I just got back from my annual vacation trek to sunny Florida, and Walt Disney World. As always, I am blown away by the level of commitment of all the cast to providing a consistently great “user experience”. One part of the overall approach to achieving this, of course, is through many Marketing activities and programs.  Readers of this blog will note that I have always had a focus on Integrated Marketing, particularly in the physical event Realm…er…Kingdom..I mean, AREA. Sorry – I may have spent too much time in the Magic Kingdom.

I saw an interesting article on the topic of Integrated Marketing in Bloomberg Business Week today. I think this excerpt sums it up well:

Integration is not simply slapping a common tagline onto all your ads, using a single color palette, or force-fitting a message that’s suited for one medium into another (great television commercials rarely translate well to outdoor billboards, which in turn are very different from online banners).

Integration means communicating a consistent identity from message to message, and medium to medium, and (more importantly) delivering consistently on that identity. It requires not only the identification of a powerful, unifying strategy and compelling voice for your brand, but the discipline to roll it into every aspect of your organization—from advertising to sales, customer service to customer relationship management programs (and beyond).

You can read the compete article here.

This past Friday, April 5th I attended a really interesting and useful Online ROI Summit that was hosted by TechTarget. As with every TechTarget event I have ever attended, this one was well-run, with plenty of detailed information available for the attendees. I was especially pleased to see that Marketing Automation vendor Marketo (who I was familiar with from my Brainshark days) was one of the sponsors of the event.  There were 4 breakout sessions, and a few expert panels, one of which included my ExaGrid colleague, Danielle Pryor. She was a panelist at the Understanding and Improving Demand Generation for More Sales Opportunities through Activity Intelligence™
panel hosted by Justin Hoskins, Senior Director of Product Innovation and Architecture at Tech Target. You can read her bio, along with those of the other presenters and panelists here and get the presentations for the event here.

I’d like to share my experience attending the “Better Backup for All” event in Boston, MA on Friday, February 10 2012. The event was held in a large, 16-screen movie there complex, with registration scheduled from 9:00 AM – 9:30 AM. I am a vocal fan of the entire integrated campaign, including the iconic WWII-style graphics, but I have to say I was less than pleased with the event execution itself.

Early Arrival

As I usually do with any type of event, I arrived early and scoped out the place to see how the preparations look, how nice the signage is, and so forth. I arrived at the the venue at 8:30 (30 minutes before the start of the event registration), and was SHOCKED to see that no signage was in-place. In fact, the name of the venue was DIFFERENT than the one on the email invitation/registration receipt. Luckily, the address was correctly listed.

The only human being around was a man on a ladder out front who was engaged in changing the light bulbs in the overhead canopy in front of the main entrance. He was able to confirm that this WAS, in fact, the right place. He took pity on me and asked a colleague to let me in to the lobby to wait due to the fact it was in the teens and windy outside.

Hurry Up and Wait

Now, by this time it was about 8:40 AM (20 minutes until the start of registration). Still, no one around except one of the concession staff. My question to him about if “this was the right place for the Symantec event” led to some evident confusion on his part as to whether I was part of the Symantec event staff, or an attendee because he led me upstairs to the theater where the registration would be taking place. After several minutes or so hanging around watching the registration table being set up, the event staff noticed me, realized I was a “civilian” and booted me back down into the lobby to wait. Now it was a few minutes before 9:00 AM.

A few other attendees had filtered in slowly over the next 30 minutes or so, until there were quite a few of us waiting for the signal to head upstairs by 9:35. After a false start given by the venue staff to head up (followed immediately by a very testy reminder to wait downstairs by another venue staff member), we were allowed to queue up for registration at around 9:40 AM.

Complete Redemption
Then the event began, and Sean Regan, Sr.Director Product Marketing at Symantec began his slide presentation.  Sean is a personable, engaging presenter and the material looked stunning on the big screen. I may have to hold our next corporate event at a theater! The door prizes, the content, the thoughtful provision of snacks all more than made up for the snafus of the registration.

Bottom Line

I had a great time, learned a lot, and felt that it was a good use of my time. I recommend attending one of these events while Symantec is till holding them if you are involved in backups and  want to hear about the latest NetBackup and Backup Exec features.

Symantec is one of the largest players in the Backup Software space, and now is establishing a beachhead in the appliance world with their NetBackup 5xxx series. As part of their growth initiative, Symantec has announced a new initiative across all their Backup products called “Better Backups for All”.  The integrated campaign has many layers, including physical events, online webinars, videos and compelling messaging with iconic graphics such as the one featured here.

This past Friday, I attended a live event that was part of their layered strategy. I was impressed with the online registration process, which was pretty smooth and easy and had some great email reminders, a calendar add feature, etc.

So, that’s it for the bones of the campaign. In a few upcoming posts I’ll detail my experience with the event itself. (SPOILER ALERT – It’s not all positive).

Happy (almost) New Year, everybody!

As some of you may know, I am working at ExaGrid Systems doing Technical Marketing.  So I’ve been keeping an eye on the trends and products in that space, and will be focusing my blog more on these topics in the coming year. Have a safe and Happy New Year!

Info-Tech is ranked as the Leading Research Firm in the IT & Telecom Research, Reports and Services Market. They recently evaluated six competitors in the disk-based backup market, including Data Domain, Dell, FalconStor, HP, Quantum and ExaGrid.

