Tackling the Stack

Events may at long last have the CMO's attention—deservedly so, since they consume up to 60% of the marketing budget at most B2B companies.

That's because event tech is transforming the analog meeting into a full-scale "digital production."

So much so, CMOs now face a formidable "event tech stack," a digital gauntlet comprising CRM systems; email delivery platforms; event websites; online communities; registration systems; event personalization platforms; onsite networks; session scanning and survey tools; audience engagement, second-screen, and polling systems; beacons and sensors; games; event apps; lead retrieval systems; learning management systems; social media suites; analytic suites; and vendor sourcing and travel management systems.

That's a ton of tech to choose from and "B2B marketers sometimes need 12 different tools to run an event," says Alon Alroy, CMO of Bizzabo.

A new conference launches this month to help marketers tackle the stack.

Transform USA promises to help attendees develop a "coherent data and digital strategy," according to its founder, Denzil Rankine.

Geared to event producers, Transform USA offers "practical takeaways for their strategies for their organizations, and for the partnerships that they should be operating," Rankine recently told Convene.

Transforming a meeting into a digital production sounds really sexy. And the big-data metrics, personalization and amplification event tech can provide are long overdue. 

But without a strong business-first philosophy—asking of every piece, "How does this serve our marketing goals?"—a CMO could easily find herself overpowered by the event tech stack.

HAT TIP: Gary Slack inspired this post.

Logistics

We are not in the coffee business serving people, but
in the people business serving coffee.

— Howard Schultz

For four crazy years I ran mid-market antiques shows.

It was often tempting to think the business was about logistics, because planning and executing a successful move-in and move-out consumed so much attention.

Collectors—the attendees—could have cared less; but dealers—the exhibitors—considered logistical snafus, even tiny ones, world-shattering.

Until the doors opened.

In that moment, the business's raison d'etre crystallized: the business supplied fixes to people addicted to fine gewgaws.

Don't be lured by language into believing you work the "wheelhouse" of some vast sorting machine.

Your raison d'etre is people—the ones you sell to, the ones you buy from, and the ones in between.

No one has relationships with brands.

Everyone has relationships with people.

This is No Ordinary Job

This is no ordinary job. This is your #dreamjob.

— Salesforce

Human happiness never remains long in the same place.

                                                                                     — Herodotus

With the success of socially conscious companies like Apple, Google, Whole Foods and Salesforce, Millennials' expectations of finding a dream job have risen.

A recent Harris Poll, in fact, shows 8 of 10 Millennials think they can find one.

I was hired for my first dream job under false pretenses.

The Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf hired me as its publications clerk in the belief I wore hearing aids when, in reality, I wore band-aids.

It was 1974, the year of gargantuan eye wear, thanks to Sir Elton John, and my fashionably oversized specs were so heavy they irritated my auricles, making it necessary to wear band aids for relief. But to the association's HR folks, they looked like hearing aids.

The job was a dream job because, after a long series of outdoor gigs, it was my first experience working in an air-conditioned office. Washington, DC, is sultry much of the year; the Alexander Graham Bell Association was a 65-degree nirvana.

I was lucky, because, as the Harris Poll indicates, most Boomers, unlike their Millennial counterparts, don't expect to find a dream job (the same holds true for Gen Xers). They're dubious. Millennials, by comparison, are like overeducated Don Quixotes, rejecting home and hearth and questing instead for the perfect job.

The Harris Poll also indicates how workers define a dream job. Among those who hold one:

• 91% say they know what's expected of them
• 83% say their work matters
• 73% say the job is rewarding and
• 70% say the job taps their greatest strengths.

While many considerations—from compensation, security and opportunity, to mission, culture and location—help define a dream job, it's noteworthy that defined outcomes—the key to sustained organizational growth, according to Gallup—tops the list.

Perhaps no other job in history had more carefully defined outcomes than that of "Keeper of the Royal Rectum," the consultant on colonic matters to the Pharaohs in Ancient Egypt.

The Greek historian Herodotus said the Ancient Egyptians were obsessed with purging themselves "by means of emetics and clysters, which is done out of a regard for their health, since they have a persuasion that every disease to which men are liable is occasioned by the substances whereon they feed."

And if that job lacked for advancement opportunities, there was also the "Groom of the Stool" in King Henry VIII's court—another dream job.

Unless you hate paperwork.

Please Disturb

Sadly, most "social selling" merely amplifies sleazy selling.

You see it on LinkedIn daily, as an ever-swelling spam tsunami floods your homepage.

Although they do themselves no favors, the buffoons behind the flood damage their brands more than themselves. Where they once had opportunities to drive away only handfuls of prospects in the past, now they possess a weapon of mass destruction.

It need not be that way, says LinkedIn strategist Kristina Jaramillo.

Social selling experts insist social selling is a lead-gen "volume play," Jaramillo says.

But it isn't.

Social selling's purpose should be lead qualification and nurturing.

"The focus should be on prospect development," Jaramillo says.

Simply posting about your product, your team, yourself or even your industry doesn't make you relevant to buyers.

You have to drill down to value; and, on LinkedIn, that comes in form of challenges to the status quo.

You need to publish "disruptive" content that drives changes in thoughts and actions, and, most importantly, "give prospects a reason to change," Jaramillo says.

You Can Thank Associations for National Days

July 6 is National Fried Chicken Day.

Marked merely to drive product sales—in this case, sales of chicken parts by fast-food restaurants—the hennish little holiday typifies most so-called "National Days."

National Days are PR stunts—or the vehicles thereof—that date back to the Roman Empire, when emperors declared micro holidays constantly, in order to keep the bread-and-circus-loving citizens of Rome satisfied.

Lupercalia, for example, was a micro holiday marked every February 15th. The Romans would celebrate the day by sacrificing goats, drinking lots of wine, and parading around in the nude, in hopes of banishing evil spirits.

We moderns prefer National Days that honor stuff we can buy: consumer goods like almonds, bourbon, cupcakes, eggs, hot dogs, pancakes, spreadsheets, towels, tubas, and underpants.

As of 2017, association marketers have spawned over 1,200 of this sell-ebrations, according to the National Days Calendar.

To apply for your own National Day, all you need do is submit it to the keepers of the Calendar.

"The buildup annually to a National Day is great," the application states. "News stories, increase in product sales, top of mind awareness and much more can be generated annually."

Great, that is, provided you're not a chicken.