Author Archives: Dan Gershenson

Is There A “Chicago Style” of Business Development?

Note from Dan: Today’s Chicago Brander post is from guest blogger Steve Congdon of Thunderclap Consulting Group. Drawing on the experience of over 200 pitches, Thunderclap helps marketing communications agencies and other professional service firms win more new business. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Steve and find his blog a must-read for anyone seeking a better way to get into more pitches and improve their close ratio. Call him at 773.637.5203. You’ll thank me after a conversation with Steve.

Steve Congdon, Thunderclap Consulting Group

When you think Chicago and personalities, what comes to mind?
A what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of mentality? Da Bears? An Everyman quality? 
Is there a Chicago style of prospecting and salesmanship?
And, if there is, how might be it applied?

Here are three quick thoughts:

Get belly-to-belly.
No matter what is being sold, conversations lead to understanding, which can lead to sales. In my world, ad agency new business development, going belly to belly could mean exchanging a phone call with an in-person meeting. Or, adding a social event to the pitch process that augments your understanding of “your prospect.” The more you know you know about these people, the more you can understand if you want them as a client and how to make that happen.

Work a bit harder.
For brand stewards, this can mean offering up something free.  For business development professionals, it could suggest doing something unexpected, but helpful for your prospect. Like, for instance, writing up an analysis on some competitive activity. Or sending an email past 9p with a relevant link to a cool online story.

Be real.
Another Midwestern trait. For now, let’s define this as being yourself. Can you imagine George Wendt making a stiff, formal presentation – using huge words that tie him up, making both him and his audience uncomfortable?! Nah. It’s just not his brand.

While I honestly think there may be some positive qualities that prospects might be willing to apply to you when you associate yourself with a “Midwest” or Chicago label, these are more likely to affect business success early in the sales game. By that, I mean the label creates perceptions before you even meet someone. Not a bad thing. Certainly nothing “second” about it, (he wrote proudly).

And, of course, you don’t have to be from these here parts to try any of the above. I happen to know people from both coasts who are very nice, despite wanting ketchup on their hot dog.

So what do you think? Is there a “Chicago Style” of business development? And if so, what are those traits?

Why You Can’t Give Social Media To An Intern

“Could I just have some college kid do it?”

It’s a question I’ve heard before from small business owners when they consider the prospect of taking on social media. Before I answer that question, let’s do an experiment – and I genuinely don’t mean to sound like a smart-aleck when I say this, but rather to illustrate a point:

I’d like you to give up control of your company.

Not for a day or a week, but the next 3 months.

And I don’t want you to hand control to your VP or COO or CFO but a kid who is still in school who will be interning with you for 3 months.

He’s going to lead client meetings, speak with investors via conference call and interact directly with your prospective customers.

What, you have a problem with that? Sounds preposterous, you say? It makes you more than a little nervous and nauseous?

Of course it does.

And that’s essentially what you’re doing when you let a college kid handle social media for you. Because there are a few roles that put your brand on the front lines of interaction quite like social media. It’s the blessing and, for people who mishandle it, the curse. It’s oh-so-easy easy to take a glance at people who post on Facebook or Twitter and think, “How hard could it be?” The problem with that outlook is that it dwindles social media to an afterthought rather than an integral part of your brand strategy.

In fact, it doesn’t even consider strategy at all. It doesn’t consider the bigger reason and purpose for why you’re doing what you’re doing. It’s saying, “This is what everybody seems to be on these days, so we should be doing it too.” Maybe you should. But not like this.

To be clear, I like interns and think they’re valuable. I’ve managed many and watched them have an impact on the industry I couldn’t be more proud of in writing and in design. They comprise some of the most rewarding relationships I have ever had in this business – and those people know who they are. Yet, when they come into the advertising and marketing world, even they would admit they have been given instruction in a closed environment that, try as it might, can rarely if ever simulate what it means to work in the real world in real time to represent a real company.

In other words, when they enter your environment, they’re a lot like Luke Skywalker the first time he faced Darth Vader without intense training. If you threw them out there and wished them luck from Day 1, you’d be lucky to emerge with just a flesh wound. As time goes on, you teach them the ways of what you’ve learned to impart hopefully some good things by the end of their training – things they never would have learned in the classroom. But that still doesn’t mean they’re ready to handle social media. Why?

The main challenge is that the person who handles social media has to get a great feel for your mission, your culture, your goals, your tone and manner, what can be said, what can’t be said and more. They have to understand the audience they’re interacting with and how that audience has to be respected. They need to be able to monitor and mine for insights that can be communicated to management (after all, I assume you care to know if what you’re doing is working, right?). They need to be a fountain of good content that resonates with the people you want to attract most.

