September 1, 2010
Every member of a team must make a unique, individual contribution to the team’s success. I want to be surrounded by people who don’t make excuses, assume individual responsibility and work towards the greater good of the team.
With a commitment to individual responsibility, empowerment and performance, I invite you to join me in believing and internalizing the following affirmations:
- I see the big picture.
- I see how the individual pieces fit together, and I understand the importance of my unique role.
- I prioritize my work and spend considerable time working on projects that are important but not urgent. Because of this, I am proactive and in control of my projects, my career and my life.
- I think strategically before acting tactically.
- Functioning as a marketing consultant, I ask affirming, empowering questions of myself and others.
- I approach consulting projects in a collaborative manner, finding ways to say “yes” and thereby facilitating the success of others.
- I own and manage important projects where I assume the entire responsibility for the planning, production and evaluation of my projects.
- I am a collaborative team player, contributing my energy and expertise to those projects managed by others.
- Knowing that the status quo often leads to obsolescence, I have a deep desire to learn, to create and to explore. I seek innovation and welcome change.
- I do work that really matters. I make a difference.
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Posted by Duane Hallock
August 25, 2010
Helen Keller was right when she said, “The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.”
Everyone, it seems, talks about the importance of having a vision, but very few people have a vivid picture of what they hope their future will look like.
With a commitment to being visionary and strategic, I invite you to join me in believing that:
- The effectiveness of a vision statement can be measured by its ability to inspire us to rally around a shared picture of what can be—and must be—our new reality.
- A compelling vision is future-focused and usually threatens those deeply vested in the status quo.
- Progress always requires change, but not all change is progress.
- Where there is no vision, people perish.
- In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
- Tactics not tied to strategy are nothing more than busywork.
- When you and I are not pursuing the same goal, then we are not on the same team.
- When you and I focus on the same goal from different vantage points, we have stereoscopic vision that gives us better depth perception.
- Every project can be improved by periodically asking, “Why are we doing this?”
- We must, as Stephen Covey says, begin with the end in mind.
Leave a Comment » | Marketing & Strategy | Tagged: marketing, strategy, vision | Permalink
Posted by Duane Hallock
August 18, 2010
Marketing is not as complicated as some want you to think. Good marketing is based upon common sense, though such sense is uncommon.
With a commitment to successful marketing, I invite you to join me in believing that:
- Marketing will flounder when not in pursuit of a measurable goal.
- If a product, service or even a person cannot be differentiated, it cannot be marketed.
- Marketing will fail unless strategy drives tactics, not vice versa.
- Marketing must be based upon the concept of exchanges. Without a quid-pro-quo exchange, we will never have a solid marketing program.
- Value can be defined only by the customer, not by the company producing the product or service. (Nonprofit organizations especially have trouble with this.)
- The social media revolution is the best thing to happen to marketing in a long, long time, even though the tools for achieving marketing success have forever changed.
- Old-school marketers who try to control the message will become increasingly frustrated, disoriented and ultimately obsolete.
- You are still functioning in a 1.0 world—even if you’re using 2.0 tools—when you are not creating community and engaging people in conversations.
- If we aim our message at no one in particular, we shouldn’t be surprised if no one in particular responds.
- Communications comes at the end of the marketing process, not at the beginning.
Leave a Comment » | Life in General, Marketing & Strategy | Tagged: 2.0, communication, differentiation, marketing, nonprofit, social media, strategy | Permalink
Posted by Duane Hallock
May 4, 2010
Three years ago tonight an exceptionally violent tornado destroyed 95 percent of Greensburg, Kansas. With winds more than 200 miles an hour, the rare EF-5 twister claimed 10 fatalities in this town of 1,400. The tornado was 1.7 miles wide and it flattened nearly 1,000 homes and destroyed almost all businesses. Additionally, thousands of picture albums, family heirlooms and other irreplaceable possessions were lost forever.
For seven nights and eight days I represented the American Red Cross in its disaster relief efforts. My role as a Public Affairs Supervisor provided me with unusual access to the restricted areas. When I first parked my Red Cross vehicle, I walked through what was left of the town and saw firsthand the widespread devastation. Block after block after block, houses and businesses were gone. Thick steels bars were wrapped around the stumps of huge oak trees. Cars were upside down under layers of brick, wood and concrete. The drug store, the local café and the post office had been blown away.
I took nearly 500 pictures, though they inadequately captured the magnitude of the devastation. Without using clichés I found it difficult to describe the destruction. Yes, it looked like a war zone. From its appearance, the town could have been leveled by a huge bomb.