ExaGrid once again was rated as a “Champion” in the “Leading Vendor” category in their latest version of this report, “Vendor Landscape: Disk Backup”. According to the report, Champions are vendors that “… offer excellent value. They have a strong market presence and are usually the trend setters for the industry. “

According to the report, “ExaGrid is a champion in disk backup due to the combination of its architecture and business strategy. The youngest company in the landscape, ExaGrid has differentiated itself with a unique product offering that brings a scalable storage node clustering (or grid) approach to the backup tier.” Info-Tech also noted that, “ExaGrid has differentiated itself through easy non-disruptive scalability and cost-effective options.”

Click here to download a copy of the full Info-Tech Vendor Landscape.

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving holiday, with friends and family and great food (hopefully).

I’ve noticed in the past several years that there is more and more talk of Cyber Monday dominating the sales volume  rest of the year. Why is that? What role does Marketing play in this fundamental shift in retail and Internet sales, alike?

I have to admit that I’m of two minds about this development. On the one hand, it’s a brilliant achievement of Marketing to have this wide-ranging effect on how and when people will whip out their card. On the other hand, it’s spammy and can be misleading; sometimes the deals aren’t all that great; its just that they are yelled very loudly. Sure, it’s EFFECTIVE marketing, but is it good for the long-term growth and health of the company to have such sales concentration?

I think Marketing organizations should lead the way towards setting internal sales results on  a longer-term sales horizon than “right now” and “today”.  To the extent possible with seasonal demand variations, smoothing out the bumps and giving a steady flow of sales revenue throughout the year is a worthy goal for any Marketing organization.

I know, I know… I sound like a broken record..but GM deserves a lot of credit for their GM Outreach programs. I attended one of these events, held throughout the country to give the buying public a chance to speak with GM engineers and staff about the products. I had the privilege of meeting Mike Kunis (shown above), one of the engineers who worked on the Chevrolet  Sonic subcompact.

Of course these events also mean that GM gets unfiltered feedback immediately on its products, so it’s really a win-win. Here’s a brochure that gives you a good idea what these are all about. This particular collateral was for an event in Naperville, IL.

So how does a huge company like GM pull off one successful event after another all over the country, time and time again? They hired the professionals at the Integrated Events group for the Morley Companies.

The event I attended this past Saturday, October 8th was held at Herb Connolly Chevrolet in Framingham, MA. I even got to meet and have lunch with Chris Connolly, one of the owners of this store whose family has been in the car business for 96 years.

This was a top-shelf event from the start. I received a nicely-formatted HTML email Invitation from GM Outreach Program Headquarters. One really unexpected aspect of this event – executed to the same high level as the event itself - was the catering by an excellent local BBQ joint – yes, there really IS such a thing as a free lunch!

There’s a really useful blog for marketers at http://www.marketo.com/.  Personally, I found a recent blog post by Shonal Narayan to be very much in line with my own thoughts on trade shows, and how to make the best of them.

Shonal’s Top 7 list of things to avoid includes:

Going in Blind – Plan, plan and plan some more is a great way to avoid unforeseen problems, or at least be equipped to handle them as they arise.

Under- or over-staffing – Staff levels are success-critical. Regular readers of this blog will recall that I made a similar point with regard to events in my last post.

Talking Too Long – If a very interesting conversation starts at the show, and you can’t seem to end it, gently pass the person off to a knowledgeable technical or sales staff member to move them away from the booth and into a one-on-one someplace comfortable. (You DID book a small room and bring enough staff to make this possible, right? )

Lose Important Feedback or Leads – Have a formal system to capture what you see and hear at the show, including existing customer feedback or success stories, competitive information gathered, and net-new leads.

Losing Earlybird Discounts – This should be an integral part of the planning process.

Have a “Me Too” Presence – Lack of creativity is one of the key reasons trade shows have a reputation for poor ROI among some stakeholders. Another “me too” booth that looks identical to your competition and half the show floor, giving away the same old SWAG as everyone else, will not get you what you need from the show. Make sure your presence stands out to get the best results.

Drop the Ball – This is perhaps the most common pitfall encountered by busy event staffers and planners.  You work hard to plan, get the logistics right and have a good show with solid traffic. But some emergency comes up right after the show that makes you slow or forgetful in getting leads into the Sales process for followup, negating the whole reason you went in the first place, and gutting the value of the leads collected.

Read the entire article with Shonal’s take on these points here.

In Part 1 of this post, I looked at the grand scale and and quality of execution at this driving event thrown by the New GM.

To wrap up, I’ll examine some of the key Customer Experience elements of the event, and highlight a few of the takeaways for B2B marketing.

Chillin’

The Customer Lounge was a key element of maintaining the low-key tone of the event. Now, I know it’s just a tent with tables and chairs, some video game kiosks, energy bars and cold beverages. There was an “Ambassador” out front to wrangle guests and answer questions but otherwise left guests alone to relax. I think the standard practice at events would be to put sales messages in front of essentially captive guests taking a break from the heat and sunshine – but GM resisted, to their credit. It was just a place to lounge.

Questions?

The hub of the event area was anchored by a Customer Information booth that was well staffed by happy faces ready to address questions. How many times have you gone to a big trade show, had a question and couldn’t find anyone to ask?

Another thoughtful touch was the benches sprinkled around the central hub area; sadly, most of them were unprotected from the rather intense sun. So, GM gets a small “miss”.

Well that’s all I have to say about this event. In terms of success from GM’s perspective, I am now seriously considering a Chevrolet of Buick for the first time in…well, ever. A great big “Win” overall..well done, GM!

Closing thoughts

- Keep guests comfortable, safe and engaged with lots to do

- Have adequate staff to handle the traffic.

- Put the product “front and center” – not the features, not messaging – in demo areas

- Have fun; it shows!