Fulfilling those responsibilities is a very full plate for anyone. It’s next to impossible and downright unfair to someone who is just learning the basics of marketing. It’s not their fault, really. It’s just where they are in life. Of course, if a university isn’t teaching enough about new media, it’s certainly not helping.

It’s a place of experience and understanding that the “face” of social media of your company has to operate from that the intern doesn’t have. This person can come from within your company or can come from the outside world – yes, in all transparency, I do this for people who don’t have the time or internal resources or understanding right away to handle it. But the people who trust me to handle this great responsibility know that I am not a Junior who is in the middle of taking a Marketing class but someone who has a lot of experience in developing and managing the voice of a brand.

Is an outside consultant going to be more expensive than an intern? Yes. But all we’re talking about here is the perception of your brand to the outside world.

Is that really something you want to cut corners on?

Book Can’t Tarnish the Enduring Brand of “Sweetness”

As I learned of the details of Jeff Pearlman’s new biography on Walter Payton, “Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton,” I admit my reaction was the way many Bears fans would react: I wanted to find Jeff Pearlman in a bar and ask him to step outside. But after I cooled down a little, I realized that, regardless of what Pearlman has written about Payton in the way of his painkiller use, extramarital affairs and depression, his book is as useless for touching the brand of Walter Payton as a New England Patriot in Super Bowl XX.

This is not the voice of a pure fan talking, believe it or not. It’s the voice of reason based on what I know about how iconic sports brands endure above those that shockingly fail us. Particularly those born and bred here in Chicago.

First, let’s play Devil’s Advocate and assume for the sake of argument that every word Pearlman has written about Walter Payton is true. In fact, many fans and friends who witnessed his behavior off the field after he retired wouldn’t disagree or be shocked by some of the allegations. Pearlman interviewed 678 people for the book and I’m sure there were consistencies. So I’m not even going to naively dispute any of that.

Just like I’m not going to dispute that there is a foundation in Payton’s name that has catapulted organ donation sign-ups in Illinois and elsewhere – the same foundation that donates toys to underprivileged children in the Chicagoland area. Or there is a High School named in his honor. Or there is a section of the UIC Medical Center called the Walter Payton Liver Center.

See, where Pearlman did get it wrong was when he said the book was “definitive.” Perhaps in the eyes of a Sports Illustrated columnist who followed the trail of interviews to build a story. I certainly don’t believe Jeff Pearlman is an inherently bad person or that he intends to demonize Walter Payton. But his book will not define the brand of Walter Payton in the eyes of Chicagoans. Not one word. Why?

It’s not like we didn’t know our most iconic sports brands have had their personal faults. We know it and we love them anyway.

Michael Jordan had a failed marriage, gambles huge sums of money and gave a Basketball Hall of Fame speech that was more “F*%$ You” than gracious. Some might even quibble with the fact he smokes cigars as he signs autographs for kids. But we love him anyway.

Mike Ditka has a medical chart like a train wreck, a DWI conviction, tossed a wad of gum at an opposing fan and flipped photographers the bird. Not to mention he is also ’til this day the worst 7th inning stretch singer of “Take Me Out To The Ballgame.” But we love him anyway.

Phil Jackson. Ryne Sandberg. Mark Grace. Bobby Hull. Mistakes off the court/playing field/ice? They’ve made a few. We love them anyway.

We have been lucky to watch the special talents of these icons, but they have been lucky to have a relationship with a town as forgiving as Chicago. I am not entirely sure other cities with bright lights always have such warm hearts. When you do well by us on the field, we tend to understand your humanity off of it. It doesn’t mean we agree with it or excuse it. It means we know great players and coaches can make human errors because they are human beings.

Let me take another angle away from the field of sport. As any iconic brand realizes, when you build up a long legacy of delivering a superior product or service that people appreciate year after year, decade after decade, it is easier to maintain loyalty through the eye of a storm. It’s the difference between a bump in the road and a full-on catastrophe. Why? Because many of those people who invest in your brand look at the “big picture” of what you’ve delivered on up to this point and understand that people in business can relate to. I’m also not talking about a scandal on the level of Enron, but minor things like a foreign object falling into a Big Mac that shouldn’t have.

To be sure, the allegations of the book on Payton are anything but minor. Yet the faults of him and other icons in this town have been the same demons many people grapple with at one time or another: Staying faithful to your spouse. Gambling. Drinking too much. Painkillers for old injuries. Failed business ventures. Depression.

Tell me you or someone you love hasn’t had to face at least one of these challenges. We all have. And thankfully, nobody is writing a tell-all book on us.

Even if they tried, we’d say that author of the tell-all didn’t define us. Because even if we aren’t performing in front of thousands of people any given Sunday, we are all striving for a personal brand that is defined so much more by our positives than our shortcomings.

