cases, quite severely. Because the average B2B buyer spends much more time researching and comparing than actually &ldquo;buying&rdquo;, the window to customer behaviour may be more visible through the computer screen than the car windshield.
That&rsquo;s because a lot of the information that used to be shared only in face-to-face sales meetings through carefully crafted spec sheets and sales presentations is now readily available on line. A good amount of the networking that used to happen only at trade shows and industry events has also moved on-line. So as Chris Woods of Eloqua has stated, the body language that current and potential buyers demonstrated during those frequent sales pitches, has become less visible to the sales force. This means that physical body language, once observed and interpreted by the sales force, must now be increasingly observed and interpreted on line by the marketing department. This is a real opportunity for B2B marketers, but because it&rsquo;s relatively new it can also be challenging.
The first opportunity is to listen to find out where your buyers and potential buyers are spending time on line. Who&rsquo;s blogging? Who&rsquo;s asking questions? What questions? What are the sources of complaint and unhappiness in service and product performance? What is being said about you and your products? What is this basis for the commentary?
There are many social media monitoring tools available for this type of listening activity, some of which are completely free or have a free trial period. As you gain an understanding of what is being said and by whom, you can begin commenting on and participating in the conversations. An easy point of entry is via LinkedIn answers. You can search past questions and answers, you can post questions and of course, you can provide answers.
A question posted on LinkedIn Answers asked for recommendations on analytical tools for getting to know customers.
Interestingly, the best answer recommended visiting chat rooms, to begin blogging and to provide relevant content as opposed to sales messages. This will provide valuable feedback and commentary, revealing buyer mind states, attitudes and needs.
Here is a link that you may find valuable &ndash; vital statistics for every B2B marketer.
&nbsp;http://ht.ly/1WG3j.]]></description>
<author>jletwin@jankelley.com (JimLetwin)</author>
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