Pick a Peach

Good words are worth much, and cost little.
                                                                      
                                                                                       George Herbert

Sunday's trip to the farmers' market told me peaches are in season. They all cost the same, so we put a lot of care into picking the fattest, prettiest and juiciest. We picked up a lot of them before settling for the best.

You can spot the careless writer easily: when it comes to word choice, she's the one who settles for the first peach she picks up.

She publishes pap like this:

Your IT application infrastructure is the foundation of your business. It must be scalable, available, and secure. It must also evolve as your business needs do. This is why you need more than a support contract from your technology vendor. You need a collaborative relationship. Such a relationship is the key to a successful strategy for deploying and maintaining an enterprise platform. Red Hat understands this need.

Roget's Complaint, Rule Number 2 of copywriter Herschell Gordon Lewis' "three key rules of copywriting," states:

With all the specific descriptive words available, the writer who regards neutral, non-impact words such as needs, quality, features, and value as creative should agree to work for no pay.

Specifics sell, Lewis says; and specific descriptive words sell because they provoke the emotions of otherwise indifferent readers.

"Specific words generate far greater emotional reaction than generalized words; the more specific, the more the writer controls the emotions," he says.

Novelist Joseph Conrad famously said, "My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see.

So, a word to writers everywhere: If you want to make readers hear and feel and see, don't settle for the first word that shambles through your comatose cranium; and certainly don't, if you expect to be paid. Instead, open your Roget's. You will find it's packed with fat, pretty, juicy words that cost little, but are worth much.

Pick a peach.

POSTSCRIPT: Had she pushed herself, Red Hat's copywriter might have said:

You need an uncompromising IT platform—reliable, scalable and secure. One that will grow as your enterprise grows. And a sidekick you can depend on to be with you all the way. Red Hat understands that.

Mission Improbable

A noble purpose inspires sacrifice, stimulates innovation and encourages perseverance.
                                            Gary Hamel

Only 4 in 10 workers strongly agree their company's mission makes them feel their job is important, and fewer than half feel strongly connected to their company's mission, according to a new study by Gallup.

You may not care. But Gallup research shows a compelling mission boosts profits and reduces employee turnover and on-the-job accidents.

Gallup analysts Nate Dvorak and Bailey Nelson say company leaders should:

Build a brand. Employees and customers should hear the same brand promise from leaders. The promise separates the company from rivals and makes it worthy of consideration.

Recruit purpose-driven people. High performers long to make a difference in customers' lives. Leaders should use purpose-centric recruiting ads to attract them.

Foster employee engagement. Profitability soars when the mission's more than posters in the lunchrooms. Leaders themselves should continually communicate the company's purpose, and help workers relate it to their jobs.

But why is it so hard for leaders to step up?

La condition humaine.

Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre spelled out the reasons people rarely rally in his multi-volume doorstopper, Critique of Dialectical Reason:

• Even when part of a group, Sartre says, people normally live lives in lonely crowds. He calls life in the primordial group the life of the series. While they work toward one goal (boarding a bus, for example), people in a series don't share common bonds or act in concert. It's every faceless, interchangeable man for himself.
  
  
• While the series is the primordial group, it's not the only one. When people in a series are threatened, they form an organic and spontaneous group Sartre calls the fused group. Everyone in a fused group rows in concert of his own free will; everyone trusts and inspires his fellows; and everyone's a leader. (Think of the French Resistance, for example.)
  
  
• When the outside threat diminishes, Sartre says, fused groups either disband or ossify. If the latter, they become organizations. People in an organization take the "pledge" to watch out for each other. But the pledge doesn't mean the group members won't seek to fulfill their own self-interests first. In fact, they usually do. (Think of any labor union.)
  
  
• To discourage members of an organization from "taking care of Number 1," leaders eventually emerge who put constraints in place. Sartre calls this "degraded" spinoff of the organization the institution. Institutions work to make sure to every member knows he's a cog that can be easily replaced. (Think of any of today's corporations.)

The Funnel of Uncertainty

As a hurricane barrels up the Eastern seaboard, my local TV weather lady keeps blabbing about the "Funnel of Uncertainty" between Florida and New Jersey, as she gestures at the cartoon conoid on her screen.

Management theorists talk about the "Tunnel of Uncertainty," the corridor on the road to results where "project dampeners" resist "project amplifiers" at every step.

And software developers talk about the "Cone of Uncertainty," the passage of time from when every cost-estimate is a sheer, wild-ass guess to when costs are nailed tighter than a drum.

But I'd never heard anyone talk about the "Funnel of Uncertainty," until my weather lady brought it up.

It's an apt phrase to describe the hell hole prospective customers tumble into, once they surrender their email addresses to marketers.

"Funnel" because that's where marketers shove you as you begin—wittingly or not—your "buyer's journey."

"Uncertainty" because you never know what treatment you might receive along the way. 

In most cases, first you get an email from someone named Kyle, who insists you need a demo. Then you get an email with a link to some goofy infographic. Then, another with a link to an inscrutable slide show. Then, another containing a newsletter you wouldn't read under penalty of death. And then another email with a threat to remove you from the list, should you fail to respond.

There's nothing wrong with funnels; there's nothing wrong with uncertainty.

There's something very wrong with most marketers' graceless treatment of prospects.

Entertaining and educating prospects in the funnel is the corrective to the "buy now or go away forever" vibes you're sending.

Try them out.

Outside the Lines

Companies aren’t looking to sponsor events, they’re looking for marketing opportunities.

Ed Lord

Event producers are lousy, on the whole, at designing 21st century sponsorships, and at helping sponsors activate them.

Far too often, they pitch sponsorships as if they were seeking the charitable funds necessary to defray operating costs. And just as often they vamoose after the sale, leaving sponsors feeling like castaways.

But sponsors don't want to be funders; they want to be thought leaders. And sponsors don't want to blend into the wallpaper; they want to be integral to the attendee experience.

The good news: one in two event producers wants to improve, according to research by GES. "They're willing to take a look at new opportunities that allow sponsors to customize the relationships they have with eventers—resulting in a win-win-win connection," says EVP David Saef.

Event producers who are delivering win-win-win connections are coloring outside the lines—some outside their industries; others, outside their venues.

Live Nation, for example, wrapped a sponsorship with Hertz around attendee hospitality and privilege.

Live Nation partnered with Hertz to enable concertgoers to rent cars when they bought concert tickets on line. Live Nation then cordoned off the parking spots in front of each concert venue—the best ones of all—for exclusive use by Hertz rental customers. The company also allowed the customers to go backstage to meet the performers.

Wound Ostemy and Continence Nurses Society created a 21st century sponsorship for device manufacturer ConvaTec by leveraging event content.

The society partnered with ConvaTec to livestream its annual conference to nurses unable to attend the face-to-face event. An average of 150 nurses attended each livestreamed conference session, generating brand awareness and leads for ConvaTec outside the venue.

Results are In: Fast-growth B2B Companies Blog

A new study by Mattermark of the 50 fastest growing B2B companies in the country finds 80% blog.

According to The State of Sales & Marketing at the 50 Fastest-Growing B2B Companies in the US, "content has become the cornerstone" of fast-growth companies' marketing—and blogs have become the cornerstone of content.

"Blogging drives top-of-the-funnel traffic to a company’s website," the report says. "From there, calls to action encourage visitors to download content (e.g., ebooks, white papers, and templates) so they can learn more about a particular topic.

"This process can be repeated and scaled by marketing teams to include a wide variety of tactics at every stage of the funnel, but the end goal is always the same: to add value and build relationships that drive revenue for your business."

Does your company blog?

If not, what on earth are you waiting for?