Community Connectedness
The people of Greensburg lost everything, or so it seemed to me as an observer. Yet they were grateful for what they had – their lives, their families, and each other. What impressed me most about this rural Kansas community was the incredible human spirit. These hardy individuals rose to the occasion. Despite their loss, the townspeople stood strong. From across the nation, they were surrounded by strangers who were united in one common cause – helping the storm victims to heal and to rebuild their lives. Read the rest of this entry »
2 Comments | Life in General, Marketing & Strategy | Tagged: disaster, Greensburg, marketing, public affairs, Red Cross, tornado | Permalink
Posted by Duane Hallock
April 21, 2010
After all these years, I continue to be disappointed when I hear someone suggest that a communications objective is “to raise awareness.” I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve been in a meeting and someone profoundly states, “We just need to get the word out. We need to let the public know about us.”
Let me emphatically state: Raising awareness is NOT a marketing goal. It is a means to an end and should always be regarded as a tactic in support of some higher-level strategy.
Earlier this month I listened as a nonprofit communicator talked about media relations. She used examples from her organization to talk about writing press releases, pitching stories to the news media and developing relationships with reporters and assignment editors. I was tempted to quibble with her implied assumption that the traditional media are not waning in significance. When someone asked about social media, she brushed off the “new media” as not being serious forms of communication. I couldn’t disagree more, but I’ll save that rant for another occasion.
What I found troubling was that this PR practitioner was operating efficiently at a tactical level, yet I was unable to tie her tactics to any strategy. We spent 90 minutes bumping into trees without once having seen the forest. I wanted to see the big picture. I wanted to know the impact of her communications tactics. When asked what she hoped to accomplish by raising awareness of her organization, she talked about warm, fuzzy feelings that would be evoked in the general public. Still unclear, I asked what she wanted the audience to do with those “warm, fuzzy feelings.” She was at a loss for a solid answer.
Creating warm, fuzzy feelings is not a marketing goal. That’s a means to an end. Warm emotions can only have an impact when accompanied by a call to action resulting in someone actually taking the desired action.
Communicators are naive if they hope their CEOs will be impressed with only soft, warm and immeasurable results. Those communicators will be vulnerable targets when downsizing occurs. Only those who create results and can demonstrate their impact will be of ongoing value to an organization. Everyone else is just a drain on the organization’s precious resources.
So, I will close with this simple question: What impact do you hope your communications will have?
If your answer is “to raise awareness” I would challenge you to dig deeper by asking, “What do I want someone to do with his or her increased awareness?”
2 Comments | Marketing & Strategy | Tagged: goals, marketing, strategy | Permalink
Posted by Duane Hallock
March 10, 2010
If you had to chose, would you rather be creative or innovative?
How does creativity differ from innovation? The best explanation I’ve seen comes from Theodore Levitt, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard University. For years I have carried around the following quote from the professor:
Creativity thinks up new things. Innovation does new things.
There is really no shortage of creativity or of creative people in American business. The shortage is of innovators. The major problem is that so called “creative” people often pass on to others the responsibility for getting down to brass tacks. They have plenty of ideas but little business-like follow-through. They themselves are the bottleneck. They make none of the right kind of effort to help their ideas get a hearing and a try.
Does that help to clarify the choice between creativity and innovation?
We all have ideas about how to fix various problems. We often think of creative ways to meet new challenges. With little effort we can even come up with suggestions on how someone else can do his or her job better. We can easily create lengthy “to do” lists for those around us. The much harder assignment is to be innovative and to actually do what it takes to make a difference.
So, back to the question: Which would you rather be—creative or innovative? (Hint: it’s a trick question.)
I think the question itself is faulty. For me, this is never an either/or proposition.
The best choice is both. I want 1) to be creative and think up new things and also 2) to be innovative and do new things. How about you?
2 Comments | Life in General, Marketing & Strategy | Tagged: creative, creativity, innovation, innovative | Permalink
Posted by Duane Hallock
February 24, 2010
Perhaps I was wrong. In this new 2.0 era, I thought communications was all about having conversations.
Conversations require interaction where people talk and listen. Maybe I’m missing something, but I observe a lot more talking than listening. It seems everyone has something to say and everyone is clamoring to be heard. To me, it looks like the talkers far outnumber the listeners.
Was I mistaken to assume that things would be different with the arrival of the social media revolution? Am I naive in thinking that people would connect with each other because 1) they were genuinely interested in what others had to say and 2) they actually had something of value to share?
