….and watch your step, here comes 2014!
I’m pretty sure if we ‘get the right things done’ in the coming year (thank you Mr. Drucker) the happiness we wish each other will largely take care of itself.
Good luck and best wishes from LPC.
….and watch your step, here comes 2014!
I’m pretty sure if we ‘get the right things done’ in the coming year (thank you Mr. Drucker) the happiness we wish each other will largely take care of itself.
Good luck and best wishes from LPC.
It was that pleasant enough moment at the start of a conference call when people sat in their offices across this big country (or this small world) compare their respective weather (pretty cold in Texas, polar in Chicago) while waiting for the last few to join.
Out of the blue Bob (his name isn’t actually Bob) started telling me he’d been trying the herbal tea I’d mentioned when we’d met at a recent kick-off meeting for a research project we’re now working on. This was in Cleveland (it wasn’t in Cleveland).
The tea in question comes loose in simple brown bags from a 32 acre organic farm in Rockport, Maine. The woman who puts it together knows how to make a blend that quietly settles you down for the night without making you groggy the next morning. I find it to be good enough stuff that I order it directly from the farm and even remember to take a little with me when I go on business trips. Hot water, a little honey, gentle sleep.
It was kind of Bob to mention how as he’d found the tea to be useful. No surprise, it’s excellent, but maybe not such a typical water-cooler topic in the halls of American higher management. Anyway, he thanked me again for the link, and there was that slight silence between friendly strangers which is far harder to leave unfilled on the telephone than it is in person. Just as I was about to move the conversation along, two other voices on the line both piped up to say, well, don’t sleep as much as I might these days and if you don’t mind that’s a link I’d like to see too.
OK. Fair enough. What conclusions can be drawn? Well, one: Very few people in corporate America are getting anything like enough sleep. And two: Word of mouth when it’s overheard, unsolicited and compelling, is a powerful, powerful thing.
I know; we know this. Personal service. Excellent products. Keep the customer satisfied. Use testimonials. Let your clients do the taking (and the selling). But, like many truisms (of concept, as well as word), most of the time we nod our heads while consigning the notion to that amorphous cloud of our best intentions. Can get to be a big cloud that.
The truth is there is nothing on your sales and marketing priority list that is as vital and valuable (today, right away, now) as a customer, out of earshot and beyond the metrics of modern marketing, talking about how much they love what you make or do.
We need to keep telling ourselves this. Every day. If we can keep that idea in our minds when considering any facet of our efforts or operation we might just find we end up sleeping a little better at night.
In the meantime, here’s that link:
http://www.avenabotanicals.
If you’d like to talk about tea or anything else we might be able to help you with, just drop me a line.
All the best,
We are finishing up a major global study for our friends at PRIMIR which digs deep into Packaging in Emerging Markets.
The results will be unveiled at a presentation at their Winter Meeting in Chicago on December 10th. Members Only I’m afraid, but if you ARE a member; hope to see you there.
If you’re not going, but want to talk about the world and everything in it, drop us a line..
Here’s a trailer I’m thinking of opening the show with:
For more info about the meeting, look here.
All the best,
Lessons are everywhere, insight also, but most of the time we’re not everywhere. Instead we’re just where we want to be, safe at home, in our (comfort) zone. Quite normal, nothing wrong with that.
It is also normal (wherever you are) to believe or want to that we’re pretty good at what we do. To have some special pride in our hometown or tribe or nationality. It’s the same the world over. And there’s nothing wrong with that either; it’s the human condition. But (you knew there was a but coming, right?) it’s also important to get reminded every so often of how there’s a lot of good and talented folks out there in the rest of the world.
One of our best people just got back from a trip across to the other of side it (the world). A place he hadn’t been before. Big place, famous place, but very other to our western viewpoint. Dangerous maybe. Odd. Not uncivilized as such, but, you know, sketchy? Or weird. Or, well, other.
He was there to assess a printing operation for a client. Just another day (or three) in the busy M & A space. Technical due diligence. Get in there and run the rule over how the locals are dealing with the Big Boy production issues. It wasn’t that he expected there to be water-buffalo in the press room, but Our Man is a world-class flexographer, literally wrote the book on parts of the process, has seen the best of the best, so he was going in there with a firm-but-fair eye.
And he was blown away.
There on the far edge of the other side he met a production manager who’s doing things (for the same multi-nationals that maybe some of you are doing things for) and getting there-from-here in innovative, efficient and profitable ways. And, yeah, you could eat off the press room floor.
Work went well, report went well. Client pleased. Job done. But as a company we got something more than our fee from the assignment. LPC made another valuable contact, and Our Man, it turns out, made a like-minded friend (and not just the Facebook kind). Someone -out there on the other side- who he actually shares far more with than many of the people he’s worked with close to home for all these years. The world is always small when we let it be so.
All the best,
It might be said (not by me, never by me) that while there must be an average nose in size or spread or even the ability to make scents of things, the object in the middle of my own face is at the longer or larger end of the available spectrum.
However, and whatever the length of your proboscis (or the style of your snout), and most certainly whatever the line of business you’re in, it’s worth remembering or recognizing what’s been called the long nose of innovation.