I know the brand of Walter Payton will enjoy that positive definition too.

With Emanuel’s crowdsourcing, do we need as many Aldermen?

Around the time Rahm Emanuel took office in Chicago, news began to permeate throughout the press that the new Mayor was considering trimming the number of City Council seats in half, from 50 Aldermen to 25 Aldermen. With a city facing a mammoth budget deficit of $635 million, Emanuel had mentioned along the campaign trail that many people had wondered aloud why Chicago needed 50 Aldermen when similarly large cities such as L.A., Houston and Philadelphia operate with far less.  Chopping the Council in half won’t solve all of the city’s financial problems. Yet a new online outlet set up by City Hall made me ask what might amount to a silly question to some, but so be it:

If an online forum set up by City Hall, Chicagobudget.org, enables Chicago’s citizens to voice their ideas right to the source where those ideas can be effectively heard, shared and responded to, why do we need as many Aldermen whose primary job it is to do that? 

In case you aren’t familiar, in late July, the Mayor launched a budget idea website called Chicagobudget.org that enables residents to engage with City Hall by providing suggestions on how the city can save money. The rest of the online community can see these ideas and vote them up or vote them down.

Not long after, many people whose ideas were submitted were shocked to pick up a phone and hear, “Hello, this is Mayor Emanuel,” with the Mayor eager to discuss their ideas in greater detail. Skeptics may call this all a show, but legit or not, let’s not pretend there isn’t a degree of showmanship in politics anyway. It fueled enthusiasm and credibility for the site that yes, the Mayor is reading and if your idea is worthwhile, he’ll be calling you.

While the site focuses primarily on financial ideas, I believe Emanuel has uncovered an excellent opportunity to expand the crowdsourcing application of the website to other areas of Chicago – crime, park development, housing, transportation, volunteering and more. This Summer, I wondered in another post why Chicago couldn’t become the country’s most connected city between City Hall and its constituents, at least in a social media sense. Emanuel’s effort here is a great step in that direction and provides a crowdsourcing model for other cities to follow. It’s so successful in my mind that it begs the hard but viable question about the city government outlets in Chicago that may not be as relevant to the people as they once were. A study late last year by the Better Government Association suggests that cutting the City Council in half would save a little over $7 million alone, before we even get to the positive impact on savings it would have for operations and election expenses. It doesn’t erase $635 million, but it’s a start.

At the moment, a law drafted in 1941 says Chicago must have 50 wards. But I think a few things have changed in this town since 1941. Including the latest ward boundaries and the advent of the Internet as a communication tool.

Who knows, perhaps going around the Council straight to the people is the Mayor’s endgame all along. I haven’t had a a conversation with him and it’s not like he would admit it anyway. But let’s face it. What you have here is a social media mechanism in which people can not only express themselves straight to City Hall but in front of the city in general for great exposure. Sure, maybe it’s still their style to ring up the Alderman or trot down to his or her office. But come on. Even if they get a response, the stage here for their ideas and questions is bigger. It’s a smart political move to open up the dialogue in this manner and it’s a smart social media move to bring the community that much closer. We don’t have to point to things we don’t like in this town and say, “Somebody should really do something about that.” You don’t like it? Here’s the site. Type away. Get it front of the people who can do something about it.

The phone’s ringing so I’d better take this. Might be the Mayor calling.

Sometimes it’s not worth fighting a gorilla.

This photo from someecards.com (yes, proofers, there’s a misspelling in it, but you get the idea) pretty much sums up the “uproar” every time Facebook makes a change to their structure, layout and functionality.

We don’t have to like every change Facebook makes but this is part of the deal we’ve made with ourselves by using a service that literally costs nothing and is larger than most countries in the world. Would you rather pay for the right to use Facebook? Probably not. Even if you did, I doubt this would mean you’d have the opportunity to have your voice heard above the hundreds of millions using it. You may pay someone to help you facilitate a presence on a social networking site like yours truly, but there’s still only so much that can be done – when the sites want to make a change, they’re going to make a change. And they’re probably not going to ask you for your opinion – even though they should more often in advance.

When you do pay for services like project management tools or web hosting, you should, of course, expect more. You should expect better customization to your needs and better customer service. But wasting your time getting angry over a free social network making minor changes? Just roll with it and look at the other side of the coin – be glad that a service like Facebook is making an attempt to evolve and make things better. If not, you can employ the same practice you would in watching television – change the channel by using something else. Not that I’d recommend that if that’s where your audience is primarily living, but just saying there are options if it upsets you that much.

But in the scope of the world’s true problems, Facebook making some minor tweeks is really not a big deal.

I’d just take a deep breath and be glad it’s Friday.