As we interact, as we share information, we connect with each other. Social media give us the tools to connect and converse. Sometimes during our conversations we’ll encounter negative or inaccurate information. Does that mean we should immediately end the conversation? Should we refuse to talk because the conversation may be a little awkward or uncomfortable? Absolutely not! Read the rest of this entry »
1 Comment | Marketing & Strategy | Tagged: 2.0, communications, conversations, donors, listening, marketing, nonptofits, social media, volunteers | Permalink
Posted by Duane Hallock
February 10, 2010
I believe the social media revolution may be the greatest advance in communications since Gutenberg invented movable type.
A critical mass of people has joined the revolution. Their enthusiasm has prompted them to talk about their “social media strategy.”
There is nothing strategic, though, about either movable type or social media. Both are tools—means to an end. They are inventions that help people communicate quicker and better.
At first, I loved the phrase “social media strategy” because my mantra has always been strategy before tactics.
I’ve often criticized people who act before they think. I have little patience for people who try to communicate without first asking themselves some very basic questions.
Non-strategic communicators don’t really communicate. They just make noise. They write news releases without knowing why. They produce brochures without having a target audience in mind. They bore us with PowerPoint presentations because they have not given thought to what they want us to do with the heap of meaningless, irrelevant information they’ve just dumped on us.
Just because we’ve moved into a 2.0 world doesn’t mean things have changed much. The proliferation of noise continues. People tweet without having a clue who they’re talking to. Too many bloggers ramble on without thinking things through. Nonprofits create Facebook fan pages with no real understanding of why. We live in a world where too many tactics are not tied to a strategy, so the clutter and confusion accumulates. Read the rest of this entry »
2 Comments | Marketing & Strategy | Tagged: 2.0, communications, Facebook, nonprofits, questions, social media, strategy | Permalink
Posted by Duane Hallock
January 27, 2010
Here at the American Red Cross, our role changes through different phases of disaster relief. We’re already seeing those changes unfold in Haiti.
All relief efforts—regardless of the disaster size—transition through four distinct phases. Anticipating how a relief effort will unfold helps us better serve those affected by the disaster.
Each stage of recovery demands a specific type of public affairs response. (In case you’re unfamiliar with that term, “public affairs” is used by the military, government agencies and the American Red Cross to describe public relations, communications and media relations.)
The American Red Cross recognizes that our disaster relief unfolds in the following stages:
- Heroic Phase.
- Honeymoon Phase.
- Disillusionment Phase.
- Reconstruction Phase.
What happens in each phase? What should we anticipate as each unfolds? How do public expectations change? How should our communications strategy shift in each phase? Read the rest of this entry »
1 Comment | Marketing & Strategy | Tagged: communications, disaster public affairs, marketing, planning, Red Cross, social media | Permalink
Posted by Duane Hallock
January 18, 2010
Shortly after I began working at the American Red Cross, I realized how deceptively complex the organization actually is. In the context of that complexity, I struggled to succinctly describe the important work we do.
In a previous post, I outlined the creative process we undertook to develop key messages that would be 1) conversational, 2) memorable and 3) differentiating. At the American Red Cross of Greater Kansas City, we came up with key messages that focused on our role during times of disaster. We finalized on these three words:
W e a r e t h e r e.
That’s it—three deceptively simple words. They sit at the apex of our communications pyramid. In one sentence, the American Red Cross can say that during a disaster, “We are there.”
To add dimension and depth to that phrase, we added three bullet points that expanded the “we are there” theme. They are:
- We prepare. Before you need us, we are there, anticipating the unexpected. We set the standard for life-saving CPR, first aid and water training skills. We prepare the community with disaster education and preparedness programs. We support blood banks to ensure a safe and adequate supply for all of us.
- We respond. During emergencies, we are there, providing immediate relief and reassurance. Ever day, we serve people affected by disasters, at home and around the world. We can immediately activate a trained team of committed volunteers who are always ready to help. During tragedies, we give people ways to come together and assist those in need.
- We restore. After disasters, we are there, rebuilding lives and communities. We find answers, information and contacts so people can re-establish their lives. Our global network and extensive partnerships empower us to provide tangible solutions. All disaster assistance is provided free of charge, thanks to donations of time and money from the generous American people. Read the rest of this entry »
1 Comment | Marketing & Strategy | Tagged: communications, differentiation, disaster, donations, Kansas City, key messages, Red Cross | Permalink
Posted by Duane Hallock
Duane Hallock is a marketing guy who focuses on strategy before tactics, loves the social media revolution and believes our best days are yet to come.