Bill Buxton, a Microsoft guy, wrote in 2008 -which is a thousand years ago now- about this idea of a long nose and what he said, simply put, is that innovation has never been all about the genius of sudden invention and that many breakthrough ideas we will be looking at as new and exciting in ten years from now (whenever you’re reading this) will owe a lot to things that were already known about ten years ago (whenever you’re reading this).
His most obvious example was the computer mouse, which by his reckoning took about thirty years to get from its invention into everyday use. His wider metaphor for this notion was that there’s a lot of work, and usually lots of different contributions along the way, between staking a claim to any given mine site and stacking up the polished gold bars (or cashing them in).
I like this for many reasons, but two especially: In everyday business where we’re not all inventing world-changing items, it still takes the contributions of many, and usually over a long period of time, to enjoy an overnight success. Secondly, while the pace of this digital age seems to be running faster than our feet can keep up with, the truth is there’s still time to build things, products or companies, that don’t happen overnight, but can last and reward us for a lot longer than that.
Before this long nose, I always liked the idea of the long tail. From a marketing perspective there’s not only something reassuring about it, but it also reminds you to think of an important metric of success being programs or products that continue, not just sudden flash-in-the-pan-gotta-have-
I like the long nose (as a concept) even more. Few of us are rock stars in our given worlds. Most play their part in some kind of choir, where there are many different voices adding to the whole. And if we’re sincerely singing the best we can, doing what we’re good at with our heart and lungs, then that’s as it should be.
All the best,
It’s a puzzle. They say that man is a herd animal, but that also great entrepreneurs should be independent beasts. So which is it?
I believe that people are essentially good. There are exceptions (of course), but for the most part, most of us want to do the right thing and want to be thought of as decent. Associations tend to prove this point for me. Intelligent people, business owners, managers, presidents, gathering for self-interested reasons (to learn things, meet people, make deals etc), but more often than not willing to talk to their fellow members and share their ideas, thoughts and experiences.
Kidding myself? Maybe.
But LPC has worked with a number of associations in the labeling and packaging industry and their existence and growth, their success, is largely down to the voluntary efforts of their members, not the guidance or management of any paid employees (however hard-working and gifted they may be).
The most recent example I’d point to is TLMI (Tag & Label Manufacturers Institute). A fiercely competitive group of folks who still recognize the fact that they share more similarities than they have differences. We were involved with interviewing some of their members at an Annual Meeting and having gone through all the video footage what I came away with was how open and helpful they are prepared to be and how strongly they felt that others were towards them. I emphasize that last bit because it speaks to the point; we believe in ourselves, but we’re not always so sure about others.
TLMI’s a great group, but more than any other single thing, they’re great because they’re open and generous with each other. Which benefits each of them individually. And that’s why I believe in associations. If you know of a good one, stick with it, and do your part. Because -it transpires- the people who put the most into it, who volunteer and put themselves out there the most, are also the ones who get the most, personally and professionally, in return. Seems, in this case anyway, that you do get what you give…
Here are a few of the TLMI folks I was talking about. Some are long-standing members, some brand new, all positive and enthusiastic. Traits that I’ll bet they bring back to their everyday business as well.
All the best,
You guys write press releases, right? Some people seem to think that PR actually stands for ‘press release’ and maybe that’s not such a bad thing, because most of the time the first weapon in your public relations effort probably should be a press release.
You do write them though, right? Or maybe have somebody else write them, but your company produces press releases, correct? Regularly? Put something out in the last month? Three months? Good. Good to know. You’d be surprised at how many of your competitors don’t. Suppliers, converters, whatever. No, really. Sure, they did at one time. Before. Or they mean to. Getting round to it. Real soon…
What is it with this industry and marketing? OK, OK, this is a blog not a rant. Let’s move forward. Let’s agree that we all see the value in writing down good things about our products and people and distributing this information freely to places that will publish them (or publishing them ourselves) so that other people can get to know more about what good work we’re doing?
There are some people who don’t do this simple thing as often as they should. Or at all. Maybe. You guys aren’t those guys though, right?
I wanted to talk about how to set up/format your releases so they have the best chance of a) being published and b) being published pretty much as you submitted them, rather than being butchered (in this context that means shortened) by any swamped editor who may fish your release next out of the pile. But….as blog posts are (supposed) to be short, let’s do this: I will write down a list of a few things to check on with your next release….if you promise me you’ll have one written. By someone. And that last bit even takes the responsibility of actually writing it off of your shoulders.
Not too shabby. I think this is going to be a breeze.
What?
Not sure what’s newsworthy? Nothing new(s) happening just at this very second and precisely now?
Not true.
You’re going to get one out there just as soon as you guys get over the next hill?
Not true either.
OK. Let me start you off. Let’s borrow that pencil for a second:
Here’s your pencil back. Get started (or get someone else to get started). As the old saying goes (I’m mangling it here a little) Effort without promotion is like winking at a girl in the dark.
Let’s meet back here when you’re done and I’ll tell you a few very simple but important ways to give yourself the best shot of getting your new novel published.
Any questions in the meantime, speak to my publisher.
All the best,