The 8020Info Water Cooler

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The 8020Info Water Cooler
Issue #97 - Vol. 6 No. 17
11 December, 2006

1. Seven Steps For Marketing A Non-Profit Brand

To build a successful non-profit organization, marketing expert Laura Ries says you should follow the laws of branding. On her Origin of Brands blog, she lists seven steps:

The name: Too many charities have generic names descriptive of what they do but lacking the ability to distinguish themselves from similar organizations. Historic, powerful brands like the Canadian Cancer Society are fine, but otherwise consider a catchy name -- like Kate's Club, started by Kate Atwood for children (like her) faced with a parent's death -- rather than a generic moniker.

The spokesperson: All brands need a spokesperson. It can be the founder, CEO, or a celebrity, but someone must sell the story to the media, donors, volunteers and supporters.

The position: Every brand needs a focus. The temptation is to cover a broad field. But it's best to be narrow. Ries feels even The American Heart Association should be more specific, narrowing its focus.

The enemy: Every brand needs an "enemy" -- something for which it is the opposite in people's minds. While the American Cancer Society focuses on patients dealing with cancer, Kate's Club helps children who feel left behind.

PR, PR, PR: Public relations builds the brand, so the spokesperson has to spend the majority of his or her time doing PR, leaving the managerial duties to someone else.

A signature event: All charities have endless fundraisers but it's best to focus on one or two key events that become hallmarks of the organization, like the Girl Guides cookie drive.

Color and logo: You need a colour you can own, and a distinctive logo.

2. Five Rules For Better PowerPoint Presentations Top

The top concern for participants at a recent 8020Info Roundtable on presentations related to the use and abuse of PowerPoint, and they may be glad to know the new edition of Office 2007 will offer some snazzier possibilities. But the key to successful PowerPoint presentations -- according to Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, on his Working Smart blog -- lies in these five rules:

Don't give PowerPoint centre stage. You are the focus -- not your slides, or your handouts. PowerPoint must augment a strong presentation on your part.

Create a logical flow to your presentation. Better yet, tell a story. "The absolute last thing you want to do is turn your presentation into a random assortment of bulleted lists, which is often what happens when PowerPoint is involved," he warns.

Make your presentation readable. If people can't read your slides easily from the back of the room, your typeface is too small. While it depends on the size of the room, in his experience 30-point type is a minimum. Test your slides for readability.

Remember that less is more. Have all your bullet points appear at once rather than one at a time, and avoid sound effects to limit distractions. Also, cut down the number of the slides; you don't need a bulleted transcript of your talk.

Distribute a handout in advance, so people know there are notes.

3. Why Start-Ups Stop Top

Most start-ups fail. A study by David Garvin, reported in Business Review Weekly, found that start-up failures typically demonstrated one or more of the following:

Customer failure -- an unwillingness of customers to pay for a product, or insufficient demand.

Technological failure -- an inability to deliver the promised functionality.

Operational failure -- an inability to deliver at the required cost or quality levels.

Regulatory failure -- institutional barriers to doing what is desired.

Competitive failure -- a competitor's entry changed the rules of the game.

He concluded that success rates rise substantially when a new business targets familiar customers and is staffed by people well acquainted with the market. The litmus test involves answering the question: "What is the pain point for customers and how does our offering overcome that pain?"

4. How To Make Job Sharing Effective Top

The most common problem with job sharing is the failure to have clear and close co-ordination between the job sharers, so neither the employees nor the boss knows who is responsible for what part of the shared tasks.

On Entrepreneur.com, David Javitch recommends that employees copy what nurses long ago realized was crucial: Every day, at the beginning and end of a shift, they have to carve out time to fully inform the person taking over for them about the tasks in progress and any critical needs to be addressed that day. As well, make sure the schedule of the job sharers is known to other workers. Beyond that, he says, ensure that each of the job sharers is willing to be contacted at home on their off-day in the event of an emergency.

5. Zingers Top

The toughest part of being an entrepreneur, according to consultant George Torok, is riding the emotional ups and downs -- because they happen every day. You feel great at 7:35 a.m., not so sure at 8:02, shaking with fear at 9:15, hopeful at 10:01, jubilant at 10:39, then frustrated at 11:29. "That is the exciting ride of the entrepreneur," he says.
(Source: Business In Motion blog)

List on a piece of paper the five roadblocks that are holding you back or preventing you from being more successful. Then address each one, making appropriate corrections.
(Source: MorningstarAdvisor.com)

Research shows that managing and meeting customer's expectations is more important to customer satisfaction that the actual quantity and quality you deliver. That means avoiding saying, "I'll get this done right away," since "right away" may have a different meaning for you and your customer. Instead, be specific.
(Source: Winning At Work Newsletter)

Don't feel an urge to respond to every e-mail. If you find the e-mail was a waste of your time or you have fulfilled the sender's needs by reading it, delete and move on to other tasks.
(Source: Radical Hop blog)

Consultant Jim Clemmer says, "If you're trying to move your team toward self-management, you need to lead as if you are driving a car on an icy road. Guide and intervene with a light touch. Sudden, jerky changes will send the team into a skid."
(Source: Improvement Points)

6. Q & A with 8020Info Top

Question: Do you have any checklists for creating great copy?

8020Info CEO Rob Wood responds:

One of the best short checklists we've seen recently was published last month on a blog by Seth Godin, the marketing guru and author who wrote The Purple Cow, Unleashing the Ideavirus, Permission Marketing, and All Marketers are Liars, among other books. (You'll find his best-of-class marketing blog at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/.)

While his tips were on how to write a great blog post, the advice works just as well whether you're crafting material for a brochure, newsletter or regular web page. Godin suggests that you focus on:

A useful topic, easily broadened to be useful to a large number of readers

An appropriate illustration (Godin may have meant a graphic, but a story or metaphor can work well too.)

Simple language with no useless jargon

Content that's not too long

A focus on something that people have previously taken for granted, and that initially creates emotional resistance, then causes a light bulb to go off and, finally, causes the reader to look at the world differently all day long.

As an illustration of this last point, he referred to a piece by Joel Spolsky at http://www.joelonsoftware.com/ that asks why there are 15 ways to shut down a laptop. Although we may all have a favourite way to shut down (and therefore we resist the idea of changing what has become an automatic habit), the article soon had you scratching your head in wonder -- why would we ever need so many ways to turn off a laptop? I think of that point every time I put the laptop to bed.

So make your copy useful, simple, short, illustrative and transforming. If you deliver on these five tips from Godin, you'll have copy that cuts through the clutter of an over-communicated world.

7. News From Our Water Cooler Top

Wherever we go, people comment on how busy they are, and how quickly the year has passed. Whether that speaks to the challenges we all face in our lives and workplaces, or how much we are trying to cram into a 24-hour day, it means that the coming holiday break will be an important time for all of us to pause, refresh and revitalize ourselves.

For 8020Info Inc., it has been our most active year yet, and we remain thankful for your support and patronage. In return, we hope our services and advice made a valuable contribution to your achievements in 2006. As we look ahead to the holiday period, and the coming year, we hope this has been a rewarding year for you, at work and in the rest of your life, and that next year will bring even more success. Best wishes for the holidays from all of us at 8020Info Inc.

8. Closing Thought Top

"Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith